Most men can't make it through even five words of what I'm about to tell you by Nicole Carlson

"Did you hear? They never found him."
    "Wonderful."
    "What do you think happened? You think that bug thing took over his brain?"
    "Hey, why not."
    "You think he's gonna turn up again?"
    Yes.
    "I don't know, John. I'm tired."
    "So... you think it's starting again?

    * * * * *
I woke up in a strange place. I was cold, and every inch of my body was in pain. I heard a crunching sound, like the jaws
    of a predator grinding through bone. I pul ed open my eyes.
    I saw a dragon, standing proudly atop a hill before me.
    The dragon was on a TV screen, a rectangular liquid crystal screen from Toshiba. Beneath it was a video game console
    with a loop of cords snaking across stained carpet. I blinked, squinted at the sun burning in through a cracked window. I
    turned, hearing my neck creak as I did, and saw John sitting at a computer desk in the corner, staring into the monitor and
    holding a bottle full of a clear liquid that I'm sure you wouldn't want to try to put out a fire with.
    I sat up, realizing I had been covered up with something in my sleep. I thought for a moment John had thrown a blanket
    over me but closer inspection revealed it to be a beach towel.
    John glanced back at me from his computer chair and said, "Sorry, I used my spare blanket when I got that leak in my
    car."
    I stil heard that animal crunching sound. I looked around for the source. I found Mol y laying behind the couch, with her
    head crammed inside an open box of Captain Crunch cereal. She was eating as fast as she could, trying to use her paws
    to keep the box in place.
    "You're letting her do that?"
    "Oh, yeah. Cereal is stale anyway. I don't have any dog food here."
    The dragon sat frozen on the television, the intro screen for a video game he had apparently been playing while I slept on
    his couch.
    "What time is it?"
    "About ten."
    I stood, felt my head swim, rubbed my eyes, almost screamed in pain from rubbing the wounded eye. My shoulder felt like
    it had taken a bullet and it felt like a pair of elves were trying to escape my skull through my temples using tiny pickaxes. It wasn't the first time I had woken up at John's place feeling like this.
    A musical chime emerged from my pants. I reached into my front pocket and pul ed out my cell phone. The display read,
    "AMY." I closed my eyes, sighed, and answered.
    "Hey, baby."
    "Hi! David! I'm watching the news! What happened?"
    "Shouldn't you be in class?"
    Amy had failed a pretty basic English class last semester because it was an eight o'clock class and she kept
    oversleeping. I mean, that's her native language and she failed it.
    She said, "They cancelled it. Oh, it's on again. Turn to CNN."
    I talked around the phone to John, told him to switch over the TV. He did, found CNN, and watched as an early-morning
    shot of the chaos at the Hospital fil ed the screen. The name of the city was displayed along the bottom. National news.
    John turned up the sound and we heard a female reporter say,
    "...No history of drug use or mental illness. Frank Burgess had been with the department for three years. Authorities are
    combing the area for Burgess but police say the number of wounds he sustained in the standoff make his turning up alive,
    quote, 'highly unlikely.'"
    They cut to a shot of our enormously fat chief of police, giving a sound bite in front of a bank of microphones.
    To Amy I said, "Man, our chief of police is getting huge."
    "Did you guys hear about this last night? When it was al going on? They said thirteen people were hurt and I think three
    people died. Could you hear shots and stuff from your house?"
    A pause on my end. Too long. I could hear the same news broadcast playing simultaneously on this TV and from Amy's
    TV over the phone. Finally I said, "We heard about it, yeah."
    "Uh-oh."
    "What?"
    "David... were you there? Were you guys in on this?"
    "What? No, no. Of course not. Why would you think that?"
    "David..."
    "No, no. It was nothing. Guy just went crazy, that's all."
    "Are you