by Linda Kay Hardie
I’ve killed off a lot of people lately, and I feel better for it. No, I’m not some sort of mass murderer, although Google might think so. I’m a writer. I write a variety of genres, including mysteries, crime, horror, science fiction and fantasy, and even children’s, but my critique group has gotten used to seeing characters die, sometimes gruesomely, in my short stories. That makes me feel good. The killings, that is, not grossing-out of my friends.
In an interview, bestselling author Stephen King famously once said reading horror stories is a way for people to cope with the horrors they face in real life. In recent years we’ve all faced many traumas. During Mental Health Month in a recent May, when people held discussions on depression and other mental issues, I began to uncover traumas in my past. That’s when I realized I dealt with many of them by killing off the people who harmed me.
The names have always been changed to protect the guilty, to paraphrase stoic Sgt. Joe Friday from the movie Dragnet (starring Dan Ackroyd and Tom Hanks), based on the even older TV show with Jack Webb and Harry Morgan. Of course, I’ve fictionalized the circumstances beyond recognition. I’ve never killed someone with Thanksgiving dinner leftovers! At least not that anybody can prove. The stories are never about what happened but what I’d like to see happen. Fictionally, of course!
It’s a truism that the anger you carry for people who wronged you in your past never hurts them; it only hurts you. Think about it. Who’s carrying around the heavy burden of this wrath? Anger you hold onto becomes an abscess in your psyche and metastasizes in your soul. The person you’re holding this hate for (and read those words again) probably doesn’t even know about the pain you’re inflicting on yourself and probably wouldn’t care if they did.
So, excise that anger!
Drain the abscess. Lance the boil. Begin to heal. Kill off those people in your past you can’t let go of. You can’t hold on to their corpses. Finish that unfinished business.
It’s a change on the phrase most writers are familiar with, “kill your darlings,” which means edit and revise your favorite scenes and sentences, and sometimes even delete them when they’re unnecessary baggage to your story. In my case, I take it almost literally. Friends, relatives, significant others, all are fair game if they’ve done me wrong, as I might put into a country song’s lyrics if I possessed any song-writing talent.
Not everyone is a writer, but readers can share in this mental health activity. Now that summer is here, and everyone’s on the lookout for a good beach read, I’ve got recommendations. Not frothy, quick reads, those stories and books you zip through and promptly forget. I’m suggesting short stories. Sure, they are often fun, quick reads, but put your summer reads to work! Use them to free yourself from those burdens you’ve schlepped around for far too long.
My recommendations are mystery/crime and horror stories, stories where you vicariously kill off your own darlings without danger of the police knocking on your door in the morning. For example, in The Perp Wore Pumpkin (Misti Media, 2023), featuring humorous crime stories involving a traditional Thanksgiving food, my story “The Chile Pumpkin Pie Rebellion” involves a pumpkin pie filled with ancho chile powder—a real recipe and surprisingly good, no spiciness involved—made by a browbeaten wife. It doesn’t hurt anyone, although keep an eye on the banana bread. In Tales of the Apocalypse: William Joseph Roberts Presents Book 2 (Three Ravens Publishing, 2024), my near-future crime story “Grenade Blows Up” shows an angry ex-wife whose cats help her even the score. One more of my favorites is in From the Yonder, volume IV (War Monkey Publications, 2023), where my horror story “The Ghost of St. Hildegard’s Center for Mystic Arts” features a ghost helping a woman rid herself of an annoying cousin who turns out much worse.
Read, release your anger, and achieve satisfaction. You’ll feel better for it. I certainly do.
Linda Kay Hardie writes horror, crime, and SF/fantasy stories, as well as essays (often about cats), poetry, and fiction for children. She also writes recipes and won a trophy in 2002 for best rib rub in the amateur division of the Best in the West Rib Cook Off in Sparks, Nevada. Her writing has won awards dating back to a fifth-grade essay on fire safety. In 2022 she was honored with the Sierra Arts Foundation’s Literary Arts Award for fiction. Linda makes a living as a freelance writer and as staff employed by Abyssinian cats. Check out anthologies she’s published in.
