The ABCs of
Murder
by
Mercedes M. Yardley
I got really tired of murdering Billy Cords.
I know how that sounds, but I can’t help it. I’m a peaceful
guy at heart, and the constant scheming and planning and
carrying out murder after murder was really getting to me.
To be honest, I’d rather be playing basketball. And I hate
basketball.
Besides, Billy was my best friend, a fact that he kept
bringing up.
“Hey, loser,” he said, popping up at the foot of my bed one
evening. I sat up, clutching my bed sheet and screaming.
This was most likely because we had buried Billy two days
ago.
“Cripes, Jake, knock it off,” He covered his ears and bared
his teeth. This was such a Billy move that it only made me
scream harder. I heard pounding feet come tearing down the
hall. Billy sighed and slid under my bed. My father flew
into the room, wearing his boxers and wielding a golf club
like a weapon. The way that my father played, that was most
likely the case.
“What’s wrong?” He sidled up to the window and peeked
outside. I had stopped screaming and was hunched over, open
mouthed. My dad looked at me.
“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost, son,” my father said.
I winced. That line was so clichéd, I was embarrassed.
Under the bed I heard a muffled snerk. Billy was trying his
best to keep himself under control.
“Dad, it was Billy. I saw Billy, he was right at the foot
of my bed and-“
Dad sat down, and his face was sad. He ran his hand over
his balding head.
“Jake,” he said, and didn’t seem to know what to say after
that. I looked at him, waiting. I heard Billy squirm under
the bed a bit and I felt the same way. Dad had acted like
this when Mom died, and it was awkward enough the first
time.
My father swooped me into his arms for a punishing hug. I
struggled, but he held me fast and used his chin to hold my
shoulder in place. “I love you, son!” He said with feeling,
and hugged me even tighter. I let myself go loose in his
grip. Kinda like playing dead, but a little bit smarter.
“I…love you too, Dad,” I said. My eyes narrowed as I heard
another giggle from Billy, but I was sure that Dad didn’t
pick up on it. On account of his sobbing.
“I don’t know what to do for you, boy. Losing Billy. You’re
going to see him everywhere, that’s the way of it. Behind
corners and in crowds and picking green olives out at the
grocery store. But he’s gone, and you’re going to have to
accept it, although you can talk to him whenever you’re
lonely and…”
I kinda tuned out, then. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate
my dad and this unusual display of affection, but come on.
Plus my dead best friend was getting all restless under the
bed. He didn’t have an awful lot of patience. ADD,
practically. I knew it was time for this craziness to end.
“Boy, Dad, thanks a lot,” I interrupted, and then I faked a
big, jaw-cracking yawn. “And I sure am tired. Big test
tomorrow, and all that.” I smiled sweetly. A bit too
sweetly, actually, but Dad was relieved enough to cut his
parenting short.
“Sleep well, son,” he said, and hovered his face around my
head for an instant. I was afraid that he was going to go
in for a kiss like I was ten years old or something, but
instead he just mussed up my hair and left the room, taking
the golf club with him.
“That was close,” Billy said, sliding out from under my
bed. I just stared at him.
“What?” he said.
“What do you mean what? You’re dead!” I climbed out of bed
and smacked his arm. There was a little resistance there,
but not much, and my hand went all of the way through
pretty easily.
“Ow!” Billy yowled, jerking his arm away.
“What, that hurt?” I asked. A little hopefully, I had to
admit. If he was going to scare me so bad, then he at least
ought to get a slap out of it. It’s just the way our
relationship always went.
“Nah, it doesn’t hurt. Just kidding ya. Hey, Jake,” he
said, and suddenly his brown eyes were very serious. “I
need your help with something. As you can see, something’s
not right.”
“What do you need?” It was a simple question, but I wasn’t
prepared for the answer or the look on his face when he
answered.
“I need you to kill me.”
*
“I can’t do this,” I told him the next morning. We were
standing behind my house. I was holding the wood axe in my
hand like it had been dipped in poison. Something gross and
acidic was in my mouth. This was so uncool.
“Dude, I told you I can’t feel anything,” Billy said. He
was sounding ticked off. “Just do it already!” He closed
his eyes and turned his face away.
“Billy,” I said. I was speaking very calmly so that he
could understand me. I heard that’s what you’re supposed to
do with crazy people. “I don’t want to kill you in the
first place. I mean, what’s so bad about being a ghost? I
know,” I said when he angrily opened his mouth, “you said
it’s boring and you feel like you’re not in the right
place, but come on! Killing you with an axe? An axe!”
I pointed at the axe with my other hand. Billy didn’t look
impressed.
“Look, just do it. I can’t explain it, but I just need to
die, okay? Be a pal.”
