The Sultan of Dreamland

He nearly missed seeing the drone disappear over the trees. His phone had alerted him that someone was at the front door. He was not expecting a package and certainly not a drone to deliver it.

The shipping label was blank other than the address. Printed in plain lettering above the address as if it was a name, or a title, appeared the words: The Sultan Of Dreamland.

He had no idea who or what the hell that meant.

It was a small package, maybe eight inches square and only a couple inches wide. It was plain white cardboard with clear packing tape wrapped excessively around the entire box. There was no return address. He could see that a long strand of jet black hair was caught under a section of tape.

He was extremely curious but not knowing if the package was even intended for him, he set it on the dining room table. He was late to work already and while he was outside the dog had shit on the floor.

When he returned home later, his wife immediately asked, "who the hell is the Sultan?" That's when he remembered the package. Although he had his doubts that morning, he decided to go ahead and open the package.

She was smiling as she held out a Compact Disc case. "I hope you don't mind but I already opened it. I didn't know what it was. I mean, The Sultan of Dreamland? Anyway, it was a CD so I assume it's yours."

She handed it to him. He could tell immediately something was very off about this.

"I listened to the entire thing. It's very good. In fact, I think it has one of your songs. Is that why you ordered it? The title is different but this song 'Coming Home' is definitely that old song you used to play. What did you call it? 'Ithaca', I think? The singer even sounds a lot like you. Where did you order it from?"

She could see from his expression that he was even more confused than she was. "Wait. The singer sounds a lot like you and it has at least one of your songs. Oh, crap. Is this you? Did you make a CD? When did you make an album?"

The second he had turned the CD case over his heart had immediately dropped. The cover was very artfully done but didn't convey much about the artist or the music. However, he could tell right away from the track listing that someone had stolen more than just one song.

"June, I don't understand. I gave this all up years ago. These are my songs but I never recorded any of them. Most of them no one ever heard but me."

"Roger, what's happening?"

"I don't know", was all he could muster up.

"You go listen to it. You need to. I'll order some dinner. Take all the time you need."

She had no idea what she was offering to him. He indeed took his time. He listened to the album over and over, late into the night. His wife sat with him most of the evening. She cried a little. He cried a lot. Eventually, she went to bed. He couldn't stop listening.

He called off work the next day. And the day after that. And the next day.

He only needed to listen to the first minute of the first song to know that he was somehow listening to himself. These were his songs, his vocals. He was playing guitar and keyboards.

He made this album.

Yet he hadn't.

What the hell was this?

According to the copyright, the year it was supposedly released was twenty years ago. Thus, the CD format. There was no streaming back then. There were still cassettes. Vinyl hadn't come back yet but CDs were what most everyone bought.

The included booklet contained not only the lyrics, but full liner notes, listing every musician, every contributor, every detail of where and when it was recorded. There were even photographs from the sessions. As he dug through the credits, he noticed a great deal of prominent artists performing backup vocals, guitar solos, and even a couple who shared songwriting credits with him. There were some big names on here. Artists like Buzz and Michael Johannsen and Buno and even three of the four Wandering Stones. And so many others.

He just couldn't understand how this CD existed. He couldn’t understand why this was happening. What exactly was happening.

After a very exasperating week, more so for his wife than him, he knew what he had to do.

It took less effort than he might have thought to get the producer, Milford Hawkins, on the phone. Twenty years ago there had been no bigger name in the industry. He emailed him first, attaching a picture of them together from the booklet.

“I don’t know who you are", Milford said. "I saw the picture you sent and all I can say is that it must be a well done fake. I don’t know what you’re trying to pull here, what kind of scam or con, but you need to leave me alone."

He tried to reach some of the musicians credited on the album. He never got past their publicists. A few were kind to him but he could tell they thought he was crazy.

He called up a very famous drummer named Bernie Fredericks. He happily took the call, seeing as how he was serving a life sentence for shooting a record executive in the face after he had tried to drop his band from their label.

"Yeah, I remember you", he said. Roger couldn't believe what he was hearing. Finally!

