by David Wong
The priest believed he had been spared by Koddock only to relay the tale to me, to warn me off. He bid me farewell, saying he intended to strike out into the jungle, to walk west until he touched the sun or until the land reclaimed him. I didn’t tell him that walking that direction meant he might wind up as part of a tour group out of Iquitos. I shook his hand and left Peru for good.
A week later I was back in New York, relaxing with Sharon after Dr. Haleine’s memorial service, enjoying cups of coffee laced with a great deal of brandy.
We stood on the balcony, looking over the city through clouds of my pipe smoke.
Sharon said, “Those poor people. Why did they have to die?”
I snorted a laugh around my pipe. “We all have to, dear.”
She didn’t smile. “You know what I mean. The way they died, sick and blind and screaming for their gods to save them, with no answer in return.”
She turned her eyes to me.
“The gods are cruel, aren’t they, Albie?”
I drew a deep breath and replied, “Every living being has but one need: power. Power over other living things. You need it to grow, to eat, to reproduce. And cruelty is the ultimate expression of power. To impose needless, extreme suffering and humiliation on another. It is the purest demonstration of strength. Toddlers learn it in the nursery.
“Therefore every organism, from the microbe up, wears its cruelty as a badge to mark its upward progress. Prey must be subdued, competition must be starved, enemies must be wiped out. One would thus assume that we find the same among the gods, only more so. That at each level of the heavens we find higher and higher levels of greed, brutality and mindless spite. How else could they have become gods?”
Sharon shivered, though it was not cold on the balcony.
In a barely audible voice she asked, “But is that really the way it is? The work you do—you would know better than anyone.”
I set my pipe aside and turned, to let her look into my eyes. I said,
* * *
Afterword
If you want to know when the next edition in the John and Dave series will appear on bookshelves or when the film adaptation will hit theaters, go to my permanent home on the Web at JohnDiesattheEnd.com. There you can keep up with the latest news and further explore the John Dies at the End universe. You can also find me at comedy megasite Cracked.com, where I serve as the editor and, as such, have somehow gained full-time employment writing poop jokes. Yes, it is a ridiculous universe we live in.
Speaking of which, it should be pointed out that the story behind this story, the tale of how John Dies at the End wound up in print at all, should be an inspiration to anyone who works in a cubicle and/or is really easily inspired.
Back in 2001 I was living a double life. During the day I was just a guy doing data entry at a law office, for single digits an hour. But at night, I would change out of those khakis and assume another identity: Guy Doing Data Entry at an Insurance Company. Fortunately the 75 hours a week I spent filling in columns of numbers on computer screens didn’t leave much time for the crushing depression.
Around Halloween of 2001, during the few hours of personal time between cubicles, I took to the Internet and shared a tale of me and my friend and a monster made of meat. On the first day, only six people read the story. The next day, the number grew to eight. Then ten. I had clearly stumbled onto a word-of-mouth phenomenon and after one year, the story had been read by nearly seventeen people.
Riding this buzz, I sat down again and relayed more of the tale and would do the same the following year. By 2005 the chronicles of our adventures had grown to 150,000 words. E-mails poured in from readers, fans telling me they stayed up all night reading the story, then called in sick to work the next morning to finish it. People were printing the whole tale, eating up a ream of paper and three ink cartridges in the process, then binding it with rubber bands and loaning it to friends.
I believed for the first time that I had tapped into something, and that something was the fact that lots of people are crazy and/or have lots of spare time on their hands.
At this point I was contacted by independent horror publisher Permuted Press, who asked me about doing a print run of the story as a trade paperback. I told them no, that no one would ever actually pay money to read it. Then the transmission went out on my car and I decided I couldn’t turn my nose up on whatever meager amount of money would come in. The resulting book, written by a data entry clerk with no previous publishing experience and not even an English degree to boast of, sold about five thousand copies through sheer word of mouth. When the print run ended, rare copies were selling on eBay for up to $120.
Next I got an e-mail from horror writer/director/producer Don Coscarelli (who made two of my favorite horror movies of all time, Phantasm and Bubba Ho-Tep), which I immediately deleted, assuming it was a hoax. But he was persistent and after convincing me on the phone that it wasn’t all an elaborate prank to get me up on a stage so he could pour a bucket of pig’s blood on me, we made the deal to turn John Dies at the End into a movie. After the ink was dry, more than half a dozen other offers for film rights would come in.
