Question the Second .1

I scratched my head. "All right, then, my second question is; how do we defeat the ninjas and clear them off the planet?"

"That," said the ghost army arrayed before me, "is the correct question."

I blushed. "Well, thank ya kindly. I was rather proud of it."

"You're welcome," they responded, much more hospitable now that they had a sympathetic ear.

Then we waited in a kind of verbal Mexican standoff. I didn't feel I had much more to say on the subject, but they didn't seem like they was gonna be forthcoming with the information. But the whole thing was a lot more complicated, strategically speakin. For one, they had spoken last, so it was prolly my turn. But they left me in the position that my next phrase was likely to be a question; somethin like 'Y'all wanna give me that information now?' Sure, it would be a sarcastic question, but I couldn't risk them bein a bunch of literal jerks like all them genies in them dirty jokes Douggy's wife keeps tellin when she's had a touch too much wine. And it's like my pappy always used to tell me, if you can't say nothin nice, or you can't say nothin without gettin yourself trapped by some sorta verbal contract between you and a supernatural entity, it's best to say nothin at all.

I tried to get them started with some throat clearin. They responded in kind. Then I tried some beard scratchin. They came back with sniffin. I hit them back with a raised eyebrow. They came in heavy with a significant incline of the head. They had my back to a wall, both literally and figuratively, so there was only one option left to me. Don't judge me, I had no choice. I had to bring out the big guns.

I cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger on a, "Yep."

They were scrambling. They tried to rally with a weak, "Uh-huh."

I had them. It was a simple matter now of dealing the final blow. With a small, almost imperceptible nod, I gave them a knowing, "Mmmm," while wrinklin my eyebrows in thought.

They knew they were defeated. "Ok, ok!" yelled the ghost army. "No more! We'll tell you."

I just wish every contest could be as easy as a silence off. I been workin on winnin those since I was a kid. We'd go on long road trips and my pa would challenge Frank and I to the quiet game. In our final game, neither Frank nor I said a single word from the time I was 12 until I was 14. The school we went to worried about us and was fixin to put us in a special program when Frank, in order to fulfill her 'team activities' requirement was forced to join the debate team. I thanked my lucky stars that she'd signed up for her activity too late to get on the bowling team and, after her first debate was over, I gloated for weeks. Plus, that two years taught me a couple things. I learned how to communicate a whole bunch of stuff without ever resorting to more than a knowing nod. I also learned that language is an abstract construction that cultures implicitly agree to use in order to cement our societal rules and regulations, reinforcing norms and cultural assumptions on the very youngest members, therefore ensuring that our view of the world, or at least the communicable aspects of it, will be carried on in perpetuity. As such, language assures that cultures maintain themselves, for better or for worse, until language itself changes. And finally, I learned it's difficult to cover up farting when you're not making any sound.

"To defeat Clan Platypus on this planet, you will need to defeat the 13 sons," the ghosts explained. "And to defeat the 13 sons, you will need the staff of Haruki."

"That sounds like an interesting story," I told them. "Please continue."

"We shall. "The year was 1983," they began. "It was a great time to be a ninja. Clan Platypus was heavily invested in cocaine sales, and sales were good. They had been organizing things politically so that the economic boom would be concentrated amongst the rich, who were the only ones interested in buying cocaine. The poor were still killing the pain of being poor and cold and hungry all the time in the same way they always had; by drinking cheap beer and yelling at their families.

"It was into this high life atmosphere that the young necromancers graduated and began their careers. Being young in the 80's, they felt they could change the structure of how the Clan did business. Most of the young ones began by joining financial firms which, despite their utter lack of training, was made pretty easy through their families' political connections. Ten of the thirteen began working on a new type of economics, which combined money know how with dark magic.

"Their plan was to concentrate wealth at the very top. They sold this idea to all the people of the world saying that, by giving money to the top 5% of earners, those people would spend the money on goods and services, thereby allowing the money to trickle down into the economy. As ridiculous as this sounds, they sold it pretty well. However, being in the top 5% of earners themselves, they knew that rich people were the most against spending money. After all, one doesn't become wealthy by giving money away.