"I'll tell you what. You come on down here and we'll reminisce about the old times. There's some things I could use, too, if you could bring 'em with you." It was a very long list. Roger didn't know how prison worked but was pretty sure some of these things weren't allowed. He hung up when he finally realized Bernie didn't know or care who he was.

As he became more desperate, he actually flew out to Los Angeles to visit the studio where most of the tracks had been recorded. June begged him not to go. She begged him to look on the bright side, that he was able to experience something no one else probably ever had, or ever could. She begged him to let it go.

"We get to enjoy your album. Isn't that enough?"

She told him if he went, she wouldn't be here when he returned. He told her he simply had no choice.

There was a fast food restaurant where the studio should have been. The manager didn't know anything about any studio and as far as he could remember, a restaurant had always been in this location.

He visited the record company. They were famously at the corner of Hollywood and Pine. He showed the receptionist the CD and said he just wanted to know more about the album.

"We've had hundreds of thousands of releases, sir. Many of them are some of the best-selling and most acclaimed albums ever. You'd probably find all you need to know online."

He was persistent and explained this CD contained songs he had written but wasn't aware had been recorded. That got her attention.

"If it's a royalties issue, sir, have a seat and someone will be with you shortly."

Eventually a gray-haired man with a dark mustache came to the lobby. He looked at the CD, wrote something down and said he'd be back in just a moment. He returned with a CD in his hand and politely insinuated that Roger must be trying to pull something. He showed him the CD they had in their archives that had the identical catalog number.

"Yours is obviously a fake", he explained. "We never use a catalog number twice and that number corresponds to this album, not yours. If you feel your songs have been used without compensation on perhaps a legitimate Pinnacle Records release, then you'll have to substantiate your claim better, or consider retaining legal representation. We simply don't have an album in our files credited to this artist name at all.

"Someone must be messing with you", he said in a hushed tone as he walked him to the elevator.

He went home.

Just as she had promised, June was gone. She had taken the dog.

He wasn't sure why he didn't think of the duet. It was probably because it was by far the weakest song on the album. He still listened to the CD on constant repeat but occasionally would skip that song. The other vocalist was extremely talented and it was obvious the song was intended to showcase her. She wasn't anyone he had heard of.

He looked online and found someone with the same name living just a few blocks away.

She picked up on the first ring.

“I wondered how long it would take you to find me."

She gave him her address. He left the house within seconds of ending the call. In fact, he sprinted there.

"You weren't kidding when you said you'd be right here. It's a nice day. Let's sit on the porch."

She poured them each a tall glass of iced tea and got right to it.

"Where I come from, you're a big star. You're so famous that it only took me a few weeks after I arrived to realize you weren't famous here. I mean, you're everywhere where I come from. Although it's not quite you. The first time I saw you out shopping one day, I could tell. I can see it for sure now. You're different but there are similarities. Maybe that other guy is who you could have been or maybe your lives are different because you're different people. I don't know. I've had twenty years to think about this and I'm still confused. Maybe it doesn't matter."

The last few weeks were more than he could bear and he couldn't hold it in anymore.

"But it does matter. This CD has become everything to me. I realize now this is who I was supposed to be. Hearing it made everything make sense. Why I was never really happy. Why work was so unfulfilling. Why I started these songs to begin with."

She could see the pain he was feeling and guessed the reason.

"You lost someone because of this, didn't you? I caused that. That wasn't my intention."

"I lost June. She was my everything but she didn't understand, wouldn't even try to understand."

"Wouldn't understand or couldn't understand? Don't you think this is a lot to ask of someone? To just watch while someone she loved went through an incomprehensible situation. I'm sure she tried in her own way. I've learned a lot traveling from there to here. And trust me, I've learned it the hard way. I didn't want to leave home. I don't know how I ended up here. I just woke up one day and every damn thing outside the doors of my house was suddenly wrong and different. Some days I don't even know if any of this is real. But I've come to accept it. And what I've learned as a result is this.

"What matters is being happy and loving who you're with and most importantly, loving yourself.

