Joseph Frogmorton was the stupidest murderer of all time, space, and dimension. He was born a complete imbecile, his brain incapable of grasping even the most basic systems of logical thought. His memory was full of rapidly decaying twaddle. A brainwave courageous enough to travel through the rutted canals of his mind soon gave up in disgust, and rapidly died. He was puerile, doltish, feeble-minded, idiotic, lack-brained and addle-pated. His paternal grandfather was a twit, his paternal grandmother, a rock. His maternal grandparents had survived by sucking the sweat off the upper lip of a Hippopotamus.
This blunt-witted clod, this thick-skulled loon, this louse on a louse's ear, hatched a fantastic plot to kill his dear mother, the 96 year old Velda Frogmorton, the first openly declared lesbian in the history of the United States of America. She was a dwarf, a paraplegic, and blind. It should have been easy�
It was while making a peanut butter sandwich one day that the idea occurred to him. His sandwich making methods were brutal. He smeared great gobs of peanut butter on soft white bread, tearing it, forcing it to his purpose. He slapped together three sandwiches and began jamming them into his mouth with great speed, his jaws moving mechanically, transforming them into great, gooey lumps, which he forced down his gullet through sheer willpower. As always, he choked and fell to the floor, his face turning blue. "Haaaargh!" He gasped and smacked his chest frantically, ejecting a moist blob of food that hit the ceiling and stuck there alongside older, drier companions.
"It's all Momma's fault, Momma's bad!" he screamed as he shakily rose to his feet. He hated peanut butter sandwiches, but the lack of income and imagination severely limited his choices. He worked in an Aspirin factory putting little wads of cotton into aspirin bottles after they were filled with aspirin. He hated his job too, and sometimes spit into the bottles or held them under his butt and farted into them before he put the little wads of cotton in.
After his bitter defeat at the hands of his own food, he thought his usual bitter and stupid thoughts. His brain, in a frantic effort to shift gears, sent a figurative cloud of smoke into the rafters of his mind. "Kill Momma," he thought. Startled, he groped blindly to recover his thought. "Kill Momma," he thought again. Idiotically pleased, he clung like a syphilitic monkey to the only new idea he'd had in ten years. "Kill Momma, kill Momma, kill Momma!" he cried eagerly. He felt craptastic.
He began to plan. Immediately he ran into problems. He couldn't remember what the words "kill" and "plan" meant. He was also shaky on the word "to." He experienced acute renal failure. He went into shock, then plunged into a coma, collapsing on the floor. This was victory. For, being comatose, he was able to plan without the interference of his brain, an organ slightly less efficient than a pile of melted worms on a hot sidewalk. "Kill. Kill Momma. Momma is bad. Take Momma's money and go to a restaurant. No more peanut butter sandwiches. No more mean food. Fart on mean food. Fart on aspirin bottle. Fart on everything. I can hit Momma with a big stick; I can hit Momma with a cinder block. All Momma's blood will come out. I sleep now." His plan was complete. He no longer remembered why he wanted to kill Momma. It no longer mattered. What mattered was that he had peed his pants while in a coma and he wanted to change. He hurried to the bathroom. He hated to be wet.
At work the next day Joseph was so excited he could hardly think of anything else. His hands trembled. He forgot to say "Hi" to his friend Bobby Lee. He forgot to take his lunch break. He forgot to fart in the aspirin bottles. He forgot everything but what he was going to do that night after work. With a cinder block. Or a big stick.
Velda Frogmorton was the nicest person ever. The birth of her son Joseph had left her with severe health problems but had not altered her personality in any way. She was sweet, kind, and helpful. She had left her husband while pregnant, saying she couldn't stay in a relationship she didn't believe in. Soon after Joseph's birth, she had taken a lesbian lover. They worked in a Circus. They were very happy together. Velda soon became aware that Joseph was not a terribly bright child; that in fact, he was a friggin' idiot. She tried to shield him from the unkind comments of thoughtless people. He had problems in school, and grew sullen. She gave him all the love she knew how to give, but he seemed unable to respond in kind. As a young adult, he was distant. Despite her love for him, she thought him thick and dull, and was horrified, imagining some flaw in her character. The years passed. An accident involving steamrollers and a duck-billed platypus left her paralyzed and blind. Her son became a stranger. Occasionally, they would speak on the phone. She would send him gifts at Christmas and on his birthday. But she had not heard from him in 10 years when he walked into her room at the Bozo the Clown Circus Performers Retirement Center in Delaware, Ohio with a cinder block, screaming about evil peanut butter sandwiches.
Joseph looked at his shriveled Mother. She reminded him of a tiny child lying there in her twin bed, except that she was frail and wrinkled and grey, and was a lesbian dwarf. He remembered that she had never, ever been mean to him. The peanut butter sandwiches had made him crazy. His brain pulsed like a slug.
"Joseph, Joseph, is that you?" his Mother said.
"It's me, Momma, it's me," Joseph sobbed. "The peanut butter sandwiches tried to make me kill you!"
His Mother, bewildered, raised her frail hands towards her son. "Just come and give me a hug, Joseph, give your Momma a hug."
"Yes Momma, yes!" Joseph, tears streaming down his face, reached for his Momma. The cinderblock, which he had raised over his head, came crashing down on his skull, felling him like an ox. He lapsed into a coma. He saw little birds. They told him he was a moron.
Joseph Frogmorton soon recovered from his injuries and gave his Mother many hugs and kisses. On his way home he accidentally killed somebody and that's how he became The Stupidest Murderer.
© 2002 by Craig Snyder