Slights
Kaaron Warren
 Slights is a first-person narrative by a troubled woman, Stevie, who lost her father when she was nine, and her mother when she was 18. Her father, a police officer, was killed during a mysterious shooting incident on the job, and her mother died when Stevie crashed their car while driving recklessly. The accident left Stevie badly injured and she had a near-death experience in which she found herself in a dark room filled with angry people threatening her. Usually nothing frightened Stevie, but that room terrified her, and she was relieved when she was revived in hospital. From an early age Stevie was anti-social and soon earned herself a bad reputation. After her mother's death she had the house to herself and began digging in the backyard, an activity her father had often indulged in. She stopped cleaning the house, and herself, and berated and abused most people she encountered. Her indifference to herself and others led to a suicide attempt when she was 21. She returned to that dark room filled with angry people clawing and tearing at her, and she was very grateful when someone found her unconscious and took her to hospital. While the room frightened her, she was intrigued by it and realised that the people in it were those she had slighted at some point in her life. She wanted to find out what other people's rooms were like and took a job at a local hospice to be close to people near death, but was frustrated when she could not get the information she wanted. Then she resorted to picking up strangers and bringing them home. She would get them drunk or drug them, and start killing them, but revive them as they lost consciousness so she could interrogate them. She never got much out of them and they all died. She buried the bodies in the backyard amongst her father's secrets. Stevie's backyard excavations had uncovered toys and trinkets from her childhood, but also objects she had never seen before, and bones. Indifferent to life and her fascination with death led to several more suicide attempts and trips to her dark room. Each time Stevie was discovered and revived. But when she was 35 she hung herself and no one found her in time to save her. She had learnt that her father had been under investigation for the deaths of several people, and with the reported disappearances of those she had murdered, it was only a matter of time before the police arrived at her house. For a very long time she lay in her dark room and endured the biting and scratching of those she had slighted. Then suddenly her tormentors were finished with her and left the room, and after a while Stevie heard her mother and father's voices and she began to rise along a "golden path".