PART III: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS / 25

Chapter 25

Since I didn't work at EcoCares the next day, I decided to spend the morning finishing up the newest manuscript I'd been editing, the one about the guy who lived in the sewer in Cincinnati, and said it was as good as _The Snows of Kilimanjaro_, which Bufford and I had both enjoyed reading last summer, but not as sweeping or meaningful, although the author did imply that the entire memoir was "memoir masquerading as metaphor, a deeply meaningful allegory of sorts", but this is what all insecure writers say about their work.

Alas, I didn't even get the laptop booted up before there was a knock on my door. Too early for bill collectors. Too early for mail. Too early for most everything, but I got up, a bit annoyed, listing like an overfilled oil tanker and lumbered toward the door. I looked through the cracked peephole. I backed out, considered, then leaned forward again with my other eye. I saw the same thing. There was, indeed, a large shaggy purple dog on my porch standing uncharacteristically erect on its hind legs. The brain is faster than the most super super-computer (for now) but no logarithm could be found to make this surreal scenario 'situation normal' inside my head. There was a large purple shaggy dog at my front door at an ungodly hour of the morning and it had just knocked at said door, and it had a tongue the size of a necktie protruding and wagging dreamily from its mouth. This is the part when one wonders if they are truly awake or still dreaming. This is also how people get shot, or stop sniffing glue.

I backed away a couple of steps from the door,  recalling the police smoke bomb and taser still in my possession. They were lying on the recliner across the room. Though I was not generally a violent man, I considered them as options. Another knock. Finally, I decided that this had been a strange week and why not keep to form. So I reached out,  twisted the door handle decidedly and pulled it open a crack. The door exploded open the rest of the way and I stood face to face with the surreal beast. It opened its mouth.

The fuzzy canine giant suddenly popped his head off with the deep, hollow sound of a WWII submarine hatch opening and held its decapitated cranium, still smiling, proudly above his body. Alarmingly, another smaller head took its place. The head belonged to one Bufford Johnson, sweating profusely and still beaming about his recent epiphany.

"Brody!" The exclamation shocked me so much that I jumped. "It came to me early this morning as I walked past The Bed Frame on MLK! If I need to hide, I don't actually have to disappear. I can be someone else right where I am now."

Where had he gotten that dog suit? Was I already aiding and abetting? What was that horrible smell?