"Then, once money was taken from those who needed it most and given to those who needed it least, they would infiltrate the airwaves with shows about how rich people lived, making the poor jealous. They then used this jealousy to pass gambling legislation in a few states and expand state lottery operations around most of the country. The poor people were willing to go along with this because they felt it gave them a chance to live the lavish lifestyles they were seeing on TV every week, and the rich went along with it because it made them even richer. And, of course, it didn't hurt that the people passing the laws were amongst the top 5% themselves.

"Their final goal was far from economic, however. From the first, the new necromancers planned only to increase the surplus suffering in the world, because this suffering is where dark magicians get their power. They would then harvest this suffering and turn it into a sweet, sweet nectar. In the final step of their diabolical plan, they would inject this nectar into a new type of soda and sell it back to the people, creating a suffering feedback loop and expanding the people's capacity for suffering exponentially. They anticipated this final harvest would make them the most powerful necromancers in the known universe.

"Because their plan involved economics to increase suffering, they came up with a name for it; Voodoo economics. They began their work slowly and carefully, concentrating as much suffering as possible and distilling it in their labs. When they were ready, they made a test batch of their conceived soda. They combined the suffering with carbonated water and waited to see what happened. They became worried when the pure suffering turned their soda a radioactive green, but they pressed through and found that the color and its horrible, godless flavor appealed to the poor. Pleased with this development, they went into production and soon, all the world was inundated with Mountain Dew. It is made from and causes suffering.

"But there was a flaw in their plan. It was discovered by the three sons who had taken up other careers; Tetsuo Yamazaki, Ichiro Toei and Haruki Hatayama. What they did changed the very nature of the world."

Question the First

"Question the first," I began, "What the heck are y'all? You were like a dragon, but now you're a bunch of trucker ghosts. What's the deal here?"

They responded in a voice that sounded like the Vienna Boys Choir, if the Vienna Boys Choir were made up of adult ghosts. "We are the tormented spirits of meth addicts. The leaders of Clan Platypus on this planet searched far and wide to find those who were the most desperate, the most broken and the most addicted. They collected us together and took us to their underground base, deep beneath the Earth, where the dinosaurs roam free and the cheese fountains flow.

"At first, we thought we were the luckiest people in the world. Not only did we get to live with dinosaurs, which the ninjas had tamed and were using as beasts of burden, but Clan Platypus gave us all the meth we could use. It was heaven for a time. We would wake up in the afternoon, get spun on meth and then do whatever we took a mind to do.

"We built stuff, we cleaned, we collected things and we souped up the dinosaurs with blowers and slicks. And we listened to a whole lot of Skynard. But it was a lie, it was all a lie. The ninjas were just building our addiction to their horrible drug. Slowly, very slowly, they began to spread rumors that they were running out. We would receive less and less each day until, finally, we got none.

"It took mere hours for the withdrawal to kick in. We were shaky and itchy. By that time, it felt like ants had colonized under our skins, because the crystals had grown there. We scratched and scratched until the skin came off. Incidentally, this is how we learned we could feel pain again. We began to feel the throb of arms and legs we'd broken while doing our wild activities. The worst, though, was the emotional pain.

"Without the drug, our minds began working again. We started to see what animals we were becoming. We wondered aloud at some of the things we did, especially souping up those dinosaurs. Dinosaurs don't need giant, fat racing tires on them. They're animals, not cars. We also realized that our favorite music besides Skynard, which was mostly Kid Rock and Slipknot, totally, totally sucks. Strangely, Skynard still rocks pretty hard. We figure that's because they were making music before the drug became popular and they'd possessed that one thing that has become a detriment in modern music; talent.

"Then, just when we thought we were going to be clear of the drug, the ninjas brought more. We began to binge. We built and destroyed, built and destroyed. What we didn't notice is that they were keeping us off the drug longer and longer. When you're addicted, every day is much like the last. They just go by in gray blurs when you don't have the drug and in colored blurs when you do.

"Clan Platypus kept up this boom and bust cycle of meth of years. They were very scientific about it. They would dry us out before we did lethal damage to ourselves and they would deliver more drugs only after we were over the worst of the withdrawal. Finally, they cut us off entirely.

