Gloves Off: Michael Campling for Real

Earn Your Murders

You Got a Good Head Start on This Story

Today, let’s take a longer look at Michael Campling’s story.

Read the story as originally published here.

In Front of The Mirror Alone

In the quiet times, I tell myself that if I shut my eyes, he goes away.

But that’s a fairy tale. A lie.

Methuselah is never far away. He’s waiting for me. Always.

Bryony turns her gaze on me and says, “So, Andrew, what I’m hearing is that you’ve attributed a name to your chronic pain, and you’ve called it Methuselah.”

“No,” I reply. “I didn’t choose the name. That’s what he’s called.”

She makes notes while I stare at her, letting the seconds tick away, inching me closer to the end of our session, nearer to my moment of freedom.

“This is interesting.” Bryony smiles at me. Like saccharine. No. Like aspartame. “Describe Methuselah to me. What is he like?”

Like dying alone, I want to say. Like cold steel twisting in my eyeball. But I look at my hands, twist my fingers together and stay tight-lipped.

My Feedback: My apologies for the rude strike-out, but the opening sentence is so strong. It already implies a fallacy — “tell myself” — that the next two lines aren’t needed. They actually rob energy and dread by confirming/repeating what the first line does so elegantly.

That said, there does need to be another beat before Bryony comes in. Before we land in a scene. What could that beat be? My suggestion is to introduce an object: The pills. The story mentions objects, but it would help to have them present. The narrator could fiddle with pills (or a single pill) in his pocket. This fiddling would help create the narrator as a physical person, and intro the medication earlier.

Another possibility is to somehow hint at Sally. As it stands Sally enters late and so suddenly the reader might feel confused or cheated. How might it be possible to hint at Sally here, near the beginning, so that her later appearance seems inevitable?

Because the son, James, seems to have no mother, might Sally be that mother?

Later, we’ll consider larger motives for the killings. But for now, consider that everything the narrator does is to suppress the truth he refuses to accept. With that in mind, might Sally eventually be killed also? Would you also kill the therapist?

“Okay,” she says. “If he were a person, what would he look like?”

“He looks like me. Who else could he possibly look like?”

“Right.” Another note. She’s writing faster than before, pressing her pen harder against the pad. She flips the page, frowning, and I know what’s coming next. “Tell me about your medication. How are you getting on with it?”

“Fine.”

“Hm. There’s a note here from Mr Jacobs. He says that you’ve expressed some concerns about your meds.”

My Feedback: Here’s where the pills as an object would help keep the narrator physical. The therapist is writing. The narrator might be fondling a single pill in his pocket.

Also, a nice trick? When you’ve got a sequence of back-and-forth dialog, consider not putting the narrator’s word in quotation marks. That suggests the narrator is not responding aloud, or is paraphrasing his response. It varies the texture — not replying to quotes with more quotes — and it builds tension by suggesting the narrator is withholding or is unreal. While writing Fight Club I chose to never put the narrator’s dialog in quotation marks, and that made him seem less real than even the imaginary Tyler Durden. Not that quotation marks are all-or-none choice. But always consider where a line of the narrator’s dialog could be paraphrased (no quotation marks).