Johnny Ruin
by Dan Dalton
If a tree falls in a forest and Jon Bon Jovi is with you when it happens, is it still a figment of your imagination?Haunted by the idea that he is somehow broken, the narrator – a depressed, heartbroken, thirty-something writer – embarks on a journey through his own mind with his spirit guide, Jon Bon Jovi, for company.From the redwoods of California to a crumbling New York City, they travel the highways of our narrator's memory, an imagined America, where his thoughts are tangled with fragments from the songs and movies that shaped him, and where he can't help but replay scenes from his doomed relationship.When his ex-girlfriend turns up demanding that he forget her, he must decide whether he's ready to let go...