"At first, it was like every other time. We went through the withdrawal knowing that more drugs would be delivered to us soon, if we just stood it. But it was not to be. We waited and waited. A month passed. Then another month. Then a season. Then one day we woke up and found a year had passed since they took the meth away. Yet we were not clear of the itching, the hurting and the craving.

"Clan Platypus had induced in us a state of permanent withdrawal. We craved and craved, but the drug never came. We searched, we fought, we cried, but no drugs were to come. We became twisted and hateful inside. We all became extra destructive. Some of us destroyed things; tearing the tires of the dinosaurs, pulling down the dams on the cheese rivers that had been meticulously built out of toothpicks. Others destroyed other people, getting into fights that, more often than not, ended in murder. The rest of us destroyed ourselves.

"It didn't matter how it happened, or how long it took to break, all of us ended up dead in one way or another. And when we did, instead of the sweet release we were hoping for in death, we only got more slavery at the hands of Platypus.

"The Clan has a special council of 13 necromancers, consisting of the sons of the 13 top members. At first, the leadership didn't know what to do with their necromancers. Sure, they knew that their sons had gone off to Ninja college and gotten it into their heads that they were going to study Necromancy instead of something respectable like Disemboweling or even something practical like Camouflage Techniques. The leaders all thought their sons were just going through a phase and would eventually change their majors, but it was not to be.

"On the day the 13 sons graduated, the fathers finally accepted that they had necromancers in their ranks now. It was considered shameful at the time and many of the leaders attempted suicide before they had to show their hooded faces at the next ninja convention with a necromancer for a son. Two of them succeeded in their attempts, only to be revived by the very sons that gave them shame.

"It was this revival that made Clan Platypus reconsider. If the 13 sons could raise the dead, even after the dead had been eviscerated, beheaded and thrown in a volcano, then what else might be possible? They gave their sons free reign to experiment and develop their skills. We, the twisted souls you see before you, were one of their early projects. They purposefully corrupted our souls until our only outlet was death. Then, when we tried to die, they trapped our souls in glass bottles marked with two particular sigals; one that instructed us on what to do if ever we were released, and the other to continue to torture us. Then, they took those bottles and placed them strategically around the entrance to their underground volcano lair.

"Until today, we didn't know what our instructions would be. But then you and your group broke open our bottles and set us free. Many of us tried to flee, but the pain became too great. We were slowly pulled back to the corporeal sphere and we naturally formed into a dragon. Then, the hunger hit us. It was like the hunger each and every one of us died feeling towards meth. We had to feed, and so feed we did.

"But then you, Pat O'Neil, gave us the kick in the behind that we needed. Your scolding made us use our minds again. And your understanding has eased our suffering. You have set us free, good sir, and we shall always be indebted to you for that."

I was stunned. "Wow. That is some story, fellas," I said.

"It sure is," they responded. "You have two more questions to ask."

What to do with a Ghostly Dragon, Earli in the Mornin.

Sometimes, quick thinkin is gonna save your butt. Like if you get yourself into a contest with a one-eyed, bearded fella that shows up at your door and challenges ya to a thinkin quick contest in which he wants to wager a rump roast, but you don't have a rump roast, so you think he's likely to take your actual rump, because this guy looks like serious business and you think he might be cheatin ya because his two crows is outside cawin away and sayin crazy things like, "Nevermore!" On the other hand, there are prolly times quick thinkin could actually hurt you, like if you just decide to bake yourself a cake but you don't have any milk, so you decide you can prolly use whiskey instead and you don't wanna be bothered to slow down and consider how that's gonna work out (not well, if the first, and last, angel food cake I made was any indication). On the third hand, there's times you don't get the opportunity to do any thinkin whatsoever, like when you use a phrase like "on the third hand," or maybe when you're under so much stress it feels like your head's gonna crack open and butterflies are gonna fly out and have knife fights with one another. That's the kinda situation I found myself in.

I was backed up against the cliffs, my exo-suit had given out, the Deus Ex Machina turned out to be no help and, to top it all off, I realized Frank's birthday was comin right up and I didn't even know what she wanted. I'd tried to wing it the previous few years, but, on her last birthday, she made it pretty clear that if I bought her any more socks, I would leave her house with the socks in a place that would likely require medical intervention to remove. Even though I don't require much doctorin, I still like to think of myself as a patient man. But there, against them cliffs, I guess I'd had enough.

