Iago

Prologue: The End of Iago

As the gun pressed into his back, Lucas took a deep breath. Pinned down, weary, he closed his eyes. It was the end. The end of everything he had strived for. How did I get to this point? My future is gone, my efforts wasted. As he stared into the distance, his gaze hardened. It's all that horribly inept teacher's fault. That darned teacher injured me with my own gift, my own glass apple! He laughed to himself bitterly, then winced in pain. His cuts still bled from the glass having dug into his skin. The sight of a dead Becca, bleeding, sprawled on the ground flashed briefly in front of his eyes. Did it feel something like this when she died? he wondered. She'd bled too.

His mind raced forward to all the dreams he had, all the goals he could have fulfilled had the teacher only given him the A he so deserved. He pictured himself at Harvard, an eloquent English major who was challenged by the best of the best but rose to every challenge with stride and outshone them all. A world-class scholar whose unconventional thinking would be revered by all, whose insights changed the world and cast the greatest works of literature in a new light. 

And now? Lucas was not naive. He knew that he now had a criminal record, that he would be charged with the kidnapping of Mr. Butler's son at the very least, and likely the murder of Mr. Butler's wife as well. He might even end up being charged for Becca's murder, if conclusive enough evidence came up and the judge or jury deemed him guilty. He was aware that his age would not save him from decades of imprisonment if he ended up charged with murder. No elite university would accept him now that his true self had come to life, his mask destroyed. His dreams were shattered. He thought about his English class' lessons on Othello. How ironic that I ended up being a real-life Iago precisely because of that class - or rather, because of the teacher who taught that lesson. He saw himself in that character - how all of this started because of their ambitions, which had been very simple in the beginning, how none of their initial plans had included murder, but how they escalated to result in the deaths of others because circumstances made it so that others' murders would give them what they want, how their motives and plans came to light eventually, and how they both ended up punished for their crimes. 

As he contemplated his misfortunes, his mind flashed back to the beginning, to his childhood. He replayed his memories of recording himself practicing different emotions. He shook his head. Is my life really in shambles because I was unable to genuinely embody those emotions which seem to dictate others' lives? All I've ever wanted, back then and now, was greatness, and recognition of it. To be rightfully crowned. He closed his eyes once more, thinking back to days when he still had full control over his life and could dare to dream of carving out the path he wanted.

A.N. I'm not 100% sure what I want to do with this story yet. I want to use this to flesh out Lucas's life more, but I'm not sure if I will make this A.U. yet or not. On the one hand, I know that left to my own devices I'd probably soften Lucas to the point that he doesn't try to frame his professor or kill anybody. I realize that by doing so, I'd be falling precisely into the fangirl trap of romanticizing a psychopathic killer, convincing myself and others that "he really wouldn't have been THAT bad". On the other hand, if I do this carefully, I could end up at the same ending point while drawing out the timeline more and / or giving more character development. One thing many people hadn't liked was that there wasn't enough character development and insight into Lucas's motivations, so a somewhat A.U. timeline done well could provide that nuance and doesn't need to entail romanticizing Lucas. I could also write other, less stupid revenge plans. Psychopath =/= killer, and any reasonably intelligent person would realize that killing his teacher's wife won't get him the grade he wants. Anyhow, I'll see what I do with this. 

I might also play around with writing some chapters from other points of view. I realize that the media disregards crime victims when they focus on the background and story of a killer, and I hesitate to do that with this story, but on the other hand I probably find Lucas the most fascinating character and the only one I'm really interested in fleshing out. Stories provide a means of fleshing out such an extremely two-faced person in a safe environment, and the other characters are rather boringly normal, like you and me, so fleshing those people out would probably just feel like a diary entry rather than an exciting, tension-filled creative exercise. Let's see.