BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Something people like to ask me is whether or not I have ever killed someone off  in a story. Well, since I write suspense thrillers about serial killers one would think that I could just look at them and say, “Duh.”

Well, sometimes I do, actually.

Then they go on to explain that what they really mean is, “Have you ever put a real person into a story and killed them off in the story because you were mad at them or something?”

Then I look at them and say, “What? Are you some kind of sicko or something?”

After I spend a few minutes watching them get all flustered I let them off the hook and give them a real answer.

That being, “Yes. Of course.”

I have made real live annoyances in my life into characters, then had them meet an ugly demise. This is something that every fiction author on the planet who writes a murder mystery, suspense thriller, or the like has done at one time or another. If such an author tells you otherwise, s/he is lying. Guaranteed. They can tell you I am full of it if they want, but they are still lying. I take a dump every morning.

Hell, just look at the facts – they even have coffee cups and t-shirts that say, “Be careful or I’ll kill you in my next book.”

Those didn’t happen by themselves, let me tell you.

So, yes, over the years I – like most all of my word slinging colleagues (some of them write non-fic) – have named fictional victims in my novels after old girlfriends… I have named them after the idiot behind the counter at the local shop ‘n stop… I have named them after someone who did me wrong… And then I have offed them in some horribly gruesome and terribly painful fashion – all on the pages of a novel.

It’s one of those cathartic writing exercises. It makes you feel good and just a little evil at the same time.

However, one particular “story killin'” stands out in my mind above all others. It actually didn’t happen in a novel. It was in a short vignette I wrote while in High School. You see, I was in a film study class – mostly because it was an English Credit, and I had already taken all of the truly academic English/Lit courses. This is not to say it wasn’t a good class, because it was. I actually learned quite a bit and enjoyed it immensely. But I digress…

During that semester there was this girl seated in the desk next to mine. We’ll call her Janice, mostly because that was her name. Now, Janice wasn’t a horrible person by any stretch. At least, not that I am (or was) aware. She was, however, insanely annoying. You see, she had no desire whatsoever to think for herself, so even in a class so subjective as Film Study, she wanted everyone else to provide her with the answers. Since I was sitting a mere three feet to her left, and was “gettin’ good grades” as Timbuk 3 would say, she figured I was a good candidate for providing them.

In keeping with the song reference theme, she had another issue – Just like Joe Walsh has crooned, “she just would not shut up…”

Yeah, Janice was a talker, and that just made her even more annoying.

So moving right along… One day Janice happened to notice that I didn’t just write for the school newspaper. This happened because I dropped some papers and she got to them before me. My guess is she was probably looking to see if there were answers she could steal. What the papers were, however, were some of my short stories.  For whatever reason, this intrigued her, and she embarked upon a mission to talk me into writing a story that featured, who else, her.

She kept on me, and on me, and on me for more than a week. Every time I saw her in a class. Now, it bears mentioning here that Janice and I weren’t exactly friends, nor were we dating or anything like that. She was just one of those bizarre folk who would glom onto someone and drive them crazy just because… well… she could.

Anyway, after finally becoming fed up with the harassment, I gave in. That evening, I went home and rolled a sheet of paper into my trusty Smith-Corona manual typewriter (yes, I’m old) and proceeded to tap out a 2 or 3 page vignette featuring none other than Janice herself. It was a sci-fi sort of setting, with her being a high level operative of some government organization who had been captured by very bad people – but in a stroke of blonde genius (yes, Janice was blonde and a poster child for the negative stereotype) she had managed to subdue her immediate captors and was making her escape from the maximum security facility where she was being held for interrogation. (wow… that was a long sentence)…

Anyhow, as I am sure you have guessed, she didn’t make it. It was a sad and horrible death. Not overly gruesome. Just the right amount of gore, mixed with pain, and a healthy dose of “holy shit, I should have turned left instead of right.”

The next day, in Film Study class, as we were taking our seats and she was bugging me, I handed over the pages. Ten minutes later, as we were all sitting quietly, working on our assignments, she blurted out while waving the papers wildly, “WHAT? YOU KILLED ME?!”

Now, there is something else I should mention here – Our teacher, whose desk was nearby, had been hearing Janice annoy me about this story for the entire week prior. In fact, the teacher had even told her to lay off on several occasions, not that it really did any good, obviously.

