If you're going with hanging, there's also the point that if the drop wasn't far enough to break the neck, then the person got to go out the slow way. So if he's died of strangulation without much sign of a struggle, then odds are he didn't do it by hanging. There would also be different wear signs on the rope if a body's weight dropped to the end of it, as in jumping off a chair, or if the body was hoisted up.

(researched it for another story)

Also don't forget the manual preference question; a right-handed person tying a noose only a left-handed person could tie also works in reverse if the suicide is trying to frame someone for their murder.

Hmmmm. So ... just for argument's sake ... what if there were signs of a struggle? Hmmmm ...

Ah, then we have to figure out the nature of the struggle. If we posit someone doing the long dance from the main beam in the center of the room, but the potted aspidistra over in the far corner has been knocked over, then our victim was either murdered or is a very bad housekeeper. Or has a cat.

Honestly, any policeman walking into my house would say, "My god, World War III happened in here!" Especially when he saw all the swords.

Well, you know, you don't get to pick the vic. The inverse is also true. Like my mother would never voluntarily be without dental floss. But I'd sound like a freak saying "You don't understand, Detective Pembleton. There was no...lovely dental floss." Timmy would believe me. Munchkin might dig the quote.

I am such a big schmoop. I was reading one of my own stories, one which I wondered, in a cynical mood, if it was too manipulative, and I ended up getting teary-eyed. Does that happen to anyone else, with their own stuff?

Sometimes. But mostly I get turned on by my own sexy scenes.

That has been known to happen too.

There's one scene in what exists so far of my novel that makes me laugh and laugh and laugh. I love it when I'm funny.

I'm sure that when iI get mushy, if I do it well, I'll make myself cry. I'm a sap.

This week's Open on Sunday is illness/sickness. I just did two of them.

Vignette, with Sex and Death, 18th Century

Don't do this please please don't

Angelus has her by the throat. He's got himself in the other hand. One pleasure he never denies himself is a hard brutal rape. Nothing like penetrating a victim in multiple places at the same time.

oh merciful God don't no

She's barely struggling. He's got her skirts up, he mounts her, rubs his teeth over her throat. She's odd warm, oddly weak.

don't don't

He stops, seeing the telltale blue buboes just under the breastbone. Cursing, he backs away and leaves her.

Even beyond death, fear of the plague is hard to overcome.

Earshot

There's illness, and then there's this.

bet she doesn't wear panties ooooh he wants to be a study partner

She doesn't bother trying to block it out; the infection that is demon power running under her skin, through her bloodstream, crowding all the incohate voices in all the world into her consciousness, can't be stopped with sonics or headphones or balled fists. She's dry-eyed, hot to the touch, on the edge of screaming.

forgot my homework hate them all new shoes you don't know what to do about the math test

This is power as ultimate sickness. And it's mortal.