This is a difficult read. You sympathize with the narrator – until the end. By the way, in the first pgh where you have those statements within quotes, you should capitalize the first letter of each first word per statement. Ditto for the second indentation.

Thanks for those corrections Ana. They’ve been made.
Yeah, I came up with the first line and everything just kind of steamrolled from there. It definitely took a dark turn, which is why I tagged it mature.

That was really good.

Just as Christina said, you don’t know what to think of it.

Kind of freaky, but I found it amusing to picture a male model holding a gun, crying, to someone’s head.

Just my twisted sense of humor, I guess!

Agreed with Ana. Until the end, you can sympathize with the narrator. But there comes a time when you realize that, not only your parents, but all parents tell such lies to their children. But most of the time, is it to give them hope and inspire them to become something. The effort he did not put forth was his own failing, not his parents.

All in all a good read from a very interesting perspective. I do like the dark turn, it’s very real-life.

Good concept and well presented, but the listed lies are too innocuous to justify his actions.

Although (as Krulltar says) slightly incongruous with the ultimate action, I really like the details in this piece. His memories make him a more intriguing character.

This story rolled around in my head all day at work, so I had to add a variation of the story idea. I can’t call it a sequel since it not a continuance. I asked my Obi Wan magic 8-ball and he said search your feelings , well my feelings say I should call it a plagiaristic piece of crap. Oh well. You got sequeled.

Nice job with this. I think in some ways, we can all sympathize with feeling shocked and betrayed when we realize all the lies we’ve been told… but we get over it. I guess this character didn’t.

Very dark, very good.

I’m interested to see the reactions to this. I never thought that the lies were the impetus behind the situation, only something going through his head at this time. There’s no clues as to what led up to this particular moment, or what is to come, but most everyone has assumed this guy is upset at his parents for these lies.
He’s a character that will be in another series, and I’m just playing with how dark and messed up he is, but he’s not killing his parents for telling him there’s a Santa. ;)

The idea behind the “you can be anything you want when you grow up,” was that this guy was destined to be a killer. The events in his life guided him in that direction, though I definitely didn’t bring that to life in this ficlet. He’s running through the lies to make what he has to do easier, not as the reason for what he’s doing. I’ll try to clear that up as I go along.
Thanks for all the comments guys. I definitely appreciate them.

Holy Cow John!
Great read and like Ana said you really feel for the guy until the end.
Didn’t see that coming at all… BTW , glad I can FINALLY get back into Ficlets again. Been getting errors for weeks now.

hmmm better than i expected… at first i thought u were just a “commenter” but now i realize that u are none other than a “writer” thank-you for clarifying this for me.