Chapter 1a:

A Chapter by Daniel Sutheran

The first chapter of "The Death of a Man called Timothy" (the chapter does not have a title yet).

As soon as he arrived back that night, Timothy was suddenly profusely aware of the fact that someone - somewhere and at some time - had begun writing about his whereabouts and hereabouts at that present moment, and was thus unaware of the masked man behind his bedroom door that was ultimately there to cut short this story. The latter-mentioned would eventually end said story with a long kitchen knife, which would (as mentioned) cut the tale short, leaving his internal organs flailing uselessly and rather messily over the bedroom floor. Anyone other than Timothy, in light of the fact that he was unaware of the masked man and therefore unaware of the eventual spewing-forth of his innards, would be rather put-off by this and would immediately request the presence of a large cloth, vacuum cleaner or plastic carrier bag to begin cleaning up the mess.

Timothy, now knowing that someone had begun to narrate his actions, began to wriggle his fingers in a wave motion - he did this with the full intention of later reading this person's writings and as a result reading of his fingers' performance. Feeling rather impressed with himself, Timothy walked smugly into his flat (after unlocking the door, of course) and walked toward to another door, which lead into his bedroom. It was at this point that Timothy realised that the writer had forgotten to write that he had closed the front door after he'd walked through, seen as they'd made such a point of making sure they noted his unlocking of the door in the first place, and thus making him realise already that the writer wasn't a very good one. It also crossed his mind that he now wasn't entirely sure whether he was being written about, or whether he was being made to act via the writing itself.

Timothy also wondered why the writer had chosen to focus on this fact, rather than the more pressing issue of him now lying strewn, next to at least six of his internal organs (which were rather obviously covered in blood), all over his bedroom floor. Also, he hadn't noticed that his mobile phone had been taken from his jacket pocket until the writer had written about it, which furthermore confused him as to the writer's intentions and capabilities, and to the function of the writing itself. Wracked with bother and the aforementioned confusion (and possibly alongside the aftermath of having his stomach cut open), Timothy lost consciousness to the sounds of Gimme Gimme Gimme by the Swedish pop group, ABBA, even though he'd never heard that song before.

Given that Timothy's share of 'becoming aware' had been done, the writer suitably became aware that, within the short amount of words they had written, they hadn't actually described Timothy's surroundings, his flat, his bedroom, or even his front door, which they'd made quite a meal out of introducing. The writer now noticed that they'd not given many, if any, details of the masked man with the long kitchen knife, other than him being facially covered, technically male and the fact that he was brandishing a lengthy preparation utensil. The writer hadn't even written about Timothy's physical appearance or anything to do with his personality. Even Timothy's death had been sudden, undeveloped and unappealing. The writer was also now maddeningly aware of the fact that they'd not done a great deal of writing at all.

More to the point, the writer now knew that they had been rather slow and distracted when writing about Timothy's actions, which was made clear within the exclusion of important and murderous events in the scene, and the inclusion of their personal choice of calming background music. The writer began to wonder whether Timothy would have appreciated his last moments on Earth being spent listening to a song of his own choice, rather than listening to a song depicting a Scandinavian woman's insistence for person of a male persuasion to accompany them about their activities during the early hours of the morning. Upon the writer realising that their favourite song had in fact been covered in a film featuring Pierce Brosnan, they began to worry of their actual value in society and of whether Mr Brosnan's face actually existed at all or whether it was merely a mirage formed by Lucifer (or Jasper, the neighbour's cat) to make all of humanity's individual facial muscles condense into a point of infinite mass, creating a black hole on every person's face, which would cause, and had caused, a considerable amount of pain to the owner of the muscles.

Getting further distracted even now, the writer began to question the necessity for being worried about possessing a certain fondness for music that is admired by both the majority of women and the majority of male homosexuals, both of which the writer happened not to be. Although they were not particularly understanding of the mindset of being homosexual (or being female, for that matter), they decided that they were proud to understand that appreciating a certain thing does not have to have any feminine or homophilic connotations in any form, not that it would prove an issue to them at all if it did.

Shaking their head in the way people do when they've realised they've gone off on a bit of a thought-tangent and attempt to get back to what they were thinking about in the first place, the writer began thinking again of ways to rectify this silly, silly situation they'd put themselves in by writing a bad piece of literature.

Another person who'd just completed a similar cranial gesture to the writer was the writer of the writing that told of the actions of the writer who'd been writing of (some) of the events leading up to the death of a man called Timothy.

To simplify things, the writer currently writing decided to assign a naming system to the writer's currently existent:

"The Latin character 'A' refers to the writer of the death of a man called Timothy; the Latin character 'B' refers to writer writing about A; the Latin character 'C' refers to the writer who was most recently introduced, and the collection of Latin characters 'Timothy' refers to the man called Timothy."

Now that C had cleared things up, they turned their attention to a more imposing situation: the words they were currently writing were of no consequence and were absolutely awful. Realising that it was now their turn to begin realising, they realised that the writing they had just written was badly-structured, badly-organised, badly-worded and, in all, rather bad. C also realised that they now hated the style, the idiom, and the positioning of the words, and thus wanted to get entirely rid of the writing as soon as humanly possible.

Upon realising this rather bad situation, C decided to scrap everything they had just written and start all over again.