At that point it was pretty clear that the entire world was just fucking with me. Keep in mind I was still working at the insurance company, still sitting in a cubicle every day, eating those awful diagonally sliced sandwiches from the vending machine, and reading memos about the dress code.
Word of mouth. That’s all it was. No one “discovered” me, I didn’t get some big break out of the blue. It was a slow advance of strangers from around the world, passing around the link and loaning out those sad homemade copies. These are the zealots who would later buy copies, loan them to friends, then buy more copies when those never came back. Hundreds of passionate strangers whom I’ve still never met—they’re responsible for the edition you hold in your hands. I wish I could thank all of them by name. So, let me do that now. (Please turn the page.)
Amy Brown
Laura Taylor
Lee Beckman
Brandon Sharp
Tim Richardson
Ross Wiseman
Michael T. Hawkins
Ville Nousiainen
Nick Mathews
Curtis Jeffs
Matt Garner
Josh Yagley
Jennifer Liang
Charles Cooper
Jim Mahar
Nate Bailey
Tarnir Hadary
Ryan King
Chuck Sebian-Lander
Lucas de Carvalho Martinez
Rianna Turner
Tomas Fitzgerald
Alex Augustine
David Scully
Stuart Layt
Tyrone Cameron
Victoria Liakhova
Ira Jacobs
Bob Clark
Alex Zechiel
Sean Gray
Vincent Simone
Katters Smao
Shane Peter Davis
Dave Henry
Scott Holcomb
Anthony Clark
Thomas Buttrick
Eric Holodnak
James A Russell
Kevin Murray
Christopher Wells
Andrew Gordon
Craig Taylor
Drew Dexter
Alex Lysick
Joshua Heimendinger
Nadine Hearity
Steve Clark
Tom Cherry
Lance Johnson
Joshua Daum
John Walton
Nathan Cleary
Jess and Brett Ferricher
Robert Hight
Michael Schmidt
Jason Phebus
Steffanie Hirsack
Ed Gardiner
Owen Sprod
Joel Benge-Abbot
Nikola Pilipovic
Ira Porter
Lee Smith
Popovici Alexandru
Matt Nolan
Daniel Sloane
Jesse Hayen
/> Jakob Beacham
Michael Cornett
Heather Holl
Adam Quigley
Will Timson
Kevin Smith
Evan Lewis
Larry Coffey
(not the famous one)
Isaac Rowntree
Nicholas Charlton
Nicholas Seitz
James Goede
Samuel Raab
Benjamin Ashley
Ben Schuplin
Rich Beischer
Michael Scheahan
Eoghan C.
Anthony Nguyen
Jim Ribby
Robert Lawson
Erica Bercegeay
Nathan West
Ryan Salyers
Jonathan Edwards
Ben Driscoll
Joshua Madden
Alex Ennis
Jenn Tharp
Sean Hyslop
Damien Unger
Zac Wiggy
Stewart Dawson
Brian Wesley Schwartz
Christopher Petterson
Ryan Aston
Joshua Lucero
Joel Vandale
Nikki Barajas
Peter Christensen
Jonny Ashley
Angela Soper
Joel Thompson
Beau Ferreira
Daniel Andrew
Devin Pentecost
Matt Overstreet
Jadon Grayson
Justin Davis
Ethan John Davies
Andrew Patterson
Ben Wolfe
Alex Pascarelli
Matthew Waller
Jonathan Kimak
Conor Burnell
Kristina Himmelsjo
Sam Mackey
Brian Lemak
Cassie Hillyuck
Walker Reynolds
Jeremy Root
Nicholas Russell
Brendan Reilly
Christopher Brown
Ben Moore
Stewart Hills
David Bulger
Alex Mathews
Melissa Black
Aaron W Mosley I1
Lee Banford
Robert Roboi Parras
Stacy Farina
Katie Roe
Brandon Robinson
Austin Pettyjohn
Zachary Harper
Kenneth Cross
Jamie Lachance
Scott Bailey
Kitty Butchko
Jason Domanowski
Michael Free1
Juan Cabrera
