High

Mike Barry

“I don’t want to die.”

I looked up at this announcement, spoken so incredulously by a voice I was not used to hearing incredulity from. Jake stood in the doorway, shirtless, in only a pair of worn blue jeans. Women (and some men) have always described Jake as attractive; of the two of us, he’s the one that’s always gotten the attention. He‘s got the deep green eyes, the dark, messy hair, and the San Francisco tan. Most people think he’s vain because of how he walks around half-naked all the time, but Jake doesn’t really realize how good looking he is (if he did, he would’ve become a model instead of a musician. It’s a much safer career.) For him, it’s just about being comfortable.

At that moment, though, he looked anything but comfortable. He looked dazed, beads of water clung to his skin, and his hair hung limply, down past his shoulders, soaked like the rest of him. He clutched a crumpled piece of notebook paper in his right hand, and his eyes were bloodshot. I figured he’d just taken a hit or done a line, so I started to shrug it off, but then I noticed two things. One, water still leaked from his eyes. They were bloodshot because he’d been crying. And two, he was smiling wider than I’d seen him smile in years.

“Why are you wet?” I asked him, laying my guitar to the side. She’s a dark blue Gibson, and she’s the validation for my existence. Growing up around Jake, I got pretty well acquainted with his shadow, but playing that guitar was the one thing I could do better than him. She’s literally my life. Jake’s got a decent voice, but he’s the front man because he’s charming and the crowd loves him. Me? I’m just good at guitar.

He waved a hand dismissively. “I jumped in the shower. Needed to wake up.”

I stared at him blankly. Was he high? He was acting like it, but I’d never known Jake to cry while stoned. “What’s going on, man?”

“I don’t want to die,” he said again, shaking his head in wonderment. He started to pace back and forth across the floor of our shared hotel room. “I was standing in the shower, and I realized that I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die. I don’t WANT to die. I don’t want to die!”

“Yeah, Jake, I heard you the first time, but…” I chuckled lightly under my breath. I couldn’t help it. This was just absurd. “What’s going on, man?”

Jake took a deep breath, and visibly forced himself to calm down. “I just talked to Emily.”

I winced. It was a natural reflex that was triggered by that statement. Technically, Emily was Jake’s fiancée back home, though you wouldn’t know it from the number of women he slept with while we were on the road. They met back in high school, when everything was simple, back before the drugs or the stardom. It was just me and Jake and dreams of one day being the next Nirvana. A lot of things started back in high school, actually. Friendships, relationships, even the band. I guess in most ways, we never really left. We never grew up, and lately, Jake and Emily’s conversations tended to quickly devolve into shouting matches. If they’d been talking, nothing good could come of—

“I’m gonna be a father!”

I fell off the amp I’d been sitting on. Literally. Jake just laughed and hauled me back to my feet. “Did I hear you right?” I asked, awestruck.

He laughed again, louder than I think I’d ever heard him laugh before. “All my life, man, I’ve just been keeping going for the sake of keeping going, y’know? Get drunk, get high, get laid, get rich. That’s all I’ve cared about, that’s all that’s mattered to me. But I’m going to be a father! I created life! Ha!” He pulled me into a tight hug, and raised the crumpled piece of notebook paper triumphantly.

I raised an eyebrow. “And that would be?”

“This,” Jake said, holding it to his breast reverently like a priest holds his bible. “Is the first track of our new album, and I wrote it for my daughter.”

“Wow, Mike, that’s quite a story.”

“Isn’t it? All our lives, Jake never cared about anything, but that was the turning point. He was a different person after that.”

“For those of you just tuning in, we’re talking to Mike Barry, lead guitarist of Never Mind. He’s here talking about the greatest tragedy to hit the music scene since the Day the Music Died, the recent death of Jake Reed, the lead singer of that same band, who died of an accidental cocaine overdose just last month. Mike just shared a story with us from around the time of the band’s first album. You and Jake knew each other for a very long time, didn’t you Mike?”

“That’s right, Tom. We’ve been best friends since middle school, and we were inseparable. Then we got to high school, and, well, that’s when things really started going downhill for Jake.”

“Really? Can you tell us about that?”

“Well, as you all probably noticed, Jake was always extremely cool, unlike yours truly, who plays D&D every weekend. When Jake got invited to the cool kids’ parties, they made a point to leave me out, and because I wasn’t there to play shoulder angel, Jake tried a bunch of things for the first time.”

“Yikes.”

“You have no idea, Tom.”

Travis Parker

“I wish I was dead.”

I sighed and checked my watch. We’d been in this bathroom for two hours now. “I bet you do,” I muttered darkly.

Jake mumbled something indistinct and whiny and morose under his breath (probably the same statement) and heaved over the toilet again, but nothing came out. Mike kneeled behind him, holding his hair in one hand and rubbing his back with the other. “I don’t think you’ve got anything left to hurl, buddy,” he said. Mike’s a good guy, and one of the few people I can tolerate for any amount of time. And don’t get me wrong, I like Jake, too, but if I’d had to put up with him for as long as Mike has I’d have ditched him a long time ago.

“So…how long is this going to take?”I asked.

Mike shot me a glare. I raised my hands in an admonition of my innocence. “Hey, don’t look at me, I’m not the one who let him get smashed and snort three lines.”

“I already told you, I wasn’t invited to this party, and Jake was. What was I supposed to do? Tell him he couldn’t go?” Jake heaved yet again, and Mike went back to rubbing his back soothingly.

“Look, all I know is that Emily said she wouldn’t get here until midnight, and its fifteen minutes until. If she gets here and sees him like this, someone’s going to die, and it is NOT going to be me.”

Mike had apparently stopped listening to me by this point, and Jake had probably never started. He seemed pretty dead to the world. So I stood in that bathroom, smacking a half-empty pack of Lucky Strikes into my palm repeatedly. I desperately wanted a cigarette, but it was common party etiquette not to light up in the bathroom of the host. Not that that stopped people from sucking on their bongs and joints in the living room. Blech. Give me good, wholesome nicotine any day. I didn’t even want to be here. This whole “everyone-get-drunk-and-act-retarded” thing really wasn’t my kind of scene, but Jake’s a friend and when Mike called me up and told me he needed help, I got over there as fast as I could. Which wasn’t very fast. That probably should’ve told me I needed to quit smoking.

