The Regrettable Death of Hype Lobster
He was an anomaly both ahead of and behind his time, dressed in a snapback hat and jeans centuries before that was in fashion. Hype Lobster embodied the party animal of the Chinese nobility but also the college frat pledge of the modern era, a Taoist sorcerer educated in the classics of longevity with a taste for fine wine and elixir lean which would become his downfall.
Hype Lobster came from the Dragon Skulls lineage of magicians in ancient China, he had been around at the beginning of the Complete Reality School’s founding and had heard Zhuangzi speak in person. He had mastered his control of the breath and meditation for hours at a time, opening the Dragon Gate with his occult knowledge when he was only sixteen. He had watched emperors grow old and die as he remained youthful and stupid as the day he took his alchemical pill in secret. With his practitioners sword he drew a circle in the sand of the temple and conjured a drink which he became addicted to, and it is said you were only meant to sip this beverage once in a lifetime.
He attained the rank of Grandmaster Hype Lobster, the great sorcerer of the Dragon Skulls lineage when he turned a hundred years old, amassing wealth and wisdom along the way which he shared with his dozens of students. His yearning for partying rivalled that of contemporary rock musician Andrew W.K. long before that man was even born, his sigil was a lobster with a yin-yang hexagram drawn onto its shell. The I-Ching came as naturally to him as a fish to water, yet even Hype Lobster couldn’t see his excess would bring his immortality to an early grave.
Many rock-eating alchemists had died trying to achieve what Hype Lobster accomplished, however he couldn’t let well enough alone, continuing to sip his elixir lean with the other hype-beasts of the community. One of the key ingredients was said to be mercury, and whilst we now know that to be a toxic chemical, the sorcerers of old were driven to madness with their obsession with the liquid. Internal alchemy was all the rage when Hype Lobster was two hundred years young, partying with thousands of maidens and noblemen in the Imperial High Court to the detriment of the taxpayer. Far was this way of life from the simplicity of Lao Tzu’s teachings or the Analects, utterly lacking frugality and sincerity. He had a pet tiger imported from India, becoming the Joe Exotic of his day amassing underfed and unhappy jungle animals in his garden of delights, he had no reason to stop because he felt in his heart because he had taken the alchemical pill in its liquid form that he was invincible. Immortal, yes. Invincible? No.
The mess left by his partying and orgies left a wake of trash behind Hype Lobster that he was loathe to pick up after himself. Travelling to Rome at the height of its empire purely for partying reasons, he helped Caligula ruin the GDP of Italy as well, all this money for partying had to come from somewhere, and the gold stolen from Africa and other places paid in full for this egregious lifestyle. Hype Lobster was now a man of the world, backpacking to the richest bohemian salons and falling out with donors whose girlfriends he helped cheat on them kept betraying their lovers for his unique philosophy of the boudoir. His pet tigers ate a cuckolded spouse chasing after him and the evidence was thrown into a meat grinder to prevent suspicion.
His magic allowed him to conjure a device from the future called an iPhone, which he filled with tracks from the douche-baggiest artists of the modern epoch, such as Chris Brown and Lil Wayne, these hoes ain’t loyal was tattooed onto his chest as a mantra. In immortality, he had ceased to care whose feelings he hurt in the process of getting that next buzz of endorphins, and like Rasputin learned once he entered the weird mystic game, being outrageous and drunk all the time could earn you a few enemies. Hype Lobster’s past was bound to catch up with him, as infidelity to his own polyamorous partners earned him a reputation as a proto-Casanova within the circles of high society. His pet elephants lay neglected in a filthy private zoo where he underpaid the maidens in charge of tending to the creatures in his menagerie, having no fear of retribution in his afterlife had transformed him into a swaggering douche without a portrait of Dorian Gray to hold him accountable. In Germany he had caught wind of a new philosophy antithetical to his Taoism spoken of by Nietzche called nihilism, which interested him since he felt dead inside ever since the fifteenth century. He read De Sade and other such noblemen of naughtiness, depraving himself as any future casualty of the #MeToo movement would do if he thought he was untouchable.
Elixir lean and booze flowed through his veins faster than his blood could, and one day he heard a song which moved his tortured soul: Can’t Stop Partying by Weezer and Lil Wayne. This song which also had a heartbreaking acoustic version shook him to the core, reminding him of the possibility of partying so hard that death could claim him in his ignorance. He made the song his ringtone as a morbid memento mori gesture. There were certain parties he now avoided, such as the ones at Jeffrey Epstein’s house, which was probably for the best. Hollywood in its moral emptiness shocked Hype Lobster as he wandered the streets in search of a younger generation of partygoer, he was the eternal old guy at the club and it was his own fault for making himself immortal.
