I want to do something silly.
Let’s write a fiction together!
Here is the opening of a thriller I just wrote.
I don’t know where it should go.
What do you think?
John is a teacher in his forties. He’s married to Rachel and they have a 5 year old child, Sara.
Their marriage isn’t great but it’s not in crisis. They live each other beyond question but the romance has vanished. John is having a midlife crisis.
They live in a suburb. A small place.
The night of John’s 45th birthday, they all go to a restaurant. John, Rachel, Sara, their best friends, who are mostly their neighbors and colleagues.
John thinks his wife might be having an affair. He has no evidence to prove this. HE is probably crazy. He knows he is probably crazy. He knows he is projecting on his wife his own problems.
But his problems persist. And he can’t help but be thrilled when the waitress hits on him.
AS they sign the check and get up to leave, the waitress touches John’s arm in an unnecessarily intimate way and whispers, “Happy birthday.”
He smiles awkwardly.
John and Rachel and Sara head home.
They put Sara to bed.
Johanna Rachel get in bed and begin to do what they know they should do: make love.
But it is clumsy. It’;s been a while. The marriage is not the romantic thing it once was. But Rachel is determined to not be her mother. To not make the same mistakes. She loves John. She will make this work.
But it isn’t going to happen. Neither of them can climax.
John kisses her on the neck and says “this is my fault. I will make it better. I will make us happy.”
Rachel says, “I know,” but she doesn’t believe it.
They lay in silence. One minute. Two Minutes. Three minutes. John stands up.
“I can’t breathe.”
Rachel waves him away.
John puts on his running clothes.
He exits the house and goes for a jog.
We’re in the woods. We’re in the sticks. John runs through the bits that are lit by the moon. It’s only 9pm after all.
John thinks about how when he was young 9pm was early. But now he had finished a birthday dinner and failed to fuck his wife. 9pm is the end for him
He runs and runs.
He finally reaches an opening for lake.
He knows this lake. He grew up by this lake.
It’s only a mile from town but it’s as private as can ever be.
He plans to put his feet in the water but before he can he hears the sound of a car approaching.
He watches two cars pull up.
He watches from the dark people exit the first car and pull a body out of the trunk. They carry it to the lake.
John crouches. He recognizes the situation and is scared.
The people in the second car pull out lots of little trash bagged items and throw them in the lake.
Then a man exits the passenger door. He is the important man. Let’s call him Max. Max pulls out a young woman from the backseat. He says something to her that John can’t hear. Then he shoots her in the head.
The other men go to dispose of the body. At that moment, John’s phone rings. They put the body down ion the shore.
John in a bush 100 yards away but the men can hear,.
He silences it as quick as he can but before he has a chance to think he is hit across the face by one of the bad guys.
The thugs hold him as Max walks over. They pull out his wallet and hand it to Max.
Max inspects it.
“John Coakley. 174 Smith Street blah blah.”
He tosses the wallet to one of his henchmen,
Max points a gun at John’s head.
“I’m very sorry this is happening. But you were in the wrong place at the wrong time”
At that fateful second, the woman that they had shot—the body they had left on the beach—screams. Everyone turns to her.
John recognizes his opportunity and darts into the woods.
Max screams in anger. He gives chase.
John is pushing through the woods and Max shoots random shots at him. He’s only a stop behind.
This is a suburb. Nothing is far from anything. John is running for his life but he is running towards sounds. He knows he’s only a half mile away from help.
Max follows after him in close pursuit but eventually John exits the woods into the town.
He knows Max is on his heels. He run to the left towards the highway or to the right towards the town.
The town is loud and lit up and he heads right.
A few seconds later John sees the opening of the mall. He runs in through the doors.
It’s Friday night in a small suburban town. There are actually quite a few people in the mall.
John dodges by them looking frantically for a cop or a phone or something.
He sees a uniformed cop by Macy’s.
He runs over to him.
“Officer! Officer! I need your help! There is a man after me and a killing they killed—“
“Slow down, son, slow down.”
And that’s the moment John feels the barrel of the gun against his back.
“Hey Gary,” Max says, to the cop.” “He’s a buddy ion mine. He’s had a bit to drink.”
The cop smiles and walks away.
John realizes that Max is a cop. And Max has a gun to his back.
“Here is what is going to happen. You are going to walk outside into the parking lot with me”
“No”
“Yes”
“You are going to shoot me if I walk outside”
“We can talk this through. No one has to die”
Jphm, terrified and frantic, begins walking towards the food court.
“Where are you going,” Max asks, not expecting an answer.
They walk to the food court.
John sits down in a booth. Max sits across from him.
Max sighs.
“I didn’t want this. I don’t want this. I need you to come outside with me.”
“So you can blow my brains out without it being on security cam footage?”
A waitress comes over to clean the table of a spilled Orange Julius.
As she approaches Max whispers to John “everyone else you bring into this dies.”
They smile as she cleans the table.
She leaves.
They are alone.
Max: “This is a first for me! I don’t know you. I know your name but I don’t know you. But here we are and you are were you were and that’s that. But I can’t shoot you in the head right now in this food court without, you know, going to prison myself. I don’t want that. So, we have ourselves a sticky situation. Walk with me outside and we’ll sort it out.”
“So you can shoot me in an ally? No.”
Max pulls out of his pocket Joh’s wallet.
“Your name is John Coakley. You live at 174 Smith Street.”
John;’s breathing gets slower.
“I am going to send those men you saw me with to your house and they are going to chop up everyone they find.”
“How?””How? Thought eh miracle of technology”
\Max pulls out his iPhone.
“The second you out your gun down I am going to take it and blow your brains out”
Max laughs. He does need two hands to type.
At that moment HUGH appears. Hugh is the worst teacher at the school. A big fatso. But he loves John.
“Hitting up the A&W after dark! Just like Shakespeare!”
High sits down next to John.
Max and he get along politely.
John had a pen in his pocket. IT was dry, but he has been trying to get it wet for 20 minutes.
He begins to write on a napkin, “help save family”
Hugh says he has to leave because his uber is coming soon.
John stands up and hugs him and places the note in his pocket.
Max glares.
Outside a drunk Hugh asks people if they are his uber driver. One of max’s men says yes and strangles him in the car.
Max has thought about stuff. Here is what he has come to:
“I need to be able to trust you,” Max says. “Can you convince me to trust you?”
“I don’t want to die”
“Not enough”
“I don’t want my family to die”
“I don’t want to have to kill your family.”
—End of act 1—
Let me know in the comments.
John suspects Rachel's having an affair...perhaps Rachel's having an affair with Max? That might, in a roundabout way, save John's life. In that circumstance, Max can't just kill John no-strings "Strangers on a Train" style once he finds out John is Rachel's husband. If John winds up murdered, and the homicide police start poking around Rachel's personal life, it might lead back to Max. That, at least, might give Max pause enough to get John out of the mall and through the parking lot alive.
"Wait. You're saying you can kill my family and my cast-iron alibi will be that I was here? Fucking DO IT! You don't have to worry about me talking because this is a fucking win WIN, baby. All that insurance money … uh … if I had taken out policies … would have been nice, but just getting to start fresh? That's a gift. Do you see how free you've made me?"