“This is my fault,” Mike said quietly, his back to me.

“How do you figure?”I rolled my eyes in exasperation.

“I should’ve been watching him better.”

“Why should you have to watch him period?” I asked. “Jake’s a big boy; he can take care of himself.”

“Because he’s going to get himself into trouble with all this stuff,” he gestured vaguely at the toilet and Jake’s panting body.

“Look, if he cared that much, he wouldn’t do it,” I pointed out. High school would’ve been a much easier place is everyone had just listened to me.

“I know,” Mike looked over his shoulder at me then, his eyes pleading. “He’ll just keep doing this, over and over and over again until it’s too late to even think about stopping. This is going to kill him some day, and I know he doesn’t care. At all. That’s why we have to care for him.”

I snorted derisively. “Yeah, okay, good luck with that.”

“I need your help, Travis. I can’t be here to watch him when he’s at these parties. They always invite you—“

“For some reason,” I muttered under my breath. One cigarette. Half a cigarette. I would settle for half.

Mike grinned. “It’s because they think you’re dark and mysterious. You’re like the one goth kid who everyone thinks is cool.”

“Ugh. What part of antisocial don’t they get?” I remarked with disgust.

Goth. What the hell? I liked black, and I liked books, and I didn’t like dealing with people. Apparently, all those kids with the ankhs and the fishnets and the heavy metal were doing it wrong.

“Are you going to help me or not?” Mike demanded.

I weighed my options. Jake was one of the few people I counted as a friend. He was like that. He transcended cliques. But was this really my job? My responsibility? Did I want it to be? I didn’t really owe either of them anything.

I sighed in defeat. “If I say yes, can I go smoke?”

“So I started going to parties with Jake. I started using my razor sharp wit and scathing humor to deter him from the coke and the alcohol, and it worked. For a little while. Until I started doing it myself.”

“Wow. For those of you just starting to listen, we’ve got Travis Parker in the studio with us today. Travis, a well-known former music journalist for Rolling Stone—“

“Oh stop, Tom, you’re making me blush.”

“And, more recently, the bestselling author of his autobiography: Cigarettes, Black Clothing, and a Bad Attitude: Travis Parkers’ Guide to Success. Now, Travis, you were telling
us about your high school years; one of the times, according to your book, that defined the rest of your life the most.”

“That’s right, mainly because of my experiences with Jake Reed, the former lead singer of Never Mind. Like I said before, Jake was one of the only friends I ever had, and he stayed that way up until the time of his death.”

“You toured with Never Mind for Rolling Stone for a little while, didn’t you? Were you with them when he died?”

“Sadly I wasn’t. I was only with them for one tour, writing my review for the man. I had left them by the time Jake died, to return to my glamorous little cubicle to slave over a machine I wanted nothing more than to bash in with an Oxford English Dictionary. But Jake and I still kept in touch, and I gave the band a positively glowing review, which they’d absolutely earned.”

“I remember reading that article, actually. So you knew Mike Barry in high school too?”

“A little bit but we weren’t best friends or anything. The only thing we really had in common was Jake. But even now, five years later, we still get together every couple of months and talk about him. He and I and Emily Reed, Jake’s wife, even started a charity together .”

“The Shannon Blue Reed Foundation for Recovery, right?”

“That’s the one. In fact, half the proceeds from my book will be going into that foundation, so I’d encourage anyone and everyone out there to pick up a copy. The world’s got too few real rock stars left to be losing them to drugs.”

“One last question before you go, Travis, and this one’s purely for my own curiosity. Wasn’t Shannon Blue the name of the last album Never Mind ever put out?”

“That’s right. It was Mike’s idea to name the album that. It’s the name of Jake’s daughter, and I honestly couldn’t think of a better way to tribute Jake Reed than to name his last work of art after his greatest. Thanks for having me on the show, Tom.”

“It was our pleasure, Travis.”

Emily Reed

“Why do you want to die?”

“Huh?” was his intelligent response. I guess I couldn’t really blame him. For this question, I mean. It had sort of come of out nowhere. Well, I couldn’t blame him for this, at least.

“Why do you want to die?” I repeated, slower, sure to enunciate every word carefully. It didn’t matter that I was insulting him. He never, ever got insulted, no matter what anyone said to him. It was one of the reasons why I fell in love with him in the first place. I cradled the phone a little closer in the futile hope that it would let me hear his thoughts. I used to be able to do that. I used to be able to hear his silence and know exactly what he was thinking. It didn’t work anymore.

“Well…I dunno. Do I want to die?” Great. Now he was answering my question with another question. Classic Jake.

Wash, rinse, and repeat. How long has this cycle been running for?

“Jake, you’ve wanted to be dead since the day I met you, and I understand that. It’s the 90s, and it’s cool to be miserable. Sometimes I think you’re the one who started that trend. But you’re…you’re so fucking numb, between that fad and the drugs that I honestly don’t even know that you’re not already dead.”

“So what? What do I have to live for anymore? I don’t even know why we’re still together! Should I keep living for the next fix? The next gig? The next groupie? Because that’s all I’ve got at this point. I’m sick of this life. I’m sick of this life and there’s nothing I can do about it.” He didn’t sound angry. He just sounded numb. Neutral. Cold. He usually did, these days.

“You were in rehab,” I said.

“Yeah, until the record company blackmailed me into touring! I signed a contract; I’ve got no choice, and there’s no rehab on tour, Emily. Everywhere I look, it’s there. Everyone’s shooting up, snorting, smoking, and I’m rapidly running out of reasons not to jump on the fucking bandwagon.”

I bit my lip and shut my eyes tightly, creating a less-than-watertight dam against the sudden stream of tears. I was about to jump off a proverbial cliff, and it could go one of two ways. I could either reawaken what died in him a long time ago, or I could drive him over the edge and lose him forever. But then again, if this continued, hadn’t I already lost him?

I took a deep breath and clutched the little white plastic stick a little harder. I had kept it sitting on my nightstand for all three months since I first took it. I kept it next to the sonogram photo that showed the outline of our baby girl. “I’m pregnant.”

Silence. Then, softly, “what?”