The dragon was comin straight at us, like an arrow fired from the bow of an Olympic champion and I just started yellin. "Hey! Hey! HEY!" I shouted. "Stop it! Just stop it! Just knock it off! I've had it up to here," I pointed at my eyebrows, "with you! You been flyin around here, roarin away like it was nobody's business, just cryin out at eatin people and I've had enough, buster!"

Shockingly, this worked. The dragon stopped in mid-roar, slumped a bit in the middle and hung it's head. Then it started cryin. It wasn't no single-teardrop-rollin-slowly-down-the-cheek kinda cryin, neither. This was full on, I'm-eight-and-I-just-fell-down-playin-and-skinned-my-knee-and-tore-my-brand-new-pants-that-I-was-fixin-on-wearin-the-next-day-at-school-and-I-think-pa's-gonna-whip-me, heavin, bawlin, givin-yourself-the-hiccups kinda cryin.

Alistair, wide eyed, looked at me and cocked his head towards the dragon. I sposed he was suggestin I go over there and do somethin. So I did.

I waled right up to that dragon, patted it a couple times on the back and said, "There, there." Mind you, this technique has never, ever worked for me. When I'd done it before, the people recievin the comfortin pat on the back and heartfelt "There, there," would look at me with a combination of disgust and hate in there eyes, shrug off my hand, and go back to their cryin, but at least I could tell myself I tried and feel ok about slippin out for a sandwich or a block of cheese. But this here dragon was full of surprises. My pattin seemed to calm it down a bit. The sobs dropped off, the wailin reduced from a fevered pitch to a low whinin sound, like Barry White tryin to imitate a puppy, and the hiccups came fewer and farther between.

When the sobbin was nearly gone, the dragon reached into a tiny pocket on its abdomen which I hadn't noticed, pulled out a small kleenex, blew its nose with enough force to knock over several beach bungalows, had there been any there.

Then it spoke. "Thank you," it said in a thousand voices at once, "for giving us a little comfort. That's all we really needed."

"You're welcome," I replied, not wantin to be rude. "You feelin better now, big guy?"

"Yes, thank you. You've done much to ease our suffering, Pat O'Neil. We will now allow you an audience with us. You may ask three questions and three questions only. Then, we shall disincorporate and journey to the land of the dead."

"I been there," I informed the dragon, "it ain't all it's made out to be."

"Is that so?" it asked.

"It is so," I confirmed. "Just a bunch of whiners down there. I'd suggest gettin yourself reincarnated pretty quickly, if y'all want to avoid hearin a lot of long, borin stories about people what has been dead a couple thousand years."

"We appreciate the advise."

"Ain't no thing."

"Now," non-sequitorized the dragon, "we shall show you our true form. Then, we shall hold court with you."

"All right," I drawled.

And that's just what happened. The dragon slowly disolved, breakin pieces of itself off left and right, like a twinkie in a glass of warm milk. Soon, we was surrounded by a semi circle of ghosts. They was a sorta translucent blue, glowin from an unknown source. Every single one of em was skinny as an Italian model gettin ready for Fashion Week. All of em was wearin trucker hats with slogans like "Git 'Er Done" on 'em, worn out jeans and t shirts with the arms cut off. The lady ghosts also had cut off the bottom half of their shirts, revealin sunken bellies and an assortment of tattoos featurin a great deal of roses and butterflies. I'd also estimate there wasn't but three teeth in the whole bunch. I guess I'd have to say that I wasn't ready for that. From the ghosts I seen on the teevee and in the movies and whatnot, I thought ghosts was supposed to be classy, or at least scary, these ghosts just made me a little sad. That wasn't the worst, though. The worst was that they stunk. I guess you never think about ghosts havin a smell, what with seein em in movies and all. But these here ghosts smelled like poo chili what has been left in the sun and covered in battery acid. I could hardly keep my eyes open from all the waterin they was doin.

