If you said the payoff for the reader is that the protagonist goes insane, you would bracket about 70% of Lovecraft's stories.
The protagonist who goes insane in this story is angry that his son was killed in the war and angry at several men around him who he had ascribed by his beleifs to have done him wrongs. He is found after several hours crouching over the half eaten body of one of these men who confronted him. They claim he did it and lock him up, but he insists it is the rats in the walls (that no one can hear) who did it.
He is found out and locked up.
I want my protagonist to do something terrible, but that it would be seen as kind of on the edge of what corporations do to get profits. He is either slow poisoning the food, building a product that kills people, or he begins to eat the people in his corporation and serve them somehow to others. Dunno. It won't take much of a twist but it will need a twist just the same.
possibilities: releases deadly germ. Builds energy plants that kill people or eventually explode. Eats his lawyer. Sereves his lawyer up to the rest of the board. "Rathencourt used to swear by these hoagies."
I don't want him locked up, I want him loose and mad, and I want others to know it. Any ideas?
Last edited by SecretSquirrel (2012-04-26 20:44:04)