“I was late. A month late. I guess I didn’t really believe it was possible, I mean, since it was only the once before you left again on tour but…I guess that did the trick,” I laughed a little laugh that probably sounded more than a little hysterical. I tried listening to his thoughts again. Nothing, of course. “It’s been four months, so…the doctors were able to tell me the gender at my last appointment. It’s a girl.”

“I’m going to be a father?” He sounded like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. I wasn’t used to hearing that from him. Seems like I’d found the one thing that could render him speechless.

I nodded, then I remembered he couldn’t see me. “Yeah.”

Then I felt something. It had been almost a year since the last time I’d been able to hear what he was thinking in his silence, and now it finally worked again. I heard the smile coming before it erupted into triumphant laughter. I heard him ruffling sheets of paper and moving things around, and he started talking to me, laughing and asking questions and making jokes. He talked to me as I heard him scribbling in the background, and then he sang the song he’d just written for our daughter out loud. I couldn’t stop the tears. I didn’t even try, to be perfectly honest. Something just told me everything was going to be okay.

Everything gets better from here.

“Shows what I know though, I guess. Oh, god, listen to me. I’m sorry. I’m sure no one wants to listen to me sound bitter and complain.”

“On the contrary, Emily, they tune in every day just to listen to me do the same thing. For all you latecomers, we’ve got Emily Reed, professor of Music History at Seattle Pacific University in the studio today, talking to us about her late husband’s untimely death. Emily, it’s been about six years since Jake’s relapse and subsequent death, hasn’t it?”

“To the day, as a matter of fact. Coincidence, Tom?”

“What can I say? I’m a criminal mastermind trapped in the body of a radio personality. So, here’s another question, would you say that Jake’s widely missed by the music industry?”

“That’s an interesting question. Never Mind wasn’t on the scene for a terribly long time, you know, and they were never as good as, say, The Who, or as influential as The Clash, but I think that most of the music industry does at least remember Jake. He was the sort of man you couldn’t help but love, no matter how much you wanted to hate him. People just had this natural reaction to him. I can remember the Madison Square Garden show where Never Mind opened for Nirvana, and as Jake’s walking offstage he happens to walk past Kurt Cobain, and he just reaches out and gives him a high-five! Just as cool as can be, like it’s no big deal at all, and then he comes over to me, and I say “you know that was Kurt Cobain, right?” and he just smiles and says “really?” and shrugs. That’s a perfect example. Influential? Maybe not. Remembered? I don’t think there’s any question.”

“I’ve heard similar stories before. I don’t know how long you’ve been listening to the show Emily, but we’ve had both Mike Barry and Travis Parker on in the past.”

“Oh, I made sure to listen. Travis kept reminding me; he likes showing off. I remember one story he told in particular, of that night at the party in high school. By the time I got there they’d somehow managed to drag Jake downstairs and set him on the couch between them. When I walked in, the two of them were sitting on either side of him, and Jake’s snoring away in between them. They both looked so innocent. Of course I was suspicious.”

“So the three of you still keep in pretty close contact?”

“Oh yeah, Tom, absolutely. The two of them help me run the Shannon Blue Foundation for Recovery, which is the charity organization I set up after Jake’s death. It helps people struggling with addictions get help.”

“Speaking of your daughter, how is she doing these days? Never Mind’s last album with Jake on vocals was named after her, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right, Tom. It was Mike’s idea, and it was a beautiful gesture. Shannon’s doing fine, she’s every bit as pretty as her father and every bit as smart as me. Thank god.”

“Well Emily, we’re almost out of time, and I hope you won’t think that I keep harping on this topic, but…after that phone call you told us about before, was Jake really a different person? I mean, I know you’ve talked about how he was completely changed, but he did die of a coke OD, so…”

“It was a complete freak accident, Tom. There was this show in Detroit, and the crowd got violent and a riot ensued. Three people died, and seven more were hospitalized. I guess he just needed to escape for a few hours after that, but the fact is he WAS a different man. I think he saw Shannon as his second chance, a chance to be involved in a life without fucking it up. Oh. Sorry. Can I say that on the radio?”

“Which word? Bleep? Absolutely. Go on.”

“Right. He saw her as his second chance, his chance to be a better person, and he took it. This may seem random and unimportant, but it really sums up his change better than I ever could. During his last break before they went on the Shannon Blue tour, he went out and got part of a James Dean quote tattooed on his arm, so that he could always look at it if he needed to. It said: ‘This is going to be one terrific day, so you better live it up boy, because tomorrow maybe you’ll be gone.’ He was always such a kid. In a lot of ways, I don’t think he ever left high school. In his world, it was always cool to be miserable, and he was always trying to find that next high. I think that’s why Shannon made such a difference for him. I think he realized that after creating something as beautiful as our daughter, he was never going to be able to top that high.”

“Well, we’re almost out of time here now, Emily, but if you’ve got any last words for the unwashed masses, now’s the time to lay ‘em down.”

“I think the young Mr. Dean said it best, Tom. Live it up, because tomorrow you might be gone. And I guess…that’s all I’ve got.”

Today I learned that a parking lot is a horrible place to spend an anniversary

Yesterday I thought everything was going to work out perfectly

Three days ago I danced with her, and placed my hands on her hips

A week ago she slept in my bed

Three weeks ago we made love

Two months ago we were hundreds of miles apart, missing each other

Three months ago we kissed for the first time

Four months ago we sat under a tree and held hands

Five months ago we sat in the grass and I explained comic books to her

Six months ago I saw her from across the room, and couldn’t take my eyes off of her

Four years ago I decided someday I wanted to fall in love

Six months ago it happened

How do I begin this? Great tales of legend and heroes always have a hook, right? A first sentence that draws you in and captures you and refuses to let you go until you’ve finished. Well…I don’t have one of those, but I guess I should introduce myself? Okay. My name is Beauregard Shade. Don’t laugh at it, trust me.

You might regret it.

See, I’m a medium, which makes me sort of a…courier for the dead, if you will. When they have messages to send to the living, they come to me. I make it possible. And let me tell you, some days I really hate this job.

Which is how I ended up outside the residence of one Hank McCoy, in one of the middle-class-but-still-too-expensive neighborhoods of Brooklyn, in the rain. But that’s okay, it’s always raining on days I have to work. Just the universe’s little way of kicking me in the shins. I pulled the collar of my thick beige trenchcoat higher up around my neck and braced myself, raised a finger and pushed the little button next to the name ‘McCoy.’ This part of the job never was very fun. So I waited, in the rain. It must’ve taken him fifteen minutes to finally answer.

