The surprise party

TW: violence, gore, murder

“Ok, so everybody, listen up and PUT YOUR WEAPONS DOWN!” it was my cousin Benny who was shouting his guts out, yet we could hardly hear him among the surrounding explosions and the people screaming in pain, lying on the living-room carpet soaked in blood and vomit. “Nobody else needs to get hurt, come on!” As my poor cousin spoke what would be his final words, subsequently being stabbed in the back by one of the assassins, I could not help but wonder if all of this (the murderers, the massive home wrecking, my sister discovering she was not adopted after all, and my mom crying on the floor, embracing her knees) could possibly be my fault (my mother's traste for sushi may also have had a little to do, too).

All I had tried to do was to surprise my parents on their 30th wedding anniversary. 

Well, that went like crap. But let me start from the beginning.

It was mid-May. My sister Janet and I were having a cup of tea in the kitchen. I had just arrived from work and she was about to leave for hers, but we shared these brief moments during the afternoon. We are close. We were raised like twins, although we do not look alike. The story goes like this: for some years, my parents couldn’t conceive a child, so my mother signed up in an adoption agency, although dad was reluctant. A few months after receiving the news they would get a cute little orphan baby coming all the way from Eastern Europe, my mom discovered she was pregnant with me. I was born while my father was fighting in Afganistan and on the very same week of my arrival, the social assistant came home with my new baby sister: we were almost the same age, and though my hair is raven black (I look exactly like my dad), and she has sparkling blue eyes and golden curls, our parents raised us as twin siblings. I have always thought of her as my sister, but I must admit she catches every glance and she owns every room as soon as she walks into it. Men literally fall at her feet. Perhaps, in an alternative reality, if we hadn’t been raised together, she and I… but I’m losing focus, sorry.

“Hey, Nick”, said Janet, after sensually sipping the remaining tea off her cup and wiping her mouth with her sleeve, “Isn’t mom and dad’s anniversary next week?” “Oh yeah!” I said, “And thirty years this year, isn’t that something as… silver wedding or something?” “Pearl”, said Janet. “Oh, that’s right, dad should buy mom a pearl necklace” we both burst into laughter, and you would have too if you had met my father. “It’s not like dad’s going to remember or something”, she shook her head and her golden curls trembled. I couldn’t agree more: I have never seen such a less romantic man than him. His idea of a date is ordering fish and chips from the drive-through and eating them in the car. Mom often complains about it with her bridge buddies, or with Mrs. Somers, that old crazy librarian. 

So I came up with the whole idea of the surprise party. “You know, sis, you and I should do something nice for them”, I said. Of course, I know nothing about parties. I’m a part-time employer at what I thought was a respectable law firm. And my sister works in a night club as a bartender –or so I thought before discovering she got all of her incomes from doing “personal” favors to Mr. Hugo, a sixty-something drug dealer who owned the place just as a cover-up for his actual business. I suggested to her –oh if only I had kept her out of this– she could get some contacts at work, providers and such, for catering and animation. She was into it, as long as we invited good Hugo as a thank-you… and that’s where the mob became involved in my parent’s 30th-anniversary party. You see where this is going, right? Wrong, let me tell you.

And it’s not Janet’s fault. I blame myself as well: I decided that borrowing some money from one of the accounts of the firm I worked for was a good idea. No one would notice! I could return the money afterward, with my monthly check, together with what I thought we could get from the presents my parents would receive. Little I imagined the company I was working for was also a façade for another illegal business! So that’s how I ended up taking cash from a different gang. 

Sometimes I think the tragedy wouldn’t have been so large if we had restrained the celebration to a few guests, but NOOOO. We HAD to invite every single acquaintance of both of my parents: my dad’s old army buddies, my mom’s former neighbors, her bridge buddies, the eccentric Mrs. Somers, together with all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Janet particularly insisted on calling our cousin Benny from London (by that time, I didn’t know they were seeing each other… intimately, and neither of them knew they were actually blood-related).