Josh Hendren
Asaf Lackgren
Phil Loring
Brandon Dixson-Jack
Brad Schoonover
Courtney Shelton
Isaac Westerhoff
SPC Nicholas Young
Kevin Kuchta
Simon Thelwell
David Morris
Mark Cawdrey
Brandon Spoelstra
Magnus Eek Olsen
Alex Huss
Ian Breakey
Michael Hartley
Carrie Rivard
Kim McMillan
Josh Rickert
Jeremy Stevens
Steven Irvine
Dustin Quam
Josh Cohen
Megan Schnitz
Jeff Pallagi
Jason Glass
Mikki Cioffi
Brian Tolman
Jordan Dillman
Petter Vilberg
Matt Cowger
David Binford
Chris Heilman
Spenser Stefaniuk
Jon McCullough
Eric Main
Paul Harris
Paul Calhoun
Laura McDowell
Isaac Davidson
Allin Cook
Tom Andry
Colin Newby
Garrett Hille
Nikolai Gloeckler
Luke McCarthy
Joel Paine
Dawn Morrow
Ian Douglas
Fabio Zaccagnini
Michael Dubya
Z. Sheldon
Courtney Olivecrona
Cole Goater
Mark Gomer
Nick Stolk
Steven Gordon
Alex Winfield
David Piniella
Matthew Porreca
B. I. Flight
Joe Vandale
Matthew Parker
Daniel Griffin
Matt Picioccio
Sean Levesque
Brandl Couch
Eric Pelchat
Ike Wassom
Justin Dunsing
Hunter Tammaro
Teddy Lee
Jack Talbot
Loren Cress
Rowan Chapman Hill
Todd Aquino-Michaels
Adam Woodyard
Dan Heerdt
Henry Copestake
Zachary Helming
Karen Nickerson
Eric Bates
Michael Purdy
Marie Petty
Alexander Convin
David Nelson
John Diebold
Philip Howard
Scott Clark
David Scott
Kevin Smart
Bo Soderlund
J. “Buck” Caldwell
Janet Mysliwiec
Ashley Monroy
Kyle Nelson
J. Molloy
Reid A. Dawson
John Plandowski
Peter Armstrong
Tyler Calvert
Miia Lempinen
Alex Hirzel
Rutger Schreuders
Jack Clarkson
Dean Perkins
Philip Zaslavchik
Matias Ignacio
Joe Bautista
Matt Best
Lara Koenig
Nathaniel Lichfield
Jimmy Bean
Steve Wetherell
Jess Jeffery
Louie Klein
Greg Pfaff
Brian Malik
Aaron Macke
Jarad Geer
Frank Looney
Josh Palmer
Rebecca Johnson
Kenny Heard
Jude Taylor
Lyz King
Kyle Hellkamp
Jake Brown
Denny Wright
Robert Parsons
Jay Locke
Joe Defilippis
Connor Bishop
Michael Keen
Aaron Kinney
Rhett Stafford
Walter Sojda
Jeff Devine
Ellen Boring
Ben Pearson
Casey Harris
Benjamin Deason
Casper Van Gemert
Tarik Ghabra
Sean Tessena
David Costelloe
Nathaniel MacDonald
Chris Jensen
KYTE
Tom Heafey
Jeremy Harvey
Don Shihey
Azrael Macool
Russell Monett
J. D. Beideman
Mark Ulissi
Jeff Ward
Sean Emery
Simon Clair
Jonathan Barone
Dave Eng
Ben Ireland
Thomas Gorney
Brian Durbin
Brian Lernmon
Devin McGinty
Jeff Lengyel
Marc Williams
Ross Cochran
Darnian Holter
Christana Waterstreet
Dustin J. Shifflett
Manie du Preez
Cory Batts
Dan Bromley
Andy Melat
David Starr
Amanda Mack
Teemu Nordlund
Kaitlyn Werner
Brian Mack
Cress Fox
Jason Elledge
Brandon Crawford
Tommy Scala
Luke Norman
Julian Smith
Richard Kreski
John Miller
Andrew Briggs
Salvatore Ciano
Courtney Childs
Jefferson Nieto
Laura Engelman
Anthony Sgromo
Mick Weaver
Clae Wilson
Greg Ulfik
John O’Connor
Tim Young
Rich Larden
Hector Wakefield
David Saulrnon
Nate Arnold
Doug Tammany
Joshua Svendsen
Brent Donoughe
John Honey
Breno Nakao
Ben Heidorn
Stephanie Wagar
Brooks Cary
Gerald Rice
Aaron Jones
Joseph Zebrowski
Oliver Griinewald
Jonathan Bjorklund
Kyle Sechrest
Ben Heidorn
Garii Pearce
Reid Sheldon
and
Mike Brenner
Alan Thompson
