Hades' Melody

By JD Belcher

When a recent college graduate with a smoking habit is called to serve on the board at his local church, he immediately struggles with separating his public and private lives. His fantasized ideas of religion suddenly become dangerously real as he's enmeshed in a perfect storm of events which leads to, of all things,spending three extremely paranormal days behind bars. When it's all said and done, it seems as though he has entered through the gates of hell and been released to the flip side of life.

There, friends and family often appear as enemies and everyone speaks using a strange, coded lingo. With a mind full of problems, but no solutions, he tries to navigate in this bizarre new world, experiencing strange phenomena on the highways, unnatural episodes during house visits and hospital stays, and futuristic visions while at sea. He journeys across the United States trying to get home, veritably touched by a host of eclectic men and woman along the way.

Hades' Melody is a remarkable coming-of-age memoir which unabashedly explores abandonment, solitary spirituality, prophecy and the dark songs of language. It's a spectacular narrative that delves into the psyche of an individual searching for answers during the subtly explosive dawn of a new era.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Yorkshire Publishing
• Release date: Jan 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781954095175

JD Belcher

J.D. Belcher is an author, screenwriter and journalist. He serves as editor for the online news publication The Yellow Party News and the daily devotional website Ephod and Breastplate. His memoir Hades' Melody was longlisted for the 2019 Sante Fe Writers Project literary award. The Inescapable Consequence is his first fiction novel.

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Table of Contents

PROLOGUE

MARIJUANA

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHURCH

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CROSSING TO THE OTHER SIDE

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A NEW WORLD

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE GREAT ESCAPE

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

HOME

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

J.D. Belcher

Hades’ Melody Copyright © 2019 by J.D. Belcher

ISBN: 978-1-949231-90-8 (Paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-949231-91-5 (Hardcover)

ISBN: 978-1-954095-17-5 (ebook)

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncom-mercial uses permitted by copyright law.

For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below.

Yorkshire Publishing

4613 E. 91st St.

Tulsa, Oklahoma 74137

www.YorkshirePublishing.com

918.394.2665

spiritual awakening

[spir-i-choo-ul l] [uh-wey-kuh-ning]

—noun

when a person or a group of people suddenly and unexpectedly become aware of the spiritual activity which surrounds them.

For Life.

PROLOGUE

Spring 1986.

Many things happened that year; the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded live on national TV, my father left our family for the first time to work on an engineering project in California, and my mother planned a trip from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with my two brothers and I to Fort Wayne, Indiana to visit my grandmother Barbara over the course of a weekend that would forever change my life.

Grandma lived in a single level ranch home—similar to ours back in Monroeville—on Broken Arrow Drive with her second husband George, a pastor and part-time taxi driver, inside a suburban development called Concordia Gardens not far from the banks of the Saint Joseph River. Apart from the incident which transpired during our stay, I can barely conjure up any extraneous details. I remember the gray clouds and rain that day; sitting on the piano bench practicing chords; the white carpet in the living room; and my brother Amos, who had the nickname AJ, perched on the couch, watching the bulky floor model television which sat up against the wall. In a framed painting above me was a rendering v

so vivid that it almost looked like a photograph, one of the resurrected Christ walking with two men—all of them with their backs turned—down a shaded dirt road to the town of Emmaus. Next to me, a dining room table with placemats squarely positioned in front of each seat circled a basket of fake fruit covered in shiny fur.

Two candles plugged the weighty, amber-colored holders on either side of the decorative bassinet. Behind the table, a sturdy, wooden china cabinet displayed vintage plates sketched in dull blue ink, depicting various long-forgotten American countryside landscapes.

My younger brother Jodan, who everyone called Tre, rose to his feet, and wandered past me down the hallway that led to three bedrooms and a bathroom. A few minutes later, I heard him screaming at the top of his lungs, as if someone was attempting to take his life, with the rumbling voice of my step-grandfather ranting in the background.

There are two versions of the story that survive. One, as was always the case with Tre and his manners as my mother recalled, was that he entered my grandparent’s master bedroom, grabbed a piece of butterscotch candy from a dish, and attempted to return it to her and ask if he might have it. The second version, as I remember, involved Tre entering the same bedroom, swiping the wrapped, hard candy and asking George for it, making the naïve mistake of calling him by his first name instead of Grandpa—as was proper when addressing a well reputed, old-fashioned preacher—and as a result, ending up with a smack across his soft, three-year-old face.

