KRIS ASHTON

The idea for this story came to me back in 2006. I was still a film critic at the time, and while writing a review on a superhero flick I thought how hard it must be to work up new characters and new powers. (I was and still am in awe of Stan Lee.) Although it seemed an impossible task, I decided to try and devise an original hero of my own.

 

The nameless narrator in 'Threshold' was the result (and no, he's not terribly original – just the protagonist in Stephen King's The Dead Zone with an extra twist). I initially conceived the story as a graphic novel; the opening lines would have accompanied shadowy illustrations of a guy skulking through an alley. But there was a small problem: I couldn't draw. Moreover, the people I knew who could draw were not the least bit interested in creating a rough version to shop around to publishers. And who could blame them?

 

Over the next two years I returned sporadically to the idea, trying to work out a way to turn it into a text-only story, but nothing worked. Everything I came up with seemed too fatalistic, too pointless. Then in early 2008 I had 'Buried Potential' accepted at A Thousand Faces. Spurred on by this, I decided to come up with something else to send to the editor, Frank Byrns. My mind picked up 'Threshold' again and began to turn it over, re-examine it. What was missing, I reckoned, was tension. How to make the anti-hero's urge to kill dramatic?

 

The solution, ironically, made the story unsuitable for A Thousand Faces (which has now folded, much to my dismay). And since superhero fiction isn't exactly a mainstream genre, 'Threshold' became a story without a market. But in 2011 a targeted Duotrope Digest search turned up Corrupts Absolutely? and it was one of those moments where story and anthology locked together like pieces of Lego.

 

I like the grim, noirish tone in 'Threshold' and I think it has some strong imagery to go with its concluding moral dilemma. Its weak point is its overly coincidental twist, which I couldn't kill off despite endless rewrites.