Eddie had been dead for six months before he got the invitation.

It arrived in the usual way—sliding under the door of his shabby, spectral apartment in the afterlife, written in an elegant, looping script.

THE DEAD MUSICIANS’ SUPPORT GROUP

For those still adjusting to the silence

The address was scrawled at the bottom, but Eddie didn’t need to read it. He already knew. The abandoned nightclub on the corner of Nowhere and Regret, the place where echoes of forgotten songs clung to the air like cigarette smoke.

He almost didn’t go. What was the point? He was dead. His guitar had been buried with him, his voice no longer carried in the world of the living. What could a “support group” possibly do for a ghost?

But something—curiosity, loneliness, or maybe just a longing for the music he’d lost—pulled him there.

The club was dimly lit by neon signs that flickered with an unnatural glow. The stage was empty, the microphone covered in dust. And seated around a table in the center of the room were the others.

Janis Joplin was nursing a whiskey that would never be finished. Beethoven sat hunched over, furiously scribbling notes in a book that would never be played. A man with a hole in his chest—Eddie thought he might be Mozart—sighed dramatically. Cobain stared at his hands as if trying to remember what it was like to hold a guitar.

At the head of the table, a man in a crisp black suit smiled. His voice was smooth, practiced. “Welcome, Eddie. We’ve been expecting you.”

Eddie hesitated. “What is this?”

“It’s what the name suggests,” the man said. “A support group. For those of us who died with music still left to play.”

Eddie felt something tighten in his chest. He had died young—before the album, before the tour, before anyone had the chance to really hear him. His songs, his voice, his dreams—left to rot in a coffin.

“So what do we do?” he asked. “Talk about our feelings?”

Beethoven snorted. “We don’t talk,” he muttered. “We listen.”

And with that, the man in the suit—who Eddie now realized was Johnny Cash—gestured toward the stage. “Play something, Eddie.”

Eddie hesitated. “I—I don’t have my guitar.”

Janis grinned, her whiskey glass clinking against the table. “You don’t need one, sugar.”

And suddenly, the silence wasn’t silence anymore.

It was music.

The kind that existed beyond sound, beyond flesh and bone. The kind you felt in your soul, even when your soul no longer had a body to contain it.

Eddie stepped onto the stage, and for the first time since he’d died, he wasn’t empty.

He was full of music.

And he played.

Because death might have taken his life.

But it would never take his song.

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The Dead Musicians’ Support Group

Eddie had been dead for six months before he got the invitation.

It arrived in the usual way—sliding under the door of his shabby, spectral apartment in the afterlife, written in an elegant, looping script.

THE DEAD MUSICIANS’ SUPPORT GROUP

For those still adjusting to the silence

The address was scrawled at the bottom, but Eddie didn’t need to read it. He already knew. The abandoned nightclub on the corner of Nowhere and Regret, the place where echoes of forgotten songs clung to the air like cigarette smoke.

He almost didn’t go. What was the point? He was dead. His guitar had been buried with him, his voice no longer carried in the world of the living. What could a “support group” possibly do for a ghost?

But something—curiosity, loneliness, or maybe just a longing for the music he’d lost—pulled him there.

The club was dimly lit by neon signs that flickered with an unnatural glow. The air hummed, though there was no music. Just the suggestion of it, a phantom presence hanging in the space between the living and the dead.

The stage was empty, the microphone coated in dust. But seated around a table in the center of the room were the others.

Janis Joplin, leaning back in her chair, nursing a whiskey that would never be finished. Beethoven, hunched over, furiously scribbling notes in a book that would never be played. A man with a hole in his chest—Eddie thought he might be Mozart—sighed dramatically, fingers drumming a rhythm against the wood. Cobain sat quiet, staring at his hands as if trying to remember what it was like to hold a guitar.

At the head of the table, a man in a crisp black suit smiled. His voice was smooth, practiced. “Welcome, Eddie. We’ve been expecting you.”

Eddie hesitated. “What is this?”

“It’s what the name suggests,” the man said. “A support group. For those of us who died with music still left to play.”

Something in Eddie’s chest tightened. He had died young—before the album, before the tour, before anyone had the chance to really hear him. His songs, his voice, his dreams—left to rot in a coffin.

“So what do we do?” he asked. “Talk about our feelings?”

Beethoven snorted. “We don’t talk,” he muttered. “We listen.”

And with that, the man in the suit—who Eddie now realized was Johnny Cash—gestured toward the stage. “Play something, Eddie.”

Eddie hesitated. “I—I don’t have my guitar.”

Janis grinned, her whiskey glass clinking against the table. “You don’t need one, sugar.”

And suddenly, the silence wasn’t silence anymore.

It was music.

The kind that existed beyond sound, beyond flesh and bone. The kind you felt in your soul, even when your soul no longer had a body to contain it.

Eddie felt it in his fingers, in the spaces where callouses once formed. He stepped onto the stage, and the dust on the microphone vanished. The strings of his long-lost guitar hummed to life in his hands, an instrument not of wood and wire, but of memory and longing.

And he played.

He played for the songs he never finished, for the melodies he never got to share. He played for the empty bars he would never perform in, for the audience that had never heard his name. He played for the ache in his bones, for the life he’d lost, for the music that refused to die.

The other musicians closed their eyes, listening.

And as he strummed the final chord, the nightclub pulsed—not with light, not with applause, but with something deeper.

Johnny Cash nodded, pleased. “That’s the thing about music, son.” His voice was warm, like a record spinning in a distant room. “It doesn’t need a heartbeat to live.”

Eddie looked out at the room of legends, of lost voices and unfinished symphonies.

Maybe, just maybe, he hadn’t been buried after all.

Maybe he had only just begun to play.