Where Is Dexter When You Need Him?

by Zoé Mahfouz

"How would you kill someone?" A question popped out of nowhere in my screenwriting class interlude, asked by a typical English man in his early twenties dressed like one of the Beatles, whose nickname I chose to be "Camden Singer" because he reminded me of the beer-day drinkers in Camden Town, London, a name he turned out to really appreciate as he confessed to me that he was actually a piano singer in Camden Town. He was very proud to say that his killing method would be to choke someone with a piano string because it was really romantic, and since he considered himself a writer, he had to figure out a more imaginative murder weapon than a gun, which he deemed too basic and vulgar, and because everyone around was so astonished by his answer, he followed by saying that he would only do it in a random town with a random person he had no connection to, which I thought was a massive act of cowardice, but he was a male, so what did I expect, right? Obviously, I didn’t say a word, I laughed instead, not only because I felt overwhelmed in these social contexts, but also because I didn’t want to outsmart the guy who was savoring his fifteen minutes of fame. After all, the school year wasn’t over yet, and if I started to stand out and show too much of my flamboyant personality, people would have just enough time to ruminate at home and might start to secretly hate me in silence, and I’d have to threaten them to chop their heads off with a piano string to have peace, and they’d go tell the others, and there would be more than three quarters of the classroom against me, and with the lack of protein and refined sugar I’ve been experiencing these past few weeks, I might do something I’ll regret, and I could get sued, but only if there are cameras and witnesses ready to testify, which isn’t easy because when you testify you have to be present in court, fill out forms, and give copies of your ID card, which we all know could be stolen and trafficked by some men on the Ivory Coast, and you could end up with a whole bunch of debts in your name and be forced to go through a cavity search at the airport. Not that anyone asked, but for me it would be poison, ricin to be precise, it’s undetectable in autopsy, or at least that’s what they said in Breaking Bad, and screenwriters are never wrong.

6S

Zoé Mahfouz is a multi-talented French artist: an award-winning bilingual Actress, Screenwriter, Content Creator, and Writer whose work spans fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her writing has appeared in over 70 literary magazines and best-of anthologies worldwide, including Cleaver Magazine, OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters, NUNUM, as well as Ginyu Magazine, a respected journal of avant-garde and contemporary poetry, and The Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan’s largest newspapers. While her fiction is often described as “very tongue-in-cheek,” “kookie,” and “random,” her poetry, which ranges from seventeenth-century eerie Japanese haiku and haibun to more classical forms and the occasional ekphrastic poem, draws on anthropological strangeness and sharp mythological references. In contrast, her other poetic and prose works lean into a darker, more introspective register. They weave fragmented narrative with sensory overload and philosophical undercurrent, exploring themes such as psychiatric care, neurodivergence, and the collapse of identity.