Spectator competition winners: killer short stories

In Competition No. 3160 you were invited to supply a short story whose opening sentence is ‘I have no idea whether I killed him.’

The idea for this challenge came from The Mandibles: A Family 2029-2047, Lionel Shriver’s gripping and plausible 2016 novel about societal meltdown in the US following the collapse of its economy (yes, the toilet roll runs out). Towards the end, one of the characters says, ‘I have no idea whether I killed him’, to which another replies: ‘An excellent first line for a short story…’ Indeed. There was a fair amount of repetition, and as I read through your entries — this was a hugely popular competition — I became increasingly grateful for those that didn’t feature an insect of some kind or Schrödinger’s cat. The winners, printed below, take £25 each.

I have no idea whether I killed him. I don’t, to this day, know his identity. But someone was wearing that gory bull’s head like a helmet and prancing around the Bayswater flat as I uncomprehendingly uttered guttural incantations. When he fell, rather theatrically I thought, to the floor, I imagined it part of the ritual until he didn’t get up. I’d only been standing in for Crowley, whom I’d met in a hotel bar, keeping the ritual ticking over while the Great Beast swept out to give private instruction to one of the needier girls. ‘Oh God, have I done it wrong?’ I quavered, standing over the body and dropping Crowley’s grimoire like the incriminating evidence it suddenly might have been. One of the girls giggled, someone demanded an undertaker and I fled, not checking if the fellow was actually dead but certain I’d overstepped a mark mentioning God.Adrian Fry

I have no idea whether I killed him. You know how it is — as bedtime storyteller after an exhausting day you struggle to remember how last night’s effort ended.