Second Negative

Murder in Pleasant Grove

This is a disturbing tale of murder and betrayal that may not be appropriate for younger readers. Okay, it’s not. I lied. I do that. The truth is, it’s another story from my vastly entertaining childhood. It’s probably true that most of us could write a book about our youth, and if we could all become famous like David Sedaris, we would. Unfortunately most of our stories aren’t really all that funny or interesting, and nobody would buy them. With that in mind, thank god for the internet. Enjoy.

One thing that you should know about me is that I think it’s incredibly funny to scare the hell out of people. My neighbors probably think that I beat Nicole regularly since she issues at least one blood curdling scream per week. She has a natural jumpiness that makes her an easy target. It’s probably something that she developed while growing up wondering when the Big One would dump California into the Pacific.

Meanwhile I spent my childhood building a gun arsenal and sneaking around the house like an outlaw. Yes, real guns. Okay, they were actually plastic guns, but they did make a loud popping noise that might have startled a small mammal to death. For some reason we prefer the rifle variety in Texas, but a nice Dirty Harry style handgun is hard to beat.

Not to go too far off topic, but plenty of kids I grew up with had plastic rifles, and that morphed into BB guns, and that led to real rifles. It didn’t happen that way for me, and no doubt partially because I didn’t have anybody around telling me how wonderful guns are. Another likely reason is that one of the few times I got my hands on a BB gun I shot out all the light bulbs in the barn, and then accidentally shot my brother behind the ear while trying to scare the hell out of him with the loud noise. Yes, according to Dr. Phil I was on my way to either becoming a serial killer, or the Governor of Texas.

Getting back to the point, one afternoon when I was a kid, my uncle came over to visit with my mother, and brought his son Clay along. Clay was probably around five or six years old at the time. While they were outside, my brother and I hatched an incredibly evil plan…wah hah hah. Unfortunately it was too complicated, so we went with the one I’m telling you about. After locating our “pop” rifle, we grabbed a bottle of ketchup from the refrigerator and went back to my room. We didn’t know when (or if) Clay would come inside, but we were hoping he would come alone, since most good plans are ruined by parental intervention. A few minutes later, we heard the back door open and assumed it was “the mark” since there weren’t any voices. My brother pulled his shirt up and I poured ketchup on his back. He leaned over to keep it from sliding down and we moved into position. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Clay coming down the hallway towards my room. Getting into character, I started yelling at my brother about something that was worth killing him over (like taking too long in the bathroom). When Clay rounded the corner into my room, I pulled the trigger with a loud POP! My brother grunted loudly, and fell over dead. The ketchup ran down his back in perfect low budget horror movie style. My cousin’s terrified gaze moved from the “blood” on my dead brother, to my face, and then to my rifle. This all happened in a split second, and then he was gone, down the hall and out the back door, yelling bloody murder the entire way. Apparently he was crying and screaming when he found our parents, but still managed to spit out that I had killed my brother. Imagine the look on their faces.

Whatever happened after that gets a little fuzzy (and probably involves graphic violence), but all of these years later, every few holidays, my cousin will lean over and whisper, “Remember that time you killed Cody?”