So, as Janice belted out her umbrage over my having dared to do her in on the page, drawing quiet attention from every corner of the room, the teacher looked up from her desk and without missing a beat said, “Can you blame him? You’ve been annoying the poor guy all semester.”

Hmm… I think maybe I should name a victim Janice in a future novel. After all, that’s one of the great things about being a fiction author – you can always dig  up your enemies and kill ’em again…

More to come…

Murv

There is a stretch of highway in Saint Louis county known as I-170. Sometimes it is called the “Innerbelt”, although these days that term is not as prevalent as it was once upon a time. A time, incidentally, that I am actually old enough to remember.

You see, way back when, in the days of dinosaurs and mammoths, I-170 was designated as 725. These days I-170 stretches from the Highway 40 interchange in the southern portion of the county, up to the I-270 interchange in the north. But, back when it was called 725 – or, as we teens at the time called it, Seven And A Quarter – the Innerbelt ran from Eager Road in the south and unceremoniously ended with a barricade and a single must take exit at Page Avenue, smack in the middle of Northwest County. Back then it was the quickest way – and ostensibly, still is – to get to Clayton. You may have heard of Clayton – and no, I’m not talking about Clayton Moore aka The Lone Ranger. Clayton, Missouri is where you find the county courthouse.

But, as usual, I’m not actually writing this blog to talk about Clayton. I’m writing it to talk about construction.

Road construction to be precise.

Many years ago, as the dinosaurs were dying out and mammals were becoming the dominant species (i.e. my early, early 20’s) our short little stretch of tarmac, so lovingly known as Seven And A Quarter became I-170 and was expanded, lengthened, what have you. Well, as urban sprawl continues to… well… sprawl, traffic changes and what seemed like a good idea at the time no longer meets the needs of the unforeseen future. So, things get torn up, rebuilt, expanded, stretched, widened, and otherwise completely re-invented.

Such was the case with I-170. At some point during my late, late 30’s the powers that be realized that the person who had originally designed the interchange at I-170 and I-270 had probably been smoking crack while drawing up the plans. It was probably one of the wort, most congested, and literally dangerous interchanges known to man. So, in a bid to correct the mistake, they redesigned it, tore it all up, and made a bigger and better interchange between the thoroughfares.

Then, traffic increased on I-170 because the I-270 terminus was no longer a clusterf*ck. What did that mean? Well, simple. It made the rest of I-170 a cluster. What was once a lonely stretch of road connecting two parts of the county was becoming a parking lot every morning and evening throughout the week. So, what did the powers that be do? Well, the only thing they could. They found someone else who wasn’t on crack, redesigned the Innerbelt, tore it up, and made it better than it was.

Better, stronger, faster…

Let me tell you, it cost more than 6 million bucks too. It even cost more than 7 million (the pricetag on the Bionic Woman… ya’know, inflation and all…)

But, in the end, congestion was alleviated and I-170, while not returned to its original quietude as 725, became much easier and faster to travel. In many ways this is good. In others, maybe not so much. You see, living where we do, I-170 is pretty much a main thoroughfare for us. It is  close by, easily accessible, and an artery that will take us most anywhere we need or want to go – even if it is simply getting us to a different highway in order to reach our final destination. Therefore, E K and I travel it often.

Such was the case just the other day.

As we cruised along in the northbound lanes, wind whistling past the Evil-Mobile, (at the time the cloaking device was on and switched to Soccer Mom Van mode), and traveling somewhere near 987 miles per hour, (E K may be a petite bundle of mean, but her foot weighs 12 metric tonnes whenever it comes into contact with a gas pedal), we were watching the landscape flashing in the windows. Bare patches of flattened land were evident where grassy berms and stands of trees once lined the thoroughfare. Nearing our exit I happened to glance to the left and noticed the carcass of a rather large groundhog, sprawled lifeless in the center emergency lane against the better than 3 foot high concrete dividers.

I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the creature, and vocalized my theory about its demise.

“Poor bastard was probably just trying to cross the road and got stuck there because of the dividers and traffic,” I lamented.

EK  clucked her tongue and said, “Maybe it ran into traffic on purpose.”

I furrowed my brow and grunted, “Whaddaya mean?”

“I mean maybe it finally had enough of us tearing up its home and it just ran into traffic to commit suicide.”

You know, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if E K was right about that. And, what’s worse – If I were a groundhog trying to escape the utter insanity of human urban sprawl, I might just do the same…

More to come…

Murv