This story was originally published in Day One, a weekly literary journal dedicated to short fiction and poetry from emerging writers.
The entire family’s just about had it with teenager Alyssa’s vegetarianism, her too-short, belly-bearing shirts, and the nonstop grief she gives her parents. So Jackson, her nine-year-old brother, decides that he’d be doing the world a favor if he simply got rid of her. To set things in motion, the boy declares a fatwa, condemning his sister to death for her transgressions. Then, as if by fate, a new family moves into the neighborhood, and if Jackson were to judge based on appearances, he’d say that the man of the house is the perfect candidate to get the job done. But despite Jackson’s good intentions, the man is more than a little offended by the boy’s solicitation, and Jackson is left dealing with the repercussions of his childish, wrongheaded assumptions about a person different than himself.