APOCALYPSE

Death. I’ve noticed that I have become rather good at making all of my writing revolve around the theme of death.

Perhaps it is true. The way a writer develops the style, tone, voice, and ambiance of their very first work eventually determines the direction in which the rest of their catalogue flourishes. Though the question arises whether the direction of death can truly be called a path of flourishing.

I reckon I ought to make a vow to myself that A Deal ***** is the last novel I ever write that dives into the depths of exploring death.

Death. The very first novel I ever wrote was about one..., about a father who, refusing to believe the police’s verdict that his son’s death was a suicide, begins an investigation of his own, only to uncover more of his own fractured mind than the truth behind his son’s final moments.

Pfft, I literally named the protagonist of A Deal ***** after the nineteen-year-old boy from my very first novel, a choice that was neither coincidence nor a pre-planned decision.

Coincidence. I find it to be quite an unusual word. No, not because it sounds eerie to me, nor because it feels foreign to what my soul and mind accept as close to heart. To claim that would be equal to claiming superiority, if I dare reflect upon it from such an angle. The reason is rather less peculiar and far more obvious. As someone who firmly believes in destiny and relies upon intuitive guidance, I simply cannot fathom how so many magical and marvellous things in life could be reduced to nothing more than a stupid, meaningless set of coincidences.

Perhaps that is the impulse, the reason, the very motif that propels me toward the necessity of writing about something that, apparently, must be regarded as too dark, too depressing, too detached from life itself to even deserve a mere thought.

Yet I bestowed it many. Many thoughts. Thoughts that refused to remain locked inside the mind, the mind that apparently would never silence itself. Thus, they discovered, no, rather dug, a way to pour themselves onto a blank white page, a page that kept growing darker, blacker with every word and every sentence that rushed to fill it from top to bottom.

I won’t refute the high likelihood that everything in life, and life itself in general, may indeed be nothing more than a game of dice. I rather enjoy playing one myself. Occasionally only, though.

Nonetheless, it is a comforting feeling to believe that life has been given to you with meaning. Not that I disapprove if your own philosophy revolves around nihilism, and you yourself are a nihilist. Sometimes I become one too. Occasionally only, though.

Death. Unlike my first novel, in which the young boy commits suicide and his father arrives too late to alter anything worthy of redemption, in this novel titled A Deal *****, the suicide attempt is prevented in time.

I should stop. Indeed, I must come to an agreement with myself to stop writing about death. Somehow, though, and rather eerily, I seem unable to do so. In my case, words flow more naturally when I search for the story within the grip of death than they do when I seek it within the embrace of life.

For that, I blame my mind. Perhaps I should blame my soul. Yet something inside me tells me that it is my mind upon which I must place the greater share of accusations.

Life. Life and death are not antonyms, unlike what many people make them out to be. They go hand in hand. The further one moves away from life, the closer they move toward death. I think people tend to forget, when celebrating their birthdays as the point of origin from which their lives began, that the candles they light represent not only the time that has already passed, but also the time that still remains.

Ironic. While I am finishing everything that precedes this very sentence, the song playing in my ears happens to be one by the group Cigarettes After Sex. And no, it is not only the song titled Apocalypse that has, to this day, served as a soundtrack, or rather one among several soundtracks, for this story of mine called A Deal *****.

I started writing this fiction back in February 2025, just one, or perhaps two, months before the very first collapse of my identity as a novelist that I have ever experienced. Back in January 2025, I had several other ideas for what story to write next. More precisely, I had come up with four main concepts. Although every one of them has stayed with me ever since, the connection I felt toward them was never strong enough to compel me to begin working on them without delay.

In contrast, the two ideas that came to me toward the end of January 2025, at the point when three months of consistent momentum with the story of I Made *** had finally begun to hit a wall, when the long-awaited surge dissolved into froth, remained with me in an entirely different way.

Not that I had planned for it, nor that it had ever been my intention, but during the first weekend of February 2025, while ironing bedsheets and attending to one of the most mundane household chores, the idea arrived. The imagery of the very first scene of the upcoming novel revealed itself to me, and although it came unexpectedly, it stayed with unwavering loyalty.

Unlike my very first novel, in which I explored a boy coming to terms with death, for this, my seventh novel, I reckoned it ought to be about a boy coming to terms with life. And what better way to accomplish that than by meeting a... My apologies. For now, I can’t reveal it.

The following day, when I arrived at the coffee shop that had become my usual creative hub ever since August 2024, the first 2,200 words of the novel were born.