Then there was my own situation. It might take only one more obit for Michael Anderson to surrender completely to that high-voltage buzz. Just thinking about it made me want to do it, because it would take away, if only temporarily, these feelings of horror and dismay. I pictured myself writing an obituary for John Smith or Jill Jones to cheer myself up, and my balls shriveled even more at the thought of the mass carnage that could follow.

‘What are you going to do?’ Katie asked.

‘I’ll think of something,’ I said.

I did.

That night I opened a Rand McNally Road Atlas to the big map of the United States, closed my eyes, and dropped my finger. Which is why I now live in Laramie, Wyoming, where I’m a housepainter. Primarily a housepainter. I actually have a number of jobs, like many people in the small cities of the heartland – what I used to refer to, with a New Yorker’s casual contempt, as ‘flyover country.’ I also work part-time for a landscaping company, mowing lawns, raking leaves, and planting bushes. In the winter, I plow out driveways and work at the Snowy Range ski resort, grooming trails. I’m not rich, but I keep my head above water. A little more above it than in New York, actually. Make fun of flyover country all you want to, but it’s a lot cheaper to live out here, and whole days go by without anyone giving me the finger.

My parents don’t understand why I chucked it all, and my father doesn’t try to hide his disappointment; he sometimes talks about my ‘Peter Pan lifestyle,’ and says I’m going to regret it when I turn forty and start seeing gray in my hair. My mother is just as puzzled but less disapproving. She never liked Neon Circus, thought it was a sleazy waste of my ‘authorial abilities.’ She was probably right on both counts, but what I mostly use my authorial abilities for these days is jotting grocery lists. As for my hair, I saw the first strands of gray even before I left the city, and that was before I turned thirty.

I still dream about writing, though, and these are not pleasant dreams. In one of them I’m sitting at my laptop, even though I don’t own a laptop anymore. I’m writing an obituary, and I can’t stop. In this dream I don’t want to, either, because that sense of power had never been stronger. I get as far as Sad news, last night everyone in the world named John died and then wake up, sometimes on the floor, sometimes rolled up in my blankets and screaming. On a couple of occasions it’s a wonder I didn’t wake the neighbors.

I never left my heart in San Francisco, but I did leave my laptop in dear old Brooklyn. Couldn’t bear to give up my iPad, though (talk about addictions). I don’t use it to send emails – when I want to get in touch with someone in a hurry, I call. If it’s not urgent, I use that antique institution known as the United States Post Office. You’d be surprised how easy it is to get back into the habit of writing letters and postcards.

I like the iPad, though. There are plenty of games on it, plus the wind sounds that help me get to sleep at night and the alarm that wakes me up in the morning. I’ve got tons of stored music, a few audiobooks, lots of movies. When all else fails to entertain, I surf the Internet. Endless time-filling possibilities there, as you probably know yourself, and in Laramie the time can pass slowly when I’m not working. Especially in winter.

Sometimes I visit the Neon Circus site, just for old times’ sake. Katie’s doing a good job as editor – much better than Jeroma, who really didn’t have much in the way of vision – and the site hovers around number five on the list of most visited Internet landing-spots. Sometimes it’s a notch or two above the Drudge Report; mostly it lurks just below. Plenty of ads, so they’re doing well in that regard.

Jeroma’s successor is still writing her Getting Sloshed with Katie interviews. Frank Jessup is still covering sports; his not-quite-joking piece about wanting to see an All Steroids Football League got national attention and landed him a gig on ESPN, Mohawk and all. Georgina Bukowski wrote half a dozen unfunny Speaking Ill of the Dead obituaries, and then Katie shitcanned the column and replaced it with Celebrity Deathstakes, where readers win prizes for predicting which famous people will die in the next twelve months. Penny Langston is the master of ceremonies there, and each week a new smiling headshot of her appears on top of a dancing skeleton. It’s Circus’s most popular feature, and each week the comments section goes on for pages. People like to read about death, and they like to write about it.

I’m someone who knows.

Okay, that’s the story. I don’t expect you to believe it, and you don’t have to; this is America, after all. I’ve done my best to lay it out neatly, just the same. The way I was taught to lay out a story in my journalism classes: not fancy, not twee or all hifalutin. I tried to keep it clear, in a straight line. Beginning leads to middle, middle leads to end. Old-school, you dig? Ducks in a row. And if you find the end a little flat, you might remember Professor Higgins’s take on that. He used to say that in reporting, it’s always the end for now, and in real life, the only full stop is on the obituary page.

For Stewart O’Nan

Here’s an anecdote too good not to share, and I’ve been telling it at public appearances for years now. My wife does the major shopping for us – she says there’d never be a vegetable in the house otherwise – but she sometimes sends me on emergency errands. So I was in the local supermarket one afternoon, on a mission to find batteries and a nonstick frypan. As I meandered my way up the housewares aisle, having already stopped for a few other absolute necessities (cinnamon buns and potato chips), a woman came around the far end, riding one of those motorized carts. She was a Florida snowbird archetype, about eighty, permed to perfection, and as darkly tanned as a cordovan shoe. She looked at me, looked away, then did a double take.

‘I know you,’ she said. ‘You’re Stephen King. You write those scary stories. That’s all right, some people like them, but not me. I like uplifting stories, like that Shawshank Redemption.’

‘I wrote that too,’ I said.

‘No you didn’t,’ she said, and went on her way.

The point is, you write some scary stories and you’re like the girl who lives in the trailer park on the edge of town: you get a reputation. Fine by me; the bills are paid and I’m still having fun. You can call me anything, as the saying goes, just as long as you don’t call me late for dinner. But the term genre holds very little interest for me. Yes, I like horror stories. I also love mysteries, tales of suspense, sea stories, straight literary novels, and poetry … just to mention a few. I also like to read and write stories that strike me funny, and that should surprise nobody, because humor and horror are Siamese twins.

Not long ago, I heard a guy talking about a fireworks arms race on a lake in Maine, and this story came to mind. And please don’t think of it as ‘local color,’ okay? That’s another genre I have no use for.

Drunken Fireworks

Statement given by Mr Alden McCausland

Castle County Police Department

Statement taken by Police Chief Andrew Clutterbuck

Arresting Officer Ardelle Benoit also present

11:15 AM–1:20 PM

July 5, 2015

Yes, you could say Ma n me did a good deal of drinking and lounging around out to camp after Daddy died. No law against it, is there? If you don’t get behind the wheel, that is, and we never did. We could afford it, too, because by then we were what you might call the idle rich. Never would have expected that, Dad being a carpenter all his life. Called himself a ‘skilled carpenter,’ and Ma always added, ‘Barely skilled n mostly distilled.’ That was her little joke.