"Andrew who?" I said.

"Andrew Mayhem," it moaned back.

I turned to Andrew. "Know anyone named Mayhem?"

"You"re a waste of carbon," Mayhem said. Then to the voice, "Horace? Horace Folterkeller? Is that you?"

"It"s me, Andrew!"

"Horace is my neighbor up the street," Andrew said to me.

"Whoop-de-freakin"-doo," I answered.

"I thought you left your wife," he said to Horace.

"I didn"t leave her! I was kidnapped and brought here!"

"Oh. You probably don"t want to hear about the new man she brought home, then."

"New man? I"ve only been gone a few weeks."

"Sorry, Horace. Everyone just a.s.sumed you ran off."

While this conversation was all savagely interesting to me, I decided that looking for an exit was more important than neighborhood gossip. I groped around blindly, hands in front of me, searching for a door or a wall or something.

"Is he nice?" Horace asked.

"Is who nice?"

"The man my wife is seeing."

"Well...he"s got a lot of very nice tattoos."

"Tattoos?"

"And a nice motorcycle."

"She"s dating a biker?"

"Well, not dating so much as moved in with."

"What about my teenage daughter?"

"She seems to like him. She"s, um, kissing him all the time."

I nudged something with my toe, then crouched down to pick it up. Some sort of slimy hose. I gave it a squeeze.

Nearby, Horace farted.

I squeezed it again.

Another fart.

I put two and two together and realized this wasn"t a hose after all. I set it down gently.

"Pardon me," Horace said.

"Buddy, are you, uh, missing anything?"

"Like what?"

"Like your colon?"

Horace sighed. "I thought they were yanking something out of me. I"m chained to the wall so I can"t tell."

"Aren"t you in any pain?" Andrew asked.

"Nope. Feel pretty good, actually. Got some sort of IV, doping me up. When they come for feedings it kind of tickles."

An IV? Now that I could use. I had a killer headache, and my arm hurt from landing hard on Mayhem. I was sure Horace wouldn"t mind if I gave myself a little poke to take the edge off.

I headed toward him, but my feet got tangled up and I fell sideways, turned a small cartwheel, and ended up on my back with my legs in the air.

There was a loud sound-part flatulence/part slurp-and then Horace produced an exaggerated sigh that sort of petered out into silence.

"Horace? You still there?"

"He"s in a better place," I said, unwinding the intestines from my ankles.

"What did you do now, you idiot? How the h.e.l.l did you ever get a private investigator"s license?"

"You need a license?"

"G.o.d, I hate you."

I smelled something p.o.o.py, and realized that something in the entrail pile was leaking.

"Your neighbor had a lot of guts."

"More than you"ll ever have."

"I mean he really had a lot of guts." I felt something small and wet, like a skinned lemon. "What the h.e.l.l is this? A spleen?"

"We need to get out of here. Jesus!"

"Call me Harry."

"I found a wall. And another corpse. Oh G.o.d, and another one. And another."

I finally kicked off the last of the offal, made it to Horace, and took a hit off his IV tube. Tasted like morphine.

"I think there may be an exit this way. I feel a breeze."

"Mmmm. Morphine."

"Harry, you moron, are you listening to me?"

"Yeah, yeah, breeze, exit, I"ll be there in a minute."

"Are you eating something?"

"I"m n.o.b eebing ebbyfib."

The morphine went down easy, just like Aunt Emma, and soon all of my various aches and pains were replaced with a non-specific sense of well being. I tied a knot in the tube, pulled the bag off the IV stand, and then plodded off in the direction of Mayhem"s insults.

I found the wall, and my hand touched something wet, sort of like a water balloon coated in baby oil. I squeezed it. It popped. Thank G.o.d for total darkness.

"Over here, McGlade. I think I found a door."

I came up next to him and felt around.

"What gave it away?" I asked. "The doork.n.o.b?"

"It"s locked."

"No s.h.i.t."

"It feels like one of those bathroom door locks. If we stick something small and thin in the hole, we can open it."

I started to giggle. Some jokes don"t even need to be said aloud.

"Feel around for a nail or something."

"I"m on it," I said. Then I sat down and stuck the morphine needle in my mouth.

"Harry? Harry, are you searching for something?"

"Mmmm-hmmm."

Someone, probably Andrew, kicked me. I giggled. Then I felt a pair of hands s.n.a.t.c.h away my morphine bag.

"Dammit, McGlade, you"re getting high!"

"Just taking the edge off. Do you see that bunny?"

I reached out to pat the bunny, and he did a funny little bunny dance.

"Okay, I think I can use this needle."

"Don"t bogart it. Save some for your buddy Harry.

I heard a metallic clicking sound, then the sound of a k.n.o.b turning, then the sound of a door opening, then the sound of two leprechauns having s.e.x.

"Grab her in her Lucky Charms," I said to them.

They laughed, and gave me a big hug. So did the bunny. Then I bit my tongue really hard, just to see if I could feel anything. I couldn"t. Life was swell.

"Here"s a switch."

A light went on in the room next to me, which scared away the leprechauns. I started to yell at Mayhem to turn the light off, and saw him walking up a flight of stairs. I followed him, because, after all, he had the morphine, and when we got to the top there was another door.

"I think this leads outside," said someone, possibly me, possibly Andy, possibly the large walrus in the clown hat who I had named George.

I loved George.

Andrew opened the door, and standing there were two police officers, and I was 96% sure there weren"t a hallucination.

"Thank G.o.d," Andrew Mayhem said. "We"ve been held prisoner in a house full of psychopaths who think they"re vampires."

"And there was a bunny," I added.

Then the cop on the left grinned, and I felt very confused because it looked like he had really sharp fangs.

Stop.

When Harry and I agreed to relate the unpleasant tale of our unfortunate adventure together, we set some ground rules. First, and most important, was that I would not write in the same room as him. I think we can all agree that this was fair and just. If fewer people spent time in rooms with Harry McGlade, the world would be a much happier place.

Second, we agreed not to debate each other"s contributions to the narrative. So though Harry"s side of the story has certain...ah, lapses in accuracy, I let them go. He mostly got the big picture right, if not the details.

I was cool with this until I read his last section, where we suddenly have a completely fabricated conversation that makes me look like an insensitive idiot. I"m not going to lie to you, I"ve been an insensitive idiot on many an occasion, but when a guy is chained up in the bas.e.m.e.nt with his intestines slopping out onto the floor, even at my most insensitive and most idiotic I would not try to cheer him up with news that his wife is shacking up with a biker dude.

Correction #1: My neighbor"s name was not Horace Folterkeller. It was Dan Smith.

Correction #2: I did not say "You probably don"t want to hear about the new man she brought home, then." She did not bring home a new man. Dan"s wife was absolutely devastated by the situation.

Correction #3: Dan didn"t even have a daughter. He had a son who"d gone off to college.

Correction #4: In fact, not one word of that conversation is accurate. Mostly there was a lot of "Dan! Dan! Can you hear me?" while I gently slapped his face and tried to get him to focus on me. He wasn"t even able to speak except for a few incoherent words.

It was all very tragic. That McGlade felt the need to rewrite it into a not-particularly-convincing comedy routine says a lot about his moral character.

What Harry got right was that the b.u.mbling dips.h.i.t did indeed take a hit of morphine. You probably thought he made that part up, too, because n.o.body would actually do something like that, but I a.s.sure you that he did. And, yes, you are right to weep over the state of humanity.

So, anyway, we walked up the stairs and saw the cops with fangs. At least Harry saw them. I didn"t, because I"m a big stupid p.o.o.p head and I like to smell people"s b.u.t.ts.

Chad,