Screen Shot

by Teel James Glenn

About the Author: Teel James Glenn has killed hundreds and been killed more times on stage and screen as he has traveled the world for forty plus years as a stuntman, fight choreographer, swordmaster, jouster, illustrator, storyteller, bodyguard, actor and haunted house barker. His stories have been printed in over a hundred magazines from Weird Tales, Mystery Weekly, Pulp Adventures, Spinetingler, SciFan, Mad,, Fantasy Tales, Pulp Empire, Sherlock Holmes Mystery, SciFan, Crimson Streets, and Blazing Adventures.

Excerpt

Two words that seem to go together are Hollywood and irony. I point to the fact that I had to do what they call a ‘psychological autopsy,’ which is when you try to figure out what went through someone’s mind before they put a bullet in it with out having the body to examine. After all, in this case there was no doubt about the cause of death, so all that was left was the reason.

“I can’t make sense of any of it,” the now-dead space captain said on the laptop screen. Behind him was a calendar with half the dates X-ed out in blood red and a rack of hats on a wall, a very non-spaceship setting. “I have to end it,” he continued. Then the image of the man on the screen put the revolver in his hand up to his right temple and pulled the trigger.

I froze the screen before his falling forward onto the laptop had shut it off. And before he’d splattered his brains out of the side of his head. I turned to the woman who had brought the thumb drive with the gruesome image to me. “I’ve looked at this a number of times since I got this, Mrs. Barnet, and I can’t think any differently than the police; your brother killed himself and this video proves it.”

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