I knew I had to act fast, before I rudely threw up all over the place. I'd already done it in my mouth a little bit, but I managed to cover it with a fake cough and then swallow that bile back down. Lookin behind me, I spotted the pile of silk what used to be my exo-suit. I slyly reached back there, grabbed a handful of the stuff and, pretendin like I was sneezin, jammed it up my nose.

"Subtle," said Alistair.

"But effective," I retorted.

"Now," announced the group of ghosts, "you may ask us three questions, and three questions only."

Alistair leaned over to whisper, "Make them good."

"OK," I said, takin a deep breath through my mouth, "here goes."

The Cliffs

I reckon I became aware of the cliffs quite a bit before I saw them. It was like when I awkwardly met someone I went to high school with in the middle of the Wal-Mart and we got to talkin about that girl that was always mean to everyone and I knew exactly what he's talkin about, but I couldn't remember her name. I could even remember when she laughed while her boyfriend shoved me into a locker which, and I don't think they knew this, had a broken lock, makin me think I was gonna be trapped in there till judgement day. But then I found that the back of the locker wasn't actually made of metal, but of plastic wrap loosely taped over a firey portal that led directly to the land of the dead which, all things considered, is better than a locker if you're trapped. So there I was, wanderin around the land of the dead, meetin the great heroes of old and they all kept tellin me how their accomplishments was greatly exaggerated and how all they really wanted was to set the record straight. The biggest whiner of all was this guy named Paris, but not named after the city because he was older than that. What he told me, and asked me to tell others if'n it ever came up, that he didn't actually want nothin to do with that Helen girl, but she kept goin on about how her husband was always with his concubines and she was so lonely and she was also a good knitter, so maybe she could go with him back to Ilium and maybe hang out for a bit and maybe make her husband appreciate how much she really meant to him. He also said to tell people that the whole thing with the golden apple and whatnot was a bunch of drivel. Honestly, I couldn't make heads or tails of what he was sayin, but I said I'd say somethin if I got the chance, and it looks like this here's my chance.

Course, that happened to me a whole bunch down in the land of the dead. All them poor people down there told me all about how their stories got all twisted up and how they really happened. If I get a little downtime some day here, maybe I'll tell ya one or two of them tales. What I really learned down there, though, is that dead people seriously need someone new to talk to. A lot of them old guys have been down there three or four thousand years. I guess they've got the option to leave any time they want and come on back to a body on Earth, but they've got to forget everything in order to do that and, this is just my opinion here, I don't think a lot of them guys spend so much time thinkin about themselves that they just wouldn't know how to forget. So, they just sit down there and wait for someone to talk to, to try and clear things up, as it were. When I finally got back to the locker, the door was open, but I'd seen horrible, horrible things. I was forever changed by my trip down there. Also, I'd missed math, and we had a quiz that day, which I failed due to an unexcused absence. If only I could remember to hold responsible for that...

Oh well, I guess I'll remember it sometime. It don't matter much right now, anyway, since I was tellin ya how I came up on them cliffs. They took up a place in my brain like that girl took up. I could sorta feel them there, but not know how big and terrible of a presence they would soon be in my life. I guess you never really stop to think about cliffs. What I meant to say there is, "I guess I never really stop to think about cliffs." For all I know, you could be one of them cliffologists, spendin your whole life researchin cliffs. If that's the case, and you've ever come up with a good way to confront a dragon with cliffs at your back, it'd be great if you could go back in time a little and let me know what that is, because apparently screaming is not the ideal solution. Mostly because it doesn't make the dragon stop, but also because it makes your throat hurt, and who wants to be eaten when they have a sore throat?

And then bad turned to worse. It started with a poppin. The poppin turned into a buzzin. Then, the whole thing up and turned into a cracklin. Finally, everything went silent, there was the slightest whiff of ozone, and my whole suit went to pieces. I ain't certain if the battery gave out, if there was a wirin problem, or if I'd just overloaded everything with all the activity I'd been doin. All I knew at that point that I was standin at the base of a line of black cliffs that would have been at home in Mordor in a pile of moon spider silk waitin for a ghost dragon to come and eat me.

