A Million Heavens by John Brandon

Author:John Brandon
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Horror, Westerns, Fiction, Literary, Gothic, Visionary & Metaphysical, Occult & Supernatural
ISBN: 9781938073328
Publisher: McSweeney's
Published: 2011-12-31T18:30:00+00:00

REGGIE

There was a breeze. There were no windows but there was a breeze from somewhere. It carried blatant scents such as chlorine, such as the smell of a heater kicking on for the first time since last winter, but also scents Reggie had to guess at—dollar bills, dead batteries. The breeze was cool and the floor had become comfortably warm, like the floor of the bathroom in that fancy hotel Reggie had stayed in on a trip to Colorado with a friend’s family. Reggie’s living area was spacious, a hall again, but he made a decision not to recommence his laps. The bar and the library had returned, and Reggie prepared himself Irish whiskeys and perched on a stool like a customer. He’d never been a real customer at a bar because he’d died before turning twenty-one and had never felt compelled to procure a fake ID. He sat across from the bottles and sometimes he looked past them into the mirror and his face didn’t show him a barren, lethargic street anymore—maybe, instead, a beat-up stretch of interstate, a stretch of interstate that didn’t go anywhere exciting but that the locals appreciated. Reggie had to use more ice in his whiskey than his father did, and couldn’t take down an honest gulp until some of the ice had melted. He never carried his drink to another part of the hall and never left a drink unfinished. He sat in the red chair in the library and committed to a novel, a five-hundred-pager by an Italian in which all the characters realized they were characters, understood they were mere artifice, and began hopping trains in every direction to confuse the author. The billowing exhaust from the trains was described in a fancy way and from what Reggie could tell looked exactly like the sluggishly circulating smoke huffs that hung above the main hall. Reggie’s mat did not return. Instead, a hammock. Reggie had never been in a hammock before, and it was almost too comfortable. The breeze was stiff enough to rock it. Reggie didn’t bring books to the hammock. He drank in the bar and read in the library and rested in the hammock.

Reggie’s next song was ready. He started by messing around on the harmonica—warming up, putting some cracks in the quiet—but soon it was time to earnestly compose so he shucked his shirt and picked up the guitar. He had no idea how many songs were in him. Reggie cracked his fingers and began playing. He knew what was coming but it sounded different hearing it on the air than it sounded in his brain, as if the songs were made of an element that enlivened upon contact with oxygen. He was enjoying writing songs again, and would’ve been doing it whether or not he was rewarded. He hadn’t asked for any of the luxuries the afterlife was showering on him. His inclination was to feel bribed, kept, but these were concepts from the world of the living.

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