Dear Mr. Elliot

[RMDuChene]

Dear Mr. Elliot,

Thank you for your recent review of my story, To Kill with Style. Although I thoroughly enjoyed the way that you picked apart my story’s plot and poked fun at my grammar skills, I feel that your review was a bit short-sighted. Perhaps you lack the insight required for you to adequately rate my work. If this is the case, I would like to let you in on some background information regarding To Kill with Style.

The ‘unrealistic’ description of Mandy’s decapitation was actually pretty well spot on. Yes, there really was white, fatty stuff that oozed up from her neck after her head was cut off, so for you to say that those details are unrealistic shows just how much you know about the human body. You also said that eyeballs do not pop when someone rips one out and squeezes it, that they actually become gelatinous puddles when removed from the head. I completely disagree. Andrea’s eyeballs actually did pop. Not only did they pop, but they squirted a clear fluid all over my hands that took me quite a while to wash off.

I’ve followed your reviews for a few years now and have always agreed with your assessments, but in this case, you are wrong. You stated in your review that my story ‘wasn’t very well thought out’ and that it ‘just didn’t make much sense.’ I ask you this sir; when does life make sense? It should surprise you to learn that my story isn’t a story at all. It’s a memoir of sorts.

In the final part of your review, you said that it was practically impossible for a single man to take control over and then torture and kill two people. To prove you wrong, I’ve left a little surprise for you in your bedroom. You’ll be happy to know that in this case, your wife’s eye-balls didn’t pop, but your housekeeper’s did. I had quite a bit of fun, testing all of your little theories and proving them all wrong… one body part at a time.

I’m sure that you’ve rushed off to your bedroom now and are not even reading this last part where I’m telling you that after leaving this note on your desk, I decided to stick around. I figure that you’ll rush into the room, see the mess I’ve made with your wife and housekeeper and fall to your knees, crying out in terror. Your eyes will be fixed on the art that I have created by relocating various body parts and removing skin in those intricate patterns that I wrote about in my story. I hope that before I come out of your closet and open up your throat, you will have time enough to appreciate just how hard it was for me to eviscerate your housekeeper and use her intestines to bind your wife before enjoying her flesh. Anyway, I’m off to your closet now. I’m not really sure how this will all end, but I bet it will make one hell of a story….

[DATo]

Now this was clever! Gruesome is difficult to write without sounding contrived, and to put it into a comic context is extremely difficult to do effectively. I am reminded of Christian Bale's little dance before he slashed his "competition" in American Psycho as well as the scene in Cloud Atlas when the disgruntled writer throws the critic off the top of the building in front of the entire group of attendees at the cocktail party and then calmly partakes of the refreshments.

I think you succeeded in this piece by cleverly employing several devices which merged beautifully. First we have the fact that this narrated though a letter, secondly there is the very matter-of-fact manner in which the writer describes the mechanics and results of dismembering a corpse to state his disagreement with the critic's review, and finally, an ending worthy of Alfred Hitchcock.

Short, sweet, and beautifully done. My compliments.