A shockingly dark short story idea from 23 year-old me.

(Originally Written August 22, 2007 in Notebook 19)

Name: ____?

Plot:

Defense lawyer, high profile defense a client successfully in an unscrupulous manner the client kills again. He begins to feel an inner conflict.

He reflects on where his life has gone. He remembers his ambitions of changing the world and reflects on how far removed he is from there now. He begins to ponder leaving the high-powered firm he helped to start. He thinks about leaving to teach.

Meanwhile his 17-year-old daughter invites him to a debate. She is masterful and demolishes her opponents. He feels a pride for teaching her to argue so well. Then she divulges that she completely disagreed with her position. His heart sinks and he falls into a deep depression.

He falls into an alcoholic daze. He then has a moment of clarity. He leaves his practice to teach. He builds a relationship with his daughter. They become close over her senior year. Shen the is brutally raped and gets pregnant.

The ex-lawyer's own protege is retained to defend his daughter's rapist. The rapist is a young, rich socialite. The protege uses his former mentor's tricks to get him off.

The daughter struggles with the thought of abortion, but in his moral revival he has clung to his old Catholic faith. They struggle to find a solution, but she gets an abortion behind his back.

He returns to drinking. In a drunken rage he alienates his daughter and kill the socialite rapist, his mother and father. He then kills himself.

Idea: The key to the story is to make the lawyer as detestable as possible in the beginning and then to make the reader feel sorry for him. It must make him then appear to be genuinely remorseful and reformed. Then the rape has to come has a horrifying shock. Then he must be drastically changed by alcohol and commit the murder-suicide in an awful way.