“Yes?” his electronic voice came through the callbox, and even through the distortion I could hear the hesitancy and heartbreak in his voice.

I took a deep breath and forced the words out of my lungs. “Mr. McCoy, my name is Beauregard Shade. I was wondering if I might be able to have a word with you?” Yeah, soul of professional courtesy, that’s me.

“I…I’m sorry, but…I’m afraid I can’t take any callers at this time.” Poor guy. I could imagine how he must feel. But this couldn’t wait.

“It’s about your wife, Mr. McCoy, and believe me, you want to hear this.”

There was another pause, and I could almost hear him struggling with himself internally. Then, finally:

“I’ll be right down.”

No buzzing me up, I noticed. Smart man.

When Hank McCoy opened the door, I really had no preconceived notions of what he might look like, but I was still a little taken aback. Mr. Henry “Hank” McCoy was a tiny little fella with thin hair that still kept its ginger roots and big bright blue eyes behind thick spectacles that magnified them by at least ten times. The overall effect was, to say the least, startling. I liked him already.

“Hi,” I said brightly, but he just continued staring. I’m not a very interesting guy to look at, but I guess I wasn’t what he expected. Between my permanently mussed dark brown hair and my bright green eyes, coupled with the two small silver rings in my left earlobe and the square silver spectacles, I must’ve looked a little out of place in the white button-down dress shirt, tie, and black slacks.

Mr. McCoy blinked at my tie for a moment. I couldn’t really understand what had him so fascinated with it; it was just a plain black tie. Oh, maybe it was the piano keys…

I fumbled in one of the pockets of my coat and finally came up with a business card that looked like it had been through World War II, Vietnam, and Thanksgiving with my family collectively. “Like I said before, Mr. McCoy, my name is Beauregard Shade, and I need to speak with you on behalf of your wife.”

And suddenly his attention was back on me. He’d moved from staring at my tie to staring at my shoes in either horror or fascination, I couldn’t tell which. But, to be fair, red high-top Converses are just about the sexiest shoes ever made.

“My wife is dead,” Hank said flatly.

I didn’t say anything; I just offered him the card again. He took it and glanced at it, then back up at me, then back to the card, before finally settling back on me. He raised an eyebrow.

“Psychic medium?”

“That’s two separate titles, actually,” I said smoothly. “I’m a psychic and a medium.”

“What’s the difference?”

“About six letters,” I answered, flashing him my most charming smile. “Would you mind if I came in?”

He ignored my question, his eyebrows kitting in consternation. “What exactly are you trying to sell me here, Mr. Shade?”

“I’m not trying to sell you anything, Mr. McCoy, I’m just here to do my job.”

“And what, exactly, is that?

I sighed. “Here’s the thing, Hank. May I call you Hank?” He nodded. “Here’s the thing, Hank. Your wife’s got something to tell you. Something that can not wait. And I’m the lucky duck who gets to deliver it. Here. At your apartment. In the rain.”

He missed the hint. Again. “I’m sorry, son, but I’m afraid I just don’t have the money for-”

“Oh, no,” I interrupted, laughing a little softly. “It won’t cost you a thing. Like I said, this is my job. I don’t accept tips.”

He glanced over his shoulder once and turned back to me. “Well…okay, go on then.”

“It’s…just a bit more complicated then that, Mr. McCoy.”

He frowned. It didn’t suite him. “How much more complicated?”

“Well, I’ll need to set up. Then I’ll have to get in contact with Death and negotiate the terms, and then-”

“Listen…I…don’t know about this,” Hank McCoy cut in, fidgeting nervously.

I could tell I was going to have to sell him. I leaned closer to the little guy and he flinched back ever so slightly.

“Your wife died two nights ago, Mr. McCoy. Her name was Janet Evelyn McCoy. She died in her sleep, of a brain tumor that no one knew she had. Her parents didn’t come to her funeral. In 1987 she had a miscarriage, and in 1991 she had another. The second one almost killed her. She was pronounced dead for approximately twenty minutes before the doctors were able to resuscitate her. During those twenty minutes, you smoked exactly a pack and a half of cigarettes. You were married in 1985. Her wedding vows ended ‘I love you, Hank McCoy, in this life and the next.’ It’s engraved on the inside of your wedding ring. And her favorite color,” I added as an afterthought. “Was periwinkle.”

He stared at me for a second, and then swung the door open. “First floor. Second door on the left.”

I smiled at him and stepped inside and out of the rain, but now that I could see all of him, he was even more of a wreck than I had thought. He was dressed in a cheap tuxedo, wrinkled and rumpled as if he’d been wearing it for several days. In the florescent light of the staircase, I could see his robin’s-egg-blue eyes were red and bloodshot, and they lacked something. A certain sparkle that I could tell was absent. He blinked owlishly under my scrutiny. My heart went out to him.

The apartment reflected the man living in it. Boxes and boxes of old photographs lay around, on the floor and the worn old recliner and on the tiny kitchen table. Everywhere. A half-full photo album lay open on the coffee table next to a formidable pile of used Kleenex, and a stack of old vinyl records leaned precariously next to the old record player. The apartment itself was probably very attractive thirty or forty years ago, but now the dingy windows and peeling wallpaper made it significantly less so. All the same, you could tell it had been lived in. It had that sense of security and love. It was a home.

“Uh…sorry about the mess,” Hank said, rubbing the palms of his hand against his tuxedo pants, as if he didn’t quite know what to do with them.

“its fine,” I nodded at the scrapbook. “You working on that?”

Hank nodded. “Janet…she would always take pictures, everywhere we’d go. At the supermarket, on vacations, even just out to lunch. ‘Why do you have to take so many pictures?’ I’d ask her. ‘What’re you gonna do with all of them?’ And she’d say ‘I’ll look back at them later and remember.’ But they always ended up in boxes in storage. Never stopped her, though. I guess I thought…” he shook his head. “I think I’m talking too much. Have a seat. Can I get you anything, Mr.…?”

“Call me Beau,” I told him, smiling warmly. “And a cup of tea would be great, if you have it.”