Either way, when Tre came back into the living room with George’s pink handprint on his cheek and ton-sils vibrating from his frantic lamentation, my mother jumped to attention, and darted down the hallway to find out what had happened. I heard it all from the piano: Grandma unsuccessfully trying to resolve the matter in her usual, humble, peacemaking fashion, my mother snapping away at George, demanding that he keep his hands off her damn child, and George wanting both of them out of his way, probably en route to the bathroom for a bit of solace.

But my mother wasn’t having any of that— no, George had to pay for hitting her son. She quickly and briefly appeared at my side—I immediately stopped practicing my chords and made a 180 degree turn on the piano bench toward the television in the living room—

and I saw her lift one of the heavy candlestick holders from the dining room table. What transpired next, I would remember for the rest of my life. The arguing turned up a notch, and I peeked my head around the corner and down the hallway to get a glimpse of the action. After I looked—for whatever reason, I didn’t want to experience it all live, in real time—I turned back to AJ, who continued to watch television on the couch, and the first thought that entered my mind had been how very strange it was to see all those people in the hallway. There were too many of them, not just Grandma and George and my mother, but three others, wearing red and white robes from neck to foot. One stood beside my mother, whose raised arm with candlestick in vii

hand at any moment might have come crashing down atop George’s head; another behind George, who was bent over my grandmother, just seconds before pushed out of his way to the floor; and the last, kneeling near Grandma, as if checking to make sure she was all right.

When I took a double take, they were gone.

The next thing I knew, Mom came storming in from the hallway crying, telling us to gather our belongings and head to the car. She picked up the phone and dialed the police. All the while, I couldn’t get the image of the people with the red and white clothes out of my mind.

When we all finally settled into the car out in the driveway, windshield wipers slamming back and forth and my mother exclaiming to us how she wanted so badly to hit him, and had even tried with all her might, yet her arm wouldn’t move, like someone had been holding it back—a sight I clearly remembered seeing—I finally spoke up. With my ten-year-old intellect, I explained how I saw the other people in the hallway, and that I thought they were angels. Even at my young age, it all made sense to me—George’s life had been spared. She surely would have killed the old man with the heavy candlestick holder. My mother might have gone to jail for murder, losing everything; her marriage, her children, her future. When the police showed up, they asked my grandma if she wanted George to leave. She said no.

Instead, Mom drove us back to Pittsburgh and wouldn’t return to Fort Wayne for another two years. The story spread throughout the family, and from then on, I was known as the child who saw the angels.

MARIJUANA

CHAPTER ONE

Summer 1996.

The first time I smoked marijuana was on the balcony of a 10th floor Camp Hall dorm room at the University of Alabama–Birmingham, with a black guy named Muhammad. He opened a small plastic bag—about the size of a cotton ball—tied so tight at the top that he had to bite it open with his teeth. It was packed with moist green herbs. At the time, I knew nothing of drugs and had no idea what he planned to do with the package of Phillies Blunt cigars he placed on my dining room table.

Yeah, boy! he said, with the one of the heaviest Southern accents I had ever heard in my northeastern Yankee ears, after taking a deep whiff of the weed. "I done got us some shit."

Two years earlier, I had smoked cigars with Brian, my hometown buddy and former roommate in that same dormitory at UAB. He showed up with a pack of Swisher Sweets, bought from a small convenience store on Tenth Avenue South.

Let’s light up in celebration of our arrival to college, Brian had said proudly. It has been a long hard road.

We filled our room with smoke, and it was the very first time I had gotten a real buzz from smoking anything. After two semesters, Brian left Birmingham and went back to Pittsburgh. He always complained that UAB didn’t have the undergraduate programs he needed to prepare him for med school, so he decided to transfer back home and enroll at Pitt. I’d be spending my first summer away from home alone.

Before I graduated high school, I received letters from colleges and universities all over the country, advertising their school as the place I should attend for academic and athletic purposes. On my first collegiate sports visit, I traveled down to Alabama A&M to meet the basketball coach and team. Since I had grown up with my divorced mother up north, I thought Alabama to be an ideal location. I could be closer to my father—who worked contract jobs as an electrical engineer in various places around the continental US and finally settled in Decatur—and experience a taste of some Southern hospitality. After an indecisive visit, I still felt the need to pursue my Division I basketball dream by walking on at the larger and more prominent UAB. I was accepted as an undergraduate, but after the tryouts, I didn’t make the team. Though I had game, they weren’t in need of six-foot, one-inch point guards. They wanted six-foot nine-inch forwards.

