ATTIC JAM

A short story inspired by Trouble and The Skull
By W.H. Sepulcher

He lived in the attic of the burnt house.

No one remembered his name—not even him, not really. Only the sound of it, like a bell tolling underwater. He’d come here years ago, drawn by silence. The kind that didn’t just fill space, but erased it.

The walls of the house still wept when it rained. Charred beams groaned with memory. But in the attic, it was always dry. Dust danced like spirits in the light from a shattered windowpane, and he sat beneath it every evening with his journal, writing the same words again and again:

I wish I could forget what I believed in.
I wish I could believe in what I’ve forgotten.

Some nights, he could hear a voice beneath the floorboards. It sang in a language he almost knew. A broken hymn, part psalm, part curse.

The voice was his own.

He’d buried it years ago—somewhere beneath the cellar, wrapped in lyrics and old cassette tape, sealed with rusted nails and prayers he no longer trusted.

But The Wish always came back.

Sometimes in dreams. Sometimes in the mirror. Sometimes in the tremble of his hands as he tried to light another cigarette and missed.

He had loved once. Had faith once. Had a band once.
Had light.

But it faded, like they all do, like the chorus of a song that never quite resolves. And when he tried to bring it back, the sound turned to static. Even God, if He was listening, had stopped answering.

One day, when the moon burned red and low, he stood and walked to the cellar. Barefoot. Unafraid.

He opened the floor. Dug through ash. Found the box.
Inside: his old guitar, warped and dead. A photo. A page torn from a Bible.
And a note.

It simply said:

The wish is you.

He smiled.

Not because he understood. But because he finally didn’t need to.

Then he played one final chord.

It rang out, pure and raw, through every ruined room.
And then the attic was silent again.

But below the house, the earth remembered. And somewhere far away, in a darkened bar no one had been to in years, a record needle dropped on a forgotten groove. It was “The Wish”.