The last thing you remember is performing at the annual Layne Staley tribute
show downtown. Layne’s spitting image, you flaunted your lanky figure and
signature wail and dominated the night’s lineup with the expert performance of
a seasoned impersonator.
For years you soaked up the love of mourning fans at local shows and karaoke bars. You woke in your share of squalid living rooms among junkies and hangers-on. But you’re surprised to find yourself here, bound and gagged in a damp basement.
She walks in the room and ties you off.
“It’s H,” she’s saying as you feel the prick. “Enough to end you.”
You think you recognize her. Can’t place from where. The back of your head throbs where she hit you with the bat, but the pain is fading and you realize that’s a bad thing. Losing feeling. Losing focus.
It smells like rain, you’re thinking. Like home.
You’ve nodded off. A dream tugs at your softening boundaries, offering a final escape. Not just yet though. You come to and she’s yelling about how all she wanted was to leave that small town and now you remember. You see her as she was then: twenty-two, starry-eyed, toting that beat-up book of songs. she’d let you bum smokes and crash on her couch; it had been easy to slip in while she slept and take what you wanted. Overpower her when she woke and smile when she returned from the bathroom shaken.
For years you soaked up the love of mourning fans at local shows and karaoke bars. You woke in your share of squalid living rooms among junkies and hangers-on. But you’re surprised to find yourself here, bound and gagged in a damp basement.
She walks in the room and ties you off.
“It’s H,” she’s saying as you feel the prick. “Enough to end you.”
You think you recognize her. Can’t place from where. The back of your head throbs where she hit you with the bat, but the pain is fading and you realize that’s a bad thing. Losing feeling. Losing focus.
It smells like rain, you’re thinking. Like home.
You’ve nodded off. A dream tugs at your softening boundaries, offering a final escape. Not just yet though. You come to and she’s yelling about how all she wanted was to leave that small town and now you remember. You see her as she was then: twenty-two, starry-eyed, toting that beat-up book of songs. she’d let you bum smokes and crash on her couch; it had been easy to slip in while she slept and take what you wanted. Overpower her when she woke and smile when she returned from the bathroom shaken.
Rain pelts a window. You tease out a rhythm from the pattering, the dream ever-present.
The drug courses through your system, songs from Dirt and Jar of Flies a blurring medley in your mind. Will oblivion be as sweet as Layne made it sound? you wonder.
Maybe when you’re gone she’ll find peace. Perhaps your final thoughts will be free of denial. You have no way of knowing and neither does she.
She’s yelling again. “I couldn’t listen to my favorite band for ten years because of you.”
Me? you’re thinking.
“For months I woke up screaming because of you.”
She looks powerful as she stands over you—a turn-on you resent. A needle
dangles from your arm as she calls your name—your real name, not Layne.
If I die in the rain, you’re thinking, will I be washed clean?
You hear her laughing and then you’re gone.
September Woods Garland hails from the Pacific Northwest where she enjoys taking long, romantic walks through haunted houses and feeding Bigfoot peanut butter & seaweed sandwiches. She works as a freelance book editor and serves as editor-in-chief at Weird Lit Magazine. September’s work has appeared in Crow & Cross Keys, Roi Fainéant Press, The Sprawl Mag, and elsewhere.
septemberwoodsgarland.com
What did I do?
“I can’t make love without panicking because of you.”
Oh, you recall as the numbness blooms.
If I die in the rain, you’re thinking, will I be washed clean?
You hear her laughing and then you’re gone.
September Woods Garland hails from the Pacific Northwest where she enjoys taking long, romantic walks through haunted houses and feeding Bigfoot peanut butter & seaweed sandwiches. She works as a freelance book editor and serves as editor-in-chief at Weird Lit Magazine. September’s work has appeared in Crow & Cross Keys, Roi Fainéant Press, The Sprawl Mag, and elsewhere.
