Murder and Mayhem

January 16, 2005

When she put her hands on my neck and told me I was dead, I just laughed. I mean, gosh, she was my mom. We were involved in a game and it was only a few minutes after the instructions were given. Neither of us had ever taken part in that type of entertainment, so I thought she was merely getting into the spirit of the activity. Even when she questioned me about where the weapons were hidden, I didn’t take her seriously.

She was a careful killer, knocking victims off in dimly lit hallways and strangling them as they lay napping in the fiction section. After the fourth or fifth body was found, my suspicions arose. Mom was pretty pre-occupied, and when she confronted me again, as I was writing a letter at the big oak desk outside the library director’s office, it all became very clear. “Why are you alive?” she asked, “you died in the typing room.” Recounting those first few confusing moments of the library fundraising murder party, I did recall her choking gesture and those lethal words. Slumping quietly onto the half-written manuscript in front of me, I waited for some other patron to find me and report the crime.

I was eventually discovered and taken to the final resting place of the living-impaired, which wasn’t a bad place to spend time. There was a table of luscious treats, crunchy chips and warm cheese dips, appetizers of every sort, and thirst-quenching beverages, as well as the lively company of other dead people. Only the remaining un-dead players could assist with the ongoing investigation to determine who the killer might be. The dead were not allowed to vote, though most of them got a good look at the culprit that did them in.

The lab technician who once took a sample of blood from my arm and the x-ray specialist that has seen parts of me not visible to the human eye were both suspects. A quiet nursing student from out-of-state and a local elementary school teacher were being very evasive. That guy that raises pure-bred sheep west of Lime Springs had a deviously guilty appearance. We were all sure that he did it. Actually, any one of us could have been the murderer. It was stimulating entertainment created by a group of library supporters who did a great job putting it all together. What an amazing job of cooperative, unrehearsed, and spontaneous acting we all did. But it is a tiny bit unsettling to realize how the genuinely honest people we think we know quite well, quickly become cunningly deceptive criminals. I don’t usually associate murder with fun, but it was apparent that everyone was enjoying themselves, both the living and the dead.

By Patsy Bronner