“Sure. Earl Grey?”

“Perfect.”

I settled down on the tiny, ugly, paisley sofa and closed my eyes. I listened to Hank McCoy move around the kitchen and rattle cups and plates and I slowed my breathing. The noise would be my anchor, now it was time to strike a bargain.

When I open my eyes, I am in another world. Not literally, of course, but I wont go into the theological mumbo-jumbo. Anyway, I stand on barren earth, devoid of anything even resembling scenery. No plants grow, no mountains rise up in the distance. Just dry, cracked, brown dirt, and it stretches out in all directions, as far as they eye can see. The permanently overcast sky shows everything in a grayish tint, and the amber clouds moving by overhead do so with astonishing speed. It reminds me of the movies, when they try to signify a time change, only here, time never changes. It’s one of three other worlds I’ve visited, and sadly enough, I think it’s the most attractive. All its missing is the sign. ‘Welcome to scenic Limbo, please enjoy your stay.’

“Well, well, well,” a deep, raspy voice says from behind me. “Beauregard Shade. How now, spirit? Wither wander thee?”

I sigh and turn around. “Come on, Death, drop the Reaper routine already.”

Death wears a long, flowing black robe that seems to suck ambient light into its depths and covers his entire body, except for the skeletal hands that stick out from the ends of the sleeves and the bony toes that protrude from the hemline. A deep hood casts an impenetrable shadow over his entire face and makes it impossible to see his features. However, two crimson lights glow from the depths, and they cast just enough light to see the bleached bone eye sockets that house them. Yet even as I watch, Death throws back the hood and all of that melts away.

Death’s true form is that of a young man no older than twenty-five. Tall and whiplash thin, with short black hair that meets in a small mohawk in the middle of his head, a close-cut beard and goatee, and silver-rimmed square eyeglasses over plain dark brown eyes. His robe has vanished, to reveal a Blue Oyster Cult t-shirt that says, in big electric blue letters, ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper,’ a pair of plain faded blue jeans, and sandals.

“Dammit, Beau,” Death says angrily. “Why, man? Why do you have to mess up my G-A-M-E? Why do you have to ruin my image? Seriously, I’m freaking Death, man! Can’t we show just a little respect to the Reaper of Souls?”

“Not if the Reaper of Souls is going to keep referring to himself in the third person.”

Death sighs and hangs his head in defeat. “What do you want, dude?”

“Standard stuff,” I say cheerily, looking around. “Where’s your scythe?”

Death scoffs “It’s the 21^st century, bro. I upgraded,” and, from seemingly nowhere, produces a sleek black palm-pilot. On the back, engraved and inlayed with silver, is the image of a scythe blade.

“Nice. Very classy.”

“Why, thank you,” he says, and whips out the small black stylus with a flourish. He makes a show of going to hit a button, but then stopping. I roll my eyes. This waltz is tedious, but it’s necessary. Death is big on proper channels.

So from inside my coat, I produce a plain brown paper sack and toss it to him. He grabs it greedily and opens it, riffling through its contents.

“It’s all there,” I assure him. “I had a little trouble finding the Hellboys, apparently the store around the corner from me doesn’t save the back issues, but the Punishers came through just fine.”

“Doesn’t save the back issues…I tell ya, Beau, the living get less and less taste every year,” Death says, shaking his head sadly, and suddenly, the bag is gone. He hits a button on his Scythe 2.0. “So, who do you need?”

“Janet Evelyn McCoy. She came through two nights ago.”

“Janet Evelyn McCoy,” Death says thoughtfully, scrolling through a list. “Yeah, here she is…oh, sorry dude, I sent her on already.”

“The good place or the bad place?”

“The good place, but-”

“Then you can get her back.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Death protests. “I mean-”

“The hell it doesn’t,” I say angrily, taking a step closer and seizing him by the collar. I’d heard of embracing death, but this was ridiculous. Don’t let the bad joke fool you, though. I’m mad as heck and I’m not gonna take it anymore. Can I actually harm Death? Well…probably not. Do I care? Probably even more not. “I’ve got an old man back in his overpriced, lonely apartment making scrapbooks and wearing the same tuxedo he wore to his wife’s funeral two nights ago. I told him he had to talk to his wife, and no one, not you, not God, not even the fucking devil, is going to keep me from giving him that tiny little moment of comfort.”

Death stands silent for a second, then. I can tell what’s going through his head. He knows I don’t have the kind of power it would take to really make good on my threat, especially not here in neutral territory. I can see him weighing his options in his head, calculating exactly how much power he would need to crush me like an insect. But instead, all he says is “it won’t be easy.”

I exhale. “Thank you.”

“Or cheap. I mean, I’m gonna have to call in some serious favors, and-“

“I’d owe you one, Death.”

“Pssh. You owe me too many to count as it is, Shade.”

“How long?” I ask in relief.

“Right…about…now,” he says smugly, crossing his arms over his chest.

And just like that, a woman is suddenly standing next to me. She’s about as tall as me, with the type of plain, wholesome good looks that mean she was a beauty in her younger days. Her hair is a very dignified brown, shot through with sparse strands of iron grey, and her clear green eyes hold obvious warmth. She looks around in confusion, and finally settles her eyes on me.

“You heard me,” she whispers in disbelief, and she takes a step forward, brushing her fingertips against my now-dry coat as if to make sure I’m really there. It’s the same tone of voice her husband used when he first spoke to me, but it sounds better coming from her. “You came.”

“I’m sorry to pull you away from paradise so soon, Mrs. McCoy, but would you still like to say good-bye to your husband?” I ask. I smile at her, and she smiles back through ghostly tears and nods. Was it worth the ass-kicking I almost received? Hell yes.

“Then good luck, dude,” Death interrupts. He raises his hands to his collar and jerks at the air there. The hood of his robe settles around him once more, and he becomes the traditional image of death again. “I shall see thee again soon, Beauregard Shade. Perhaps,” he adds, the two crimson lights narrowing at me. “Sooner than thou may think.”

I roll my eyes again. Show-off. “Take my hand, Mrs. McCoy. Let’s get you home.”

She did. Her hand is trembling, and warm. I squeeze it reassuringly, and drift back to the sound of rattling pots and pans, to a cramped little apartment in Brooklyn, with peeling wallpaper and dirty windows and a man who is currently making me a cup of tea. Mmm. Tea.

