(800 words) Word had it that Douglas Whiting wanted to kill someone. Someone, anyone, just to see what it was like. And it got back to him that, yes, a man named Norman Oliver was happy to be the victim. Well, perhaps not happy exactly, more resigned, his cancer untreatable. So, early one evening Whiting knocked on Oliver’s door. A shabby door in a shabby house in a shabby street in a shabby town. Oliver answered the door and Whiting saw the man matched his surroundings, unshaven, a green cardigan with holes in it, old chequered trousers and worn-out slippers. “Hello, you must be the man who’s come to kill me,” Oliver said. Whiting looked Oliver in the eyes. “That’s right. You haven’t changed your mind?” “Oh no, no, not at all. Come in, please come in.”
