This is my first professionally-published story, as it appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine in 2015 as winner of the Mysterioous Photograph Contest. There are three rules for the contest: Your story must be inspired by the photo in that issue, it can be no longer than 250 words, and it must include a crime.
The photo for this issue was of a woman sitting on a platform, next to railroad tracks. That kind of station, just a concrete slab, is common in Massachusetts, in towns too small to rate a station building. This includes Acton, where I used to live.
When I first saw the picture, it looked blurry to me. Why would that be? Obviously, someone had lost their glasses. Why would that be important? Because it interferes with the crime. And what is the crime? Murder, of course. Money makes a good motive, so it seemed natural to make the narrator a hitman. The reader has no reason to dislike the intended victim, so I did not want the murder to succeed. I don't know where the other details came from; they just percolated up from my subconscious as I played out the story in my head.
When I received news that my story was going to be published, I was so excited that I contacted the local newspapers. Worcester Magazine wound up doing a nice story about me. You can find the issue online here. My story is on page 26. The headline writer managed to misspell "Hitchcockian."
Incidentally, there was also a typo in the published version of "Blurry" — it said "underfood" when it should say "underfoot."
There are only two things hitmen fear: professional embarrassment and equipment failure. And failing or getting caught, but those fall under professional embarrassment, so let's say two.
I saw her sitting on the platform, leaning back against her luggage, holding her hat against the stiff April wind. Her other hand held a newspaper, maybe? Hard to tell. My glasses had slipped off in the parking lot of this lonely commuter rail station, and the crunch underfoot told me the rest of the day would be blurry. So I wasn't sure she was the woman I had been hired to whack, but she was the only one there. And no witnesses. So…
The train approached. She started to rise. I held out my hand. She smiled. "Why, thank you, kind sir!"
A quick jerk of my arm would launch her toward the tracks, to be crushed under steel wheels. Easy to say the wind had knocked us off-balance. I stepped back, missed the edge of the platform, and fell flat on my back next to the track, the woman atop me.
I heard the train stop and passengers rush off, then saw dozens of cell phones pointed at us, snapping away. "You'll be famous!" I heard someone say. "My hero!" the woman cried as she hugged and kissed me.
So now the photos and videos are all over the TV and Internet. My cover is blown. Professional embarrassment caused by equipment failure. New girlfriend. Go figure.