In my most desperate moment, when all odds seemed against me and it looked like there was no way out, down came the Deus Ex Machina. The dragon seemed afraid of the space ship, because he pulled up short and started circlin like a shark tryin to look nonchalant. And I can't say I blame him. That there ship descended with such a clatter that I thought I may have to head up to the roof to see what was the matter. I can't say exactly what sound it was makin, but it was a lot like the time I washed and dried my overalls before checkin em and I realized during the spin cycle that I'd left a whole set of socket wrenches and scrap metal in the pocket.

The Deus was shootin flame here and there like an angry god, and looked like it was havin trouble stayin steady, like a drunk angry god. And then, it fell. That thing plummeted to the ground like a metal stone covered in lights and smoke. In the second before it became forever a part of the landscape, one last gout of flame shot out the bottom, slowing its decent enough that nothin shattered on impact.

Once it was settled and I'd got the dust wiped out of my eyes, I looked up to see Alistair comin out of the ship, coughin and flappin his wings.

He spotted me, too. "Pat!" he yelled. "We came to help."

"Oh yeah?" I shouted, "and how's that goin for ya?"

He came closer, so we didn't have to yell at each other. "As you can see, not well. Something's gone wrong with the Deus Ex Machina."

This was surprisin to me. "Didn't you guys build it so it would always work."

"We thought so," he admitted, "but I guess the Deus Ex Machina doesn't always work."

"What went wrong?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe it's been over used."

I raised an eyebrow. "You fellas ain't used it that much, as far as I know. How could it break down so fast. Did you get the parts from Pontiac or somethin?"

"Nothing like that," he said. "We've been loaning it out. I guess we shouldn't have done that."

"Loanin? Really? To who?"

"Well," he eyed the dragon, which was still circlin out over the plains, "tv and film producers, mostly."

"Really?"

"Oh yeah, they love the Deus Ex Machina. But I guess they've used it so much that it's become ineffective."

"That's a shame," I told him.

"It sure is," he agreed. "It's really a convenient way of solving things, maybe too convenient. It's just too bad that we've become so reliant on it that we expect it to always work."

"I guess you're right," I told him, not really knowin how much they really used the Deus Ex Machina. I figured, for it to have the problems it had, they prolly had to let every producer and writer in the world use it at some point or another. "But, if the Deus Ex Machina isn't workin, it's lookin like we're gonna have to find another way out of this whole dragon situation."

And I had to think of it fast, because that dragon had stopped his circlin and started roarin again.

Betty Millner! That was her name!

What's the Blue Light?

After eating Tom Cruise, that dragon rose into the sky, let out a roar like Thor farting and curled up. For a minute there, it looked like a question mark just hangin in the sky. It was a little like the bat-signal, but more like if The Riddler were bein called. I can't say I rightly know why anyone would be signalin the Riddler to come. Maybe they were stuck on a crossword clue or were bein terrorized by Will Shortz and the only one who could help them defeat the Puzzle Master is the Master of Puzzles. I guess it don't really matter much why someone would be callin the Riddler, just as long as you accept the possibility that a Riddler signal could exist and that this dragon looked like it would if it did.

The dragon didn't keep that shape too terribly long. It turned its red, hateful eyes on me and came bearin down. I ain't sure what normally goes through a person's mind when they're lookin down the business end of a dragon, but I would imagine the word "Oh" comes up as the first word in a lot of two word sentences one could think of in that situation. Me, I don't take much with the cursin and the foulmouthin that seems to be all the rage amongst the young people these days, so I ended my "Oh" sentence with "heckbucket!"

I think my mind must have gone totally blank then. Not to say that it takes a whole lot to make my mind totally blank. I imagine that, most of the time, I'm 99 percent there. If you want to get a picture of it, go ahead and pull yourself out a piece of printer paper. Now, put the tiniest x you possibly can in the center of the paper. That, right there, is what's goin on in my head at any given time. Now go ahead and erase that x. That's what was goin on in my mind as the dragon came down on me again. Now put the paper back in the copier before the boss comes by and fires you for wastin office supplies. It's got nothin to do with what was goin on in my mind, but I would sure hate to get you fired. Course, if you was worried about that, you would prolly not be readin this at work in the first place.

