"Heathman Ldg" by Brian Evenson

It's Storytime with Wil Wheaton

Wil Wheaton

Fiction

4.9 • 664 Ratings

🗓️ 15 April 2026

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"Heathman Ldg" by Brian Evenson, narrated by Wil A splashing fountain in the center court of a mall with fully stocked stores but no shoppers, muzak cheerfully playing for an audience of none. A paper ticket in your hand, in an airport departure lounge that hasn't seen a passenger in fifty years, the board still updating flight information, with whirling letters. The front desk in the empty hotel lobby, an abandoned cigarette burning down in a glass ashtray, static on a black and white TV. .These are Liminal Spaces: familiar, recognizable, but not quite right, and also a little bit wrong, in a way that is just beyond your ability to describe. Fortunately for us, it is not beyond author Brian Evenson's ability to describe. In fact, you may want to look up now and then to remind yourself where you actually are, as we take you out on the road, destination: Heathman Ldg. Original Publication Credit: “Heathman Ldg” was first published as a limited edition concertina chapbook in Brazil, in English with facing Portuguese translation: Heathman Ldg (Sao Paolo, Brazil: Raphus Press, 2023). Edition of 88, concertina. Nearly simultaneously it appeared in English as: “Heathman Ldg,” Bourbon Penn 32 (2024), 7-22. To learn more about the author, please visit: https://www.brianevenson.com It's Storytime was produced in 2025 by Traveler Enterprises, Inc., who holds the copyright. Our producer is Harris Lane. Our Story Producer and Director is Gabrielle de Cuir. Our Content Editor is Michael Thomas. Our Podcast is mixed, edited, and mastered by Alex Barton of PhaseShift AV. Special thanks to Wes Stevens and Christopher Black. It's Storytime is recorded at Skyboat Media in the beautiful San Fernando Valley, California. If you'd like to support the show and get an ad-free feed, visit ⁠patreon.com/storytime⁠ I'm your Creator, Executive Producer, and host, Wil Wheaton. You can find me online at ⁠wilwheaton.net⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Here.
0:13.0	The Hey everybody, it's Will and it's story time.
0:28.7	I wrote an introduction for today's episode that I like.
0:32.7	I had fun writing it.
0:34.1	It felt good.
0:35.0	But on my way to the studio, I decided that I'm not going to read it because a huge part of how much I loved this story and chose it for the podcast was the discovery along the way, the slowly dawning realization as I turned the pages. I don't want to take that away from you,
0:55.8	so I'm not going to.
0:57.9	The intro is pretty cool, though,
0:59.4	so I will read it to you
1:01.0	after we finish Heathman Lodge.
1:15.6	Heathman Lodge. Heathman Lodge by Brian Evanson.
1:26.7	His final jaunt, just before he dropped off the map entirely, Erlund spent weeks without going home,
1:31.2	traveling from town to town, staying at hotel after hotel, taking his sample books and displaying them to whatever merchants he found loaded
1:37.3	into his itinerary each day. The company had, in the past, always given him a few days off every week or two, and had also
1:46.7	set his schedule so those days would fall at a time when his route brought him close to home.
1:53.5	But perhaps, either a new person was scheduling him now, or there had been some sort of not
1:58.9	yet diagnosed computer glitch, or the company
2:01.3	had changed policies in ways that were not completely legible and that he couldn't understand.
2:06.7	Still, what did it matter? His wife had left them a few months before, and they never had children
2:12.2	nor pets. He had no one to go home to. And yet, it did matter. That many days on the road, that many days
2:22.2	in a row, you started to lose track of yourself. Most mornings, Erland woke up, unsure what town he was in,
2:33.2	disoriented, confused. And whenever he picked up his phone,
	...

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