milliways_bar | Entries tagged with johnny truant

is my beginning is my end

The front door opens, slowly, and a cold draft gusts through the room.
...I will be watching then as I watch now.
Beyond the door is a gaunt young man in faded black, his back to the room, barely silhouetted against a slowly whirling vortex of darkness. He staggers back away from it, apparently involuntarily, into the warmth and light of Milliways.
I will praise darkness now, but then the leaf.
The door closes, and melts away into the wall.

ashtreelane

When a door last opened between the house and Milliways, two months ago, eleven people came stumbling through.

And two were left behind.

Don't cry. There's always a way.

ashtreelane

[Not quite out of Milliways:

Upstairs, Johnny Truant discovers something unusual.]

truantjohnny.livejournal.com

More hot showers. More clean sheets. It's too much for a poor sinner like me to ask.

If it weren't for the dreams, sun-soaked, with shadows creeping in on the corners, I'd almost feel safe.

But dreams mean that I've been sleeping, and for sleep, I am grateful. I actually took a walk outside, feeling the clean, lean air blow through me, the air feeling almost like Europe, when I wandered that ancient and bloody land in my youth, gentle like a knife, the bittersweet November chill filling me with-- hope? fear? maybe both, impossible to say, some undefinied emotion, something without a name.

And when I push open the back door and I am hit with all this sound, all this light, all this life, and I smile a creaking sort of smile to myself, and think that maybe this is the closest thing to Heaven I'll ever see.

lord-of-dreams.livejournal.com

No matter how long you would like to brood, eventually you must face people again. At least this is what any number of dreams have been informing the Lord of the Dreaming. Eventually you must face people again.

This does not mean he's smiling about it, this is Dream. However, he is manifest, and he's no less able to be approached than he ever is.

truantjohnny.livejournal.com

I woke up with the highly disconcerting sensation of not knowing where the fuck I was, in a comfortable bed, with clean sheets, a clean face, a clean body. And clean and I have had some parting of the ways for quite some time. I thought that maybe I had died somewhere in the capillaries of America, wandering all those unnamed roads for so long, that the dark that's always just a mile behind me had somehow gained ground and swallowed me whole.

And then I remembered out in Texas, and that tiny dusty bar that had turned out to not be such a tiny dusty bar after all.

My chest tightened, my pulse thrumming at my temples, jerking upright in bed like a marionette with rigor mortis, till that unfamiliar and welcome sensation of cleanliness twined around my body and brain, and I settled back.

More clean on the dresser, clean clothes. I put them on in a kind of daze, not questioning this particular oddity. I was in a daze, dumbfounded by this unexpected luck, humbled and vaguely grateful to whatever faceless benefactor had decided to bless me with such untold luxury. Clean socks. Miraculous.

What I needed was coffee.

So I stumbled down into this uncharted cathedral of comfort, eyes wide like an immigrant, half-fearing deportation from these strange and blessed shores.

coin-tricks.livejournal.com

Shadow is in the bar, with a mug of cocoa. It's that sort of night.

He's not doing too much, really.

There's a seat across from him. He'd probably appreciate some company.

Current Mood: bored

truantjohnny.livejournal.com

It's been, what, seven years since that day in Flagstaff? Can't remember. Been thinking about that lately, since I buried my dog. Poor Edmund. I don't know whether it was the cold in Colorado or just old age that finally brought down his great old thrumming heart. Maybe I should have known when he barked at me, all dusty and sad, when we split ways from my buddy Red in Colorado Springs.

Red, now there's another good old road-dog. Those ridiculous raccoon-tats on his face, faded and blue from years in the sun, hitching his way from East Bumfuck, Virginia to San Deigo and back again. Best goddamn didgeridoo player this side of Australia.

Only Red's still alive and kicking and drinking, and Edmund is under three feet of hard dirt and a pile of stone in the Texas panhandle.

I've been thinking 'Fuck this' for a good five miles till I come across a tiny, burnt-out old bar, here out in the middle of nowhere.

What I need, I decide, is a beer. And a shower and shave wouldn't go amiss, either.

Maybe I should have known by the bone chimes hanging from the dilapidated front porch, playing some kind of primitive dirge. Maybe by the way the road shimmered on up ahead, from road into water, then from water into sky.

But what do I know?

So I walk into the bar.

The bar is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

My breath hitches, and my heart races, beating out ancient rhythms of panic at my temples.

"What the fuck is this shit?"

action-antihero.livejournal.com

Jack comes in from the front door, looking tired after a long day of work outside. He's been a little...off, the last few days. That meeting, dream...whatever that had been with Tony on Halloween night had rattled him, unsure what to think about it. Whether he should even believe it actually happened, even though it had felt so real. A talk with Kim had put things into some kind of perspective, though, and the last couple days outside he'd spent trying to move things along, to get ready for anohter major change in his life.

Earlier today he met with a realtor, and put his cabin up for sale. Maybe it was time to start actually getting his life back, and moving back to L.A. is the first major step.

At the moment, though, the only step he's taking is toward the bar, to get a cup of coffee.

The Bar at the End of the Universe

Entries tagged with johnny truant

(no subject)

Out of Milliways

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

Milliways Bar

Important Places

Comms