"Going to See Mandy" is a decent short story that takes advantage of an all-too-often unused weapon in the writer's arsenal: unresolved ambiguity.
Robert, the protagonist, is a killer. That's actually too modest: he's a butchering animal who takes "jobs" performing not just murders, but grisly killings that include special options, such as skinning his victims. And yet, he's got a daughter that he obviously cares a great deal about, and he is moved to assist an apparently stranded young girl he first met on the bus that's taking him to visit his daughter, the titular Mandy... who we never meet. Robert's philanthropy doesn't end there, either, as he gives an obviously ill homeless man money for a room for the night.
All is not as it appears, however, as these "people" he helps are not people as we would define them, and their purpose is inexorable. In the end, without regard for anything so pedestrian as Robert's "free will", they act, taking possession of Robert's being.
But are they evil? Are they good? What about Robert? There is a deliberate greyness about virtually everyone in this story, a complete lack of anything so clear-cut as a "hero" or a "villain". Robert is certainly monsterous in his activities, but there is a curious tenderness in him that encourages the reader not to see him as a souless killing machine.
If there is a weakness to this story, that last statement might be it.
What does it take for a man with a 13-year-old daughter to be able to collect pay for skinning a pregnant woman alive, and do it without even a twinge of conscience? He feels guilt for walking away from the old man at the bus terminal without giving him money, but nothing for having plucked out the woman's eyes after he skinned her.
While it is a truism that in writing "believable" fiction, there should never be a character who is a paragon of virtue or a tower of evil, neither should one combine such intense dichotomy with no effect. Robert should be bi-polar, at least, if not dangerously shizoid.
In the end, though, we are left with the feeling that we really don't know how we feel. We're left as ambiguous as the characters, not knowing if we think Robert is being redeemed by these "people", or being punished by them. It could go either way... just like Mandy's dad. If the author wasn't going for that effect, consider it serendipity. If that was the goal, then this story hits the bullseye. Good shooting! |
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