Dead Man's Playlist: Chapter 10

Junie hadn’t gone back into the storeroom since the incident.

She told herself it was silly. Chalk it up to a long shift, a shadow, a weird customer with a weirder sense of humor. The basement light had always flickered. The man could’ve just looked like someone she once saw in a dream. The way trauma warped memory, it was a known thing.

Still, she didn’t pull the chain light anymore unless someone was with her.

Sasha had noticed something was off. She didn’t say it directly—she never did—but her sarcasm had taken on a gentler edge lately. Fewer jabs, more check-ins disguised as insults.

“You’re not turning into some weepy Sylvia Plath type on me, are you?” Sasha had said yesterday, shoving a new poetry collection into Junie’s hands. “At least read someone fun while you spiral.”

Junie had smiled, but it didn’t reach all the way up. The strange man’s voice still echoed in her head sometimes. The longer she sat with it, the more it itched at something buried deeper, some place her father's records had started to unearth. Now, tonight, she found herself sitting on her bedroom floor again, the crate before her. Dust had settled over the sleeves. There were only a few left. Each one felt heavier than the last.

She hadn’t intended to play Track 10. Not tonight. But the unease in her chest, the lingering tremble of that encounter, the silence between her and Sasha, the weight of not knowing what her father’s end had really looked like, it all pushed her toward the wax.

She lifted the next sleeve. Black cover.

Track 10 — 'Sæglópur' , Sigur Rós - “Memory distorts the shape of love.”

Her breath hitched. She placed the record on the player. It hissed softly before the music began—slow, spectral strings blooming into ethereal, wordless vocals. A choir of aching ghosts.

Then, her father’s voice. But it was different this time. Not steady. Not certain. Like he wasn’t sure where he was when he spoke.

“Time doesn’t move forward the way we think it does. It curls. Loops. Sometimes, when I speak on these records, I’m not sure if I’m remembering something or inventing it just for you.”

“I’m sorry if this one feels strange. I recorded it on a bad day. Maybe a bad year. I was tired. I kept hearing your voice even though you hadn’t spoken to me in years. I kept seeing you as a little girl, and then as a woman I never met. All at once.”

The music swelled behind him.

“I wonder… is there a version of me that stayed? A version that made it to your high school graduation? That taught you how to change a tire, or made you coffee after your first heartbreak? If there is, can you tell him I’m proud of him?”

Junie’s chest cracked like old wood.

“I keep thinking about the day we took you to the beach. You were four. You held a jellyfish in your hands and told me it felt like wet air. I still don’t know how something so small can hold a whole memory.”

The track paused. A soft breath.

“I hope this isn’t the last one you hear. But if it is, know this, I loved you in pieces. Shattered, cowardly pieces. But each one was yours.”

The song wound down. It faded like a photograph left in sun. Junie sat in silence, heart thudding, afraid to move. Her father had sounded… unwell. Not in the way she knew he was, but in some deeper unraveling. Like his voice was being pulled through water, stretched between places.

She wanted to believe he’d recorded them all at once, thoughtfully, with purpose. But now? Now it felt like maybe these records weren’t linear either. Maybe he’d made this one close to the end. Maybe his thoughts were slipping.

Maybe she’d just heard his goodbye. She didn’t write in the journal right away. Her hands were shaking. She walked to the window instead, cracking it open for air. The bookstore, the foggy lake, the long drive, all of it felt unreal now.

She needed to talk to someone. But not Sasha. Not yet. That thread was still too tangled. She called Mira, knowing she was at work, but wanting the sound of her voice. It was late, but Mira picked up on the second ring.

“Junie?”

“I listened to another one.”

Mira sighed, like she’d been waiting for the call. “Okay. Do you want to talk about it?”

“I think he was losing it when he recorded this one. He kept forgetting things. Mixing time up.”

“Sounds like my last essay on Nietzsche.” Junie laughed, just a little. It helped.

“I mean it,” she said. “He talked like he wasn’t tethered anymore. Like he didn’t know where he was. And he said something—something that scared me.”

“What?”

“He said he loved me in pieces. Shattered, cowardly pieces. But each one was mine.” Mira didn’t respond right away. When she did, her voice was quiet.

“That sounds like someone trying to make peace with the truth.”

“Or trying to get me to forgive him.”

“Maybe both.”

Junie looked at the crate. Only eight records left. “I’m not sure I’m ready for the next one,” she admitted.

“Then don’t be.”

“But it’s like… they’re calling to me. Like the more I hear, the more I have to hear.”

Mira paused again. Then: “Do you ever think he’s still trying to parent you, through these?” Junie blinked.

“I don’t know.”

“Well,” Mira said, “if he is, then you get to choose which lessons you take. You don’t have to carry every ghost he hands you.” That landed in her chest like a warm stone.

They talked for a while longer, about nothing and everything. Mira’s boss, a weird cat she saw outside her apartment, the dream she’d had about Junie in a field of radios.

By the time they hung up, Junie felt something settle inside her. Not closure. But not chaos, either. Something in between. She walked over to her journal and opened it. She didn’t write about the record. Not right away.

Instead, she wrote a question at the top of a new page: What if memory is just grief in disguise?

Then she wrote about Sasha. About the way she held hurt like a badge. The way her anger was sometimes armor, sometimes a scream. About how their friendship felt like it had edges now, but maybe that meant it was real.

She wrote about Naomi, too. The quiet steadiness. The side-glances that saw more than they said. She wrote about her mother’s silence, and her father’s noise. And somewhere, in the middle of the page, she wrote: “Maybe we’re all just trying to find the right song to tell the truth.”

When she finally closed the journal, it was well past midnight. Junie crawled into bed and listened to the apartment creak around her.

In her dream that night, she stood in a field of radios, all tuned to different stations, all whispering versions of the same story. She walked among them, barefoot and calm, searching for the one that sounded most like home.

And somewhere, in the distance, a voice called her name.

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Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10