The Ingenious Machinations of Logan Bramley

My name is Logan Bramley. My last name may suggest otherwise, but I arrive from a rather unique intersection of ancestries: Jewish, from my mom’s side, as well as Eskimo and a pinch of Cambodia—that’s my gramps and grandma. To make my introduction simple, I am the heir to a monstrous fortune and Scarface-esque drug empire…I need only wait. But who wants to do that, when they could have it all now? No one, of course, and certainly not myself.

To that end, I’ve taken measures to accelerate the agonizingly slow process of my grandpa and dad’s deaths. This is my story.

Yesterday was Sunday, and today is Monday. It’s nine forty-five PM. But to completely elucidate the magnitude of the brilliance you’re about to witness, allow me to backtrack. And bam! Just like that, it’s six PM.

I amble downstairs, with my swag on—I can afford to keep it on at home, but if I forget to turn it off when I go out I always get swarmed by women. I find the usual gang arrayed in their usual spots. Grandma reclines in that perpetually creaking rocking chair, her head cranked to one side in some half-lazy, half-alert dozing repose, as her soaps drone on in front of her. Mom is halfway through the first Twilight again, and she keeps alternating between bug-eyed fascination and monkey-liked squeals. And Mia, as usual, has her face a mile deep in a tub of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Meanwhile, grandpa is in his room, preparing for his weekly Klan meeting in an hour—he has a big speech or something. As for dad, well, he’s in the bathroom right now, but I know where he’ll be as soon as he vacates those four crunchwrap supremes. I have ten minutes, at least, and I pause to thank my wonderful foresight that I only had two crunchwraps and a beefy five-layer when we ate at Taco Bell for lunch. That won’t be hitting my bowels in full force for a while.

I glance to one side then the other to make sure I’m unobserved, and then I prowl down the staircase into the basement. I sidle from there into the garage, taking care to walk on the balls of my feet without making the slightest noise. James Bond would be jealous, I think. Only two cars populate the garage: my dad’s F150, parked on the far end, and grandpa’s Mercedes. I open the Mercedes door (having stolen the spare key from grandpa’s nightstand earlier) and plant a copy of Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion on the dashboard. Then I turn on the interior light and lock the car. I can’t help but grin—everything is working so perfectly!

But I can’t afford to dawdle. I proceed to my next step: I find dad’s bottle of car wax, pour half into the garbage, and replace the other half with gasoline. Then I climb onto the bed of the F150 so I can plant thirty pounds of C4 onto the top of the garage door opener. I carry the trigger in my hand—but I’m not so foolish as to expose such precise timing to the danger of human error. My methods are far more foolproof.

I hear footsteps arriving from overhead—that’ll be dad. So I sneak out of the garage, as stealthily as I arrived, and into the basement bathroom. This toilet has always been peculiar: whenever flushed, our house’s ancient plumbing system disrupts the entire house’s electrical system. Our family does not lack for enemies, and we’ve accordingly allowed this structural idiosyncrasy to exist: you never know when it might come in handy during a night attack, if we’re cornered by the feds into our basement bathroom.

I get the door shut just in time. I hear dad bound down the stairs, eager to wax his truck as his weekly habit. He kicks the door open, since that always makes him feel like Gerard Butler and an all-around badass. He takes one step. Another. Then pauses.

The pause lingers in my bated breath, as I shut my eyes and imagine myself in the garage with my father, to see the mounting emotion in his eyes—

“You bastard!” A scream belts out, and a moment later I hear the terrible crash of a baseball bat to windshield.

Step one, complete.

Next up was step two, beginning at nine PM after some of the commotion died down. Grandpa stumbled downstairs to find his Mercedes trashed, but he still needed to make his Klan meeting—so he hotwired dad’s truck and took it out. The truck that my dad inevitably waxed after calming down about the car that isn’t even his.

So at this point, dad has returned to his own room to read the Bible and pray, which he does every night for about three hours. He probably does a few other alone-time things in there, but I don’t really want to find out. Anyway, I’ve already begun the key element of step two at this point: planting a gift in each of my grandma and sister’s rooms. My grandma should be finishing her nap right about now. My sister has taken a break from her tub of ice cream to use the bathroom, and I glance inside: there’s about a quarter tub left. But that’ll ruin the timing!

But have I ever let something so innocuous stop me? Of course not! I can’t find her spoon, so I reach in with my hands and claw out most of what’s left to shovel it into my mouth, leaving just a thin layer of mint chocolate chip. She’s too thick to notice the difference, probably. Then I reach behind the TV—but not before wiping off my hands (come on, I’m not stupid)—to sever the power cord and implant a trigger for the C4 inside before reconnecting it. As soon as the power is cut to the TV, the C4 will detonate.

