I Asked the People in My Life How They Would Kill Me
Illustration af Ashley Goodall

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Everyone's Thought About Killing Me

I Asked the People in My Life How They Would Kill Me

And they did not hold back.

What if you were reading this… in an email? Keep up to date with VICE and subscribe to our weekly newsletter. I've been watching a lot horror films lately, and I've been thinking—a little bit, not a lot—about how I might kill someone.

What's the easiest way? The most generous? The most intimate? How would you do it to someone you cared about if you absolutely had to? And how would people want to kill you? Does someone's murder fantasy say something huge about your friendship and how they see you? Are you, like me, a narcissist who insists on having people tell you what they think of you, even in such brutal terms as plotting your death?

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I asked my family and friends how they would kill me if they had to. Some answers were kind and tender, some were funny and telling, and some were downright fucking despicable. Those of you are dead to me. Brit, you're sick. Sick.

For the record, here's how I would like to die: From a big old drug overdose. I know you're not supposed to say that and that it's much more terrible than I could ever imagine, but it's my death and I'll go however fucking awfully I want to. But here's what everyone else said.

My Housemate, 32
I would make you the most beautiful meal, French of course, and then over candlelight in your finest threads you would die. It would look like it was quick and painless but actually the poison would very slowly suffocate your organs. In death you'd look beautiful; untouched.

My Boss, 38
In Mongolia at a large festival where a lot of goats were being killed, an old man told me the way to do it is to make a small cut in between the shoulderblades, push your thumb and index fingers through, and break something (this was through a translator) near the vertebrae.

He said (I think) that this was the most humane way to do it, and I think you deserve that. But yeah, both he or the translator could have been making it up. Still, I'd give you the peaceful Mongolian death. Out on the steppe where the birds can clean your bones.

Someone Who Knows Me A Little Too Well, 23
I'd probably make you watch Katy Perry's three-day live stream from start to finish, with your eyes sticky-taped open. At the end you have to conduct an interview with her and are forced to say how much you are into her new vibe and sound. Just before your interaction is over, she'd make you drink a mojito (made famous at Melbourne's House of Bacardi party) where she'd then convince you to do a handstand. By this point you're so delirious that you miss judge your handstand, slip over, crack your head open on the concrete floor, and meet your end.

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My Mum, 61
Once upon a time, when you were a teenager, I might have strangled you. But not anymore!

My Best Mate, 21
I mean look, we would presumably be in the Big Apple drunk off countless cosmos. Wearing suits. And we've been trolling some app developers all night. They say, "Come back to our apartment". We consider it but it's probably some Eyes Wide Shut shit. So we don't.

Then in the street I say something that annoys you and you do the thing where you just slap someone heaps. So I push you off me, not knowing my own strength or your inebriation. You tumble into the street and are fatally struck by a taxi cab. That's how I think it will actually happen.

My Friend, 26
I think I would kill you in a Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs kind of way, because I admire you and want to become you by wearing your skin as a body suit. Also I dont have the balls to go under the knife à la genesis p-orridge's pandrogyne situation. I like the flexibility of being you on some days and going back to plain old Mahmood on others. And I feel like Q Lazarus' "Goodbye Horses" would be a nice track to be taken apart to. Romantic taxidermy vibes.

My Crush, 21
My original idea was to simply cut you off from accessing any of your socials or the internet, and cause you to do the deed for me. While looking into my ideas though I was taken to various uncomfortable gaming forums and fake news pages which made me change my idea. It seems suitable to torture and kill you via Iron Maidon, not the band.

My Oldest Friend, 29
I don't wish for you to die in any way. I guess if you had to go, I'd hope it was either painless or hilarious. Like Paul Walker—he died doing what he loved best, being fast and furious.

Someone I Used to Date, 30
I would somehow cut you off from the internet. But only in the way that it looks like you're online, you have all the wifi bars but you can't connect. That's the evil part. This would force you to write letters that contain definitive answers to questions about emotions and feelings which in turn would either send you into a solitude so deep you wouldn't know how to get out. You also wouldn't be able to access any of your favourite songs because I lost that iPod you gave me. That's the part that would kill you. Sorry. For the record, I don't hold any grudges.