Artist Insane .com

Josh walked into the apartment, closed the door behind him and dropped his keys plus a pile of mail on the bookshelf by the door.  Kneeling down to the level of the dark brown tabby rubbing back and forth against his legs, he gave the cat’s head and neck a vigorous scratching.

“Hey, Sultan.  You haven’t had much attention lately, have you pal?”  he asked his furry roommate.  “Yeah, I know.  Humans.  There’s just no excuse for us, is there?”   Feeling hungry for the first time in days – an irony not lost on him that he’d only just left a diner – he stood up, went to the fridge and rummaged through its freezer, at last pulling out a single-serve frozen dinner, followed closely by Sultan, who expressed his pleasure at Josh’s homecoming by noisily crunching the remnants of his morning feeding in the bowl beside it.

Josh tossed the dinner in the microwave, then returned to the fridge to pour a glass of water from the bottle Julie always kept filled…swearing at himself under his breath when he realized it was empty – and why.

Refusing to surrender the sense of relative peace he’d newly discovered over the last hour or two, he took the bottle to the sink, filled it to the brim, and poured a few ounces in Sultan’s water dish before replacing it on the shelf. Seconds later the microwave emitted the annoying, high-pitched beep that seemed diabolically designed to punish a hangover, signaling his meal was ready.  He grabbed a fork from a nearby drawer, hit the button to open the door, and pulled the plastic cover from his dinner, drawing back in haste as a cloud of steam wafted out, causing him to shake his hand in pain.  Heading back to the fridge once more and finding only a few bottles of Samuel Adams, he plucked one from the pack, eagerly wrapping his still burning fingers around the comforting coolness of its neck.  Gingerly balancing his molten-lava-like dinner on the other hand, he at last made his way to the couch and sat down heavily, letting out a tired but not unhappy sigh.

He opened his beer and took a long draught, immediately regretting not having waited for his food to cool and eaten some of it beforehand to prevent his empty stomach from rebelling against this sudden intrusion of icy liquid.  Sultan padded in to sprawl on the carpet a few feet away, and Josh sat very still for a moment, one hand clutched to his mouth, waiting for the nausea to ebb.  Finally feeling a bit relieved, he decided to delay a few more minutes before introducing food to his already confused system, and walked to the bookshelf to pick up the pile of mail.  Bringing it back to the couch, he sat down and began flipping through envelopes – bills, solicitations, etc. – before stopping at one sent via overnight mail from the record label’s New York offices, which he tore open impatiently.

“Dear Mr. Gray,” it began, “congratulations on joining forces with us in bringing your work to the music-buying public.  This letter is to remind you of a few requirements of your contract and to request some additional information we’ll need in order to begin moving forward with recording of your album here in NYC.”

Josh scoffed, scanned the rest of the letter – which went on to discuss arrangements for housing and the need to submit an official band name…an odd thing to be lacking after ten years with the same lineup, all members would admit.  But, Josh had been the one who’d started out with a full repertoire of material when the others began backing him for fun in high school, and as he had remained both the primary writer and the voice behind the songs over the years, it had been his billing alone that prevailed up to this point.  It had also been his suggestion to change that when they got a record deal.

Josh wasn’t thinking about monikers, however, when he tossed the letter aside in disgust; rather, he was recalling that old joke about the devil’s tour of a sunny resort-like hell shown a “lucky” soul given the opportunity to glimpse the afterworld before choosing which side of it he’d one day like to occupy.  Finding after death that the reality was vastly darker than he’d been led to expect, the devil exclaims in sneering glee, “Then you were a prospect; now you’re a client.”  Faced with the similar reality of “his” label’s sudden ownership of both his product and “placement,” Josh was beginning to feel equally duped – and equally displeased.

Turning away from the mail entirely, he took a few bites of macaroni and cheese, then polished off the rest of his beer.  Reaching for the phone, he dialed and waited for Chris’s voicemail greeting of an originally composed invitation to leave a message.

“Yeah…it’s me.  Hey, I don’t think I’m gonna come to that gig tonight.  Hope it goes well, though…and I…uh…I guess I’ll talk to you later.  Bye.”

Carrying the largely uneaten contents of his now congealed dinner, Josh headed back to the kitchen, scooped the remains in Sultan’s food bowl and dropped the container in the trash under the sink.  Stopping by the refrigerator yet again to grab another beer, he sat down heavily on the couch once more, and took another deep drink, staring past the rhythmic, slow-motion thumping of Sultan’s tail through the doorway to the bedroom, its balcony and the memory that not all pre-death tours of hell are all that cheery in themselves.

So much for the peace he had so recently begun to enjoy…and more recently still, pretty much all but forgotten.  But, as long as the Sam Adams supply in the fridge he’d up its end of the bargain, maybe with a little luck of his own, he could forget that, too – indeed maybe he could everything before the night was out.

Except, of course, the nagging memory of that one recurring hell he was yet to conquer…

Morning had to come eventually.  And then what?