#1: THE SPIDERMONKEY INCIDENT
It was 2004, and Spain had incredibly loose laws regarding keeping exotic animals as pets. I was visiting family in Spain and my parents left me for a playdate at my cousin’s house. He was a couple years older than me.
My cousin led me to a quiet corner of the house. Here, there was a dark red blanket thrown over a cage no bigger than what you would keep a cockatiel in. Theatrically, he pulled away the blanket. There was a spindly, wiry-haired spidermonkey hanging upside down from a wooden bar.
My cousin went to the kitchen and returned with a metal kebab skewer. He prodded the monkey with the pointy end. It released a bloodcurdling scream and did not stop, even after my cousin had stopped. I noticed that it had countless wounds on its scabby, nearly hairless belly.
My cousin threw the blanket back over the cage, and we went and played ‘Simpsons Hit and Run’ on his Playstation 2. The monkey didn’t stop screaming all afternoon, even when my parents came to pick me up.
Nineteen years later, I was reunited with this same cousin. I was fascinated to see what kind of twenty-five-year-old that little boy had turned into. Then, I was disappointed to learn that he was a new alt-ight type, spinning in the Manosphere orbit, constantly rattling off Andrew Tate-isms, esoteric homophobic rhetoric, and a few insanely racist statements which caught me completely off-guard.
I asked him about the Spidermonkey Incident, explaining that it was my earliest and most enduring memory, and that if he had anything to clear up about it, please enlighten me.
“Oh, yeah, I remember the monkey,” he said. “I hated that thing. It was always screaming.”
#2: CHICKENS OVERDOSING ON ROCKSTAR ENERGY DRINK
In Year 9, the kids who did agriculture at my high school were tasked with taking home four chicken eggs, hatching them, and raising the chicks for a few weeks. I did not do agriculture, but somebody I used to smoke weed with did. He had two pugs whose faces he habitually blew smoke into, after pulling a bong. They would get irritated red eyes and start “acting funny”.
When the chickens hatched, I was over at his place. It was nice. We got stoned and watched these anomalous creatures emerge from their fractured shells. I went back over a week later. They had grown feathers and looked far more like chickens than they had as fresh newborns. It was strange, though; they were jittery, and tweeting in such a way that I presumed distress.
Later, I observed him pouring Rockstar-brand energy drink into the water feeder of the enclosure. I said something flaccid and non-confrontational like, “why’re you doing that.” He shrugged. “It’s funny.”
Needless to say, he failed the assignment, because a few days later the chicks had all died, presumably of heart failure.
He went off the deep end and soon after that, became a prolific drug dealer. That’s not why he’s an asshole, though. I ran into him maybe a year ago. Dude wouldn’t stop talking to me about crypto.
#3: KILLER OF SHEEP
We had a herd of sheep at our high school, the agriculture department was very well-funded. One morning we had an assembly; the Principal announced that someone hadk broken into the school and killed everybody’s favourite sheep. The sheep-killer in question had been filmed by a friend as he swung the creature in circles by its hind legs before throwing her into a wire-fence; she died of stress due to the experience. The video circulated amongst us students; we knew the guy. He was from another school and was notorious for beating the shit out of us on the weekends.
Friday night of that week I went to a houseparty. It turned into a huge scene; all these crashers showed up (par for the course), and upon not being let in began to hurl bottles over the fence and shout various pejoratives. Then they left, we all got fucked up, it was like usual. About two hours later a few of the crashers returned and proceeded to strongarm their way through the front door. One of them had a metal pole, some kind of discarded piece of machinery probably from the construction-site dumpsters nearby. There were fifty or sixty of us all in the backyard. The crashers started throwing punches indiscriminately, and the guy with the metal pole started swinging. I recognised him from the video; it was the dude who had killed the sheep.
Several casualties that night, most of which were good friends of mine; one girl had her wrist broken, one guy had most of his teeth knocked out. The metal pole was jagged and rusted at either end; the sharp edge of it caught my friend’s forearm and split it open. There were other injuries that I was not so privy to, that I don’t know the exact nature of, but I know for certain another guy got a fracture in his skull. After the party had dispersed and the sheep-killer had fled, people were left nursing various open-wounds or cradling their broken bones or laid down in puddles of blood coming out their skull, nobody older than 15.
He got arrested sometime over the weekend, for the sheep, but a few of the people he harmed decided to press charges also. I’m not sure of the punishment, but I know he ended up moving back to New Zealand, where he had recently emigrated from.
I never heard about him again.
. . .