Charles Rammelkamp

LITTLE RED CORVETTE

Why’d I kill Brian and Kelly Sue?
Ten years older than me,
he’s always pulled that Big Brother shit,
Mister Know-It-All Pharmacist,
looking down his nose at me,
but he was killing people
with those Covid vaccines.
I knew it, and he knew it.

Time was short, too. I told my mom
the FBI was coming after us.
Of course, she didn’t believe it, worried
I was going mental on her.
But she’s an old lady, like her friend Becky.

I didn’t want to hurt Becky,
but I needed her car, that big old Lincoln
she never drives anyway
except to go to Burger King with Mom,
two old ladies in their eighties.

After I shot Brian and Kelly Sue,
I knew I might as well give up.
But I’d always wanted to drive
Brian’s midlife crisis mobile,
that little red Corvette of his,
the one he taunted me with,
just a loser taking care of our mother
as far as Brian was concerned.

I drove that baby all the way to Davis,
in the West Virginia Canaan Valley,
along the Blackwater River,
spent the night at the Billy Motel & Bar,
flagged down a firefighter next day,
turned myself in. As I explained,
I had no choice. I was forced to kill them.


Charles's YouTube video reading of "Little Red Corvette":



Subscribe and turn on Notifications for Channel 52.


Charles confesses: When I read about this obvious 'loser', a middle aged guy living at home with his 83-year-old mom in rural Maryland, killing his older brother, a pharmacist, for administering Covid vaccines, my first thought was rightwing nutcase, swayed by the disinformation industry, but when I read that he’d made off with his brother’s Corvette, I wondered if there weren’t something more elemental going on, in the Jacob-and-Esau sibling jealousy and resentment mode."

CHARLES RAMMELKAMP is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore, where he lives with his wife Abby. He contributes a monthly book review to North of Oxford and is a frequent reviewer for The Lake, London Grip, and The Compulsive Reader. A poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, was published in 2021 by Clare Songbirds Publishing and another, Sparring Partners, by Moonstone Press. A full-length collection, The Field of Happiness, will be published in 2022 by Kelsay Books.