Bang

I shot a guy in a story the other night. I had a psycho girlfriend (someone I knew) pull a .22 out her purse in a coffee shop and put two in his head. Saturday night special job.



Normally, even a couple of .22 might have let him make it but in this case no. He was dead.

It was a VSS of the first order and just a fun evening with some other writers locally. I heard "the world's worst date" going on around the corner at the armpit of a coffee house where we were writing. The girl sounded familiar: vapid, but familiar.

I thought about the story a little over lunch and the direct violence made it less interesting than if I had set the story five minutes later AFTER she killed him. Maybe I could have had her going into a bar a block away and being hit on by some impostor. You know this guy. He chases any flag and has no actual personality.

The after-story would have been more interesting than the shooting. I prefer my violence off the page. I like Weegee. I like the photo after the gangland hit. I wouldn't care to see it in realtime.

I'm taking tonight off. I haven't the right frame of mind to do justice to my lunch date with a despot and I'm not ready for the other, yet.