March 28, 2011 by Mark Lidstone

Killing Friends Inspiration: An Intermission

There are currently eight “Killing Friends” stories left to write. Well, seven and a half considering I’m nearly finished Killing Friends 8. I just thought I would post a little bit about where the inspiration for this thing came from.

It started one night during a busy work week. I find when I work late, I have a lot of trouble sleeping. My brain just won’t shut down. Every thought moves at a mile a minute and everything is in code (I work as a web developer during the day. I code websites and touchscreen applications. Yawn). This night was no exception. As I was laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, I realized that I needed to exhaust my thoughts. So I wrote. I began writing really tiny stories, the first being only two sentences. The goal was to try and develop an engaging story in as few words as possible.

It was a lot of fun.

I wrote around six or seven of these, each one was dark in some way or another. When I was done, I came up with the Killing Friends idea. I thought I could write more stories like these, under 100 words, staring my friends. I didn’t want to just randomly pick friends, when you start killing people without their permission they sometimes get offended. I thought about creating a Facebook status, anyone who commented – or liked – it, got one. I was back and forth on this idea at first. I didn’t want people thinking I was being pretentious. Offering out a once in a lifetime chance to star in one of my famous stories. It was mostly for practice. In the end, I decided to do it. Who cares. Like Seuss said, “Those who mind, don’t matter, and those who matter, don’t mind”. If someone had something to say about it, let them. Worst case scenario, no one wants anything to do with it and I keep on writing, sharing it with those who are actually interested.

The results were very different from what I had predicted. Within the first hour, I had four people requesting stories. By the end of the day, ten. Once it reached 14, I closed it off, promising a round two for those too late to get in on the action.

The number of volunteers wasn’t the only thing that surprised me. The stories ended up being much longer than I had first planned. The initial idea was to write less than 100 words and if you’ve been following the series, you already know they are much longer than that. The average “Killing Friends” story runs about 1300 – 1500 words. This wasn’t because I couldn’t keep it short. I just thought it would be a great opportunity to work on my writing as a whole, not just length control, because now I knew someone would be reading. So that’s it. That’s what started it all. After a couple of stories, I slapped the “Killing Friends” title on the series because I had noticed that most of my friends, though not all, wound up dead.

As an added bonus, I thought I would add a few of the super short stories that inspired the series. Remember, these were written in one go, while lying in bed. Nothing has been done to pretty them up. I hope you like them. Thanks to everyone who has been reading “Killing Friends” so far.

—–

Drake had always thought himself better than the other kids at school. Instead of having one shadow, he had several.

—–

All my life there have been voices. They screamed at me – profanities I had never even heard before. They forced me to do things I would never do in my worse nightmares. So, I pulled the trigger. Now they’re louder than ever.

—–

Megan had always believed there was something hiding in her closet, waiting for her to fall asleep. Childish fears. The truth was, the real monster showed up after she dozed off. He would creep into her room at night, kiss her on the forehead and whisper “I love you”

—–

Alex had always joked about a zombie apocalypse. He even wished it would happen sometimes. If humanity were to die out in a z-war, at least it would be exciting. Now, he sat with his back pressed against his bedroom door. He could hear them on the other side. His stomach turned as he listened to them chew – tearing the flesh from the bones of his parents. He stifled a moan while wiping the tears from his eyes, clearing his vision. His jaw dropped as he watched what used to be his sister slowly drag herself from underneath his bed and crawl towards him. He screamed as he tried to kick her away. The chewing noises stopped and the door behind him exploded into splinters and pale, outstretched, arms.

—–

If you haven’t read any of the Killing Friends stories yet then please do. Best place to find them all in one place is here.