“How do you take it, with cream or sug-“

I opened my eyes to the sound of breaking china and I sighed. Hank McCoy stood in the doorway, hands still poised as if to hold a cup, but the broken pieces and spreading puddle of tea on the kitchen floor spoke to a different story. Beside me, Janet McCoy slid the half-finished photo album out of her lap and rose to her feet. She walked past her husband, who stood rooted to that spot in the doorway, the knuckles on his hands white from being clenched so hard. Janet picked up a dishtowel and a sponge and got down on her hands and knees to mop up the tea. Then she got a broom and dustpan and swept up the remains of the china cup. She placed them on the counter and leaned there heavily, her eyes closed and her back heaving with sobs. Hank watched her throughout, his eyes displaying the distrust in his heart. Hank McCoy didn’t want to believe that his wife was in their kitchen, just in case it wasn’t true.

“Hank, you idiot,” she said, turning around and smiling through her tears. “It’s me.”

“Janet? But…my God, how?” Suddenly he was across the room, and he grabbed her and pulled her into a tight embrace. “No, nevermind, I don’t care. You’re here, and that’s all that matters.”

Janet McCoy shook her head sadly. “No, Hank, I’m dead. I just came back to say good-bye. And to tell you…I love you. In this life, and the next.”

“I love you, too,” Hank said, and then he kissed her. It was not a Hollywood kiss. It wasn’t chaste, it wasn’t clean, it was sloppy and passionate and it went on for probably longer than it should have. And it was beautiful.

“I have to go, Hank,” she whispered when they broke apart, touching the side of his face tenderly.

“Stay with me, Janet.”

\ “I can’t.”

“Don’t go,” he pleaded.

“I have to, Hank.”

She kissed him once more, and then she turned to me and dashed the tears from her eyes. I nodded once, and let the power slip away from me, and as I did she started to fade away. Hank pulled her closer, trying to physically hold her there. She leaned in and whispered something into his ear. I overheard.

“Live, Hank. Just…live, baby.”

And then she was gone.

“Periwinkle,” Hank said quietly, picking up one of the fragmented pieces of a tea cup that was indeed that color. “Who in the world’s favorite color is periwinkle?”

“Personally,” I said, rummaging in my coat pocket and pulling out a red and white pinwheel mint in a cellophane wrapper. The kind they have sitting in dishes next to the doors at restaurants. I squeezed it out of the plastic and popped it into my mouth, savoring the peppermint. The plant it’s named after represents rebirth and new beginnings, and that’s what it tasted like against my tongue. “It’s always looked good to me.”

Mr. Henry “Hank” McCoy looked at me then, tears running down his face, and reached into the pocket of his tux jacket as well. But what he produced was the antithesis of my mint. He pulled out a small revolver and pressed it into my hands.

“Just…get rid of it, please,” he begged me, and then he smiled through his tears, and I could see the sparkle in his eyes again. That certain something that had been missing earlier, and I wondered if he, too, could taste the peppermint. “And…thank you, Beau.”

I left.

My name is Beauregard Shade. Some days, I really hate this job.

Today isn’t one of those days.

It’s graduation day. The auditorium is packed, everyone’s in their seats. And then the music starts. It’s the standard graduation theme, but I keep waiting for the electronic beat to kick in. That’s what happens when I listen to too much Vitamin C. And I have been, almost nonstop. I can feel the tears starting to come, but I don’t fight it off. I’m sick of doing that. Let them come. I sneak a glance around, and I recognize everyone. That surprises me, more than anything. I never realized just how close I’d gotten to these people. That kid from my Algebra class sophomore year, who’d always ask to copy the answers, that girl who by some twist of fate has been in my Spanish class every single time, and even that guy I got into a fight with on the first day of 9^th grade. I’m going to miss them all. I guess I just never realized how much of an imprint one touch could leave on our lives.

Of course the usual suspects are there too. She’s standing right next to me, and the gown makes her look beautiful. Breathtaking, really. And he’s on the other side of her, holding her hand. I watch him brush his thumb across her knuckles and clench her hand tighter. She returns the gesture. I look away, down the row towards the other side of me. I’m going to miss them all, no doubt about it. He used to talk about angry German metal to me, and try to get me to listen to it, and I tried to explain the mechanics of skanking to him. That girl, she used to tell me all the sordid details of her sex life with her boyfriend during psychology class, and he used to tell me the same stuff one hour later in economics. That blonde girl’s cried on my shoulder, and so has that guy on the end. And I’ve watched anime and discussed comic books with most of the geeks standing together over there. In t-minus seven hours and counting, I’m going to have to say goodbye to all of them for what very well could be the last time.

The tears on my graduation gown are a baptism. This part of my life’s going to be over in a very short while, and a whole new one is going to start. The real world’s going to come crashing down on me like a tsunami on a third-world country, and I’m going to be caught in the undertow. These people and this school have been the anchors I’ve been clinging to, and now all that’s left is for me to let go. But that doesn’t mean I forget. Never forget.

So now we’re at a beach, even though there’s really no beach near our school. But everyone’s here and I can taste the nostalgia, and brush it with my fingertips. It’s the sweetest nectar I’ve ever tasted, and I know it’s a sensation I’ll remember for the rest of my life. No one’s saying good bye, I notice, and I’m grateful for that. I make idle conversation with a few, and I have deep meaningful conversations with the rest, until I can’t take it anymore. I drift away, towards the bonfire someone started. Its huge now and the sparks make new, temporary constellations against the night sky. The heat washes over me, and I bask in it. When I look into the center of it, I feel a sensation I’ve never felt before, and I realize very quickly what it is. I’m living. This is me, living my life. That’s my heart beating, and I’ve never noticed it before. Someone tosses more fuel into it, and the flames touch the sky. My soul goes along for the ride.

