THOUGHTS OF A DYING ATHEIST / CONCLUSION II / OBITUARY XVII

THOUGHTS OF A DYING ATHEIST / CONCLUSION II / OBITUARY XVII

First, I have to apologize this took three months instead of one. This was supposed to end on/before Christmas. Anyway.

I have finished my first novel.
I have finished my little obituary experiment.

I feel relieved. I proved something to myself.
I feel a little bit more like Mene Tekel, the person I'm supposed to be.

I did not plan any of this. It just seemed to happen on it's own. This is mostly Christine's fault. It was she that inspired me to write obituaries for everyone as Christmas gifts. She inspired me to tie it into my whole countdown thing, if you even remember that.
Originally, I had nothing planned for that whole countdown. Just an, oh well, I didn't kill you.
I didn't plan on interconnecting the obits, but Christine inspired me to do that too, when she read the first one I wrote (Brian's).

I didn't even plan for this final blog or half the twists I wrote into the plot. I would publish this in print form but it only makes a good personal novel, not a book a stranger would read. For reference, this was inspired by Zodiac, Haunted, SE7EN, and a lot of other things.

I have had so many experiences wrapped around this. It was not easy. Most of these I was writing mere hours away from midnight, many more were past the deadlines I created for myself. It grew crazy inside my head. People grew as impatient as I did for results. This wasn't easy to write tho, so I took breaks. I'm still alive, still human, you know.

I began to hate this. Then school started again, and I really hated this, because I had no time for it. People whined and bitched about how their obits didn't go the way they wanted, and a lot of people begged me to kill them too. In the end, I cut out a lot of deaths because I was just so fuckin' sick of writing them. I'm not mad at anyone, so please don't take it personally if I didn't knock you off.

Also, I wasn't even the killer. DUH. I think Michael Hughes was the only one who got that, or at least the only one who expressed that. He gets kudos.

I know there is a lot of plot holes, and I wish I could fix them, but 1) it doesn't seem right and 2) I don't feel like it. If you want, you can reread them. I think I left enough clues, not enough answers. The dates have a lot to do with it. 12-21-12 anyone? How about that this started Dec. 3 and ended Mar 3? Each obit number was corresponding to a person's numerical identity, in a way. Seventeen is a very important number to me, almost more important than 23.

Some people asked me about their futures, like I really knew what was going to happen. Who is X that I married? Brandon, for example, kept asking when Psychopomp was going to become a band. I kept telling him, it was HIS future, he was the one who had to get going on it. I hope he and Ben do create the best metal band in history. But these were my speculations, and I look forward to enjoying everyone's doomed futures, even if I am wrong. Especially if I am wrong.

I had wished for this go much differently. I began to get paranoid that someone would die before I finished. And someone did. So it goes.
They weren't part of the story line, so it wasn't a great coincidence.

Someone nervously asked me, "is this necessary?", to which I responded, "This isn't necessary, but it's inevitable."
I mean a lot by that.

First, I have almost all the symptoms of a serial killer, which are killing animals, playing with fire, and wetting the bed.
I've killed a few animals. Not gonna lie. I play with fire, as you probably know. I just don't wet the bed. Honest.

Most serial killers have/had issues with those things.

Seriously, ask yourself, what is preventing me from actually becoming a serial killer?

I joke, but I'm not on any meds. Haven't been into counseling since I was 10.

What's keeping me from going over the edge? I have answers, so you don't worry any more than you already have. Here we go:

The first thing is my writing. I have an outlet to kill whoever the fuck I want. Usually, I murder people who are reflections of myself (Examples are 2AM, Jamais Vu, Ars Moriendi). This time around, I changed names that are similar to people I dislike and killed them. Other than my friends.

For example, Chris Brooks is a name close to someone I really do not like. Guess. Kyle Foot is the real name of someone I REALLY don't like, that's why he suffered when he died. I can kill him and release that rage and forgive him, all by just typing it out. In the words of Scott Adams, "Fiction is the ultimate revenge".

So, because of who I am, it's inevitable that I kill some people in my lifetime fictional or otherwise. To quote David Lynch, "if everything is real, then nothing is real as well." So, in a sense I really did kill all my loved ones and friends and such. Just not in a consequential way. A safe way, but this project still worried the fuck out of everyone. So many people got freaked out, and I just laughed. That can be taken as a good thing or a creepy thing.

My friends that died all died painlessly, if you paid attention. I don't want to ever hurt anyone, but I'm not saying that isn't an option. I pray it isn't.

The second thing keeping me from killing everyone I will get to in a moment.

Back to my first point: second, this is inevitable because YOU'RE GONNA FUCKIN' DIE. I hope to be privileged enough to write all my friends true obituaries, and they would be far better than the ones I lied about. I also hope to be privileged enough to never have to see a dear friend die, but that's not likely. That was the point. I hope these got people thinking DEEPLY about death, and maybe they will start to cherish each other more. Maybe I will start to cherish them more myself.

I hope this whole thing got you thinking about death. Your friends are gonna die, die, die. I guess you can let that bother you or you can ignore it, but neither is worth it. Cherish people, or you can lie about how you really treated them, which is what happened in one or two obits, as a joke.

Again, this was not easy on me, for a lot of reasons. It took a lot of time, energy, focus, thought and resistance and I still think I did a shitty job. Do you have any idea how hard it was to go approx. 90 days without posting a blog? No, you don't. But I digress. This is already hideously long.

There is one final reason I did this, which follows below.
It's the last obituary I hope to write for a long, long time.

- -
OBITUARY XVII - - ROBERT

The serialization of the "Anesthetic Vampire" is dedicated to the memory of Robert A. Hawkins.

Dear Robert,

I never met you, but I didn't have to.
I read your suicide note.
I cried and I shared your pain.
Aside from the spelling mistakes, that's the exact kind of note I would have written.
I wish more people understood us, that we are violent and disturbed and yet. . .
They'll only ever know when it's too late.
People won't even care after awhile.
You killed eight people mercilessly and no one really cares.
With enough apathy, nothing is wrong.

I wish I had truly known you.
Then, I could write you a true obituary.
You'd be a good friend of mine. Just from reading your biography, I know you were a person just like me, and that we would have gotten along so well. Is that wrong to say? I almost feel it's unethical to sympathize with a massacring psychopath. Well, maybe not if I'm a massacring psychopath myself.

I really wish I could have shared something with you. A little bit of hope.
The only thing, other than my writing, that keeps me sane.
My relationship with God.
I can't explain it, but in the lowest parts of my life, the darkest corners of it all, I can sometimes feel a peace, a joy and a presence that I know is unnatural.

The papers said you were in and out of treatment centers. That you were denied nothing, that your actions are not the fault of social services, that your act isn't a "failure of the system".
They wash their hands of you, Robert.

All I know is you were lacking meaning in your life. You said so yourself. And we all do at some point lack meaning. But I found that meaning, I found a purpose. In Christ.

I only wish someone had understood what you needed.
You needed someone who really loved you. You needed a purpose in life.
Now you're just an example.
A textbook massacre.
A moment of silence.
And this all happened three months ago.
And no one cared then, no one will care in the future.

I've devoted myself to reaching out to dark, lost souls like you.
Others may be afraid of you. But I understand you.
And I won't forget you.

Yours,
M. Tekel