Bagged

After I nearly strangled my twin brother Michael for lying to my girlfriend (for telling her he was me), our parents restricted me to the house for a month. Two days before my sentence ended Michael came in from the meadow, his fingers wrapped around the knot of a plastic bag with something snapping inside of it. He crossed the room, sat on the sofa beside me and held his catch in front of his face. I saw clearly the square mouth and hair-thin legs of the green grasshopper as it pounced against the bag’s clear surface again and again in an effort to escape. Michael flicked the bag with a finger, further exciting his victim, and then looked over at me and said, "That girlfriend of yours, Margaret Connelly, sure has a soft handful underneath her blouse." I clenched my fists and drew it back to clobber my brother, but Michael shot the plastic bag up between us, and said, "Careful... a lot can happen with Margaret during the next month."