I hear footsteps arriving from overhead: that’ll be mom, precisely on time. As I’ve said, I’m a punctual man, and this is nothing different. She wants to watch a TV rerun of Twilight, and I’m all too happy to oblige: grandpa doesn’t like her watching it, accusing her of pseudo-pedophilia for fawning over eighteen-year old boys. In other words, as soon as he returns from the Klan meeting, she will turn off the TV, thereby detonating the C4 and killing grandpa.

I make myself presentable as she enters the room. She looks me over with a faux-percipient eye, then scowls. “Don’t you have a job to do tonight?”

“Like what?”

“George from down the street wanted to pick up an ounce. What are you still doing here? Get to the dead drop.”

I shrug. “I’m better than your grunt work, mom. Go make Mia deliver.”

My mom can only sigh and waddle to the couch for her movie. She still makes these cursory efforts at coercion, but she knows my brilliance demands better jobs than delivering marijuana. Eager to get out of here before everything culminates, I juke to one side and dash to my room.

Minutes later, I hear my sister follow suit, having finished her tub of ice cream. She isn’t barging into my room, which suggests my deception succeeded. That is satisfactory. As the clock strikes quarter past, I hear my grandmother wake up in the other room.

Two simultaneous gasps of joy. “A gift!” they shout in unison. They yell the other’s name in gratitude, as the names in the FROM: field on each gift demands. And they tear each box open in unison. My sister squeals, having discovered a box of Oreos. Special Oreos. But she doesn’t know—only I! And as for my grandmother, she has found a box with a singular turd inside, courtesy of yours truly from yesterday afternoon. As you may have discovered by now, I make tremendous sacrifices in the name of my plot.

Grandma’s door slams open, and she busts into my sister’s room. I can hear it all from my room between the two, clear as day. “What is the meaning of this!” she exclaims.

My sister slurs her words. I hear her leap to her feet then stumble back onto her bed. “Wh-what did you do to me?”

“What are you talking about? I’m talking to Paige, aren’t I?”

“I’m Mia! I’m Mia!”

“No, no. Don’t lie to me young lady. You’re Paige, and you sent me this box of poop!”

Mia pauses for a moment, then bursts out laughing. “You’re a crazy old lady, and your name is Paige!”

“Now I’ve dropped a lot of acid in my day, young lady, but you’ll treat your elders with some respect! Don’t try and mess with my sense of who’s who! You’re Paige!” My grandma can’t help but yell, but her voice has mutated over the years into some queer combination of a squealing six-year-old and the prototypical smoker rasp. It’s agonizing.

My sister screams. “Damn it! What did you put in these Oreos?” She leaps to her feet again, but I then hear her stagger to the door and into my grandma’s arms.

“Oh no you didn’t!” my grandma yells, and a slap rings out.

Step two, complete.

Which brings me to the present time. Nine fifty-five. Grandpa arrives home in five minutes, and everyone else is too distracted to know exactly what’s happened. Mia and grandma are still yelling at each other in her room, neither party quite sure at this point what they’re arguing about or whom they’re arguing with. Living with parents who run a gang has its benefits, after all—they’re quite easy to sabotage with tools right under your nose. Dad is still praying, though he’s since moved to his Prayer Room, which also has some weird stuff in it that I don’t want to think about. And mom is halfway through Twilight—but once she hears the garage door open, she’ll shut it off. Triggering the C4 explosion.

I can’t help but don a cheek-splitting grin. This is it! Five minutes from now, shortly after I vacate the premises, I will be victorious. Grandpa will be dead. My dad is clearly the prime suspect: after all, he had just smashed grandpa’s car, and grandpa had stolen his truck. That provides prime leverage to oust him, since my grandma and mom and sister should be easily persuaded. It’s brilliant! I’m brilliant!

I start dancing, leaping from one foot to the next, too giddy with excitement to hold still.

Wait.

That’s not excitement, is it?

Those two crunch wraps and that beefy five layer burrito flash in my face.

Shit.

My bowel begins to shriek and rumble like Japan. I glance from one side of the basement to the other. The bathroom, or the stairs? Do I have time? My legs start to wobble, and my pelvic floor might as well be crumbling. Not a chance in hell of getting up the stairs. I half-hop, half-sprint to the bathroom and throw myself onto the toilet.

My stomach bottoms out and thrusts itself into the toilet with a splash.

But that’s all it took. One torrential burst, and then nothing.

Whew—I made it.

And then the garage door rumbles, and my world crashes down about me. Damn it! How could I have allowed myself to be so distracted? So stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid! I clasp my hands and look toward the ceiling and pray that once, just this once, my foollproof plan turns out to be flawed in some tiny way that makes it completely and totally harmless—

I shut my eyes and listen.

Miraculously, it isn’t silent.

I’m alive.

Overhead, I find Twilight’s blathering has ceased, supplanted by a talk show. It’s Liza Minnelli. “Balls to you!” she says, as if congratulating me.

I sigh and nod toward the sky. “Balls to you, God. Thank you.”

Overcome with the most amazing sense of relief, I finish wiping and flush the toilet.

Shit, I just flu—