I WRITE FOR THE DEAD, BUT THEY’VE STARTED WRITING BACK — Part II
By Sobowale Oluwadarasimi
“You don’t need a gun when you’ve got a eulogy.”
The name was Simon Adair.
That’s what the folder said, in tiny, polite lettering, like the man himself was being quiet on purpose. There was no birthdate nor an obituary. It was just the name, and it was clipped to a photo of a man looking straight at me. Or, well, through me.
Something about the face made my spine hum. His eyes had the same color as silence or a pause. The kind of look you see in people who are about to lie. Or confess. Or both.
I didn’t write the rest of the eulogy that night. I couldn’t.
Because something else was wrong.
His tie.
It was the same one I wore to my father’s funeral.
Not similar. The same. Blue with a threadbare paisley pattern. A wine stain near the left point from the priest’s elbow; I remember it exactly. I’d tucked it away in a memory box when I was nineteen, right after I stopped believing in God. And grief. And coincidence.
Now it was here. Folded neatly, like it had waited for this.
Now, here’s how all of this began.
I work for a discreet, high-end agency that offers pre-written eulogies for the wealthy or powerful.
Clients (or their families) request eulogies in advance, as part of their “legacy planning.” Because apparently, rich people want to control not just how they lived, but how they’ll be remembered. (Yes, I am rolling my eyes as I write this.) But I start noticing something odd. I notice that some of my subjects die days after the eulogy is written.
Some never make it to old age. And the details I include to simply sound poetic... begin appearing in the actual crime scenes.
Now that you are fully caught up, do you mind trading places with me?
Well, fast forward to this moment, I couldn’t sleep. Obviously.
I called the woman who sent the first box. The one with the ashtray. Her number was disconnected. I called the church that hosted the funeral. Burned down. I called the police station to ask about Simon Adair; there was no one by that name, not in any system. No case. No body. No missing person. (Not yet, anyway.)
But something inside me buzzed with certainty: there would be a body. And I would recognize the death before it arrived.
Not because I was psychic or involved.
Because I was starting to think I was the one doing it.
You know, it’s a strange thing, writing about the future. You don’t notice you’re doing it until someone bleeds in the shape of your sentence. Funny, huh?
Certainly not.
So, I stopped using metaphors. I stopped describing the weather in my drafts. I wrote only facts: name, age, last known occupation. I was the greatest clown for thinking that it would change a thing.
Because when I wrote about a man who “vanished like breath on a mirror,” the next week, I saw that same man drowned in his car with his windows fogged from the inside.
There was a child that I described as “a comet; brilliant, brief and gone too soon.” It was reported that said child fell from a carnival ride when the safety latch failed.
A woman whose hands I said “once sewed silence into her children’s clothes” was arrested for locking her daughter in a soundproof basement for five years.
They weren’t my clients. I never met their families. But the words were mine. Lifted from a journal I hadn’t shown anyone. Scribbled in margins. Typed and deleted. It didn’t matter.
Someone was watching what I wrote — and scripting reality around it.
Last night, I found my own eulogy.
Typed. Formatted. Printed on the same ivory paper I use for all my clients.
Folded in thirds on my pillow.
“He was a man who told the truth too beautifully for the world to tolerate it. So it wrote him out.”
No name. But it didn’t need one.
I recognized the font.
My font.
My printer.
My hand.
But I didn’t write it. At least, I don’t remember doing so.
I held it up to the window light and read it again. The sentence at the bottom made my teeth hurt.
“He died the moment he stopped believing he was innocent.”
Now I carry that paper with me like a curse.
I no longer wonder who’s behind this.
I wonder what.
Because if someone, or something, has been scripting the world through my words, then either I’ve become a prophet in reverse...
Or a puppet.
Either way, I think I’m next.
This morning, someone knocked on my door. Three times. Precise. Intentional.
When I opened it, no one was there.
Just another box.
No return address. No instructions.
Inside: a typewriter ribbon soaked in something dark.
And a mirror. Cracked straight through the middle.
Taped to the back was a sticky note, and scribbled on it was a handwriting that’s almost; almost; mine:
“Time to write your ending.”
Part III?
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