Heart-Shaped Box

by Joe Hill

Jude read that anyone who held open the golden door of mortality, for a peek at the other side, risked letting something through, and that the ill, the old, and those who loved death were especially in danger.

If hell was anything, it was talk radio—and family.

The dead win when you quit singing and let them take you on down the road with them.”

“It’s sorry to see him die this way, but it’s worse to keep a man going after a certain point. I believe that. There comes a time, the dead have a right to claim their own.”