I was contemplating my drink the way someone does when they’re teetering farther on the edge of “actually drunk” rather than the “merely getting tipsy” portion they measure themselves as being. The, “Oh, this is really pretty liquid. Especially in this insufficient light. I’m sure it has amazing physical properties. Water’s pretty neat, too, you know. You can do neat things with water. I wonder if there are frozen martini planets in space,” kind of thoughts that drinking allows to float in my head, as if in a lazy innertube ride through the rivers of the mind.

There are things you can’t un-see, and I am ever so happy to be a rationalizing human being who can eventually desensitize and forget the events I’ve been unfortunate enough to encounter of that, “I’d like some brain bleach, please,” nature. While I’m in no hurry to experience any sort of dementia, there are certainly things I would pick and choose from, and if some fey being asks for some of my memories in return for a gift, I already have them organized and ready.

Of course, the measure of that is incredibly idiosyncratic. Some people, as I’ve noted, don’t want to think of their parents having sex. Or of that ridiculous scene in that movie they made merely to push the boundaries of what kind of gore they can show on screen. (Which I think is cheating the viewing public. Trust me, that squirming sense of discomfort your brain gives in thinking of the atrocities off screen is a thousand times more rich and unusual than the actual discomfort of the special effect. After a while all we’re marking down is the splatter patterns of dyed dark corn syrup or whatever blood substitute they’re using these days and ignoring the paid shrieks of the actors. Some of the artistry in gore comes from studio-made masterpieces, but it only suggests fear the same way it suggests its realer counterparts. Of course, it’s thinking like this that would have us critiquing the effects of a snuff film. “The melodrama of the last minute was ineffective,” the critics would say. “Not enough explosions,” we’d see on Twitter… Um, sober? Not so much.)

Maggie hadn’t shown up yet. We were in the same dive bar in Boulder that Ed frequents because he hasn’t graduated to having taste, yet. I don’t know if there’s a four year school for it outside the culinary arts. I guess it’s all in the mind of the beholder anyway. Eye of the ilithid? No, wait. It sold alcohol, the prices were satisfactory, and the service was as well. I wouldn’t eat here, but I try not to eat where I can’t see the food anyway. The amber light fixtures probably built ambiance that brought to mind episodes of the Brady Bunch I thought long buried in the darkest recesses of my brain.

At least it wasn’t, say, Bennigan’s. Their potato skins used to be good, but with that and their signature Monte Cristo, even with the side of broccoli I was probably courting death more specifically than in jibing with a Shadow King. A delicious, guilty death, but a hastened one.

“I think I’m hungry.” I said it to my glass. I had been holding it up like I was in black crystal thrall or something.

“I’m not drunk enough to eat after that,” Ed said. He took a swig out of the bottle. (He refused to drink anything that hadn’t been sealed before the bartender touched it, yet I knew he had a homebrew set-up at home. It just sounded like a lot more touching than a tap system, but what did I know? I just fought Dragons and discovered errors in the laws of space and time.)

“Maggie will know what to do,” I said. I said it like I believed it, like I had my faith in the Magster to work some miracles. “Anyway, it was probably an illusion.” I drank what was in my glass. That was the philosophical shot.

“No more for you if you’re invoking Mags. Bartender, cut him off. He’s crazy. Says he’s a wizard and can close rifts in space and time,” Ed spoke over me.

The bartender harrumphed, the only sign that he was even listening.

“Sooth,” I said. “‘Cept I’m no wizard.”

“True,” Matana said, settling down to the stool next to me lightly and silently. I likened it uncharitably like a bat finding its home stalactite.

“Heya, Ed, have you met Maggie’s latest exotic pet?” I asked.

Matana’s expression darkened, and Ed caught it. He pushed my glass away. “You’re done, E. You’re not becoming a mean drunk on my watch.”

“I’m not on your watch,” I muttered, and I stumbled as he pulled me away from the bar.

“Yeah, because you’re not sitting on my wrist. But you might be on my steel-toed boot pretty soon. I’m sorry, miss.”

“My name is Matana,” she said, with that silky hint of accent.

“I’m Ed. I run `Unwanted HouseGuests.’ Run them out of town, actually.”

“Are you secretly an Edward?” she asked.

“Not a chance. Family curse. I could have been a Teddy if my mom’s mum had her way, but someone decided on a little dignity. Last name’s more French, though, so the masculinity quotient may even out since it’s come up the bayou and not from wine country. Hey, E, are you going to be sick.”

“If I close my eyes I see it again. If I don’t close my eyes I get dizzy.”

“Maggie will be here soon,” Matana said. She lightly touched my elbow and I flinched enough that I hit Ed with my shoulder.

He hit me back.

I wobbled.

More than words came out in balance. I had at least made it into the parking lot before I desecrated the shrubbery with my nervousness and a bit of alcohol, and images of a place that couldn’t exist. A place where the angles were all wrong. A glimpse via a flashlight to what had to be an illusion. I believed in Euclid. I would clap my hands if it helped, but really, I had one arm on Ed, and the other on Matana for a moment, feeling incredibly weak.

That would, of course, be the moment Maggie drove up.