Killing Frank

I have a friend...well, not a friend but...he’s sort of a...I know a guy, who’s name is Frank.  Frank aspires to be a writer but like all of us faces obstacles, well not the same obstacles but...Frank doesn’t care for people.  To be honest, Frank hates people, a lot. One might wonder how such a solitary experience would be hindered by hating people. Well of course you can forget collaboration.  A drive-by ‘good morning’ to Frank is tantamount to a kick in the nuts. Therefore, when Frank begins a writing project, it is the style of the ‘lone wolf’, ‘solitary man’, ‘lone ranger’, yeah you get it, by himself.  

 

Frank allows his less than magnetic personality to interfere with his writing.  As you might guess, his characters often...sometimes...his characters don’t stand a chance.  Especially one that might be charismatic, strong, with empathy, for that matter any protagonist that might hold one’s attention into a second paragraph.  Frank kills off main characters with the same fervor, Jeffrey Dahmer may have enjoyed a homemade broth. One such character, fought through flames in a burning building to save a puppy, remembering that he’d never had a puppy, the would be hero was killed off by a fighter pilot as he handed the puppy to a little girl.  Unable to explain to his editor why a WWII German blitzkrieg was taking place in mid-michigan during the spring of 2019, the story was scrapped. In another attempt in his poignant pulitzer prize pursuit, a young girl put her own life in peril and was giving a kidney to a military war veteran/scientist, on the verge of curing cancer.  As luck would have it, she reminded him of his own “candy ass little sister, who would do something stupid like that as well.” Not satisfied with simply filing away or deleting the story, he wrote a charming tale of the hospital burning to the ground and everyone to a person, perishing.

 

I talked with a psychiatrist, twenty-five years working with the criminally insane and familiar with Frank and his psychological disorder(s). He peppered his remarks with the expected jargon, malcontent, psychopath, sociopath and so on.  But he didn’t stop there and as he spoke his voice elevated. When he was screaming, unhinged crazy son of a bitch, I believed his point was made. After several in depth interviews with people, I had unearthed the obvious: Frank brought out the absolute worst in everyone he had contact with.  His little sister was in fact, by all counts an angelic child with a heart brimming with love and charity, except when it came to Frank. She, at an early age, had taken to beating Frank senseless at every opportunity. Two years Frank’s junior, this had caused problems in grade school and counselor’s were quick to intervene.  The school principal became involved, upon finding the counselor and Frank’s little sister both pummeling him in the counselor’s office. Unfortunately, having an innate ability to incite pure hatred, Frank had neither the nerve, or inclination to fight. The prison writing group he once belonged to, consisted of serial killers, cannibalistic murderers and individuals that killed people simply because, “they was home.”  These pillars of their gated community, voted unanimously to remove Frank from the group, based on their finding, he was irreparably repugnant.

 

Yes he, not so surprisingly, found his way to prison but his kid sister still visits him.  At least she will again, when her suspension is up. It seems she took time away from her volunteer duties to visit Frank and after smashing his face on a table, she was joined by other visitors, prisoners and correctional officers in kickin’ the hell out of him.