I started this while a bit drunk having just read the wekilledamandapalmer.com site for the first time. I don't think this fits in there as it doesn't go with any of the photos, I just sort of accidentally spewed it out of my twisted brain which is why it only reaches a haphazard conclusion. I didn't have a specific narrator in mind, it's just someone close to her. I'm sure you can find some plot holes and things, but I hope you enjoy it...
Someone must've closed the live feed to ustream pretty quickly after it had happened. I couldn't know for sure as the footage hadn't been archived, but it was evident from the speculation online that no one outside of that room had witnessed the direct aftermath of her death. Obviously the incident was being heavily investigated, but the only person obligated to relive her last moments and gruesome end was the Detective Inspector of Lexington's police department. While there were certainly those more shaken up by what they had witnessed, over the weekend that followed, most fans commented only that it had been a “chilling performance” and that, this time, she’d “outdone herself”. The press were reporting: “Palmer ’dies’ in sick stunt to promote solo album: ’Who Killed Amanda Palmer?’” It must’ve looked that way too. She’d fallen to the floor with such a seemingly choreographed flourish. 347 viewers streaming live into their bedrooms, dorms, studies, and the majority applauding the grim spectacle. I still can’t understand why people would think that of her; that she’d fake it, and so publicly. But today, I suppose, people will believe anything if they want to.
A blog sat, half finished, on her desktop. I double clicked it and the window sprung open, that little cursor flashing at me expectantly. That morning she’d been blogging fan art. There were links to a couple of beautifully detailed sketches that’d been emailed her way, and one that lead to a huge painting of Amanda and Brian, by one Yanis of Berlin. Ironically, the last picture was a charcoal of Amanda’s corpse by a Sylvia K. It showed her on her back, eyes open and bleeding profusely from the neck. Amanda had loved it. I longed to hold down the backspace key and watch the words erase themselves one by one, quite useless now. But I couldn’t. I closed the computer and left it on the end of her bed where I had found it. Half out of respect, and still half expecting she’d be back for it in a few days.
It took a while for them to show, but eventually the doubts forced themselves to be considered. There had been no blogs, no tweets, no follow up explanation of that Friday’s events. People began to get anxious. It originated on the Shadow Box forum. There had been a vast influx of new members since the ’hoax death scandal’ and just 42 hours had passed when someone started the thread: ‘AFP dead??’ and the debate began. Some, whether out of desperation or genuine belief, still argued vehemently that she was alive. But there were others who were beginning to realise the true horror of the situation.
“She wouldn’t leave us like this. This is sick.” one girl wrote, “…Amanda, if you are out there, let us know you’re alive! Please!!!”
She didn’t, of course.
That Monday, some whiz produced two screen caps of the second she was taken. They were stomach turning. The first showed the bullet, having negotiated the crowded room, just a metre from her chest and her proleptically melancholy expression as she unknowingly addressed her audience for the last time. The second had been cropped in, showing a mere square foot of wall and her slightly raised left arm . You could just make out a small spattering of blood across the wall behind her that must’ve appeared on impact. On the same day the police released a statement confirming that ‘the singer had been shot whilst giving a live interview, and after being taken to hospital was pronounced dead on arrival.’
It was Wednesday now, and the yellow tape had just been taken down. I left Amanda’s room, where the computer sat, charging happily, and went down stairs. They’d scrubbed the sky grey walls meticulously, but the light carpet had been stained irreparably both with blood and with an arc of red wine, as the glass she had been enjoying had fallen from her hand, right there beside the piano. I forced my attention from the rust brown shape on the floor to the table behind me. On it sat a simple white jug which held several, rapidly dying, white tulips. I manoeuvred my hand amongst the wilting flowers into the shallow water at the bottom of the jug. It was there. Wrapping my fingers around its cold solid handle I brought the gun out and held it inches from my face. It was just as she’d said it would be, and I would have get rid of it just as she had told me to. I stood frozen for a few seconds, examining this object of murder and wondering how she had known it would be there and questioning, if all was as she had said, was she really gone at all…
That moment, my cell chirped urgently in my pocket and the weapon fell to the floor beside my feet.
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Topic: WKAP: Murder on the internet... (Read 752 times)