This is one of those true story type things. I figured I'd share it with you all. Enjoy!




I'll never forget the night Mark got shot. It was well planned out. People that were there still talk about it to this day.

It was a Friday night. I was 18 at the time. Living in a rented house with four friends. We were all about the same age. The house was nicknamed "the party house". It definitely lived up to the name. Every Friday night, and sometimes Saturday too, we had as many people over as possible. Anywhere from 30-100 friends, acquaintances and strangers would be there. Alcohol and other intoxicating substances were in full use. We usually got a very diverse mix of people. Ages ranged from 14 -early 40s. The stereo was always at maximum volume. AC/DC, Guns n Roses and similar bands never stopped playing. It could be a very chaotic atmosphere. That was definitely true on that particular Friday.

The action was always upstairs. Downstairs was where I had my room and next to that there was a large space used mainly for close friends and people we trusted. There were a few easy chairs and a decent sized table down there. Nothing fancy, but it was good enough for us. Shortly before midnight one of my roommates, Mike, ran up the stairs. He was a tall, thin, heavy metal head banger type. Long hair and rock t-shirt were always visible. He was the type of guy that seemed to be on good terms with everyone. So when had had something to say chances are people would listen. Mike burst in to the living room and turned the volume of the music down. Right away he had the attention of the entire room. Before anyone could yell at him to turn the music back up he yelled out "Wayne and Mark are fighting! Wayne has a shot gun! I think he's gonna ..". Before he could say anything else there was a loud thump from below. Considering this was an older style house with hard wood flooring it's amazing we heard even that much.

Everyone was on edge. Mike and roughly a dozen people, me included, ran downstairs. Mike was in the lead. He tripped and fell down the stairs after the first couple of steps. It didn't faze him at all. He just got back up and kept on running.

We made our way to the room. When we got there it was a shocking sight to come upon unaware. Lying on an easy chair was Mark. He was leaning back with his legs kicked out. His chest was bloody and the back of the chair looked like it was blown out. Mark was a big guy. Well over six feet tall. And fairly strong too. He didn't seem very tough at that moment. The smell of gunpowder was heavy in the room. Not far away was Wayne. Roughly the same size as Mark. Wayne was a mechanic. He rode around on a Harley and definitely had the biker look going for him. People did not mess with Wayne. Not if they wanted to keep breathing. He had a bit of a smug smile on his face. He was quite happy with what he had done. He emptied the spent shell from his shotgun and started to walk out of the room. No one moved to stop him.

A few of the people who had come to see what happened ran upstairs. We could hear plenty of noise coming from upstairs. Footsteps of the party goers as they fled the scene. It was clear they hadn't expected a murder to take place that night. I made my way upstairs to see who had stuck around. The living room had gone from about 40 people to maybe six or seven. One of them was a fairly attractive girl. Maybe 17 or 18. She was being consoled by a friend. The girl was crying and saying things like "Why did this have to happen to him?! He was such a great guy". That was when she got a tap on the shoulder. She turned around.

It was Mark.

He hadn't actually been shot. This was a little prank we had set up a few weeks back. Maybe a dozen of us were in on it. To this day I'm still surprised it didn't get revealed before we did it. Sometimes you get lucky I guess.

As pranks go it is a pretty intense one. If we lived in a city that was full of gun deaths I doubt we would have even considered it. But we didn't so we did.

Wayne had been bringing his shotgun around for awhile. We'd even spent part of an evening shooting it off in the basement. The house was set to become a parking lot in the not too distant future. So we didn't mind being a bit destructive. As part of the fun Wayne shot a bottle of water while it sat in one of the easy chairs. It blew a hole in the back of it. That's how we got the idea.

We decided to plan a fake murder. And so the pieces were put into place from there. For a few weeks before the big night we had Mark and Wayne pretend to argue so that people would know there was tension. The night of the party we had Mark wear a ripped shirt and smeared him full of fake blood and gore. When the moment was right Mike ran upstairs and the whole thing started. Not exactly your typical party behavior. But we were a wild bunch back then.

The aftermath of the whole thing was pretty minor. No one called the police. Which really amazed us. For weeks afterwards everyone joked about how good Mark looked considering he was a corpse. It was fun killing Mark. If nothing, it gives me a story to tell.

Well told, and a well-executed prank!

Yikes! I'm glad I wasn't there, or I'd have been pretty freaked out. I'm just glad this was a prank--and that it didn't go awry and get somebody hurt for real, as pranks sometimes do.

That must have been some big and wild house.

Good job with pacing, even if you have a number of sentence fragments that detract from the momentum of the piece. When used properly, a sentence fragment can put a nice spin on what I like to call the percussion section of a story...but here, you get the opposite effect. When "Why was this not part of the previous (or subsequent) sentence?" is the reader's reaction to the fragment, you probably want to get rid of it.

Definite dramatic tension here, though. That's not easy to build in such a relatively short piece.

By the way, not for nothin': you are your friends are complete assholes. =)

I know. If it helps offset things I was writing it at the end of a long day. No? Well it's true.

Thanks for the critique, Frank. It's the kind of thing that I do appreciate. I'd rather know where I need to fix things. Perhaps on the next story. I'll tos up another one about the "party house" sooner or later.

Can you cut out a section or two where I am doing that, Frank? Just so I know exactly what you mean.

Heh. Three of those I tossed in after the fact to flesh things out.