The night of the party, we had tricked mom and dad into going out no matter what. We could just picture how boring and awkward those dates were for both of them, but we left them with no excuses: we bought movie tickets and we booked a table in a requested restaurant. We knew it would take them at least an hour to get their meal served! “What’s the worst that could happen?” Janet said, “Hey, they might end up TALKING to each other, hahaha”. Anyway, as they were out, the house was filled with guests, the caterers from the club arrived together with my sister’s boss (a big, blonde guy with a curled mustache and ice-cold blue eyes), fancy Japanese food was served, and we opened several bottles of wine. We were so into it that, when mom and dad arrived, we didn’t notice she was wiping away the tears, and that he was red with anger.

“SURPRISE!!!” almost sixty throats shouted in unison. My mother looked shocked. My father almost fell, his jaw opened like the door of a broken fridge. Both of them stared at the people around them: their family members, friends they haven’t seen in years, old collegues from dormir jobs, but it was one face in particular that created the chain reaction: it was Mr. Hugo's, my sister’s boss –and lover. “You!” said my mom “for God’s sake, what on Earth are you doing here?” “IT’S THAT HIM!?” yelled my father. The blonde mobster looked puzzled, but in any case, he did what anyone in his position would do in such a situation: he took his gun out. Predictibly, everyone started screaming.

“How did you know?” my mother was looking at my sister now “And why on Earth did you invite your biologic father to this?” “I’m sorry, MY WHAT???” said Janet. “You heard your mother, Janet” my dad was red with rage “as a matter of fact, she just told me during dinner she had an affair with Mr. Hugo here by the time your brother and you were conceived”. “That’s not –that’s not possible, dad, I look just like you!” I mumbled. “Well, Nick, dear, daddy and Hughie sort of… overlapped”, my mom seemed embarrassed, something normal, considering she had sixty pairs of eyes widely opened looking at her, a former lover gun-pointing at her husband who had just asked for the divorce, and she was discussing her sex life with her two (biological!) 23-year-old twin children. The social assistant, the adoption, all of it had been one huge lie. The truth was both my sister and I were born on the same day, at the same hospital, although we certainly didn’t have the same physical traits. As soon as my mother saw my sister’s looks, and being my father away, she created the elaborated alibi. Hey! It was more plausible than having twin children from two different fathers if you ask me!

“Janet, I can’t believe it!” said Mr. Hugo, “so I’m sleeping with… my daughter?” “You are SLEEPING WITH HER?” that came from my cousin Benny, who, before realizing he was also committing some sort of incest, he was repulsed by the fact that his beloved Janet was cheating on him with someone who was old enough to be his dad… oh, wait, I just figured it, ha! Feel free to erase that last part!

At that point, my father had already picked up a military knife he always carried around and was running towards big blonde Hugo, not minding he was armed with a fire gun, or that people around him were rushing away, breaking up the furniture, jumping through the windows, and screaming for their lives. I think my dad would have been shot hadn’t it been for a little detail: in that exact moment, three assassins brought down the main entrance door. That’s right: my company had sent men to collect the money I had “borrowed”. Ok, I forgot to say I told no one about such a loan.

Do I need to explain what happened when the gang ran into Hugo? Did I mention both mobs were rivals? Should I confirm that my sister was the first to leave the house and that we haven’t heard from her since then? Three of my aunts got sick and threw up on the floor, until today I can't tell for sure if they had a nervious breakdown or if it was the rotten salmon. As for my dad, he stabbed a few guests for mistake –most of them were my mother’s old bridge partners, people he had never liked anyway-, and some people started grabbing anything they could get as a weapon: broken pieces of glass, empty bottles, kitchen knives, chair legs, and suddenly I didn’t know how the whole anniversary party had become Montagues against Capulets, and people were hitting each other, and corpses were falling, crazy old Mrs. Somers was ripping out pages from volumes in our bookcase screaming “I hate books! I loathe them so much!”, my father and my sister’s biological father were fighting empty-handed, and all I could think about was how to make everyone leave soon so I could give my poor mother one of her pills and put her to bed. Should I call 911 or should I turn the curtains on fire? Ooops, my bad!

I don’t want to waste more of your time. You have probably read all about it on the news.

Yet, as the last ambulance packed up the remaining corpses, the house burned to the ground, my mother was committed into a mental institution, and my father and Mr. Hugo went handcuffed in the back of a police trunk, looking forward to what could only be a life sentence in prison; I told myself that I had managed to surprise my parents after all. So I guess I could say the party was not a total failure, right?