Obituaries - Short Story

Aug 6, 2025

I poured a gallon of bleach on his head. It poured all over his fake hair, spilled into his eyes, and he scurried up and down the aisle like a mouse in a Stanford-engineered maze, screaming desperately for help. In my daydream, I did this: I took the knife I used to cut open packages and threw it into the soft tissue of his pupil, or I carved out his esophagus so I would never have to hear this lecture again.

Every day was the same: sweep the floors, clean the bathrooms, take inventory, open new packages. Every day, I would clock in at six in the morning for a nine-hour blurry montage of restocking shelves and directing tourists to the sustainable toilet paper, the organic sunscreen, or the charcoal toothpaste. The lights had been flickering for a week, and sometimes one would go out for a few solid minutes, giving me a reprieve from the aggressive assault of the LEDs. All the while, my manager, David, a balding asshole with no prospects, ranted to me about his ongoing divorce. My subconscious became invaded by facts about David’s tedious life: His mom’s birthday was the week before. She hates flowers because of her allergies. His wife always wanted flowers. Could I believe she doesn’t want him calling her his wife anymore? He’s thinking of buying a new car. Something flashy. At first, I tried my best to show him grace(like my mother used to lecture me to); I tried to plaster on my customer service smile and nod along, but after months of his smoker's voice and spit-talking, I found myself daydreaming of his brutal murder.

I started wearing sunglasses when I left work. This way, my retinas couldn’t burn from the switch between the almost neon lighting of Mountain Market and the radiating sun. This way, I could lean on my car, have a cigarette, and people would avoid looking at me like I was going to start asking them for spare change. I had to decompress before I went home those days. That’s a word I learned from my mother: decompress. Like she’s been decompressing in Italy, like her and my father have been decompressing by tripping ayahuasca and seeing other people. I had to decompress before I hiked down the stairs to my basement apartment and confronted my roommate, Louis, who was busy every day applying to graduate programs and being an intellectual.

When I got home that evening, a stack of mail the size of my head was waiting for him. I dropped the stack on our fold-out kitchen table.

Louis caught air jumping from the couch. “Shit, really?’

I shrugged. What did he mean ‘really’? The letters slid over the table, taking up space.

I grabbed a glass of water and plopped down on the couch, opening Instagram to scroll absently.

“Holy shit!” Louis screamed, “Holy shit! What the fuck? What the shitting fuck!?”

He went on like this for a few minutes: random arrangements of curse words with vague allusions to being part of a question. Fuck. Shit. Fuckshit? Holy, holy. Fuck, fuck.

When he finally calmed down, I took the risk, “You got in?

“I fucking got the fuck in!” He yelled like I just killed someone in front of him.

“That’s gre-”

“I need to call my mom! I need to go! Now!” He started pacing the apartment. Something about it reminded me of the daydream I had had about David earlier. Maybe I can’t tell the difference between misery and success. Maybe Louis just had a strange way of expressing excitement.

All through the night, there was a cacophony coming from Louis’s room: shuffling and banging and some distorted voices on the phone. He was gone when I woke up, with no evidence of his ever living there except a note wishing me the best and five hundred dollars cash for that month's rent.

It was a Thursday, my one day off. After reading Louis’s note, I went back to bed. I imagined him on a plane, or in his car, or stopping to read at an independent, locally-sourced coffee shop. I knew the second he moved in that he wouldn’t stay long. Unlike me, he got his degree(and was probably further in debt for it than he let on); he was someone that other people noticed and commented on. What a hard worker. Such an entrepreneur. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m jealous. I was in school, but the whole thing cost more than it was worth, and I figured I’d be better off without it. Maybe people think my life has been some rollercoaster of disappointment or sadness, but nothing ever gave me reason to believe I’d fit any better anywhere else. If I ever needed a higher-paying job, then I’d find one. But I was fine. Good, even.

Max pulled up around lunch and punched the horn on his ancient F-250 enough times that I knew the neighbors would be calling to complain. We drove around. Max always kept enough weed, Xanax, and OxyContin in his center console to tranquilize a silverback, so after a while, we were feeling pretty good, and I got to thinking about how beautiful everything was. Max and I had known each other since preschool, but we weren’t all that close growing up. We never even hung out until after graduation, when everyone left for college, and we were the only ones still here. Maybe it was a friendship of necessity, but he was a genuinely cool guy. And I hardly ever paid him for whatever we did when we hung out.

We were parked in the lot behind the CVS with a good view of the mountains. Not that my vision was working all that well.

“How’s work?” I asked Max.

