A long time ago I had an idea for a story, perhaps even a novel, that begins at the climax of most action thrillers, when the hero infiltrates the evil villain’s lair and one by one picks off various and sundry minions on his way to the final showdown. The story would then backtrack and review the last hours of each of the minions who died in the assault.
Who was the well-dressed man the hero met at the elevator and shot dead before he could react and reach for his own weapon? That fellow who was trying to enter the fray but was shot in the head when the assassin twisted his friend’s gun so it pointed at him? What did he have for lunch, who did he eat with, and what did they talk about?
And that last minion between the assassin and his target — did he fight so ferociously because the boss may have been an evil villain, but he was the man who gave him a job when everyone else in the minion business had given up on him, how many years ago? I would tell the story of that friendship that ended with the top minion being a footnote in the good guy’s mission.
It wouldn’t be a novel in the traditional sense, more like a series of short stories, all of them with the same ending — a long life full of hopes and dreams that led to employment under an evil villain, which leads to a fatal encounter with the guy we introduced as the hero over the opening credits.
Life is not a video game. In real life, every human the hero blows away had a story of his (or her) own. My idea would be to convince the reader to look at the opening sequence in a different light and maybe cringe for each of the minions as they die, because now we know about the life that brought them to their final fatal encounter.
I should sit down and write that thing instead of thinking about it or describing it to you. If I don’t, now you have a sense of what I might have written if I ever got around to it.