I see them sitting over there, off to the side. She’s in his lap, and they’re whispering quietly to each other. He grins wickedly and says something into her ear. She laughs and smiles that genuine smile I’ve seen maybe a handful of times. He pulls her closer and she shivers, nuzzling into his neck, and he smiles that genuine smile I’ve seen a million times, but only when he’s with her. I get up and walk slowly over there, counting my steps and watching the sand enclose my bare toes with every one, and all too soon I’m there. They both look up, and grin slightly. I smile back, and sit down next to them. She leans over and hugs me, and he watches. I look into his eyes, and there’s no spark of jealousy. No quick flash of anger. No glare of “that’s mine.” He notices me looking at him, and then there’s something there. Friendship. Understanding. Kinship. Suddenly, we’re best friends again.

I wrap my arms around my legs and pull my knees up to my chest. My vision blurs as I watch them all mill about. Against the backlight of the bonfire, my friends have become silhouettes, drifting in and out of focus through the tears that are gathering in my eyes. They’re slowly losing form and definition. They’re slowly fading from my life. Then I understand that if they look like silhouettes when they’re moving, what do I look like sitting here with my head in my hands? So I get up, and I join in. We’re a group of dumb high school students who won’t be able to call themselves that anymore in a half an hour, but for now we’ve done the impossible. We’ve stopped time. No matter what else happens, we can at least say that we stopped the world for an hour. But for now, the future’s holding out both hands, ready to pull us to the next part of our lives, and no one’s going to the same place.

What we’ve come to is a crossroads. We’re looking at the gray. We stand on the edge of a cliff, and it’s the tallest one we’re ever going to have to peer over. We can’t see the bottom, and when we scream into it, all we hear is an echo. We can’t step back; we can’t run away, we can’t even stop. All we can do is take that last deep breath and jump. But if it’s all the same to you, I’m going to keep screaming.

The hill is the first thing you see when you enter our village. It’s not technically inside the village proper, but when you leave the rest of the world behind, when you cross over, the hill is the first thing you see. It rises gently towards the sky, like a child reaching for something they want, but are in no hurry to get. The tall grass that blankets it like a familiar, lethargic lover always sways gently in the wind. The wind is always blowing on that hill. Watching. Waiting. For what, no one was entirely sure, even though all of them suspected the truth. That the wind was waiting for me.

So I pushed into the breeze, unyielding, defiant, and determined to prove myself the stronger. Our age-old game, and my “welcome home.” Oh, he fought back, of course, (that was part of the game) but we both knew he wouldn’t win. It had been years since the wind was able to knock me down. Not since I was a child. But as I grew up and got stronger, I started to win, and he would cry bitter tears and howl out his anger all through the night. It used to drive the adults in the village crazy, but that just made me laugh harder. You see, the wind may have been dead everywhere else in the world, but not here. Not in our village.

In our village, the wind still plays games with us, and I’m not a child anymore, but this isn’t a game you have to be a child to play. These sorts of contests of strength were enjoyed by everyone. I can still remember how Joseph used to play with the rocks and stones when we were little, and how he would win, too.

‘He’s a strong one, that Joseph,’ the adults would say. ‘That Joseph’s going to make us proud.’

I couldn’t push against the rocks. I wasn’t strong enough to play with them. But the wind and I always had an understanding. A special, unique one. Rock would speak to Joseph, but we could all understand it, just like when Water and Tree sang together at night. When Wind spoke, I was the only one who could truly understand him.

“You’ve been gone a long time,” Wind whispered in my ear, finally satisfied with our game.
“I know,” I answered, letting myself fall back into the grass of the hill and basking in the sensation of falling. “I missed you a lot. The wind is dead everywhere else in the world.”
“I know,” Wind said.

“Has anything changed in the village? Is everyone still the same?” I asked.

“It was lonely, you know, by myself. No one would play with me,” Wind continued, unabated, dancing about me, refusing to settle.

My body tensed and my heart beat sped up in my chest. I sat up sharply. “Wind!”

“Yes?” he paused.

“What happened?” I asked again. Wind was never, nor would he ever be, the greatest at focusing, but I knew for a fact that he could answer my question. Which left only one possibility. He was hiding something. “What happened?”

Wind stopped his dancing altogether and sat down next to me with a gusty sigh. “It was Sun.”

“What?” There was disbelief evident in my voice, but relief in my heart. At least it wasn’t Rose.

Rose. The reason I had left in the first place. Actually, there had been a couple of reasons, but this particular reason just happened to be the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. When she got sick…well, the village may have been magical by the standards of the outside world, but no amount of ancient secrets could replace the advances made by modern medicine in the last hundred years alone. So I left, with the same vow that every one of the few people who had ever left the village had made before they journeyed forth. The promise to return. Only difference was, I had intended to keep mine.

“Sun flickered. She went out. It only lasted about a second, but…we all figure it means something. The old one, the stargazer-”

“Elijah.”

“Yes, he’s been trying to read the stars, but he’s not been having much luck.”

“Why? Will the stars not speak to him?”

“It’s not that,” Wind looked around cautiously, as if afraid Elijah might be standing right behind him, then he grinned mischievously and leaned forward to whisper in my ear. “It’s that he gets blinder every year.”

And then Wind laughed lightly, his previously serious mood destroyed. I smiled a little myself and lay back on the hill beside him and felt the grass sway under me. The sun beat down on us now, and she didn’t look like she was going to flicker. She was always strong, always broad, always…there. To have her gone would be the most horrible thing I could imagine. She was our mother.

“You wanna play?” Wind offered.

“Not right now. I’m tired,” I yawned and felt Wind caress my face softly. He knew that put me right to sleep.

And then I woke up, and I couldn’t feel Sun on my face anymore. My eyes snapped open in terror, and then I groaned.

“I thought the sun went out,” I moaned, slinging an arm across my eyes.

“Nah, just to sleep,” Moon informed me, knocking some ash off the end of his cigarette. I fixed my eyes on it.

“That’s new.”

Moon shrugged.

“It’s bad for your health.”

He snorted.

“They cause cancer.”

“You’ve been out in there for three years, kid. In the world. You think one of these little things is going to kill me?” Moon raised the cylinder up and took another drag. “The rest of the world’s a cancer, kid. This thing? This is harmless.”

“Sun wouldn’t approve.”

Moon gave a throaty chuckle at that. “You’re right about that much. Where’s your pal?”

Then I realized Wind was gone. I pushed down my panic and waved a hand vaguely. I kept reminding myself that this wasn’t the outside world. The wind wasn’t dead, it was gloriously alive. With Moon though, you had to be careful. You couldn’t let him know when you are scared or upset or worried. He was tricky like that.

