The Four Pins Guide To Dying In A Crowded Room

Imagine that you find yourself in a cavernous convention hall. Thousands of strangers press in on you from every side, sucking short breaths through open mouths and staring, unblinkingly, into the air in front of your face. A rough grey carpet snatches at your shoes and you realize you're sweating—not drips, but in a wave that washes across your forehead like a tide wandering into an overgrown bay. You close your eyes, blanching in the piercing glare of afternoon sunlight. The darkness soothes you and you naturally contemplate your own mortality. But how? You wonder, gritting your teeth and clasping your brow. How ever will I manage to die in this crowded room? So glad you asked, dear reader.

It's not the purpose of this guide to instruct you how to die. That's on you. Merely dying is easy and when your time comes you will likely have little to no trouble doing so. No, these instructions are intended for those who, either by personal choice or due to fate's unknown designs, absolutely must meet their end while trapped inside a man-made structure infested by a dense, smiling throng of Fellow Man. This is a trickier demise, one that will require brilliant choreography, delicate wit and graceful flourish to bring off without a hitch.

In many ways, expiring in a large house party or packed restaurant is more difficult than surviving one. But don't despair! We've created this handy, step-by-step guide to help you navigate any cacophonous, overpopulated delta that stands between your clammy body and death's clement mouth-kiss. When properly applied, it boasts a staggering rate of success, so please treat its techniques with deadly respect. Cool? Cool. This is The Four Pins Guide to Dying in a Crowded Room.

[Lead image via Pyxurz]

Dave Infante is a writer living in New York City. Read more of his work on Thrillist and follow him on Twitter here.

Check For A Pulse

The very first thing you should do when dying in a crowded room is to confirm you are, in fact, alive. A congested social gathering is quite literally a nightmare for many people, so it's entirely possible that you're actually just dreaming this entire perilous experience. In that case, you may find the simple act of waking up to be more appealing than dying. Have you seen Inception? OK, well, it's sort of like that. There's also the non-zero chance that this overcrowded bar you're currently stuck in is a manifestation of your personal hell, as in the rigorously accurate documentary film Sphere. In this case, the author of this guide (who has seen both films, though neither in a few years) regrets to inform you that you are likely already dead and will therefore be unable to die again.

Assuming you find yourself biologically alive in your environment, please move onto the next slide. There, you'll learn more about how to become biologically dead in that very same environment.

Try To Leave

Once certain that this loud, overwhelming room is no mere figment of your sick subconscious, your next move is to attempt an escape. This, probably, will fail, though not necessarily because you're a failure. No, you will fail for two reasons:

The first is walls. Rooms tend to have them,and they are extremely difficult to walk through. Doors, on the other hand, are built for walking through, so you probably want to seek out one of these.

This brings us to the second reason your effort to flee proves fruitless: other people. They will try to talk to you on your way to and out the door and some may even succeed, locking you into an interminable conversation about music or sports or your job. This, as you're surely aware, is a fate worse than death, and as such it's the firm opinion of this guide's author that you are better off giving up the ghost right where you stand.

Read The Room

It's important to understand the social composition of the room in which you seek to die. Obviously, it's crowded. This is a given. Look beyond the seething mass of human flesh around you and pick out additional characteristics. Is it a child's birthday party? A besieged DMV counter? Perhaps it's not even a room, but a World Wide Web chatroom? The possibilities are endless. By identifying the #vibe of the gathering, you'll gain critical insight on how to best discontinue your entire existence there.

For the sake of convenience, this manual will restrict itself to the mechanics of dying while at an office happy hour full of slightly overweight coworkers. Assume feigned conviviality, loose acquaintanceship and a powerful undercurrent of bourgeoisie despair. All instructions henceforth apply directly to this specific context (though they may be easily adapted to a near-infinite variety of crowded room death scenarios).

