Painkiller

Date: 27 October 2020

Written For: Swinburne University (LIT10003 Reading and Writing Genre Texts)

Format: Writing Exercise

Genre: Superhero Fiction, Fantasy

Word Count: 1019

CONTENT WARNING: This story discusses themes of depression and suicide. Nobody commits suicide or is noted to have done so prior to this story, but the topic does come up. If themes of depression or suicide are triggering for you, then please feel free to skip this story if you are not in the right headspace to be able to read it safely.

Author’s Note: From week 2 onwards in Reading and Writing Genre Texts, each week we were given a genre and a prompt and told to write 300 word stories and put them online on Canvas for discussion. Mine are speed drafts that I’ve touched up a little bit, so they’re less refined than they could have been, and most exceeded the word count. Because I’m a fantasy nerd, I combined the weekly genre with fantasy unless the genre was already fantastical or if fantasy was incompatible with the story I thought of.

For week 12, the genre was superhero fiction, and the prompt was “change”. I had the idea for this one on the Friday before the topic was posted and typed it out the same day, so I’m lucky it somewhat fits the prompt. It’s the longest weekly exercise short story that I wrote for this unit and well over the word count, but I just had to finish it. Given the subject matter, the length, and that I was consequently much more invested in this story than the rest, Painkiller is the one story that I remember going back and editing to fix up some wording here and there and to make sure I was clearly distinguishing one thing from another on a couple of points of worldbuilding in relation to the protagonist’s powers. Yes, mental illness can’t be uprooted like this with a snap of your fingers – that’s why this story is a fantasy story – but wouldn’t it save so many people from having to endure so much pain and suffering if there were people capable of that.