“He’s around,” I said.

“How long are you planning to lie on this hill?”

“Long as I need to. I’ll go into the village tomorrow.”

He shrugged again. “Your call.”

I nodded, and lay back down in the grass. I kept my eyes open this time, though. Wind was asleep, and Moon was awake, which meant it was the very deepest night. Time and Space would be dancing soon, and Dreams would play the flute. I didn’t want to miss that. It had been a long time since I had seen that sight. Then I heard the first note in the still night air, and my heart broke and soared into the sky in the same instant. I took an involuntary breath and fell back onto my elbows. I had been unprepared. I had forgotten what it was like. But the strains of the music were unmistakable once they started. Nobody could make the music that Dreams made. Think of the greatest music, the sweetest aria, the most moving orchestral movement, the deepest, most bone-shaking drumbeat you have ever heard, and multiply it into the heavens. That’s what that first note from Dreams’ flute feels like, because it’s not so much a sound as it is a sensation. A triumphant climax of music and sensation.

“So the windspeaker’s back,” Space said, twisting around me. Space was always a little scary. Like being in the middle of infinity. With Time it was the same way, but Time was calm. Serene. Space was chaotic and full.

“It would appear so,” Time agreed, surrounding me and coaxing Space away. And they began to dance. “We’ve all missed you.”

“Really?” I ask.

“No,” Space said, and giggled. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Yes.”

“No one who left ever came back, you know,” Time tells me.

“I know,” I said.

“She’s been waiting.”

I blushed slightly and turned my head so I could hear Dreams’ music better. Time and Space continued to waltz, turning simultaneous somersaults in the air and holding each other so close they seem to become one being. If you look closely, you can see the entire cosmos contained within this masquerade. It’s an age-old dance (not that that has any relevance here, considering Space’s partner) and they love to have an audience. Normally there’s a whole crowd and they do it in the center of the village, but I suppose they chose this spot as sort of a welcome back for me. Despite Space’s earlier claim, they did miss me. They missed all their children when they were gone. Space and Time helped raise me, and so did Dreams, in its own way. Dreams never stopped playing, whether or not it could we never knew. I don’t think even Space and Time knew. But Dreams would play lullabies for us when we were children, to put us to sleep. It would sit and play long after we had fallen asleep, and would stay there until we awoke. Time and Space were different. They were always somewhat distant, like they were in their own little world where nothing else mattered but the two of them. They continued to dance, but they kept a steady eye on the moon. Like I said, you had to be careful when Moon was involved.
We have a legend in our village, that there was once a beautiful woman born here. So beautiful, they say, that she could freeze a stream, just by looking at it, and by the same token, melt it with a wink. She grew up in much the same way we did, playing with the water and trees, wrestling the rocks, listening to the song of dreams. Then, one day, Moon took notice of her, and spurning Sun’s warm and caring comfort, instead embraced this young maiden. She became impregnated, and bore him many thousands of children. Now Sun was a warm and nurturing being by nature, but she was also prone to great bouts of fury (much like any woman) and, maddened by love and fueled by vengeance, rained fire down on the land. The fire struck each of the millions of children, and they were all carried into the sky by the sheer force. However, the sun made it clear that she never wanted to see them again, and so they hid during the day, and thus the stars were born.

“S’not true, you know,” Moon informed me, gazing at the dancing pair, the cigarette balanced between his lips, inexplicably dark blue smoke drifting from the lit end.

“What isn’t?” I asked, curious.

“The legend. The stars are our children. Mine and the suns,” the moon blew out a cloud of smoke, the tendrils forming designs and patterns in the still air. The smoke formed two spheres, one tinted blue and the other gold. At first they were two, and then suddenly they came together into one and dissolved, the smoke drifted away through the still night air, the two strands twisting and intertwining with each other until they vanished.

I couldn’t speak. Moon never talked to anyone from the village. At least not earnestly, like he was now. He never talked about anything important. Yet here he was, sitting on the hill with me, telling me things no one else in the world knew.

“I love Sun. She’s my other half. My better half. I wouldn’t jeopardize that. Not for anything. I know everyone thinks I’m a cold, arrogant bastard. And I am,” he smirked that famous smirk. “But Sun sees more than that. She’s my lady, and I love her with all my being. I would do anything for her.”

I nodded. I knew what he meant.

“I know that you know what I meant,” he continued, his smirk widening into a full-blown smile. “You feel the same way about her, don’t you? Your Rose?”

“I…yes. Yeah, I do.”

“Did you really find what you needed? Out there?” he asked me.

“I did. I can save her now.”

Another cloud of blue smoke was released into the air. “Good.”

I stood up and kicked off my sandals, standing up and reveling in the feel of the grass between my toes. Grass always did feel good. He was a little too humble, but I guess I would be too, if I were in his situation.

“Hey, Moon?” I said, feeling the breeze stir my hair, and I knew Wind was back.

“Yeah, kid?” he looked over at me questioningly.

“Wanna play?”

He stopped, fixed me with an incredulous stare, and grinned. With a casual wrist motion he flicked the rest of his cigarette away. “Sure, why not?”

50,000 names written on the wall
50,000 more children waiting to fall
As the soldiers of tomorrow replace the bodies of today
There are 50,000 mothers screaming “THERE’S A BETTER WAY!”
50,000 people march down the path
And 50,000 innocents suffer a nation’s wrath
When they march in time, the light shines through their legs
After the oil’s gone and we’re still draining the dregs
They’re reflected off the wall
A boy walking tall
Made a man by the bloodshed is what they said
While they all sleep sound in their presidential beds

So who am I, and why do I deserve a blog?

I'm a writer, a slacker, a boyfriend, and a daydreamer.

Here's a list of things I like to do:
1. Write things on other things.
2. Lean on things.
3. Lie in the grass on sunny days.
4. Run.

Perhaps this list will increase with time.

This is where I'll be putting a lot of fiction, a few poems, and maybe the occasional thought or two. I don't really expect you guys to keep coming back to check on a daily basis, but I thought it would be nice to have a place I can put everything.

So, this has been a test of the Thousand Paper Cranes writing blog. Had this been an actual post, you would've read something interesting. Maybe.

"This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace in the world."