“Same old, same old,” he looked straight ahead, nothing behind his eyes, “Old Laura.”

“What about her? She going sick again?”

“No,” Max shook his head, “No, I think she’s dead.” He was completely deadpan as he said it. I think I even saw him shrug like he just dropped a penny. Not that that was too unusual for Max. I guess in his line of work, you get used to seeing so much desperation that death doesn’t even faze you. I could have opened the paper one morning to see that he shot someone point-blank, and I wouldn’t have been surprised.

At the store, everything was going downhill. Some high-school part-time employee must have been fucking around, because every half-hour there was a bag of flour spilled across the floor, or a watermelon broken in half, and one time even a jar of jam that made it look like someone bled out and was dragged away. David kept yelling at me about it, he kept wagging his finger at me and spitting all over the place. I wondered absently if this was how he talked at his wife/ex-wife/housemate. I always cleaned it up anyway until I found another mess. There were hardly any customers, which gave me time to agonize over my unforgiving migraine from the lights that wouldn’t stop flickering.

“Ricky! My office. Now!” I popped an aspirin dry and followed David to his grimy, sub-standard, dark, damp room that he never decorated. The lights were flickering in here, too.

“It’s official. She’s telling her parents this weekend.” He leaned over his desk as he said it, curling up like a kid about to fall asleep in class. God, I thought, if I ever end up like this, just kill me. I nodded along and whispered something about my condolences.

“And I have to let you go,”

“What?”

“Ricky.” David shook his head, all disappointed as if he’d been some leadership figure for me, “You’re half-asleep all the time. The customers talk to you and you look right through them,”

Which was not true, I know, because I couldn't have ignored them if I-

“I’m not trying to accuse you of anything, but Ricky, it’s obvious. Clearly, you need some kind of help. I can’t keep you employed here anymore.”

Well fuck you! You make me listen to your bullshit day in and day out, and this is how I’m treated for putting up with it? Like any person in their right mind would stay here for as long as I have! Fuck you!

Louis’s winner’s chant rang in my head. Fuck. Shit. Fuckshit? Holy, holy. Fuck, fuck.

I holed up in my apartment, eating microwaved noodles, smoking, and letting reruns of Antiques Roadshow sing me to sleep. Max didn’t come by, and I didn't even think to call him about it. I mean, I kinda thought about calling him. I kinda thought about calling him and asking if he wanted to break out his stash for an old(now unemployed) friend and throw bottles off the abandoned resort roof like I did in high school with my degenerate friends. I thought about this for a while every day. But I didn’t call him.

I did call my landlord to ask for an extension on the rent. I ended up lending a decent part of Louis’s five hundred to Max the other day, and I didn’t exactly have a whole lot of spare cash lying around.

“I don’t know, Ricky,” he said, dragging out each word as if he were actually forming a coherent thought on the other side of the line. “I mean, I’ve already been meaning to talk to you.”

“I can’t get evicted right now, man.”

“I know, I know. I get it, Ricky,” he repeated this a couple of times. Each ‘I know’ increased the chance that I was about to get evicted by ten percent. I counted them on my fingers. 5.

“It’s just the friends you keep. I don’t like that kind coming around. And you’re a good guy. I know, I know,” 7, “You’re a good guy. But you’ve got bad company. And now Louis is gone, and you can’t make the rent…You know how this looks. I know that you know,” 8, “So maybe it’s better that you find some place else to hole up for a bit. You get it? I know you get it. I know.” 10.

Bang!

I mentally added replacing my phone to my list of expenses.

Fuck. Shit. Fuckshit? Holy, holy. Fuck, fuck.

I broke two bowls trying to pour the milk into my cereal. It was Tuesday, and I was feeling helpless, lying like a dead man in the stale summer heat. My brain was aching, probably because I hadn’t left the house in days, and I kept thinking about high school. I kept being drawn to Louis, Max, and David, about what it means to matter to the world, about what it means to be a ‘good man’. I worried, and slept, and all around just rotted away. Until he came knocking.

“Ricky!...Hey! Ricky!” he stalked around on the pavement, his Nikes visible from the kitchen window. I was looking up. I was moving around, all silent and stalking, like an animal knowing it was just about time he kicked the window open.

“Ricky! Come on, I know you’re in there…”

Then there was that tattoo on his ankle, a cross no larger than a square inch worn in the prideful way only he could pull off.

“Rick, this ain’t funny. I gotta go. I gotta go,” he whispered this line to himself a couple more times in the same tone as my landlord. The way people do when they’re trying to convince themselves of something. I tried to remind myself of all these things that ‘really matter’: wives, graduate degrees, jobs, apartments.

