Death and Fiction

It was a dark and stormy night. Okay, no, it wasn’t. It was night, and it was dark, as nights tend to be, but it wasn’t stormy. It was actually a rather warm and pleasant summer night, and I was killing people.

Oh, they weren’t real people. At least, they weren’t real by the conventional standards, though they were plenty real to me.

It was my habit to claim the computer in the twilight hours of the weekend and write. The little kids went to bed early, and sometimes my parents did too. It was at this time, from eleven at night onwards, that I chipped away at the stories I wanted to tell.

Stirak I thought tearfully as I unplugged my headphones from the inspiring music on the computer. Okin. These two soldier boys were characters in my latest story and the victims of the week. I’d just written Stiral’s tragic death scene. Okin was slated to die as soon as I could write a few pages to separate their untimely ends. These things had to be properly spaced throughout the story for maximum emotional impact. On the reader, that is, though it seemed to be having maximum emotional impact on this author as well.

I wiped away tears as I sat on my beat-up chair in the half-lit family room, staring at the words on the buzzing white screen. Drained, I could do nothing else. My senses were numb with grief at the death of my soldier boys. They were so young! Stiral just sixteen, Okin only fifteen. I was only fourteen, myself. I wouldn’t want to die next year or the year after. And Stiral was so brave and so dutiful… Okin was so witty… Their fictional friends would mourn them. Their fictional families would go without for the lack of their fictional payrolls. They would never again till their fictional fields or go on to marry and have fictional children. There were so many fictional girls they would never fictionally kiss!

I hiccupped sadly at the thought.

Get a grip I scolded myself sternly. Sure, Stiral and Okin were my characters, but they weren’t even main characters. They were characters I’d created for the sole purpose of dying, to add a dimension of reality to the exciting climax battle. I’d known they were going to die. I’d planned for them to die. The stroke of my fingers on the computer keys caused their demises. I was their creator and their killer, their mother and their murderer. Stated that way, the situation had real potential to become a Greek tragedy. It was certainly messed-up enough--almost as messed-up as Oedipus Rex.

They were so young… they were too young to die…

I sniffled as I slowly saved my document and turned off the computer. Sighing heavily, I stood and went to turn off the light above the turtle tank. It was a real energy-waster, that light, when nobody really cared about Little Brother's turtle anyway. Little Brother didn’t even care, though he claimed that he did.

As I was about to turn off the light that warmed the neglected turtle, I saw something in the tank, something beyond the reflection of my own red-rimmed eyes. Sure, the turtle was there, but it was the goldfish swimming near his face that drew my attention. Even as I watched, the turtle snapped the goldfish up between his brutal jaws and crushed it.

A thousand images rushed through my mind: Sprinkles, my own pet goldfish whose life had been suddenly and prematurely snatched from existence when I was but five, dead. Fictional Stiral, dead. Fictional Okin, soon to die.

“No!” I shrieked, hammering my fist against the turtle tank. “No! Let it go! It deserves to live! Let it go!” I sobbed, pleading with the turtle for the goldfish’s sake. Too much life had been lost tonight already.

My shrieking had no effect on the turtle whatsoever. Eventually, I fled to my room. I threw myself onto my bed and, bereaved, grieving, and inconsolable, cried myself to sleep.