Spectator competition winners: killer short stories

In Competition No. 3160 you were invited to supply a short story whose opening sentence is ‘I have no idea whether I killed him.’

The idea for this challenge came from The Mandibles: A Family 2029-2047, Lionel Shriver’s gripping and plausible 2016 novel about societal meltdown in the US following the collapse of its economy (yes, the toilet roll runs out). Towards the end, one of the characters says, ‘I have no idea whether I killed him’, to which another replies: ‘An excellent first line for a short story…’ Indeed. There was a fair amount of repetition, and as I read through your entries — this was a hugely popular competition — I became increasingly grateful for those that didn’t feature an insect of some kind or Schrödinger’s cat. The winners, printed below, take £25 each.

I have no idea whether I killed him. I don’t, to this day, know his identity.