The sobber – by Oliver Johns
ISLAND | ONLINE ONLYFROM THE UTAS ‘LOVED STORIES’ PROJECT
2025’s UTAS third-year creative writing students were challenged not to ‘write what you know’ but to ‘write what you love’. What they produced were stories that range from horror to rom com, lyrical writing to memoir, comedy to absurdism, social commentary to fantasy. We’ve featured excerpts from seven stories on Island Online: read all the excerpts here.
Crying is a skill, and I do it exceptionally well. So well, it’s scary. I can’t exactly remember when I first shed a tear. There’s a collection of abstract images: a dropped Cornetto, an overly aggressive peacock, gravelly skinned kneecaps. But they fade in and out. All these memories have melded into a crystallised mound of bad days, something I would need to hack at with a pickaxe – or therapy – but who needs that?
Crying takes practice, and I make time for it. An hour a night. Reddit videos of car crashes, tornadoes, or failed emergency calls usually get me going. I’ve dropped some money on Red Room deals too, but honestly, it was underwhelming. I mean, what’s the big deal with a couple of popped eyeballs? But quickly, there came a point where I was running out of good material – growing desperate – so I had neckbeards send through a few bucks, so they had something to get off to. This quick and anonymous exchange, hidden by layers of private networks, became a daily grind. They hid behind their cheap webcams as my eyes welled up, cheeks flushed, and my bottom lip dropped into the pout that got me anything as a kid. Their guttural, pathetic moaning would blare through my laptop speaker and climax as I wiped the last snot bubble from my face. Rinse, repeat.
Occasionally, some guy would pay me for more than just a cry – usually to wear something verging on unflattering – but I didn’t mind. I was making connections. And before I knew it, I’d made a network for myself, my own little army of white knights who hopped onto my private streams – Tuesday and Friday nights – to witness me, the magnificent crying lady. A million super-chats, DMs, and kink confessions later, I decided to expand into the public sector – put myself out there in a big way.
I’m now what people call a ‘sobber’, a derogatory term, honestly. I prefer ‘professional mourner’ or a ‘crier for hire’ – a title I use when I’m feeling particularly hilarious. The job is what it says on the tin: people pay me to cry at funerals, to wail for a dead person I never met – the grandmother who had no friends, or the cousin who had three. The money is still spotty, but I can get some good offers if the wind blows my way. A woman paid me two grand once to crumple to the ground and flop like a fish – a ‘full backbreaker’, as I’ve coined it. But a little weep here and there usually does the trick. Although for me, nothing is out of bounds. Well, within reason.
I won’t ever jump into a grave…again.
As a nightly routine, I curl up in my apartment with its wafer-thin walls and loud neighbours and sift through Craigslist hunting for offers. And Craigslist is where it’s at, baby! Sure, I’ve got to trawl through offers from potential serial killers looking for a ‘NEW SUBMISSIVE FRIEND’ and sexual deviants wanting someone to eat their toes, but there is gold to be found if you’re savvy like me. I know this cesspool of a site like the back of my hand. I know where to catch the fish.
Last night, underneath a listing titled ‘LOOKING FOR WILLING FEMALE TO DOMINATE ME FOR $300’, I found:
‘NEED SOMEONE TO CRY AT MY SON’S FUNERAL – WILL PAY HANDSOMELY – MALE, 54.
‘My son, 26, died last week, and attendance for his funeral is predicted to be decent. But I need someone to fill out the space. When I say I pay well, I mean it. SERIOUS OFFERS ONLY!’
I replied:
‘Hi. I am a professional mourner with substantial experience. I am happy to chat with you about pricing, but keep in mind that the final price considers transport costs, intensity of mourning etc. Once we have made an agreement, please send me the date, time, place, and trust that I’ll be there. I don’t send photos of my face to clients, as I keep things low profile. I take PayPal’.
The girl practicing the trombone next door was playing along to ‘Baby You’re a Rich Man’. I could hear John Lennon’s gravelly tones under the terrible noise, singing about beautiful people.
I’ve died and gone to heaven. The guy on Craigslist wasn’t lying when he said he’s well off. He’s promised me three-grand as payment, and I’m fucking salivating.
This morning, I stepped out of my shoebox apartment wrapped in a black dress that feels more like a body bag, into a stark white marble hall where the ceiling is a million feet high and everyone is dressed in dark furs, smelling like lilac and black musk. Shoes so polished I could see my freckles in them. Suits with the finest padding and pinstripes, cut to perfection. Real pearl necklaces. Gold brooches.
Josh, the deceased, had been laid on a bier in a dark mahogany coffin lined with plush white velvet. Open casket. I only saw his strawberry blond hair and clasped hands before sitting next before sitting next to an old man who wouldn’t stop dabbing his sweaty bald head with a handkerchief.
The service was dry, but my tears were flowing. Josh’s dad – my very generous hirer – delivered a heartfelt eulogy about how his son ‘liked to climb trees as a boy’ and was a ‘fine young man’, who was ‘appreciated by all who knew him’.
The organ player’s full-bodied rendition of ‘Abide with Me’ was barely enough to drown out my wailing. Like, I really amped it up – hunched over in my seat, sniffling and shaking, really milking that three-grand. I was a red-eyed wreck, but no one really paid me any mind. For my efforts, I got a tentative pat on the back from an older woman behind me. She really overdid her lipstick.
We said our goodbyes to Josh, dropping white roses on his chest. He was stuffed into a black suit, probably Armani. His hair was gelled flat, and his lips, pink and relaxed, were parted to reveal perfectly white teeth. The mortician did a bang-up job on this one.
But his eyes were gone. Gouged out. The sockets were hollow and clean, as if the eyes were scooped with a melon baller. I could tell that the mortician had tried to tidy the eyelids up – there were remnants of stitches – but they’d left them to become flaps of crinkled, dead skin. An empty, unfinished face.
I’ve seen dead people, plenty of them, but this was something else.
‘A horrible accident,’ said an older woman to her husband, both swathed in black wool coats. ‘Horrible.’
I dropped a rose as ‘Danny Boy’ played. ▼
Image: WW - Pexels
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