After abandoning my athletic aspirations, I settled into the role of being a normal student, and got a job as a bike messenger, delivering for the Office of the Vice President for Financial Affairs and Administration at UAB for about two years. When I wasn’t in class, I’d ride through the streets of Birmingham and saunter through the corridors and catwalks of the gargantuan hospital conglomeration, picking up and dropping off mail. But that time was coming to an end because my days at UAB were numbered. I didn’t know it, but I would soon be roommates with Brian again.

I watched Muhammad split a cigar down the middle with a knife and dump out the dry, brown tobacco on the table. I thought about how it looked much like the mulch I used to lay when I worked as a landscaper for Deauville Park Apartments while in high school. The pieces of leaves easily crumbled in his hand. He took the empty wrapper from the cigar, put it in his mouth, and wet it with his tongue. It was disgusting, the way he licked it and all.

That’s nasty, I told him, and he smirked.

He continued until the entire rectangular sheet was moist, and then finally set it on the table. When he poured the contents of the bag into the leaf, he made an even line down the middle.

Next, I watched him perform the tricky part, the craft that took me years to master. He rolled the blunt, twist-ing it between his fingers and lips until he was able to turn it back into a smaller cylindrical version of the original cigar. He took a lighter from his pocket and dried the wet spit on the wrapping, waving the flame back and forth along its surface until it became hard and stiff.

We went to the balcony and stared at the many university buildings and hospitals before us, and gazed off into the dawning horizon of the downtown Birmingham skyline. A hawk circled in the distance as we slowly passed the blunt back and forth to each other, inhaling deeply. I coughed incessantly but continued to smoke the little cigar until it became so tiny and hot that it couldn’t be held any longer. When it burned the tips of my thumb and forefinger, I threw the stub off the balcony.

At first, I didn’t know if it had worked or not. I wasn’t sure if I had been elevated to the high place I imagined the marijuana would take me; that was, until the jokes Muhammad were telling began to seem funnier than usual.

Mane, Muhammad said the word man so that it sounded like mane, like a lion’s mane, One time I got so high, I thought a tree started talkin’ to me.

I laughed harder and louder than I normally did, lov-ing the rush and the disorientated state of consciousness.

The music coming from the living room sounded better and the bag of Lay’s potato chips we were munching on seemed to have a bit more of a kick. The world had magically enhanced, and I couldn’t wait to smoke again.

All my worries had disappeared.

What did it say to you?

Mane, it asked me fah my telly-phone numba,

he said, and we both bent over holding our stomachs, cracking up hysterically.

Two days later, I called Muhammad for the number of the person he had purchased the weed from. I wanted to buy a bag for myself. I told him in the meantime, he was welcome to smoke with me again, if he’d like. We decided to go half on a dime bag, and when he came over, I gave him the five bucks.

Neither I nor Muhammad had been comfortable with his new role as my marijuana gopher, so he forwarded me the number to Charles, one of the dealers on campus.

This was a huge step for me. I had never contacted a drug dealer before and thought about what might happen during a transaction.

I only planned to do a one-time purchase. In less than a week, I’d be going back to Pittsburgh—I had made the decision to transfer, like Brian had done, to Pitt. And I also decided that if I was going to buy weed from Charles, I needed to purchase enough to last me for a while. When I dialed his beeper number, it didn’t take long for him to return the call.

Yeah? a heavily accented voice answered on the other end of the line.

Hey, this is Jovon, Muhammad’s friend. He said I could buy something from you…

Oh, okay, he responded.

I have like seventy dollars. I don’t know how much that will get me, I said, having yet to learn the vernacu-lar of how marijuana was sold and not understanding the quantification of my purchase. I only knew that I had less than a hundred bucks to spend.

"Yeah, uh, meet me in fronna of Denman Hawl in, like, fifteen minutes. We gotta go pick it up."

Denman Hall was the high-rise dormitory directly across the parking lot from Camp Hall. When I arrived, I blindly got into his car feeling half afraid and half ad-venture stricken as we drove to an off-campus complex.

He parked, and I followed him inside a virtually furniture-less apartment with only a few chairs and a microwave in the kitchen. Charles disappeared into a back room and came out with a black garbage bag in his hand.

"It’s steel wet, so I gotta dry sum before I break it up," he said, tearing off a chunk of moist vegetation from a solidly packed brick he had taken from the bag.

He put the marijuana on a plate and placed it into the microwave in the kitchen. After some seconds, he took the plate out, grabbed a small sandwich bag from the cabinet, and tied up a pleasant sized piece, which looked like more than a sufficient amount for what I paid him.

