A Game of Obituary

Hello All:

No, it's not quite the Halloween season just yet. But it's August, and the perhaps some of us are feeling those morbid fascinations as we anticipate the season's approach. It was around this time of year when I started writing my first short story book, Freaked out Horror (2009). I attributed the clear, near-to-life visions of the macabre to the fact that the season of Halloween was approaching like a morning star way off in the eastern horizon, barely visible.

I have just the piece to feature for today's blog post. It just so happens that while experimenting with some characters in my (at the time) upcoming Mapleview novel, I wrote a short story. You might even recognize the name, Daren, from the novel. No, this scene did not appear in the book. It was a character development exercise. Well, I dug the story out of the archives and cleaned it up. I hope you enjoy it.

A Game of Obituary

In the sterile, fluorescent-lit corridors of the corporate world, Susan was a localized eclipse. While others navigated the office in palettes of beige and navy, she existed in a perpetual state of mourning for a world she seemed to barely tolerate. Daren, sharp-eyed and instinctively predatory, watched her with the calculated interest of a man who viewed interpersonal relationships as strategic maneuvers. He wasn't the only one; a coworker also fancied the idea of "getting some of that," but for Daren, the draw was more sophisticated. He didn't just want her physical form; he wanted to conquer the "difficult." She was a study in shadows: jet-black hair, dark lipstick, and a solemn aesthetic that functioned as a barricade against the mundane. He viewed her as a quest, a puzzle of defiance to be dismantled. However, the power dynamic shifted the moment he pulled out of her apartment parking lot. The evening he had meticulously curated—the upscale restaurant, the structured entertainments—was discarded with a single, cool suggestion. Susan took the wheel of the itinerary, steering him away from the familiar and toward a destination where his professional polish held no currency.

The "party" was held in a basement that felt less like a social gathering and more like a curated site of social performance. Daren recognized the setting instantly: a stage for the alienated to perform their despair. The air was heavy with the scent of wax from skull-candle centerpieces and the drone of flat-toned, depressing music that served as a soundtrack for the disaffected. Daren navigated the room with clinical detachment, evaluating the nihilistic poseurs. To him, they were not truly tortured souls, but individuals trapped in a prolonged, adolescent search for identity, using the aesthetic of the grave to mask a lack of substance. In a dark corner, a girl sat at a desk, her face illuminated by flickering skulls. She wasn't writing poetry; she was drafting her obituary. The arrival of Johnny, a man who maintained a monotone voice and a theatrical, morbid composure, deepened Daren’s refined hatred. Johnny was a vampire-wannabe, a collection of staged theatrics that Daren felt an immediate, professional urge to break.

The "Obituary Game" was the catalyst where performative morbidity collided with Daren’s genuine, alcohol-fueled cynicism. When Johnny challenged him to play, Daren viewed the invitation through the lens of his "management class" background—he had written an obituary in college as a goal-setting exercise, a pragmatic tool for life planning. The group’s version, however, required the participant to envision a tragic death occurring that very night. Johnny upped the ante by placing a revolver on the desk, suggesting Russian Roulette. The girl at the desk sighed, calling it "romantic." She spoke of her boyfriend who had died months prior playing this exact game, her voice dripping with a paradox where his death made her love him more, a love frozen and uncorrupted by time. Daren saw the chilling disconnect between her romanticized fantasy and the cold reality of a lead bullet. Recognizing Johnny’s bluff, Daren countered, insisting that Johnny go first. The ensuing silence marked a definitive shift; the social play had ended, and psychological warfare had begun. Daren took a long swig from his flask, feeling the alcohol shift his consciousness into a predatory clarity.

The strategic irony of the night became clear when the group, having just performed their obsession with death, prepared for a mundane night of clubbing. This transition from the basement to the cars exposed the fragility of their personas. Anne, one of the passengers, hesitated to enter Daren’s car because he had been drinking. Daren called her bluff, mocking the inconsistency of a death-obsessed artist fearing a ride. Once inside, Daren seized control, bypassing the radio for a tape of 1980s death metal: Hallows Eve. As the lyrics echoed through the cabin—“Death and insanity, a flicker in the flame / Death and insanity, are you truly sane?”—the music set a predatory tone, drowning out the group’s chatter about "fun." Susan watched Daren from the passenger seat, captivated by his silent, near-psychotic focus—an "impeccable madness" she found more authentic than the theatrics of her peers. Daren turned the car onto a dark, two-lane Arizona highway leading away from the city lights, the desert air thick and the saguaros standing like ghosts in the periphery.

The game of "Chicken" was the instrument of exposure. Daren accelerated into the opposite lane. The speedometer climbed: 90, 100, 105. The car vibrated, a mechanical scream against the desert silence. Then, with a calculated movement, he extinguished the headlights. Total darkness. The absolute void of the Arizona night. The only light left was the dim, spectral glow of the dashboard.

"Shouldn’t we turn the lights on?" Johnny asked, his monotone cracking.

"I don’t want an on-coming car to see us," Daren replied. His voice was a flatline.

"Shouldn't we slow down?"

"What if you run off the road?"

A pair of headlights appeared in the distance. Pinpricks of white growing into twin suns. The passengers' facade shattered. Anne began to sob in the backseat. Johnny, the architect of morbid composure, began to fracture as the lights rushed toward them. One hundred feet from impact. The cabin was filled with the roar of the wind and the rhythmic thrum of the engine.

"OKAY, YOU PROVED YOUR POINT ALREADY!" Johnny screamed.

Daren waited until the final, impossible second. He flicked the lights back on and swerved. The oncoming car roared past, its horn a frantic, Doppler-effected wail of the living. Daren just laughed, the sound sharp and hollow.

In the aftermath, the silence in the car was the byproduct of genuine shock. The "So What?" of the encounter was the total collapse of the group's morbid facade when confronted with actual mortality. Daren had exposed the fundamental dishonesty of their nihilism; they loved the idea of death only as long as it remained a costume. Turning to Johnny, whose theatrical gloom had been replaced by the frantic gasps of the truly terrified, Daren delivered a final, cold glare. The triumph was absolute. He had seen behind the curtain and found nothing but hollow fear.

"You pathetic, staged victim," Daren remarked, his tone dismissive and icy. "You're nothing but a hollow tourist."

The evening had begun as a pursuit of the unusual, but it ended with the definitive exposure of the poseurs. Daren adjusted the mirror, the Arizona highway disappearing into the darkness behind them, leaving the pretenders to choke on the reality of the void they had claimed to crave.