The summer of the Rosenbergs

One of the first pieces of homework I had to do on my writing course was to write a short story beginning with the words, 'It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs.'

It's the first line of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. I hadn't read the novel and I didn't know anything about the Rosenbergs. Rather than find out and do anything as sensible as use facts in my story, I went my own sweet way, and this is what I came up with. Or rather this is the start of what I came up with. (Oh yes, and I changed the first line and the names later.)

Ziggy
I remember the summer of the Carvers’ execution; it was the summer I met Ziggy. Two momentous things happened during those three short months, the first being that I fell in love.


The Carvers were husband and wife. They believed they had a God-given mission to purify American society. At the trial, in his defence against the charge of first degree murder, Jimmy claimed that an angel had appeared to him and told him to rid humanity of the scourge of homosexuality. To accomplish this, he would frequent downtown nightclubs and lure young men back to his fourth floor apartment where Nancy had prepared and left out poisoned wine. Having killed their victims — there was some doubt about how many — they got rid of the bagged bodies in their waste disposal. They were only discovered when one larger than usual victim became wedged in the shute. It was so simple, it’s only a surprise that more people haven’t tried it. Or maybe they have.

(Continued on the bits that are too long)