There are plenty of authors who are never able to kill their characters, not at least the important ones. Killing a random character with no actual use will not cause any strong feelings in the readers. Killing important characters which really matter will matter.
Some authors feel sad when killing off characters. Some love it. Some take it so far, they write a story only to kill some characters.
Now one character is already dead. Did it make you sad?
Jay was sitting next to the corpse. Shot from close range, blood everywhere and the corpse looked like a mess. It was hard to guess what it had looked like before. First murder in this town, at least first one which anyone remembers.
We all are going to die of age of course, but this was the first unnatural death. Jay had been a detective for years now but doing mostly meaningless cases. Finding lost pets, following unfaithful spouses and such. Nothing which could help him solve a case like this.
The first uestion was, who would do anything like this and why? The second one, would it happen again? Who would be lost now.
The victim was mostly living alone, he preferred staying alone and didn't have that many friends. He had some relatives in town but he didn't keep contact with them regularly. Didn't travel much, some claimed he had traveled a lot in the past. According to some, he had lived in Finland in the past, but hadn't been around there for ages.
No clues which could help. Anyone could own a gun and in this town, they didn't have any laboratories to investigate this further.
Jay could only hope this wouldn't happen again.
What if someone more important dies?
One week later the corpse was found. The only detective from the town was found dead in an alley. He had been investigating the murder earlier and now he got murdered too. Shot from close range and the corpse left outside.
El had studied together with the detective and they both dreamed of being a detective. El didn't have the guts to follow his dreams, though ay had. Now he was dead.
When El heard the news, she was shocked. She couldn't eat or sleep properly for a few days and she had cried more than in years. Why did this happen to her friend? What had he done to deserve this?
She was no detective, but one evening she went to see the spot they had found his corpse. Most of the blood had been washed off, there was only some very deep red and brown color between the stones on the street. The district was mostly filled by drunkards and hookers, as the darkest and most popular bars and pubs were in the area.
Every now and then the local police officer had to carry someone to ail but mostly everyone were behaving well enough to avoid trouble.
One of the prostitutes kept on staring at El. She stared back, while the prostitute was taking a deep breath of her cigarette.
"You looking for something?" the prostitute asked while blowing some smoke out from her lungs.
"Wasn't this where the detective got killed?"
"It is. I had spoken to him on the evening he died. A really nice man he was."
The prostitute continued to smoke and looked in the streets, but no possible customers were to be seen.
"I could tell you what we talked about. You interested?"
She had got El's attention already earlier, but now El knew she had to talk to her.
"What do you know? Please tell me, the detective was my friend."
"Your friend? Well that changes everything. Please ust bring me $500 and I'll tell you everything."
"I don't have that kind of money with me."
"That's your problem. If you have any uestions, ust bring me the money. I'll be waiting here."
El was annoyed, but she knew she would have to pay the prostitute to know more.
"ust wait here, I'll bring the money. If you're not here, how can I find you?"
"ust ask for Ow, the other girls know where to find me."
El made a nod and started to swiftly walk home to get the $500. She had to get some money from her savings in her mattress and some from under the statue of esus. El wasn't religious, but the big statue was good for storing money under it.
At what point will the deaths make a difference? One more needs to die.
El ran t the street she had met the prstitute n. It was dead silent and the night was getting darker and darker.
El waited fr a few minutes n the street and when she culdn't find the prtitute, w, she decided t lk int the windws f the huses nearby.
She culd see in the dark bedrm f the huse, f which she had been standing. Even thrugh the darkness, she culd see bld n the flr and smene laying n the flr. It was her. w.
El panicked, as the killer culd still be nearby. She ran. h hw fast she ran away.
She culdn't slve this. It might be nbdy culd.
S she ran t the night, under the mn.
All images from pixabay!
Hehe I see what you did there.. killing off "characters".. uizzically intriguing when you uggle the killings in this shrt stry!
Well played :)
lol XD
You had missing letters and they got more frequent as the story progresses. To the point that maybe a 6-letter word became just 3 letters and near the end, a sentence just composed of one letter: w.
Could it be possible you coded something in the missing letters? Maybe the mystery could be solved that way and we'll finally know who the killer is.
Really? Maybe I should proofread this again to see if there's some characters missing. Thanks for the heads up!
I thought they were deliberate mistakes that readers will solve (I feel too lazy to crack code right though).
Really cool concept @apsu. I see some people didn't get it yet.... or maybe they don't understand the pun. Either way... I liked it. Cheers :D
The dead always has a story to tell. Who dies, depends on if we want to know more about them or not.
Hi Apsu! I feel that writers don't kill off characters for many different reasons (sake of the fans, sees themselves in the character etc.). I think that killing off characters is important to a story, especially if it is a main character—making the story mor alluring and less predictable.
I liked that El's friend was the one who died, and making a deal with a prostitute, becoming compelled to find who killed Jay, after he found the first body.
Those missing letters. I see it either as a symbolism of the victims name, or I wonder, do they spell something else out?
It bothers me now...
I'm glad you read my story!
Oh there are characters missing? Hmmh. I'll have to see what happened to them.
Maybe we'll find out what is the issue on this.
I want you to continue the story aaaaaaa <3
Oh I would like to but I don't know how.
I could finish the story somehow though.
Maybe a different story but adapt the concept. I was enjoying it a lot :D
I'm thinking of it but it's difficult. I get good ideas so rarely.
No pressure APSU muh boi, just do what you like to do C:
But why the missing letters?
I like stories where people die.Writing stories where some people die can be fun too. Oh wait you killed them. Hahahahaaaa.Maybe I should have killed off Wonder Woman in my story in the art post I did but meh...
What are you saying, are there some characters missing in the text? Or letters as letters sent in mail :)
Oh they're missing alright. They've been murdered!!! :P
Oh nooooooo! :'(
Guess who the murderer is? Hahaha.
Who? I would guess it's me.
Ding ding ding diiiing!!! You got it! :D
I really like the story but it had a lot of typos in it or it's a secret code to crack, who knows? I do however want to say that as a reader, I don't mind important characters dying like main protagonist and other fundamental side characters. What I do mind is that it's a very thin line between killing a character in a way that doesn't mess with the story's progression or the ending (if they die near the end ofc). I have seen many shows and read countless novels where they really mess the story up because they couldn't adapt the story-line to the death of the character. For example, I watched an anime called akame ga kill, (yes I'm using an anime as an example. They still have storyline's.) and everything was going fine till I reached episode 19 or near the end. They killed almost every single character, the "supposed" main protagonist and that pretty much F****** up the entire show! All that effort and great episodes went down the drain because of a terrible ending because of the fact that they couldn't do the "killing" part right. My main point is, if you're gonna kill a character, make sure you do it in a way that still gives the reader/viewer an awesome finale.
I really tried to be careful not to make any typos but I noticed towards the end I had made some typos. Were some left?
You can use anime as an example. I should get familiar with that one, as it could be interesting. Sometimes killing characters has a deeper, special meaning and will give an "ooh"-moment when you notice what's going on :)
Oh, nice! I really did feel something when the prostitute died! The progression was amazing!
Oh how I made stupid mistakes in the story, but now corrected.
Some people want a character to be killed in a certain scene and some don't. I guess it's a matter of who's reading or watching it. For me, I hate it when important characters get killed.