I sighed and squinched my eyes shut. “You so owe me,” I
said. I peeked through one eye to make sure that the axe
blade would land squarely in his heart, and then I swung
with all of my might.
Billy made a strangled gasping sound and then fell to the
ground. He disappeared. I left the axe where it was and ran
into the bushes, vomiting. It was the worst day of my life.
At least it was until nightfall, when Billy popped over my
bed again.
“Didn’t work,” he said. He shook his head. “We’ll have to
find another way to do it.”
“Billy!” I kept running my hands over where the axe had hit
him, but there wasn’t a mark, just that same resistance
before my hands passed through.
“Dude, you can never ask me to do that again.” My hands
were shaking. “Do you know what it’s like to kill somebody?
It’s the sickest, heaviest, most repulsive…”
He merely looked at me. “I’m already dead. For the most
part. And we’re going to try again tomorrow. I need your
help, Jake.”
So we did.
*
Nothing worked. We tried poison, guns, knives. I pushed him
off of buildings, ran over him with cars and set him on
fire. That one almost burned down the shed.
“This sucks,” I said, after my father berated me for
“acting out”. “Dad totally thinks I’m an arsonist. He’s
getting creeped out seeing me parade in and out of the
house with all sorts of different weapons. Obviously this
isn’t working.”
“What about that wrench?” Billy said, perking up. “What if
you just, you know, crack me over the head a good one?
Think that will work?”
“It’s worth a try,” I sighed, and thonked Billy as hard as
I could right over his eye. He jerked, fell backwards, and
faded away. I wasn’t at all surprised to see him sitting on
my bed after I came up from dinner.
“Not wrenches, either.” He cursed. “This is taking too
long. It’s been weeks already.”
“Tell me about it!” I exploded, and he opened his eyes
wide. “Man, it’s giving me nightmares! It’s changing the
way I’m seeing things, you know! I’m always looking around,
wondering exactly how I should go about murdering you. It
gets old.” I flopped on the bed, and Billy was quiet for a
minute. Which was unusual for him.
“So I meant to ask you, how are your college plans coming
along?” Billy tried to sound disinterested, like it didn’t
really matter. College scared the crap out of me, and he
knew it. But it’s important to Dad, so it’s supposed to be
important to me.
“Not so well, you know? I signed up to volunteer at the
animal shelter, because it’ll look good on an application
one day. I meant to spend some time out there lately, but
I’ve been kinda busy.” If Billy felt guilty, he didn’t show
it. And I didn’t want him to feel guilty, not really. I
punched my pillow and Billy looked at me.
“What?” he asked. His eyebrows were arched.
“I don’t know. How about…” I went through the options in my
head. “What if it has to be something from your house?
Something symbolic or something. Could that be the case?”
Billy perked up. “It’s worth a try,” he said.
*
After school the next day I stopped off to visit Billy’s
mom.
“Hi, Rose,” I said, hugging her when she opened the door.
“How are you holding up?”
Rose’s eyes turned wet when she saw me, but her smile
didn’t tremble at all. “Good,” she said, and hugged me back
harder than I thought she had strength for. Billy slipped
in through the bedroom window while Rose and I were
talking. We weren’t sure if she’d be able to see him or
not, but he didn’t want to take the chance.
“You want to go poke around in his room?” Rose offered
after a while. “Spend time with Billy’s memory? If there’s
something particularly special to you, feel free to have
it. Just run it past me first, will you?”
“Sure thing, Rose,” I said, and grinned at her. Rose was
good people. Even Billy thought so.
“Go on up, then,” she said. Then she looked me dead in the
eye. “Sometimes I feel like Billy is still around. You ever
get that feeling?”
I swallowed hard, but managed to answer in a clear voice.
“That’s because he is. He’s right here.” I gestured vaguely
at the room and Rose smiled.
“You’re a good kid, Jakob. Always were. Always will be.
You’re a credit to your mama, may she rest in peace.” She
crossed herself with a finger bedecked in rings. Then she
went into the kitchen, leaving me to search Billy’s room in
private.
Billy was leaning by his bedroom door. He had been
listening.
“Ever check in on your mom?” I asked him, shutting the
door. He shook his head and used a sleeve to wipe his eyes.
I pretended I was looking elsewhere. Friends do that.
“No,” he said finally. “It’s too hard.” He cleared his
throat and began to go through his room, looking for
something special and wonderful and mercifully deadly.
“How about this?” I asked, holding up a dragon pewter
letter opener. It was shaped like a dagger and dreadfully
tacky. We both thought it was pretty cool.