Max was sitting on my couch, surrounded by half a dozen empty cans of Coors. My landlord turned the water off after the call, and I hadn’t felt like going out.

Max was all sweaty when he said, “Ricky, I did something bad.”

“Ok.”

“I killed a guy. I really killed a guy. Some guy. Some sad guy. He’s probably happy I did. I killed him.” He blurted all this out, rubbing his hands together in some anxious tic. He just kept going. He was driving down Main Street, where there’s that roundabout that just comes out of nowhere. And there was a guy, a sad-looking guy with a uniform on like the one I wear at work. Apparently, this was the other day, and Max had been hiding out in the woods trying to decompress or something–– plan his next move.

“I gotta run, Ricky.”

“Where to?”

“I don't know. Somewhere, anywhere. I gotta run.”

“Ok.”

He started smoking a cigarette and pacing around, opening up my fridge for something to eat, and throwing beer cans into plastic bags. I never noticed he was such an anxious guy. I figured that going on the run was the only option for him. I imagined it’d be nice for a while, coasting on the open road, not having to worry about things that ‘really matter’. I started remembering all these movies I used to watch growing up about cowboy-looking guys in the wild west, about being a ‘free spirit’. So somewhere between Max’s anxious pacing and the cowboys, I decided to go with him. It’s not like I had anything left in town. It’s not like I had a wife, graduate degree, job, apartment.

So I was in the passenger seat of Max’s rustbucket, and he was lighting a joint to calm his nerves. It was us, I-80, and that wind that roars so loud you think it’ll make you deaf. And the mountains kept on rolling, and rolling, and rolling, moving past us like they were the ones on the run. Max kept his hat down when we stopped for gas. I thought it was not too bad a deck to be dealt, you know, doing what he did.

I thought up a lot of questions that I wanted to ask Max when the time came that he felt like talking about it. I wanted to know if he stayed, if he saw the light go out of the guy’s eyes. I wanted to know if we knew him, if there was an obituary written somewhere about him by a wife or brother. The last question turned out to be relatively easy to answer.

When we stopped somewhere in Wyoming, Max passed out in the driver’s seat. He snored loudly to a beat, like he was keeping time subconsciously. I snuck(I hate to call it sneaking) out of the car to the library I marked on my phone down the street.

It was a small place, all wooden, and the wood was old, so old I wouldn’t call it structurally sound at all. And it was so small that the ceiling seemed to be closing in on me, and the books on their shelves were tightening around me as well. There were so many books. I was never a reader growing up because it was such a waste of time. Why waste my life trying to place myself in someone else's? Trying to prepare for things I couldn’t be prepared for? There were so many books. They all had this scent I’d only smelled before in the lumber store or chopping wood in October. It was a nice smell, something like coming home to sleep. In some ways, something like dying.

“Can I help you?” The voice came from between the books, all weary and ominous. Maybe this was one of those old places in the middle-of-nowhere that gets haunted by some old book-obsessed-cat-lady, and she was about to jump out at me with her face caught distorted in a violent scream like something I’d only seen with Max and those little, clear tabs he likes.

I was swinging my head back and forth so hard that it kept cracking.

“Excuse me, can I help you?” The voice echoed again. This time, I saw the source as she peeked out from behind the shelves. Surprisingly, she wasn't that old, and her hair wasn’t white and wiry like I assumed it would be; she was a normal height, and her skin didn’t sag to the ground like the witches in the animated movies. She was normal: middle-aged, light-brown hair. She certainly looked like she had a husband, graduate degree, job, apartment. Or maybe even a whole house.

I told her I needed a computer.

She told me they had a couple in the back, but the internet was slow. She also said something about not accessing inappropriate media. Whatever that meant.

And there it was.

In a big, bold font: “Man Found Dead in Rural Community. How Might This Affect Your Summer Plans?” I kept scrolling to the bottom, where there was a link to the man’s obituary.

And there he was. David.

In a simple, baby-blue button-up, half-smiling at the camera, purple eye bags, crows’ feet, receding hairline, all of it. It took me a second to start reading.

My husband, David, was a good man. He was a good husband, a good father, a good son. He led a good, simple life…wife…graduate degree…job…apartment…Fuck. Shit. Fuckshit? Holy, holy. Fuck, fuck…good life…good man…simple…sober…legacy.

After a while, the normal, not-that-old woman came looking for me. She asked me something stupid about finding things.

I told her I killed a man.

And I told her I sold drugs.

And I told her… Just to know what it would feel like.

It felt okay.