HOW WE WANT TO DIE
       By The Union Weekly

     Illustration by Bryan Walton, Union Staffer

I have just finished defending the entirety of the Wu Tang Clan in Federal Court from a trumped up narcotics charge, can you say entrapment? So I’m walking down the court steps, Wu Tang is in tow, reporters are clamoring for photos and quotes. Then some punk with a shotgun comes out of the crowd and takes aim at Ghostface Killah. Immediately, I jump forward between the shooter and Ghostface. The sucker fires two shots BLAU, BLAU, both shells hit my chest, but not my face: I need my face for the open casket at the memorial service. So anyways, I’m down, metal all up in my heart. I’m bleeding out and Ghostface is holding me in his arms and he looks down and he says, “I’m going to write a rap about your ass.” Then I reply with my last breath “Ghostface… I’ve always loved you. I’m sorry about Napster.”

-Kevin O'Brien

The year: 2046. It’s August and it’s my 60th birthday. I’m tired of living in a future without flying cars, so I make one of my own out of an old ’23 Dodge Dodger—pure muscle. Jacked up on energy drinks and McFlurrys (now outlawed by our current Latino-Cyborg president), I start the car up and fly off. Problem is, it goes too high and I end up leaving the atmosphere. There’s a rumble beneath my seat, which I assume is a mix of the raw power of what I’ve built and the stress from hurtling off into space, turns out Earth is exploding. “Fuck.” I say it again, “Fuck.” Instead of being engulfed in flames or pounded by Earth-rocks, I’m thrusting faster into the depths of space. Crash landing on some rocky terrain, I’m greeted by large breasted blue women. They stare at my grey hair and battle scars (God, I think, the life I’ve lived…) and take me in as one of their own. I have sex with all of them and then kill myself.

-Michael Pallotta

When I pass on, I’d like to go experiencing the most intense forces of the universe. Once a person crosses the event horizon of a black hole, the immense gravitational force will stretch their bodies beyond recognition almost instantaneously. If one were somehow to survive the devastating singularity however, infinite possibilities could await. According to some postulation, one’s consciousness could persist for eternity since time itself slows to a crawl inside a black hole. Also, the prospect of wormholes, which might lead to galaxies and dimensions unknown, is totally inspiring (2001 anyone?). However, the technology needed to achieve this death seems entirely infeasible in my lifetime. The closest black hole to Earth, V404 Cygni, is 7,800 light years away, meaning a spacecraft traveling at the speed of light (impossible under the standard laws of physics) wouldn’t reach a black hole for nearly 8 millennia.

-Brian Newhard

First of all, on my headstone I want it to say, “It was all very funny if you weren’t me.” Moving on, if I had my druthers, I would like to be strapped with dynamite, and fed to a Great White Shark. My last act on Earth will be to detonate the dynamite as I yell, “I love you all!” Look, There are lots of lame ways to die. Cancer? Lame. AIDS? Lame. Heart attack? Fuck off. I know a lot of people spend a lot of time worrying about death, but you shouldn’t worry because it’s going to happen no matter how it happens. Think of it this way: People have been dying for millions of years, and nothing’s gone wrong yet. Just worry about being cool enough so that when you die, you have access to things like Great White Sharks and dynamite.

-Caitlin Cutt

Since childhood, I have been obsessed with the mafia, so it’s natural that my lifelong dream is to marry a mafia boss. I want the money, I want the crime, and I want the nails. So naturally, I want to die at the hands of my vengeful husband after I have sold him out to the feds. I’ll be fed up with his womanizing and him never being home because he’s out killing another innocent soul. I want to be the woman who brings his whole operation down. I’ll give dates, places and photo evidence only to come home to my husband waiting to murder me. He’ll be sitting in a high-backed chair, smoking a fine cigar when he’ll say, “So, baby, where have you been?” Then he’ll creep toward me menacingly and say something cliché, such as, “In about three minutes, you’re gonna be sleeping with the fishes.” And that ladies and gentlemen is the dream. No more, no less.

-Simone Harrison

When I was asked, “How would you like to die?” my first thought was “Killed in a nuclear explosion on a carrier, saving the president’s (hot) daughter while battling the Chinese communists or maybe the Japanese or maybe Nazis of some kind,” but then I thought, “Nah!” Fuck dying. It seems like a pretty sketchy prospect. First off, I don’t know anyone that’s ever enjoyed dying and the people who are really into death (teenagers, goths, the Germans) are weirdos that I would never want to hang out with. Secondly, I don’t know anyone that’s returned from the dead and spoke good words about the process. They just lie still and get stinky and bloated and leave a stain on my couch. Not. A. Fan. So I’ve decided to kybosh the whole concept. I’m James Kislingbury and I’m never going to die.

-James Kislingbury