“Maybe. Throw it in the bag. We’ll try it later.” It was
hard to hear his voice because he was rifling through the
closet. He emerged and tossed a backpack at me. “Keep
these,” he said. I knew what it was without looking. The
bag had all of his playstation games, and a couple of the
old school NES’s. They were gold to me.
“Thanks!” I said, and Billy grinned.
“No problem,” he said.
We put together a pretty good stash of murder weapons by
the end. We were starting to get creative, using extension
cords for hanging and trying to figure out how to
electrocute him. I mean, we had to. We were struggling
here. Murder For Hire we weren’t.
“So what was it like to die?” I asked him. I’d been dying
(ha ha) to know, but hadn’t brought it up until now.
He stopped flipping through a magazine and stared out of
the window.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “It wasn’t like I thought
it would be.”
“What do you mean? Like you thought it would be? How would
you know that?”
Billy started to grind his molars together, and suddenly I
knew that I wouldn’t like what he was going to say.
“When I went out driving that night, I was pretty freaked
out.” He watched me to see my reaction, but I wasn’t
looking at him. Suddenly the bag of video games seemed very
interesting.
“I mean, I was freaked out about graduation, you know. And
college. Where I’d end up. I’m not as smart as you,” he
almost yelled, and I was surprised at how angry he sounded.
Surprised enough to look at him. He took a deep breath and
said much more calmly, “I’m not as smart as you. I didn’t
think we’d end up at the same college. I was freaked about
getting a job to put myself through school, wherever it is.
And you know how I am with girls.”
I snorted. I couldn’t help it. Billy nodded.
“Exactly,” he said. “And in college there’s school and jobs
and girls. That’s pretty much it, yeah? So while I was
driving, I had this thought. Very brief. I thought, ‘What
if I…’”
“No,” I said. My eyes felt wide enough that they could fall
out of my head. “Don’t say it. You didn’t.”
“I did,” Billy said, looking at me. I could tell this was
taking all of his courage. “For half of a second, I did. I
stomped on the gas and headed for the trees.”
I was shaking.
“I think I hate you,” I said, and my teeth chattered.
Billy bowed his head, and then he looked up. His eyes were
glowing.
“What gives you the right to hate me? I screwed up, okay?
All of a sudden I came to my senses and I jerked the car
back onto the road, but I jerked it too far. The car’s
spinning, and you know what? It’s surreal. It’s like a
ride. And I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Wow, this is fun, I
bet Jake would love this’ and then it’s all
over.
It’s over
and
I’m sitting there alone without my frickin’ body and I need
to die and kill me kill me kill me
kill me!”
He was screaming at the top of his lungs, and, I realized,
so was I. I pushed him down onto the floor and sat on top
of him. I wrapped my hands around his throat and pushed
down and squeezed as hard as I could. That familiar
resistance, but I was stronger than that, I could press
harder than that, and I was yelling and crying and my sweat
and tears were dropping down onto his face. Billy was
gasping, but I didn’t care. I’d already killed him a
million times by now. I squeezed until his eyes changed and
he faded away, but I didn’t move. I crouched over where he
had been, my hands clawed and ready to squeeze if he came
back. He didn’t.
Eventually I pushed the hair out of my eyes and took the
bag of games. I didn’t touch the bag of weapons. I wanted
nothing to do with them. I wiped my sweaty palm on my
pants. I didn’t need weapons, anyway.
Downstairs, Rose greeted me with a knowing glance.
“May I have his games, Rose?” I asked in a voice that
didn’t sound at all like mine. I was surprised when Rose
brushed tears off of my face. I had thought I’d stopped
crying long ago.
“Of course you may, dear,” she said. I was prepared to
apologize for the screaming that she had heard, but she
simply never asked. Maybe she had covered her ears and
turned away from the sound. Perhaps she had done the same
thing in his room late at night.
Billy didn’t show up in my room again. I don’t exactly know
why that is. Maybe it’s because I killed him in anger with
my bare hands. Or maybe it’s because now I know the truth.
That he was frightened. That he screwed up. Maybe it’s
because it turned out that we were both killers.
My dad is relieved now. No longer does he have to watch me
throwing axes in the backyard. No more seeing me with guns
and nooses made out of shoelaces and setting the shed on
fire, screaming at myself. No more saying a prayer and
locking his bedroom door against me at night, just in case,
his trusty golf club by his side.
“I’m glad everything’s back to normal, Jake,” he told me.
“You don’t know what a relief it is.” He turned to me, and
I had to look away from his sincerity. “I know that Billy’s
death has been hard for you, and things were rough for a
while. But you’re coming out of this just fine. Something
like this, and the way that you act under stress, well, it
shows you just what kind of a person you really are.”
I glanced down at my killing hands, which were curled into
fists.
Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.
Copyright 2009 by Mercedes M.
Yardley