Suicide Pact

Coyote Black (not his real name) wants to die. And why not? His life has been a failure on every level. He’s hitting middle age, lives with his Alzheimer’s-addled mother, has achieved exactly nothing in his chosen career, and can count on one finger the number of romantic relationships he’s had. In an act of uncharacteristic sociability, he decides to commit group suicide with four equally pseudonymous people he met online: Twisted Rainbow, an insecure teenage girl with an emotionally abusive stepfather; The Eliminator, an ex-soldier whose short, brutal stint in Iraq left him a psychological wreck; Niobe, a young African-American woman who in rapid succession lost her job, her mother, her boyfriend, and her baby daughter; and Mr. Y, a college-aged Japanese-American pop-culture geek whose wealthy Type-A parents can provide him with anything he wants except a sense of love and belonging.

But when this quintet meets up to do the deed, Coyote Black suddenly has a better idea: Since the doomed have nothing left to fear or lose, why not postpone their suicide one month and in that time do whatever the hell they want—such as deliver a righteous smackdown to Twisted Rainbow’s asshole stepdad, or blow up an abandoned chemical plant (because despite his traumatic experiences in Iraq, The Eliminator harbors an unhealthy obsession with blowing stuff up). As a bonus, this extra month will give Coyote Black plenty of time to “unexist” himself properly: that is, to say his various goodbyes, sell off his possessions, and destroy evidence of his hateful, pointless life.

Alas, he is, as said, a failure at everything—so is it any wonder that nothing quite goes as planned?

89,000 words.