Death by Hanging

Story 2/5 Autumn 2025 Edition

Continuing our You Find Your Suicide Note edition of The Rejects is a flash story by A.P. Murphy . We will be dropping one story written for the prompt once a day.

Every story is different, every last confession desperate.

Every note you didn’t write.

Happy Day of the Dead,

George & M.P., Autumn Edition 2025.

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Death by Hanging

Please know that I didn’t mean to cause you distress by doing this. I simply could see no other way to end the pain.

In your mind’s eye you lift the note to your face and squint hard at the penstrokes. It looks like your handwriting, but you don’t recall writing it. You couldn’t have written these words. It’s just not like you.

I want to end it want to end it want to be free of all of it, and you should know I’ve tried all the other ways to heal.

Poor punctuation, not like you at all, but the writing does look authentic. Heal? Would you say ‘heal’? But who do you know that could forge your handwriting so skilfully?

You Patricia, I want you to know that you’re blameless in this. It’s my own decision to go this way.

Patricia. Is it your wife who’s done this? Forged your writing so you exonerate her from all blame? The bitch – luxuriating in sin as you lay in hospital, going at it day and night, the beast with two backs...

My love, I want you to know that I adore you completely and never wanted you to suffer as you must when you see me here, when you read these words.

Ha! There it is! The bitch must suffer. She must be made to suffer. When she sees, then she’ll suffer alright.

With all my love and forgiveness, Oscar.

Now you remember who wrote it. How the bitch will suffer. You let the paper drop from your hand and it flutters to the floor beneath.

As you dangle, as you dangle, as you dangle.

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A.P. Murphy, Writer: Film essays, fiction, poems, articles. Barcelona, Catalonia.