This month’s S Project theme: “So for October, let’s write (hopefully) fictional stories about you killing somebody else. It could be accidental. It could be deliberate. It could be a complete stranger. Or it could be someone that you’re intimately familiar with.”
I’m sorry, Anonymous Assclown. I’ve thought long and hard on this one. And I just can’t do it. The incomparable Izzybella and I were discussing it this morning. She wrote about someone who accidentally killed a person in an auto accident. She said she didn’t want to turn down writing assignments that were hard, because she wants to grow as a writer. And I get that. Truly I do. And she and I come from the same dark places, and we’ve both been touched by violent and untimely death. And I want to grow as a writer, too. So we agreed that perhaps my writing about why I can’t put myself in the role of killer–even fictional–would suffice.
Our youngest sister, A., was implicated in a homicide almost 2 years ago. We don’t know to what extent she was involved, don’t know whether she knew ahead of time that the person she was involved with had a history of violence toward the elderly, don’t know if she knew that he was going to kill the person–get the picture? We don’t know if she was there when he killed him. You see how I’m assuming that he killed the man. I know my sister. I can believe that she would do a lot of things. I can’t believe that she would put a gun to the head of an elderly man and pull the trigger.
But that wasn’t the end of it. Several weeks later, after realizing the police were at last on their track, my sister and the person she was involved with fled the state they were living in. They were noticed by highway patrolmen in another state, and the driver of the car decided to outrun the troopers. Bad idea. He also decided to start shooting. Worse idea. My sister was killed in the exchange of gunfire. The bastard who probably committed the murder and who was driving the car was lucky enough to die instantly; my sister died later at the hospital.
Before these things happened, I used to lightly use phrases like, “I’d kill to have . . . (insert object of desire here).” I don’t say things like that anymore. Or if I was mad at someone, I’d say, “I could just wring his neck!” Nope. Don’t say that anymore, either.
So Anonymous Assclown, forgive me. I hope you understand that if I can’t even jokingly threaten to wring someone’s neck, there’s no way I can, even for the beloved S Project, fictionally take someone’s life, whether deliberately or accidentally. As a writer, I know there will be times that one of my characters may have to take the life of another character, but it will be a character doing it, not myself. So I’m sitting this one out. I’m looking forward to next month’s assignment, I promise!
Beautifully worded!
I confess to the same feelings as I was trying to figure out how in the world to approach this assignment. I think of A every single day and I don’t take that lightly. My solution was cheating perhaps, but as we discussed this morning, even in that situation, I would still feel incredibly profound guilt.
Maybe you weren’t able to put yourself in that situation (why would we, when we’ve effectively already been there in a way?)but you explained your reasons very coherently. Nice job.
nothing to say really, except sorry. Never had anything that bad in my life and i hope to never have. a great arguement for keeping the police here in uk gun free.
You can write about things without really writing about things. I do it all the time.
But I think what you wrote was even better