"Do you love yourself, Roger?

"Your music back there was beautiful and my world loved it and we loved you but I'll tell you, you didn't love yourself. Not at all. You were miserable. I knew that guy extremely well. He was broken beyond repair. That's not you. You’re at least capable of happiness.

Roger, were you happy before all this?"

He paused a long time before answering.

"I don't know. I haven't really thought about it. I guess so. I have, or had a wife I love and who loves, or loved me. It's always been just the two of us but we're good. Maybe it hasn't been so bad."

"Well, darling. The Roger I knew spent every minute of his desolate life thinking and talking and singing about how unhappy he was. You know what I'm talking about. You told me on the phone that you wrote some of those songs here in this world, or started to. You know what you felt when you needed to write those songs. But here's the difference. That pathetic, beautiful bastard finished those songs. Yet all it did to him was make him the awful fuck he is, was, is. Whatever. Do you think it was worth it to him? Was his art worth the transformation? He may have started out the same as you but he didn't end up as you, trust me. You're a good person. I can tell. He ain't you. He ain't good."

Roger listened carefully but couldn't believe what he was hearing. How could a person living out his dreams and doing it so successfully be so sad? He wanted her to understand what he was thinking, what he was feeling.

"I just wanted to sing my songs, to create something beautiful, to make people happy."

He suddenly thought of a line from one of the songs he'd listened to a lot lately. Then another. And another.

She was right. These were not happy songs. In fact, none of the songs he'd heard were even remotely happy. They were not written by a happy person. He knew he had been a pretty miserable teenager when he'd started writing them. He assumed channeling that into music would be therapeutic, a way of unloading the demons, if you will. It seemed to help but of course, everything changed when he met June. It wasn't that he no longer had anything to sing about but he remembered just not wanting to anymore. More accurately, he probably didn't need to.

"I guess I didn't need those songs after my life wasn't broken anymore."

"Roger, you barely scratched the surface here with your music emotionally, intellectually. If you had finished the songs, it would have changed you. To go to the depths it takes to do that, to share in the way these songs do, is more than most people can ever do. It's a one way road you can't turn back from. Even when the you I knew had the talented help you had, making the music you made there was probably the most lonely thing a person ever did. I don't know you really but I suspect you're a better person than that. You have June. You go get her back. That guy who made that album had no one. Like I said, I know.

"Well, anyway, it's taken me twenty years and a lot of heartache but that's what all this has taught me. I just wanted you to know how lucky you are to have escaped that fate. I guess I also wanted you to have a glimpse of what that means. If I messed up, or if I messed you up, then I'm sorry. But now, you need to go back to your life.”

Her tone had remained slightly emotionless during their entire conversation but now she turned very cold. Any humanity she had shown was quickly swept away.

“Roger, don't even think of ever coming back here. I can't talk to you anymore. I just…can't."

As she said her final words she poked him in the chest with her bony finger. She gently slid the finger down his chest. Still touching him, she was tempted to tell him that as good as it was, this CD wasn't even close to being one of his best albums back home. He had made music that was even more incredible. He had made music that was so much more popular that it was virtually ubiquitous. He had made music that had literally changed the world. At least, the world she used to know. But she knew she couldn't tell him this.

What she also couldn't tell him was what she was to him back there. Why it was so important to him that she be featured as she was on his album. She couldn’t tell him why she shared this CD out of all the other ones she had upstairs in her house right now. She also couldn't tell him why the song just didn't work. Why what should have been a duet was really two lonely people singing two separate songs.

Instead, without another word, she turned and pulled open the screen door of her house, stepped in and disappeared.

Slipping the CD back into the pocket of his oversized jacket, he walked down the sidewalk, tears in his eyes. He turned back to look one last time, hoping she would be waving him back to tell him more.

Instead, she was truly gone.

He thought he saw a pair of familiar eyes looking back at his own from an upstairs window. The curtain shuffled closed.

He hummed a sad melody to himself as he headed back home, unsure if it was one he had composed or had heard somewhere.