Deathless✔️

AFTERWORD

Deathless is my favorite thing I've ever written.

Which probably says something fucked up about me, given how absolutely fucked this book gets.

With Deathless, I was after something similar to what I talked about in the Afterword of ALONE?: that strangeness, that otherness. But I was also after a level of brutality that went beyond shock value or gore porn. It sounds weird, but I wanted a sort of brutality that took itself seriously, that wasn't just there to gross you out, but to terrifying you, conceptually speaking.

Being torn apart and eaten by a monster is terrifying.

Being torn apart and eaten by a monster while being literally unable to die, no matter how much damage you sustain? That's beyond terrifying. That's incomprehensible suffering and terror.

Deathless has its origins in a very curious place. In 2007, this idea came to me. It's obvious that the original DOOM played a role in influencing this story, but the thing I was after wasn't the demons or the insane action, it was the outlandish, abstract madness that was the aesthetic of the original DOOM games. Because that shit is just weird. Like, it makes no sense in some cases. And I think it gives the levels an extra edge of fear, because they exude that otherness feeling. I wanted that.

I began working on a fan fiction called Forsaken that was for Halo, although it didn't need to be. I rarely impose rules on myself for writing beyond the basics of word count, sentence structure, etc. But for this one, I would only write after midnight, alone in my room, with my lights out.

I didn't get very far, but I got something. In it, a group of Marines fleeing destruction at the hands of the Covenant arrive at what is supposed to be a safe haven, only to find it much like the world in Deathless. They land and begin exploring. I got to the labyrinth scene and then gave up. I gave up a lot in those days.

But the idea never left me. Instead, it took root, grew, festered. I got more ideas. Finally, I knew I had to write it, and push it far, and hard. I wanted something that was insane, but still being viewed by sane people...that slowly began to go insane as a result.

I think I succeeded with this one. My wife is very smart and very well-read. Horror also doesn't really do much of anything for her. That being said, she did a kind thing and read the whole Shadow Wars for me. She said that Deathless got to her, where nothing else really did. So yeah, I think I succeeded with this one.