Sex and Murder Magazine

By Adam Graupe

I knocked on my neighbor’s door and a cricket answered.He was dressed in a leather jacket and had a cigar sticking out of his mouth.

“Listen,” I said, “your music is too loud.I can feel the bass in my side of the townhouse.”

The cricket removed the cigar and said, “You’ll get used to it.”

“This is the seventh night in a row.If you don’t turn it down I’ll call the police.”

The cricket snickered and said, “The police are sweet on Katie.”Katie, his wife, was a plump cricket who always wore high heels and dressed in muumuus.

I had bought the townhouse for $60,000 under the market value and couldn’t understand how I got away with it—until I moved in.The place was peaceful and quiet during the showing and walkthrough, but I learned a fact about crickets: they sleep during the day and only play their music at night.

From the first night onward, from dark until dawn, I heard THUMPA, THUMPA, THUMPA nonstop.The cricket built his speakers into the common wall of the townhouse so I not only heard the music but felt the vibrations of the bass.I tried foam earplugs—expensive ones that flight crews used to drown out 40 decibels of air traffic—but they were ineffective.I called the police but they were as useless as the earplugs. policeman they sent out said it was a civil matter between two parties.Unless he could hear the music on the street there was nothing he could do, but I could file civil action.I called a lawyer, and he said I could take the cricket to civil court but he wouldn’t recommend it.

I felt insane from lack of sleep and wondered how the cricket made it as he didn’t work and slept days.

My boss asked me why I started making so many mistakes, and I told him a cricket was keeping me up at night.“Just get a can of Raid and spray it,” he said.

“I’m no killer,” I said.

After ten nights without sleep, I caved in, drove to Wal-Mart and bought a can of Raid.I waited until nightfall and it started again:BANG, BANG, BOOM!With the Raid in my pocket I rang their doorbell.The door swung open and there stood the crickets.Katie wore a blonde wig and a nun’s outfit, and he was dressed as a plumber holding a toilet plunger.

I said, “I’m telling you for the last time, turn it down.”

The male cricket laughed and said, “What are you gonna do about it, wuss?”

I smiled and pulled out my can of Raid, the porch light glinted off the bottom edge.

“No!”Katie.

I flipped the cap off and gassed them.Katie fell backwards and landed on her back.Her legs kicked and wiggled but soon stopped.The male stumbled drunkenly toward the wall, steadied himself with an arm, and pulled a Luger out of his plumber’s jacket.He fired a shot, but the bullet missed my face by a whisker.I took the can and smashed it down on him. screamed, “You jerk!”I held the can down on him and rolled it back and forth listening to crunching sounds, and then there was silence.Beautiful silence.

I looked about and nobody was in view.I let out a sigh of relief and shut their front door.I returned home, crawled into bed and sank into twelve hours of REM sleep.

The next few days were bliss.I felt some remorse about the murders, but felt they were justified as I loved silence.Sunday arrived and two grasshoppers pulled up in a Volkswagen Beetle.They rang the crickets’ doorbell and peered over at me peeking back at them through the front window.They walked over and the smaller grasshopper asked, “Have you seen Dan and Katie?They haven’t called us in a week.We’re their cousins.”

I said I didn’t know my neighbors.The grasshoppers looked me over and then walked away.Soon, a police car arrived and two police officers asked questions about when I last saw the crickets, but I was evasive.The police kicked in the crickets’ front door and found the corpses in the entryway.The next day a homicide detective visited me.He was a large man with beads of sweat bubbling atop his bald head.

He said, “Did you ever have any problems with your neighbors?”

I said, “Well they played their music a little loud now and then but it didn’t bother me that much.”

The detective grimaced and pulled out copies of over a dozen police complaints I had filed against the cricket.He also showed me a search warrant and told me he was to search my townhouse immediately.I acquiesced, and, under my kitchen sink, he found the can of Raid with the cricket’s brain matter and antennae all over it.

He put the cuffs on me, read me my rights and asked if I had anything to say.

I mumbled something foolish to him, a sentence that played repeatedly in my mind like a sound bite:“I guess you cops really are sweet on Katie.”














































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