The Legend of the Cowabunga! Killing

The Legend of the Cowabunga! Killing is a suburban myth rumored to have occurred on the night of Saturday, October 7, 1989 in the Goleta, California neighborhood of El Encanto Heights. Three boys — Ron Pepperworth, Eugene Petry and Buddy Vroom — ages nine, ten and eleven respectively, showed up shortly after seven o’clock at the house of their good friend Dusty Kingston (age eleven), who had been planning the sleepover for weeks.

The boys dropped their bags in the living room then gathered around the modest-sized TV to play Nintendo. They had been passing off the two controllers for about half an hour when Dusty announced it was time to order pizza. The boys took another ten minutes to decide on their toppings. Dusty placed the order from the phone in the living room. The boys went back to playing. Just after eight o’clock the pizza arrived. Dusty paid for the two extra-larges with the cash his father had left him on his pillow earlier that day. The boys followed Dusty and the pizzas into the dining room.

At the dining table Dusty opened the first box and the boys beheld the answer to the wolves at their doors. “Rad,” Eugene said as he reached for a slice.

“Not yet,” Dusty warned.

“What d’ya mean?”

“We gotta cut it.”

“Dude, it’s already cut.”

“Not the way it should be. Watch.”

Dusty retreated from the dining room and returned a minute later holding a long ninja-style sword. The boys immediately recognized it as a katana, the sword Michaelangelo, one of the characters from the popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, toy and video game franchise, brandished in his battle against evil.

“Rad!”

“Dudical!”

“Tubular!”

The boys hushed as they watched Dusty unsheathe the katana. The blade was clean. It glinted in the glow of the overhead hanging lamp.

“Gnarly…” Ron said. “Are you gonna….?”

Dusty nodded. He slid one hand under the extra-large pizza. With his other hand he raised the katana above his head. “You dudes ready?” he said.

The other boys nodded. Dusty took a deep breath and then with a ferocious cry of “Pizza Power!” he simultaneously threw the pizza up into the air, just to the side of the hanging lamp, and began swinging the katana. Its blade slashed and spun at the pizza. Dusty was a kid possessed. He sliced in all directions, twirling around and around. His friends were yelling, shouting. He heard the word Stop.

When it was over the pizza lay in mangled pieces that looked nothing like normal slices. There were more than just toppings and tomato sauce on the blade. There was blood.

It is unknown just which boy was decapitated that night. Some say it was Ron. Others Eugene or Buddy. Still others say all three boys died that night, and that Dusty had lured them to his home with the intent of murdering them as retribution for a prank they had played on him over the summer.

The truth is we will never know. We will never know if Dusty really did flee to Mexico with his father. We will never know if the head (heads?) was ever found, let alone the body (bodies?) that went with it. We will never know what happened to any of those boys, or their parents, or the house in which the act occurred (the house disappeared and was replaced overnight with a park on October 16, 1989). We will never know, and that is the only truth.