Okay, so I’m pretty insecure about this whole writing fiction thing. And this snippet is essentially pure dialogue. It’s also like the first thing I’ve ever done, so be gentle, I’m aware that it sucks. Baby steps, it’s all about baby steps. If there’s anything you liked about it, or if you have constructive criticism, I’d love to hear it. Bleh.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
A frown flickered across her face as she sat back in her armchair, “You must love him a great deal.”
“I do.”
“You’ve sacrificed so much for him, yet you don’t resent him at all. If he had asked you for any of it, you would have left him in the dirt. I want to know why you didn’t.”
“He never asked. He never even knew. Without me, he would try and fail, and keep trying. Maybe it’s that I want to see him succeed.”
Her eyes peered out over the top of her glasses, “And if he’d never succeed without you? Is this just a game where you need him to need you?”
I turned my head to the night rain sheeting against the window and just looked for a moment before answering, “It does feel like a game, like I’m pulling the strings on a puppet, making it dance.”
“And where are you without your puppet?” I winced, but she didn’t pause, “With your talents, you could go far. What makes him so special? Why do you need him?”
“He has so much potential. I just have to show him what he could become, guide him to where he ought to be.”
“Sculpting him into a shape you chose for him. Is that what it means to love?”
“I don’t know.”
Her mouth shrank into a disapproving frown. “I think you know what you need to do.” She opened the drawer, and pulled out a pistol and a handful of bullets then handed them to me.
“Yes, I know,” my voice quiet and resigned as I loaded the gun, “Thank you, mother.”
I am thoroughly confused. The non-mother, who I assume is a “him”, loves this other dude with potential, yet he’s going to kill him? This must be a (matriarchal) crime-syndicate, since normal people don’t give their kids bullets to kill their friends, I would imagine.
I think the good thing is that this kind of thrilly dialogue works in pretty much any part of any story. The essential content is abstract enough that you can reveal in chapter 2 that the actors are actually squirrels, and the dialogue would still be almost as intriguing.
I think I like the story better with a female 1st person, but I was deliberately vague about it.
Being someone who has only written one short story in his life (and that was for a class), but several prose snippets and many poems, I think what you have written is complete the way it is.
I missed the gender ambiguity, but I did pick up a murder/suicide ambiguity. And the last word [mother] serves as a good (if slightly demented) punchline.
Congratulations.
Huh. So I read this as not “she will kill this guy she loves” or “she will kill herself” but as “she will help this guy to succeed by killing someone in his way, without ever letting him know.”