Know The Soundtrack

An office happy hour tends to be a naturally clamorous affair, whereas most non-violent forms of human terminus are relatively mute. You'll have no trouble quietly slipping into an endless night as your coworkers around you shriek ad shout with drunken verve, so the music selection is really immaterial. Right? Wrong! Much like devil sticks, crochet and Spin Art, dying in a large group of your peers is performance art. The proper song can lend substance to this otherwise meaningless conclusion to your life. To ensure precise audio synchronicity, consider loading the jukebox with $20-40 worth of Tool as soon as you arrive at happy hour.

But why Tool? The author of this guide holds the opinion that not nearly enough people have publicly died during “Stinkfist,” for one thing. For another…actually, there really isn't another thing. That's the sole reason. "Stinkfist." Do it. Moving on.

Location, Location, Location

Upon initially realizing that you will shake the Grim Reaper's hand at this very office happy hour, you will have assessed the room and forced yourself upon the jukebox with much vigor. Bravo! Now, it's time to contemplate where exactly your lifeless corpse should fall. Instinct may compel you to find a restroom in which to croak. This is a bad idea. Restrooms in bars that host office happy hours are categorically foul. Furthermore, they often feature mirrors in which your reflection may inadvertently appear. Reviewing your appearance is not an ideal activity in the moments prior to your doom, especially if you are vomiting or bleeding, which you very well might be. Finally, this guide is for those who wish to die in a crowded room, not those who wish to die in a room adjacent to a crowded room. For these reasons and more, avoid dying in the bathroom.

Instead, seek out a particularly dark corner somewhere in the bar itself. It should be largely free of moisture, for as noted earlier, you are likely sweating. Try that weird section at the end of the bar top where servers go to place their drink orders and mutter exasperatedly at people who block their path. Imagine how irritated they'll be when they discover you strewn across the narrow passage in a permanent repose! Spectacular! Remember, at this point, neither the staff nor your flocking, fucked up coworkers will have yet discovered that the jukebox is scheduled to play "Stinkfist" for the next three hours. With any luck, you won't be around to hear it, because, again, you will be dead.

Have A Drink

There's simply no good reason not to consume several light lagers before your eventual passing. This is especially true in this guide's primary scenario (the office happy hour), but it also applies to any overcrowded room in which you are to die. Light lagers are affordable in both a monetary and a caloric sense and may be crushed with significant zeal as you await the gentle caress of the unending night.

Empty Your Drafts

This isn't a metaphor. This is Twitter Dot Com. Only a maniac answers death's knock at the door before sending all his/her Fire Tweets™. Leave that eternal brilliance behind for your Twitter fam to RT in a blinding tempest of sadness. Plus, it'll give you something to do while you pour nine Lionsheads into your soon to be lifeless maw.

Look Within (Optional)

At this point, the happy hour will be in full swing and someone from marketing will be making out with someone from sales. Your overweight coworkers—those soused, horny bastards—will be fixated on these passionate displays of public affection. In these precious moments of solitude before the Big Sleep, the author of this guide advocates conducting a brief inventory of your life to date. Has it been a long, rewarding life? (Probably not.) Have you left the world a better place than you found it? (Almost certainly not.) Do you wonder what might have happened if you chose to go home after work instead of to this happy hour? (Irrelevant. Your time is now.)

It should be noted that this is not a mandatory step in the process of dying in a crowded room. You may just as easily avoid all inward thought as you charge through a bar full of people towards the proverbial bucket, kicking foot forward. Ignorance is bliss, after all. Then again, nothing in this guide is really mandatory. You're reading this because you demand solid morbid ground amidst a garish tempest of flesh and fear. So, whatever, man. Do you.

Pop A Selfie

No good happy hour deathing is complete without popping one final ‘gram for the squad to remember you by. Get that shit done in style while your colleagues plow through another pitcher of tropical sangria and regurgitate water cooler jokes about The Slap. Skip the filters, for fuck's sake. You're about to die, not graduate high school. Use the nuanced editing tools like a goddamned adult. Alright, all set? Post that shit. And now, finally...

Die

It's time. You've dotted your Is and crossed your Ts. The din will swell around you, making it hard to think, which is good because no one should think while being stinkfisted into obscurity. Just fucking die, man. The author of this guide encourages you to take one last look around this extremely crowded room and then just fucking die.