Fiction
Words by
Inside Man
Victorya Chase
About the story
The main impetus for “Inside Man” came from a Shock Totem prompt about killing the first born. My mind went to the idea of original sin – what if your first born did hold all your sins and by killing them, you killed your sins? Then the question became where would they go – and the answer was Pandora’s Box. I was fascinated with the story of Pandora as a child and remember the first version I read where Hope was the worst of all the evils that could be released. A very pessimistic version, for sure, but hope does drive us to do all sorts of things we might not otherwise attempt. Having the sins in the box, well, you can never keep sins
contained for long! That was where Hope came in, because she’s just as active with sinners as with saints. And that looped back to my original view of hope – as one of the worst of all because it doesn’t discriminate and can drive you to do amazingly wonderful things, or absolutely horrid ones.