In early 2019, I saw that the (now-defunct) Mad Scientist Journal had put out a call for stories about imaginary friends. One night shortly after, I got up around 3am to check on my young son, who was calling for me, and when I was done with him my mind wandered to the subject of imaginary friends. I had written one story to that effect before, ‘Left Behind’, which was about an imaginary friend who terrorised his now grown-up chum for abandoning him over the course of a summer holiday. I got to thinking about the converse: an imaginary friend who kept pestering his chum all the way into adulthood.
Getting a good idea is often like plucking an orange from the bottom of the pile – a second later everything tumbles down into your lap, and that was what happened with ‘Imaginary Murder’. As I lay in bed, the entire story mapped itself out in my head and I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. So I got up and started writing at 3:30am, something I hadn’t done since my teenage years.
I continued the next afternoon, and when I had about 2000 words done, I read up on the Mad Scientist Journal submission guidelines to see how long it could be… only to discover the damned story had to be written in the first person. I could see no way for the ‘Imaginary Murder’ plotline to pay off as a first-person narrative, so I just continued on as planned, figuring I’d sell it elsewhere.
‘Imaginary Murder’ seemed like an Andromeda Spaceways story to me and it did get shortlisted there, but was ultimately released. It went under submission with Total Quality Reading – which has a unique ‘public forum’ submission/evaluation process – and although it didn’t get the nod there, by chance a Sci-Fi Lampoon editor was moonlighting at TQR as a slush reader and decided it would be perfect for an upcoming anthology… known as The Fuckening.
Kris Ashton 