The deathly letters

This post started as a potential fiction, with the first two paragraphs as an intro of sorts to the inspiration behind the story. It's grown so long by the time I'm writing this line, I've decided on turning it into a review of the inspiring piece and write the actual story/fiction piece I was gonna work on later.

It was inspired by this episode of Aahat. Great premise, poor execution, and an extremely disappointing ending. The three of us watching came up with five possible other ways the show could have gone, each better than the last, all of them better than the actual approach. Such a great germ of an idea, if it's not a book already it would make for an intense interesting psychological thriller, an entire book of it. In any case, here's some crappy version of it, hope to make it into a longer piece someday. Or maybe copy it over to the Khyaak's story because the 'slippery slope' is an amazing approach to turn a legitimate normal but a little desperate person into a total psychopath, and then explore actually he was a psycho all along it was just that he hadn't been validated in exploring that side of himself. Shit, maybe I should turn this post into a review of the episode and the exploration of possibilities than actually writing a short story. Let's do that here.

So here's what the story was: there's a guy who loses a job, is behind on his rent payment and a lot of pending payments. He can't find a job and his expenses are catching up real hard. He doesn't know what he needs to do to straighten his life. He gets a mysterious letter from someone with a message: if this certain guy at so-and-so hospital in some room dies within three days from now, you get Rs 5k. He thinks it's some random-ass letter from a crank and ignores it.

Later when he's looking at a newspaper [the circumstances behind how he comes to look at the newspaper are important for the episode because he's shown it by a friend who as it happens orchestrated the entire scheme] he discovers the man in his letter has died. He receives a suspicious 5k in the mail in a few days, enough to pay his bills and have some money to spend irresponsibly and unwisely.

Then he gets a second letter, about a different guy in the same hospital. Now he's a bit curious because since it worked the first time maybe there's something to it. He calls the hospital to check up on the person, they tell him he's serious but stable. Later they inform him that the second-letter guy has passed away too due to complications. He receives a shipping of another bag of cash soon after.

Now he feels he's invulnerable, because of all the free money he's getting, he figures he's tricked the system. He starts blowing it on booze and smoking, and gambles like there's no tomorrow, only to lose all of his new money and to get into deep debt. In the episode it's a big gangster who -- spoilers, orchestrated the thing with a friend slash coworker of his to turn him into an assassin -- lends him the money. The guy's not too worried, he has a feeling he's getting another letter and another envelope stuffed with cash.

And lo and behold he gets a third letter. But this time the guy's in stable condition and won't die. The pressure from the gangster goes up and he feels his options are limited. He goes to the hospital to check up on the guy, to evaluate his chances of making his money, finds himself alone, and murders the guy. He is immediately handed an envelope of cash by a stranger when he gets home.

In the reveal we find out its all a scheme by the ganster to turn him into a murderer. It was unsatisfying and a little...vanilla. There was no bigger conspiracy, no deeper mysteries no psychological drama.

Here's the ideas we came up with: maybe he was making the letters in his mind, he just wanted to kill people. Maybe he has dissociated personality disorder, his other personalities are killing these people and leaving the letters for him. Maybe there's a deeper darker conspiracy than blackmailing someone into being a hitman just because you tricked them into killing sickly old man, possibly political in nature. Maybe they show more of the desperation in his life, and why he needs to money and why he has to kill people, instead of the mob boss just making him to it. Maybe his landlady, who disappears in the end of the episode, is somehow involved with it. Maybe his entire family, all the people he knows are hitmen and murderers and one of the tricks in not getting caught is having a clean 'innocent' mind, and it's an initiation into his family business. Maybe there's supernatural being involved,  maybe he's the victim too, besides being 'forced' to kill people through blackmail. The possibilities are endless.

What a waste of a good concept.