All of a sudden, he was far too old to be picking up chicks at the bar, and the music the youths listened to was too loud and alienated him with its EDM doof-doof. Hype Lobster spent the final chapters of his long life trying to make himself feel less alone. Addicted to various drugs like heroin and cocaine, unable to die from the krokodil and bath salts and meth he had tried to see the appeal of, he wandered the earth as a mystery to those around him, eventually he grew tired of the allure of fame or celebrity and just wanted to feel the buzz which elixir lean used to give him.
Combining elixir lean with various contemporary drugs seemed to stimulate him like before, then the charm wore off and he was numb again. He would have to experiment with darker magic to feel that rush of youth he yearned for, drinking in demons and witches brews seemed to work.
Chaos magicians such as Grant Morrison taught him that everything was permitted, and nothing was true. He was old enough now to believe in such things, wise enough to know this dangerous new path might lead him astray in a meaningful rather than empty way.
At 3am he stumbled through the bodegas in search of elephant juice to make some elixir lean, all of the shops were closed, but the covens on the beaches were wide open. Witchcraft had become in vogue again with the current generation, although the pretty teenage witches were wary of an older man trying to hang out with them late at night.
“Ew, he’s three thousand year old!” protested Myrtle, the hedge-witch who hung out in the Hot Topic. “He looks gross and fuckboy-ish.” - they weren’t wrong, he had indeed been like this since he met Caligula, and the welcome was wearing itself out. The women of today professed a newer philosophy he neglected to research, called feminism, wherein young women refused to be treated like objects. Compared to these young maidens casting hexes in the light of the moon, Hype Lobster was old hat.
The teenage girls at the beach wanted nothing to do with him, and shooed him away from their cauldron citing reasons of “necessary shadow work”. He was a decrepit ruin of a man, a coelacanth living fossil who didn’t belong. Hype Lobster wandered off to the pier to do some more heroin which he could brew in his magical spoon, only to be spotted by LA cops who arrested him on drugs charges. He was in the slammer for fifteen years, getting buff in jail and left prison with more tattoos. In America, he wasn’t allowed to vote as a felon, but he was too high on elixir lean to care. Conjuring King Paimon on his camel mount, he asked for a draught of elixir lean which would make the gods themselves crunk as Lil Jon. King Paimon granted the request and brewed him an amount of elixir lean mixed with cough syrup which would kill a mortal man.
Taking up the challenge, he drank his lean to the last drop and felt the buzz of demon seed down his throat. Hype Lobster was hyped about something for the first time in decades, now he was out of jail he was free to travel the world looking for new trouble to get himself into.
King Paimon warned Hype Lobster that this new recipe for elixir lean was best enjoyed in moderation, however it had such a potent effect on him that Paimon’s pleas were ignored. Hype Lobster travelled to Paris, France for the first time in an eternity, sipping his elixir lean on the steps of Notre Dame cathedral. He went to the club to get turnt up and was confronted with the French house music which boomed in his brain at a volume which gave him heart palpitations.
To his error, Hype Lobster decided to drink some more of the Paimon elixir lean as the bass boomed on the dance floor. He felt his heart attack strike him in agony, though that did not kill him, he continued to dance until the break of dawn although the pain wracked his entire body. His soul was starting to disintegrate, and all the demons he was drinking down spilt out of his gullet as his mortal coil ceased to be. There would be no promise of an afterlife for Hype Lobster, only oblivion due to his foolishness. The funeral was held in China, after what was left of him was shipped to Shanghai, to have a Buddhist funeral like Taoist scoundrels who die in disgrace are known to do. It was a humble, simple ceremony, devoid of the excesses of his life, no funeral strippers or expensive caskets wheeled through the streets in a hearse.
Perhaps oblivion was a kinder fate to Hype Lobster than to face the various Chinese hells, his soul was broken into a billion pieces by his meddling in dark sorcery for a quick buzz of feeling. Twenty mourners dressed in white chanted sutras as his body was laid to rest, cremated to ashes and interred at the Dragon Skulls catacombs in the Jade Crypt of Wonders where the dead magicians were buried.
The regrettable death of Hype Lobster wasn’t supposed to happen at all, but his ridiculous life lived to excess was lived at compound interest. His name was whispered as a warning to younger adepts, who shitposted quasi-ironic tributes like “mourn ya till I join ya” online as Hype Lobster would’ve wanted. There would never be another sorcerer like him, for good reason.
Copyright © Jacob Martin 2020, All Rights Reserved.
