Help Me Choose an Ending For This Story

[Guttersnipe]

It's a horror story. I have the basic plot. A criminal is on the run after robbing a bank. He finds a narrow alley and squeezes through a half-open window, finding himself in a closed wax museum. He feels safe until the wax figures come alive. They're slow-moving. He shoots them. Then a wax policeman corners him. He is out of bullets and he screams as the figure comes closer. Cut to the next day.

I have two endings in mind:
1) The police find him in front of the wax museum, screaming. The wax policeman has his hand on the man's wrist and he is unable to break free. He is arrested.
2) The police have arrested the criminal and two officers wonder aloud about his mental state, perhaps also mentioning that there is a red mark around the wrist the wax policeman seemed to be holding.

Should I go with one of these only, or should I combine them?

 

[Oochillyo]

hey Guttersnipe how are you

I think the best idea is to combine them since they sort of work together, for instance the criminal cant break free and is left screaming, maybe the Police show up cause people in the area hear this man screaming for a while/all night, the criminal breaks free just before the Police show up.

Therefore the criminal looks crazy when he tells them that he was attacked and trapped by the wax figures, leading to them questioning his mental state especially as he was screaming all night, but maybe you can add a bit of doubt in the Police Officers minds with the red mark, maybe they think its self inflicted or something happened to the criminal.

Regards - Declan Sargent

 

[Bramandin]

My instinct says to be quick about showing the question in the policeman's mind. Have him notice the red mark, and wonder how a wax hand got around him so tight that he couldn't escape, but don't linger around them discussing it. Make it up to the reader to decide if they do talk about it.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Hey , how about a third ending. The wax figures are pursuing him. Where's the safest place to go?

The cops find him the next morning where he's locked himself in the safe of the bank that he's just robbed!

 

[paranoid marvin]

And/or how about he recognises one of the cops as the face of one of the wax figures from the night before, and he starts going crazy?

 

[AllanR]

Have the curator come in the next morning and wonder about the extra statue...

 

[Guttersnipe]

All of these are amazing ideas, but I can't use them.

 

[Guttersnipe]

Have the curator come in the next morning and wonder about the extra statue...

That's very similar to the ending of the Twilight Zone episode "The New Exhibit."

 

[paranoid marvin]

So the police turn up and see a wax police statue gripping the hand of the criminal? Surely the criminal would have run away, dragging the was statue with him?

In the second instance is alone with just a red mark on his arm where the wax policeman had been gripping him the night before?

Would it not be better perhaps for them to comment that the criminal has wax under his fingernails? Perhaps he scratched the face of one of his wax assailants the night before?

If I'm reading it right, and it has to be one of the two options you mentioned above, then it would be the second. But by the morning would the markings not have become bruising rather than red marks?

 

[Guttersnipe]

@paranoid marvin All fair points, but the wax policeman is basically alive and has supernatural strength, so no, he can't drag it away. This is part of the reason as to why the cops think he's crazy--surely he'd be able to escape without a mark, right?

 

[Wayne Mack]

Another option would be if the police find the robber either with his hand caught in something else (other than a wax figure) or for a darker ending, if the police find him with his had cut off.

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

Another option would be if the police find the robber either with his hand caught in something else (other than a wax figure) or for a darker ending, if the police find him with his had cut off.

Or he gnawed through his own wrist to escape the wax policeman.

 

[Guttersnipe]

@Wayne Mack @Christine Wheelwright Too macabre

 

[sknox]

Once again, the trouble with ideas is that they aren't stories. Every idea and all ideas are viable, up until you actually write a story. Then there's one and only one that works, for that story.

Trouble choosing an ending? I just write *toward* the ending. By the time I get there, both plot and characters have driven the story to whichever ending works. I suppose I could choose an ending and then force everything to wind up there, but that isn't how I write.

It's a bit like thinking I'm going to choose how a song that I have yet to write must sound. That feels backward to me. I can have an idea, or even just a feeling. At most I might have a beat or a chord progression in mind, or even a bit of melody. But then comes the work at the keyboard or guitar. The song emerges from there. My brain is a participant, but not the sole repository.

 

[Guttersnipe]

Once again, the trouble with ideas is that they aren't stories. Every idea and all ideas are viable, up until you actually write a story. Then there's one and only one that works, for that story.

Trouble choosing an ending? I just write *toward* the ending. By the time I get there, both plot and characters have driven the story to whichever ending works. I suppose I could choose an ending and then force everything to wind up there, but that isn't how I write.

It's a bit like thinking I'm going to choose how a song that I have yet to write must sound. That feels backward to me. I can have an idea, or even just a feeling. At most I might have a beat or a chord progression in mind, or even a bit of melody. But then comes the work at the keyboard or guitar. The song emerges from there. My brain is a participant, but not the sole repository.

Oh, I'm halfway through the story. I feel the need to be vague about the details on online forums, unless it's for a critique, and/or is flash fiction. I use my longer stories for possible magazine submissions.

 

[Aknot]

Option 3) the next day the old curator wonders why there yet again is a new wax statue in the collection. This time a thief arrested by the cops.

 

[KGeo777]

The bank vault ending has irony--and what you might want to consider on that same idea is an ending where the wax policeman (or some other figure--perhaps a criminal one) causes him to be arrested but it isn't immediately obvious so it is a surprise. That a clue is left in the wax museum on a wax figure person which is inexplicable unless it came to life...