A Short Story Collection #Wattys2018

The Killing Words

Every person has a certain word that, if spoken aloud in their presence, will cause them to die instantly.  While cleaning out an abandoned storage unit, you stumble upon a book that contains the name of every living person - and also reveals their death word.

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We feared speaking aloud to each other.  Nobody knew which word would kill us if spoken, so we communicated through text messages and notes.  It was a supernatural phenomenon that our scientists still haven't been able to explain.  The first occurrence was during a funeral for a politician where someone spoke the word "politician" causing a small child to die in their mother's arms.  People were sent up in a frenzy as thousands were dying each day from simple words and only tens were dying from strange, complex words.

Some scientists have given up on trying to research the origins of this causing many to develop theories.  One theory that most tend to believe is that the government is behind the whole thing as a way for population control.  Another is that the illuminati is pulling the strings against people who have spoken out against their members.  This theory was shot down after Kim Kardashian was killed by the word caddywhompus.  The final theory is that aliens are behind it which would explain why our scientists haven't found out any information that we didn't already have:  nobody knows their word or anyone else and autopsies show the cause of death to be a heart attack.

My grandfather was one of the first scientists on the team researching this phenomenon which shows just how long the world has been battling this.  He recently passed away and left me the task of cleaning out his abandoned storage unit he hadn't used since his 30s because "I would know what to do."  Nobody in my family knew what he meant by that, but they let me do what he wanted anyway.

On the first day of cleaning, I found nothing interesting except for some old pictures of him and grandma along with some medals he won for his work in science.  The second day proved to be no better except for the fact that I found my grandparents' wedding album and a copy of their marriage license.  Finally, the third day was when I found anything that peaked my interests.

I found a leather bound book in the back right corner with a huge ink blot covering the cover blocking out the title.  Along the top and side were bright tabs with letters of the alphabet on them.  Flipping to a random page in the book, I saw two columns labeled name and death word.  At first I thought that this list was of people who have died since the death words appeared, but I saw the names of celebrities that are currently alive.  I flipped to the page where the S's started to look for my name and found it to be there along with what word would kill me.  I continued to flip through and find the names of my high school bullies and people serving time in jail.  It seemed that every single person in the United States' name appeared in the book.  A small, folded piece of paper floated to the ground as I leafed through the pages and bent to pick it up.

Dear Nick,

I and everyone else involved in the government lied to you all.  While we didn't figure out how this all started, us scientists have discovered a way to determine everyone's death word.  I am bond not to tell anyone our method of uncovering the words, but I hope you can understand that this book was made to protect the people.  I'm not too sure how the family will react to these findings, but I hope that you know what to do.

Love, Grandpa

The letter dropped from my hands as I ran out of the storage unit clutching the book in my hands.  I had to make sure that no one else would find out about the book so that I could hold all the power.  I had the power to take revenge on people who have wronged me and get rid of people I hate; I could do whatever I wanted.  This meant that I could kill anyone.