The first time I got high alone, I rolled a pathetically loose blunt. Some of the seeds fell out of the front when it tilted forward, and when I inhaled, they shot to the back of my throat during the first few hits. Nevertheless, I got high. With glazed red eyes, I watched television and listened to CDs until hunger set in. I searched through the cabinets for the perfect meal to appease my growing appetite and decided to make sausage and baked beans for dinner. After I cut up the kielbasa into small circles and mixed them into a can of Pork & Beans inside a green mixing bowl, I put the food into the microwave and then prepared to take a quick shower while it cooked.

With only a towel wrapped around my waist, I started toward the bathroom. But something told me to check on the food a final time, so I went back into the kitchen.

What I saw horrified me. There on the kitchen counter was my green bowl of cold pork and beans! The microwave churned away as the empty glass disc rotated under the light of the lamp inside.

One of two things had to have happened. Either I had forgotten to put the food inside, but still turned it on, or the bowl had somehow magically jumped out of the machine and onto the counter. It was my first real brush with paranoia, and after the fear had gone, I could do nothing but laugh at myself, just to make sense of what had just taken place.

Apart from the frequent bouts of suspicion, I liked smoking blunts so much that I began keeping the seeds and planted a marijuana plant of my own. I kept it in my dorm room window, and it grew like a weed. It sprouted so fast and tall that I had to kill it prematurely. With my limited knowledge of horticulture, I was unable to make the plant grow the flowers I knew I needed to really get high, but decided to try and smoke it anyway. When the stems and leaves dried, I made a vain attempt to roll it into a blunt. But after lighting up, I noticed that it wasn’t the same as the weed Muhammad had given me. It tasted different, like I was smoking spinach or green beans.

A few days after my seventy-dollar buy, I was in the back of my father’s minivan, fully loaded with my belongings, as we headed north on I-65 toward Pennsylvania. I hid the weed in a duffel bag, and during the entire trip, the only thing I could think about was getting pulled over by a state trooper. Thank God, that never happened.

The transition from UAB to Pitt was nothing but a huge culture shock. For the most part, I did what I was supposed to do while attending school in Alabama. I went to class, studied long, and constantly worked out in the gym. I took care of my social responsibilities at fraternity parties and dorm room soirées, held a job that paid the room and board, and regularly visited my family members in the south. I was the model student.

When I transferred to Pitt, it was like another side of me had been released. The familiarity of the city, lax study habits, the freedom of off-campus living, and easy access to an abundant supply of marijuana proved to be the perfect ingredients for me not to excel in academia.

I moved to South Oakland, the old Italian neighborhood just below campus, an area overrun by an influx of freshmen. The previous residents of these homes had gotten into the lucrative landlord business, where year after year, thousands upon thousands of newcomers frantically searched for off-campus housing. This meant that on any given night during the school year, a student who lived in the neighborhood could walk down any street and find nothing but blocks and blocks of college students. Pitt campus buildings, clothing stores, hospitals, bars, restaurants, and other colleges and universities like Carnegie Mellon University, Carlow College, and Chatham College were all within walking distance along the Fifth and Forbes Avenue corridors. Oakland was like a small city unto itself, and all its citizens were between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five.

Before the semester began, ironically, I moved in with Brian and his girlfriend, a white girl named Amy, at 3530 Louisa Street in Oakland. I didn’t have a job at the time, so he did me the favor of mentioning to his manager at Kiva Han Coffee Shop about a friend in need of employment. An interview was set up, I was hired on the spot as a barista and began serving cappuccinos and lattes to customers on South Craig Street.

Unfortunately, the housing arrangement between Brian, his girlfriend, and I quickly dissolved when he was given an ultimatum by Amy—either I had to go or she was leaving. The very same day while contemplating the situation outside on the front stoop, I ran into Poppy, the Greek landlady of the building, and asked if she had any available apartments. That night, I moved into the unit directly across the hall from the two, and for the most part, everything turned out to be a win-win situation.

I became fascinated by Pitt’s off-campus life. At night, hoards of students roamed the streets in search of parties. It wasn’t uncommon to be invited into a house while strolling down some random sidewalk and find inside anything a willing partygoer could want. There were young men and women, music, kegs of beer, liq-uor, and marijuana—lots and lots of marijuana.

One of these parties took place in my own building, thrown by three black guys who lived in the apartment directly above me. I’d occasionally visit them after class, and we’d listen to music and smoke blunts together. I always knew when they were home because they owned a stereo system that could be heard two blocks away. It literally shook the building.

