Killed Mid Sentence / Literature

• Miss Ellicott's School for the Magically Minded: After Chantel and Lightening get everyone to stop fighting, King Rathfest tries to spur his people on to fight the Sunbiters. He gets a crossbow bolt in the throat for his trouble.
  King Rathfest: Fight on, for your country! Fight on, for your honor! For what is right! Drive back the Maraud-URK!
• In The Nutcracker, the dying words of Lady Mouserinks (according to this translation) were:
  Oh, Crackatook, hard nut, now I must die
  Hee hee, pee pee
  Nutcracker, young man, you too will die
  My seven-crowned sun will avenge my death
  And take from you your living breath
  Oh, life, so vibrant and red, I - squeak!
• Oathbringer: How Elhokar meets his end, at the hands of Moash. What makes it really tragic, is that the sentence was The First Ideal, and Elhokar was one word away from finishing it. If that attack had come a few seconds later, Elhokar would've had the Healing Factor to live through it.
• In the original version of Podkayne of Mars by Robert A. Heinlein, teenage heroine Podkayne says "Do listen please, because this is important. I love—" before she is killed by a bomb blast. However, Heinlein's publisher hated such a downbeat ending to a novel aimed at teens and insisted Heinlein revise the ending to allow Podkayne to live. The most recent editions have included both endings.
• This is how Fred Weasley died in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:
  "You're joking, Perce! You actually are joking... I don't think I've heard you joke since you were—"
  • Could be a mild case of His Name Is... as well, as some readers would have really liked to have heard the rest of that sentence.
• In the Raffles short story "The Knees of the Gods", this happens to Raffles.
  The sentence was not finished, and never could be in this world.
• In Confessor, the last book of the Sword of Truth series, Richard, freshly freed from his imprisonment by the Imperial Order, approaches the officer who'd captured him. Said officer gets four words into his "I've been waiting for this" speech before Richard cuts him down without breaking his stride.
  • Furthermore, he later does the exact same thing to the series' resident Big Bad, and to top it all off, he orders him to be thrown in the mass grave with all his dead Mooks.
• In The Third World War, two of the emergency of communities involved in the war have this. The first ends mid-sentence, when the building is bombed, picking up with the backup journal noting the deaths. The second one cuts off mid-word, as Birmingham is nuked. It is stated it is found in the remains of the centre.
• In the Stephen King novella The Langoliers, Craig Toomy is facing down against the eponymous beasties, mistaking them for hobgoblins his father told him about as a caution against laziness. His last thought:
  Toomy: How can their little legs be fast? They don't have any le—
  • Eddie Kaspbrak in It.
  • Carrie dies mid-thought in Carrie.
  • Larry Underwood in TheStand.
  • Andy McGee in Firestarter.
• One of the characters in Arthur Hailey's Airport is an air traffic controller who's haunted by memories of a mid-air collision that took place on his watch (and for which he holds himself responsible). A flashback scene has him and his colleagues listening to a radio transmission from one of the planes as it plummets to earth after the collision, and the final words of a little girl aboard said plane:
  "...Mummy! Daddy!...Do something! I don't want to die... Oh, Gentle Jesus, I've been good... Please, I don't want..."
• In the Star Wars Expanded Universe X-Wing Series novel Wraith Squadron, Admiral Trigit flees in a starfighter after his forces surrender. General Crespin and Lieutenant Donos are in pursuit... Crispin offers Trigit to surrender. Trigit refuses, and instead orders his bodyguards to shoot down his pursuers. Crespin skillfully takes care of them though. Trigit, realizing he's in trouble, tries to surrender after all. He doesn't even get to mid-sentence when a torpedo launched by Donos hits his starfighter.
  Trigit: Crespin, I'd like to reconsid-
• Vorkosigan Saga:
  • Barrayar has the would-be Imperial usurper Vordarian's last words cut off when Cordelia orders him decapitated: "You're a Betan! You can't do—" BOTHARI CHOP! Later, she references Vordarian's words, and when asked what she thought he was about to say she replies:
    "This", I suppose.
  • In Mirror Dance, Miles is thinking "Wait, I haven't—" when he is blown nearly in half by a sniper. As this is Miles we're talking about, he gets better.
• James Bond:
  • In Ian Fleming's From Russia with Love, the reader is led to believe this happens to Bond. Fortunately, he got better in time for the next book.
  • An informant in The Man with the Red Tattoo is shot in the head by a bad guy just as he is going to tell Bond and his partner Reiko about the eponymous villain's whereabouts. A chase involving fish and a sword fight ensues.
• Gavroche dies mid-song in Les Misérables (yes, the book).
• In Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon, a teletype message from Jacksonville stops mid-sentence when the city is annihilated.
