GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #770: TOY CRIME STORY WRAP UP

 OK, after all that time, Toy Crime Story is over. I just posted the finale earlier tonight. When I first started posting these chapters I said I'd do a wrap up with a revelation I had recently about the work.

I wrote this one a few years back because I wanted to see if I could do a darker version of Toy Story. I wanted the kid to be murdered and the story would be about whodunit. I didn't realize one thing, however, until I reread the whole thing in preparation for posting it online.

I had no idea why I'd named the kid Joey and the dad Wally until a few months ago. I've mentioned it here before, but the first friend I ever had was a kid named Joey. His dad Wally was friends with my stepdad, which was how we met. I think it explains a lot about me that the first friend I ever had died when I was a child. Joey was chewing on a pencil and accidentally broke a piece off and choked on it. Wally tried to save his life but couldn't do it.

It's how I learned about death and that I would someday die. I asked what happens after death, and mom said, "You go in the ground, and the worms eat you."

Yeah, if you have kids, don't tell them that. It scarred me for life and probably helped make me the way I am today. Maybe that's not entirely bad, but I wasn't off to a good start.

So here I am, probably around my 40th birthday, writing a story about a kid named Joey who dies, and his dad Wally is powerless to save him. How did I not notice that at the time? I mean, I was drinking heavily back in those days. I could put away nearly an entire handle of cheap whiskey a night. But I don't think I was that booze-addled when I wrote this. I don't write while drunk.

Weird, right? Although as I look at Toy Crime Story now, I feel like I was exorcising something, but I have no idea what it was. I think about the Catacombs and Man-E-Faces and wonder if maybe the specter of death was trying to get out of my system, but that seems too obvious. To quote an asshole owl, "The world may never know."

No, not Close Encounters. UHF, pal.