Mentally Insane Creative Writing

different is bad.

When the Lloyd family moved to our town, the whole place might as well have gone into flames. People don't like different 'round here. Don't much trust it. Outsiders are worrisome things. The Llodys, 'specially, made everyone nervous.

My town is all alike. All close in the way we look the same. We talk the same, act the same. We're all law-abiding, decent, and hardworking folks. Then this family come in to disrupt that? No, ain't but a few of us okay with it.

I, for one, liked the strangers who come along in their old station wagon packed full of their stuff. There were the mama, the daddy, and their two kids. A boy my age, name's Harold. And his little sister. A cute girl they call Tia. Think her name is Tatiana but I never asked. I was one of maybe three people in the whole of our town to get to know the family. A decent family just the same as mine. Better, I'd say. Their daddy wasn't no drunk with a mean streak, at least.

That family was a private one, let me tell you. Shoot! I'd be too if my town treated them as bad as they did them. Makes me sick to think of. The way they glared at this decent family for simply bein'. I can only imagine how hard it was for them, to move into this town that took one look at 'em and decided they didn't like the sight. That they weren't welcome no sooner than they did arrive.

It was hard to tell my friends that this family, different as they was looking, weren't no different as people. They were good people just like us. Worked hard in their jobs, raised their kids right, and did right by the law. That they was nice even when I could see in their eyes they wanted to disappear back down the road they'd come. My town, I decided after my first attempt, was a town of hypocrites. Claiming to be welcoming and good-natured when they only bared their gnarling teeth at this family without a second thought.

It didn't help the Lloyds that our first murder in decades happened a week after they'd rode into town. The pastor's son, my age just the same as Harold's, found drowned in the creek near the field we'd play ball in. Harold was the one to find the body and, naturally, my town got to talking.

The older women, 'specially, loved their gossip. They went on and on 'bout seeing the daddy in that creek, fishing he had claimed, the day before, hours before that boy went runnin' his usual trail. The old men of the town, lying rats they were, tried to say it was the mama who seduced the bishop's son and killed him to break things off. Where did they get these ideas from? It's a bunch of ignorant hogwash, I'll tell you what.

It couldn't've been the son. Harold and I, and don't go telling this to no one, were out in the woods beyond his property. Sitting in the shade of a giant willow, getting talking. Doing things we're expected but no encouraged to do when we like another person.

Couldn't've been the mama. She's the one who caught us getting our hands where they didn't belong. She called us in for dinner all the same. Didn't bring it up during the meal. I was grateful, blushing red like a beet the whole time.

The daddy ate with us. Despite what the town wanted to say about the family, the Lloyds ran their family just like the rest of us at the time. The daddy, his name's Harold senior, goes to work at the farm like half the town. The mama, she let me call her Genice, took care of the home and went around to clean houses when money was tight. My town, hateful as they was, knew she could cook and clean like the dickens.

Only one left of their family that my town might blame was Tia. That girl was a little twig of a thing, barely turned five and 'bout as tall as the kitchen table. Too small to hurt a fly. Couldn't've been any of them. I know that.

How do I know that? Cause I know who did kill that pastor's son. But that's a secret you're gonna haveta pry out of my dead mouth. I'm takin' that secret to the grave.