They said they were having a bong party later that day and I should come by. After class, I walked down Louisa Street, and the first thing I heard was the loud music. I dropped my bookbag off in my apartment and headed upstairs. Before I could reach the top, I was stopped by a crowd that snaked from up on the second floor down the steps, like an entrance to a ride at an amusement park. Though they were my neighbors, I got in line and waited like everyone else. As I moved closer and closer to their door, I stood on my tippy toes and saw that the living room was filled with people; however the line was headed in another direction, to a room just to the left. Inside was the biggest bong I had ever seen in my life. It was fluorescent green and close to six feet tall. Behind it was a chair to stand on for the next waiting participant to take a hit. The use of the bong required two people. I watched the smoke rise to the top as one person inhaled while another lit the bowl at the bottom.

When it was finally my turn, I coughed before I could breathe in all the smoke, but I stayed high all day from the single hit.

It was on Louisa Street where I continued my education of the cannabis plant; the art of how to get high before class, where to find weed during the severest droughts and to sit in ciphers while high and attempt to intellectually discuss and debate a variety of topics in smoky living rooms.

I became familiar with all the vocabulary associated with the plant and its various names, was an avid reader of High Times Magazine, learned the prices and measurements— nicks, sold for $5, dime bags for $10, eighths for $20 to $25—and even turned into somewhat of a connoisseur, distinguishing between the different qualities of the drug, from its various textures, to its diverse levels of potencies.

My spacious one-bedroom apartment served its purpose as a place to crash at the end of a long day, but it also had its disadvantages. It only had one view out of every window—the brick wall of the building next door.

The ceiling in the bathroom often leaked, and the radiators never seemed to get warm enough in the winter.

I quickly found out that I couldn’t afford the rent, the electric bill, and the groceries on my income alone, so I made Roommate Wanted flyers and posted them all over campus. It wasn’t until a month later that I got my first response from a guy named Owen.

Owen had come to Pittsburgh from the Florida Keys and reminded me of everything I had seen, heard, or read about people who lived on the beach. He was of medium build with sandy blonde hair, big blue eyes, had a beard, and talked with a laid-back drawl. He said the word yeah a lot at the beginning of his sentences.

You don’t mind living with a smoker? he asked during our first conversation on the phone.

No, not at all, I said. I’ll have a cigarette every now and then, so it’s really not a big deal.

As far as I was concerned, if he could pay half the rent, he could smoke as much as he wanted.

Owen worked as a manager for a local band called Left on Dorris, and when he came home late in the evenings, we’d sit around and smoke Marlboro Lights and pot before bed and talk about what went on in each other’s day. Owen liked smoking pot out of little pipes, which I later found out were called bowls. He would pack his little marble bowl, light it, take a hit, and quickly cover it with the lighter so the pot wouldn’t burn out. He didn’t waste a bit. He’d pass it to me, and I’d do the same.

I didn’t mind smoking a bowl every once in a while, but I preferred to smoke blunts. I enjoyed the mystique of the process—splitting the cigar, dumping out the tobacco, and rolling the leaf. It was just a preference, not a requirement. I had smoked with a lot of people while in school, and for some reason, there were those who only liked to smoke pot out of bowls or rolled joints. Then, there were others who only smoked their marijuana in blunts. I best fit into the other category—those who didn’t care as long as they were high when finished.

Owen always complained when I wanted to roll a blunt. He said it was a waste of money and weed. I argued that the same amount needed to pack a bowl could be used to roll a blunt. I also seemed to get higher when I smoked blunts. Owen said he got too high. He said the direct inhalation of the smoke through the cigar seemed to go faster to his brain. It was true. Bigger hits could be taken with the blunt, whereas the bowl only allowed a certain level of drag. So, when we smoked his weed, we smoked out of a bowl. When we smoked my weed, we smoked blunts.

I had come home from a late class one evening and noticed a large cardboard box sitting in the middle of the living room floor. When I peeked inside, I saw something that looked like a large octagon shaped aquarium that stood about four feet tall. There were lights and mirrors all around the inside.

I picked up some really good seeds, Owen began explaining to me. Hopefully I can grow four of five plants, so we don’t always have to buy weed.

He placed the contraption in the closet of our living room and ran an electrical cord under the rug from the bedroom. Then he bought a bag of fertilized dirt, planted the seeds, and we waited for the plants to grow.

Incredibly, it worked.

Personally, I thought the idea was smart and absolutely foolproof. After the spaces around the hinges and on all sides of the closet door were taped up, it was impossible to tell that there was anything inside. But unfortunately, there ended up being a few glitches we couldn’t get around.

The marijuana-growing closet was the only door in our small living room, and the couch next to it barely allowed enough space for it to open. The blocked, shut door was sure to pique the curiosity of any visitors we might invite over. If someone