Short Story:
LAST WRITER STANDING
by Gene Sittenfeld
“So what’s the worst crime someone can commit?”
That was tonight’s discussion.
“Murder?”
“ Maybe, but when it’s over, it’s over.”
“Kidnapping?”
“A three-ring circus of showing off.”
“Treason?”
“Only if you have high standards. And if your heart is in the wrong place.”
“Or the right one. Fucking Bush.”
“Theft?”
“Maybe. Not only are you enjoying something of someone else’s, you are taking it away from them.”
The four of us met every Friday night at my place to read our stories. No women, because the few times we included them we ended up showing off. And because they never returned.
I lived in the Valley, a million miles from the good life. It was hot and smoggy every day. The four of us wrote bad scripts for TV. When we got hired.
We had written stories for years, mostly for ourselves. But a small press had published one of mine and two things won contests for Paulie.
There was a rising level of bullshit. We were writing less and talking more. With a little too much drinking.
We poured over a ton of crimes: from blackmail to forgery, vandalism to flashing.
“Murder’s the hardest.”
“No way. It’s the easiest. Boom, he’s dead”
“It's the hardest to pull off. Not to get caught. And to live with. It’s so...so, final.”
“I disagree.”
“Not final? How do you figure? Unless you kill Jesus...”
“No, you idiot, getting caught. Lots of unsolved murders. Not too many big robberies go unsolved.”
“Arson?”
“Could be, but –“
“But nothing, taking down a big building. What other crimes?”
We threw out treason and indecent exposure. And decided to limit victims to those who deserved it.
“So buildings are guilty of what?”
“Urban blight. Discrimination.”
“How about killing off a golf course? One night the whole thing dies?”
Yawns all around.
“We go to the zoo, see, and we free all the animals!”
I waited. “Why not choose four crimes and put them in a hat. And whatever you pull out you write about?”
“Because we’ll never get around to writing them?”
”OK Dickhead, you got a better idea?” I said.
Paulie clapped his hands, then waited a beat to make sure he got our attention. “How about one of us kills the other three? Last writer standing tells the story.”
That was three weeks ago. So you can guess the ending.
I’m writing the story, aren’t I?
***
You already know Paulie’s name. There was Charlie, who we called Chick. And Rick, who was Rico.
Oh, and I’m Douglas. And I don’t like Doug. Not even a little bit.
That night when we decided? It didn’t end well, everyone laughing a little too hard at stale jokes and dying to leave but staying put, not wanting to be the first to flee.
***
Chick had a thing about Paulie reading his stuff. He wanted to read it to himself before Paulie started in, but the rules were the rules. If you didn’t e-mail your story in advance, you read it cold.
Paulie was the hothead of the group, for sure. Always in and out of scrapes. A three-fisted drinker. Whisky, which puts your mind somewhere on the corner of hot and dizzy.
Paulie would say stuff that he wouldn’t remember later, but the punch always landed. And Chick was usually the guy who took it.
Paulie sometimes threw in a line or two just to piss us off, maybe about my weight, or Rico’s hairline. Some hairline. More like a comb-over. But we would just laugh it to the side.
Not Chick, though. It was personal with those two.
So I knew I could get them at each other.
I set up two Hotmail accounts and e-mailed some bullshit to each of them. Started a little fire. Neither said a word to Rico. Or to me. When someone’s simmering, they think fuzzy. And that’s just what I wanted.
When Paulie came the week after, and Chick didn’t, Rico and I could see the game was on. Paulie was beat up and breathless. His smile said what he wouldn’t. Paulie played ball years ago, before he drank himself out of the Pacific Coast league and slugged an umpire. But he was still strong and when he meant business, things got done.
Chick never had a chance.
One down, two to go.
“Want to call this thing off?” Rico asked.
“We ain’t calling nothing off,” Paulie said. As if his word was law. Which it now was.
We played some cards. Told some jokes. Quit early.
***
I got a sore neck from looking over my shoulder that week. Using the stairs and not the elevator. Changing my schedule. The clocks in my apartment seemed louder so I played music to cover them up.
When the phone rang it was like an explosion.
My car wouldn’t start one morning. I ran out so fast, a guy hit me in the arm. And no, the guy wasn’t Paulie. Or Rico.
Honestly, I thought Rico might bail. Like a little girl. But he had some history himself. A dad who beat him. A brother who died on the streets. Turning Rico and Paulie against each other wouldn’t be easy.
I called my son and cancelled dinner for my birthday the next weekend. Ditto my little girl. I barely slept. Because I had a bad feeling. A feeling that the big cheese was me.
Rico called and cried. Told me he couldn’t take it any more. “Can’t we call this off?” he asked. I said we’d talk about it at the meeting.
Everything changed, got supercharged. Normal things became operas.
Some truck ran me off a lane and I clipped a kid on a bike. He was OK, but I wasn’t. I almost didn’t care.
Friday finally arrived. Rico didn’t.
Paulie and I barely looked at each other. This had gone too far. But who was going to stop it?
We played gin. The two of us. Paulie counted cards. He said stuff like “so you need another seven, huh?” And he called me a “speculator." Whatever the hell that meant.
My week was a living hell. I had a script due and wrote myself into more corners than a mouse. Each day was awful, a heat wave adding to the misery. I could have said no. I knew deep down that Rico was gone. And Chick, poor Chick. The weakest of the group.
The next day, a cop was outside my car waiting for me.
He asked about the scratch on the side. So obviously new. I pretended not to have noticed it. That damn kid on that damn bike.
He wanted to see my license.
The cop called in on his cell phone. Spelled my last name and address. I was shaking.
He stiffened. Nodded and hung up.
He walked me down the street and back again, asking if I knew a guy named Rico. Seems he wasn’t at work for a few days now. Did I know anything about that?
He asked if he could see my apartment. I was almost in tears. He asked me if I knew my rights.
We walked up the stairs to my place. I opened the door and walked in.
No way. There were two bodies on my floor.
Chick was lying on his side, Rico face down. Both were as dead as yesterday.
The cop came in, reading me my rights. He stopped and stared at the 
bodies.
I screamed.
“Happy Birthday, Asshole,” said Paulie, stepping out of the kitchen. “No harm, no foul.”
The cop barked a laugh and went over to Paulie. High-fived him. They were happy.
I still didn’t get it.
“Look at the bodies, you son of a bitch.”
They were dead. All wax dummies are. And when you live in L.A., the special effects can be killer.
It was all a joke. On me. My birthday present. Rico and Chick came out from the kitchen, both with a drink in their hands.
I could have killed them all.
About the Author:
Gene Sittenfeld lives and writes in Glensboro, Ky. He is working on his first novel, tentatively titled Killing Stone. This is his first published fiction. He obeys the law at all times, and has never been arrested.