Intimate Murder (Fiction): Villain and Victim Rising To Satisfy Inner Lusts
By: Michael Forman
Tags: Murder, Sex, Fiction, Writing, Reading

Nothing is more personal than reading about a character’s life’s flicker out. As a writer, it’s easy to understate a good, intimate murder when compiling its text.

My murder is not the kind that comes by a gun or a knife. I’m talking about something far closer and more personal — like the electric intimacy shared between two new lovers maneuvering their way into each other’s arms for the very first time.

A hand slips beneath a shirt and it touches the rarest of white-meat. It’s sensitive and the flesh reacts to it. This interaction isn’t unwanted. The joining of it’s owner’s hand to the other’s says that it’s accepted, even encouraged. Before we know it, kisses increase, bodies are explored, and two bodies will become entwined. A murder can be written into this space and be just as sensual, taking intimate homicide to a whole new level of creep.

For a writer who yearns to bring these two worlds together, the challenge is to get intimacy and crime to lie together and have a reader be comfortable with this inevitable yet awkward union. I want you to want to witness the development of its relationship and savor it as it reaches its tumultuous conclusion.

Other writers often use short, cliched phrases to describe their criminal’s villainous deeds and then punctuate them with words like ‘crime’ and ‘evil individual’. The villain dies or goes to jail and it’s a satisfying outcome for everyone. The readers are guided to the safe side of morality knowing that the writer shares in their disdain. Evil is bad and banished. Everyone’s happy. It’s tidy. An easy out.

But it’s not fair to cast-off such an important person when there is still so much potential left inside their being to discover! A killer, yes, but a living soul too.

What brings a villain to take a life in the middle of coitus?

Sure, we must feel for the victim but there is a whole other side to explore that rarely gets a look in. What about the villain who lives on? Do they feel a sense of loss, gratitude or pleasure when taking the life of another? What motivates someone to snuff out a life in the first place? What is to be gained by planning, committing and concluding this action? Evil or not, there’s something else for readers to enjoy (if they have the stomach for it), to go into a whole new world.

A murder story can be so much more if it’s allowed the oxygen to breathe and grow into something wonderful — take us down new pathways that lead us to new understandings. Murder is more than hate strapped to a psychopath, just like sex isn’t just a fuck. What about the lead up into the bedroom and all the suspense before it? What about the moments when two people meet and find an interest in each other that take them to a bedroom to bring us all that suspense?

Murder isn’t simple. It’s not an assumed act and then we move on. It’s a deeply personal act. It ought to be unpacked more, teased out. If a writer can do this well, then readers are able to slip beneath a villain’s skin to find out what they feel from their side of the emotional tapestry.

Like sex, murder comes with a set of very unique emotions and sensations that aren’t experienced at any other time. Villain and victim ride sensuous waves of anticipation until the encounter reaches its climax. The destinations are different but the journey is uncomfortably similar. Writing a good death scene into fiction is absolutely amazing when done right! (sorry, a self-indulgence bomb was dropped there!)

Characters who have had no instructions on how to feel that way have to access parts of themselves they’ve never used before. If the murder is done face to face, they need to see and touch each other in ways rarely felt, seen, heard or smelt before.

It’s like sex but deliciously dangerous!

My murder is written like a good lovemaking scene. Rather than studying the actions in a fuck, I like to get to know the emotions inside my characters. I want to find out what’s going on inside their heads for them to make the decisions they make. What changes happen inside their bodies as two people begin to get closer to each other?

Discovering self, wanting inner peace and demanding respect is the same for all of us, including murderers. Self awareness, identity and acceptance is important to everyone, including a psychopath. You may disagree and feel that their needs are somewhat skewed but they’re not as skewed as you may think, not in every psychopath. Everyone wants to obtain the golden ring. How they get it is the only difference.

SEETHINGS was written to twist murder on it’s head. Read it now for free on *SMASHWORDS. (*limited time)

–Michael Forman (Author)