What the Hell is wrong with me?

I’m running a Call of Cthulhu game at the College of Staten Island next week, for their Gaming Club’s party.  I’ve done it a few times; they are a great bunch of kids.  Most of them become my play testers for the material I publish.  Anyhow, I play with these guys often, which presented a problem.

Most of them had played all of my most recent short scenario, suitable for a four hour game.  I had to dig up something that NONE of them had ever played.  So I went digging in my old archives and found something I hadn’t run since probably 2007, a nasty little reactive game called Life After Death.

It’s a modern game, which I seldom write.  It’s set in a cemetery and the players take the roles of the traditional bad guys in the adventure.  Three of them are members of a small ghoul pack, one is a serial killer and the last is Kevin Meep. Kevin is a character I created, a madman, and probably one of the strangest individuals I’ve ever created.  I hadn’t thought about him in years, so when I re-read his description… well… I was a little surprised.

Yeah, I wrote this, I remember writing this… that wasn’t the confusing part. 

But as I read it I could only think…  Dude, what the hell is wrong with you?!?!?    So, I’ll share Kevin’s description, on his character sheet.

Kevin Meep - You didn’t have what you’d call a happy childhood. Your mother was a drug addict and your father ran out on you both. You grew up in foster care, never spending more than a year with one family.  Anyone you felt a connection to would always eventually leave. Love was a myth and a lie. That all changed the day you found the cheerleader, Mary Joe Wattle, dead in that wooded area.  She’d been missing for three days and it was clear she’d been strangled and raped. She looked so beautiful, lying there naked, like she was asleep and waiting for you. She was waiting for you! At last you found love, a woman who would never leave you, or hit you, or say bad things that made you feel small. After visiting Mary Joe for a week you buried her telling no one of what you had done. Now you knew there was love, real love and that it could only be shared with the dead. The dead don’t leave; the dead love you for who you are. 

            Getting the job at Oaklawn Cemetery was the best thing that ever happened to you.  While you didn’t make many friends you worked hard and eventually made it to acting caretaker.  Your job gives you many opportunities to find love and also led you to the only real friends you ever had, the ghouls. The ghouls accept you; they don’t judge you and they appreciate your help.  They are much nicer than people.  About a year ago you and the ghouls made a new friend, the serial killer Ramani.  She’s nice, she helps out by bringing her victims to the ghouls but she’s not like the lovers you find at work. 

            If you get fired, the ghouls will starve, Ramani will probably go to jail and it will be much harder for you to find love.  You can’t allow that to happen and you won’t!  You belong here, among the dead, and anyone who tries to change that will be sorry they did.

Yeaaaaah.  So, what the hell is there inside my head that possesses me to create a sympathetic necrophiliac PC?

It’s weird being a horror writer…