Page 145 of Hollywood Dead (Sandman Slim 10)

I make it to a bus shelter and drop down onto one of the incredibly uncomfortable seats to wait for something. Not a bus. I’d rather be dragged behind a burning pickup truck into a barbed wire lake than ride the bus.

Wait. I remember now. I’m dying. I’m waiting to die.

I lean back against the plastic wall of the bus shelter.

There’s an old man sitting a few seats away.

“L.A. sure is pretty at night,” he says.

It takes me a while to process the words, but I get there.

“Yes it is.”

He says, “Don’t you think it’s time to let go? To come home?”

I stare at him but can’t see anything until passing headlights illuminate his face.

Oh.

“Hello, Mr. Muninn.”

“Hello, James.”

“It’s been a while.”

“It’s been busy in Heaven.”

“That’s what people tell me.”

Who’s Mr. Muninn? That’s a complicated question and I’m not good with complicated at this precise moment. You’ll just have to trust me when I say that Mr. Muninn is the grand marshal of the big parade. To be a little clearer, he’s God. Yes, that God. The one in all the books. Not a bad guy either. We’re friends. More or less. Less a lot of the time. I never pictured him waiting for a bus.

“You don’t have to do this,” he says.

“What’s that?”

“What you’re doing. Dragging your battered body all over creation. Just sit back and relax for a while. I’ll take care of the rest.”

I look at a bright red neon sign across the street.

CHECKS CASHED.

I point at the sign.

“Isn’t that nice of them?”

Mr. Muninn swivels his eyes toward the sign, then back at me.

“You’re babbling,” he says.

“It’s my birthday. I get to babble.”

“It’s not your birthday.”

“I know why you’re here.”

“Why?”

“You want me to go to Heaven with you.”