Maccabee Montandon | The Atavist Magazine | May 2026 | 1,752 words (6 minutes)
This is an excerpt from issue no. 175, “A Hollywood Ending.”
Author’s Note: After my brother, Asher, was shot and killed on June 17, 1992, friends and family told me I had to deal with the tragedy or it would eat me alive. In today’s parlance, these caring folks wanted me to “process” the trauma of his sudden, shocking death and the many ripple effects of grief it set in motion. But I was only 21 and had little idea what they were talking about. I was just trying to get through the day. Then, about two decades after Asher’s murder, I began to understand: I had unanswered questions, untended feelings, a mysterious, painful hole in my life. It was time to deal.
I wrote this story, which was originally published by Gawker in 2013, as a sort of exorcism to contend with personal demons. I’ve never been great at therapy, so I looked at reporting and writing “A Hollywood Ending” as my version of it. I wanted to get everything out, as it were. There were other considerations, too: I was motivated to make sense of a senseless act of violence for the people who had counseled me after my brother’s death. And I wanted the story to speak to people I’d never met. We hear about the shootings that grab headlines, but what about those that don’t? I wanted to bring to life just one of the thousands of anonymous people killed by guns in this country every year.