• In The Split Second, the second book in the Seems series written by John Hulme and Michael Wexler, this happens to Tom Jackal. His body is rapidly aging and he is talking to Becker about his family, whom he left behind to come help save The World (and The Seems): "Don't feel bad for us, son. Because our love will survive anything. And I know I'll see them in A Better ..." He would have said "Place," if he'd had the time... He just didn't quite make it.
• Pharaun Mizzrym from War of the Spider Queen series once was held at wand-point by a fellow drow wizard. This guy would be more of a trouble if he could shut up on his own, though.
  Pharaun: (to a glasstrike-n statue) If you hadn't been so busy expounding on my foolishness, you might have heard the words of my spell.
• Salzella in Maskerade... eventually.
  • A minor thief in Guards! Guards! turns around the corner and accidentally finds himself mugging a dragon, and dies with "Oh sh—" And then his ghost finishes "—it."
  • According to Interesting Times, many an ancient lord's final words were "You can't kill me, I'm wearing magic arrrgh!" ("Armour" being the interrupted word)
  • Ankh-Morpork's shortest-reigning king was Loyala the Aargh, at 1.4 seconds.
• The Hunting of the Snark. The luckless person to find the Snark then calls out "It's a Boo--!" and then softly and suddenly vanished away, for the Snark was a Boojum, you see.
• The Wheel of Time "You? No!" The word still hung in the air when death took him.” And that's the end of Asmodean. That's also all we hear about it for 8 books. It's slightly frustrating.
• Jake Featherston, the CSA's Hitler Expy in Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191 series, does not commit suicide; he's still pushing his underlings to regroup when a group of black guerrillas spots them. "Get us some motorcars and—"
• Javier Giscard in At All Costs. He realizes that he's up against a weapon he can't hope to defend against, and manages to get through only half of his lover's first name before he's vaporized.
• Apparently happens to Anna, the protagonist of the fictional story "An Imperial Affliction" within The Fault in Our Stars, as the story-within-a-story "ends right in the middle of a —"
• Happens to Father Ferani in the Paladin of Shadows book Unto the Breach.
• In Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Empire, Bayta kills Ebling Mis before he could tell where the Second Foundation is, because she realizes that Magnificio is actually the Mule.
• Happens in second book of Harry Turtledove's Worldwar, when Heinrich Jager's panzer group is attacking a column of Lizard landcruisers. He hears this transmission with his headphones:
  Engaging lead element of enemy panzer column! Will attempt to carry out plan as outlined. Will—
• In The Hunger Games trilogy, Wiress was killed in the middle of her singing "Hickory-Dickory Dock". This alerted Katniss and the others that the Careers arrived.
• In the sole full Iron Warriors novel, Storm of Iron, one mook blurts out "Oh what the f-" before an Imperial Fist cuts him clean in half with a power sword.
• Garry Kilworth's House of Tribes; Flegm's last words are "Push on, he says. I couldn't push a spr-" His friend is noted to spend the rest of his life wondering what the last word was going to be. "Sprout? Spring? Sprocket?"
• Happens multiple times throughout Eden Green and sequel New Night as (sometimes immortal) characters are killed mid-sentence, including Eden at the end of the first book, Lucas when arguing with Drews, Eden when Kazuma 'rescues' her, and others.
• Robert Gernhardt was a satirist, a poet and a victim of terminal cancer. With Gallows Humor, he wrote poems about it, one of them ending with:
  Findet man nicht alle Tage,
  womit ich nur sagen will
  - ach! Ich soll hier nichts mehr sagen?
  Geht in Ordnung! Bin schon- ^note the rhyme would force "still"
• This happens to the narrator of Math Class by ML Lanzillotta.
• Abel Hopton's unnamed commander in Grent's Fall.
• In the Warrior Cats book Leopardstar's Honor, the RiverClan leader Crookedstar dies mid-sentence: "Perhaps Mudfur was right. Perhaps death isn't—"
• The villain of Trail of Lightning is executed at the end of their explanatory speech, in the middle of scoffing at the hero' methods.
• Jaine Austen Mysteries: In Last Writes, the book's main murder victim is Quinn Kirkland, who's eaten a doughnut covered in rat poison. His last words are "I think there's something wrong with this do-" before dropping dead.
• A (Not So) Simple Fetch Quest: Katie's respawn ability means that she doesn't fear death, but Mind Control is a different matter, and being part-dragon, she is able to make that very clear. Craig's attempt to suggest putting a slave control collar on her "was rather spoilt by the way charcoal silhouettes didn't have the necessary organs for talking. His outline stood in the middle of a circular patch of wall that was glowing a dull red and clinking as it cooled."

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