I'm just sayin that my mind musta went totally blank because, instead of teleportin outta there, as I really shoulda done, I dove to the ground, like I did back in the war when the Kaiser's biplanes was hurlin hot fire on us in the field. Unlike that time, though, I didn't wet myself. I musta dropped just in time, because, as I was layin there in the dirt, I felt a cold wind blow across my back, and heard tortured cried where my head used to be. When it was over, I looked up to see the dragon barrelin away, trailin somethin blue in its mouth. I traced that blue light down to the source and was more than a little surprised to find that it was me.

I felt around my clothes and body, but couldn't feel nothin super different. I mean, my heart hadn't stopped, I didn't feel suddenly cold, and I didn't find myself becomin a brainless servant of the ninjas. All in all, I thought I'd gotten away pretty clean. That is, until that there dragon turned in the sky again and came back on me.

That little x in the center of the printer paper came back, and I got some action goin on in my head. That action told me, "Pat, ol buddy, you better get your hide on outta here if you want to keep all your skin and bones together." My mind's led me wrong sometimes, like in the dark when I thought a rope was a snake and got scared by it, only to lose my ability to muster up the proper amount of scared when I discovered the snake was hidin behind the rope the whole time, resultin in an extended hospital stay. But this time, my mind was leadin me right. So, before the dragon could get up the momentum, I closed my eyes and thought of home.

On opening my eyes, I thought I might go into the kitchen and fix myself up a tuna melt, maybe have some ice tea to wash it down with. That would have been a lot better than fightin a dragon. Sadly, it was not to be. Something had gone terribly wrong. Instead of bein in my own livin room, I was still on that scorched plain with a ghost dragon tryin to kill me. Comparatively, I'd say havin a tuna melt is a much, much more desirable position than that which I found myself in. Say what you will about tuna melts, I'm confident any one of you would take one over bein eaten by a dragon. Admit it.

On the good side, I figured out that blue light drawn out of me was somethin related to my teleportin ability. But on the bad side, that blue light was my teleportin ability. Still thinkin I needed to get outta there, I did it the old fashioned way, I hoofed it.

I musta run a hundred miles, my lungs cursin me for my years installin fiberglass in the early 80s. I ran through plains and cities, rivers and deserts. Then I came up against the cliffs.

Tom's Plan

"I ain't so sure this is gonna work," I told Tom as he loaded up the donut rail gun.

"It's always worked before," he reassured me.

I hate to be contrary, but I had to ask him, "Are you positive about that?"

"I sure am." He sounded pretty durned positive to me, but I come from a place where the closest you're gonna get to a straight answer is a shrug of the shoulders and a 'It could happen'.

"Let's just pretend I'm stupid here," I proposed. "Just explain this to me one more time."

"Fine," he sighed as he completed the loading. "We've loaded all your donuts with wadded up hundred dollar bills and set timers on them. When that dragon over there gets in range, you pelt him with your gun, the timers on all of the donuts explode inside the dragon and spray it with money. How much more simple could it be?"

"It's not really the mechanics of the plan I don't get. It's more the theory of it. I mean, I ain't never tried this or nothin and, well, you say 'shoot' and I'll shoot, but I don't understand how peltin a ghost dragon with hundred dollar bills is gonna do anything to it except let it buy a bunch of new stuff or go out for a fancy dinner."

"Look," he grabbed the bridge of his nose, "that dragon is made of ghosts, right?"

"Right."

"And those ghosts are angry, right?"

"I'd say so."

"And we're on a planet that is alien, yes?"

"Got that right."

"So, you'd say they're angry alien ghosts?"

"I would."

"And Thetans are also angry alien ghosts."

"That's what you said."

"There we have it," he announced triumphantly. "The way to get rid of Thetans, as we all know, is to throw money at them. The more money you get rid of, the less of a Thetan problem you have. It's all in the book!"

"Oh, well, if it's in the book then..." I was about to say somethin sarcastic, but I was quite rudely interrupted by the ghost dragon bearin down on us like a back of hammers with a V8 engine drivin it. Next thing I knew, alls I could hear was the woosh of the rail gun and the pop-popin of the donuts explodin mid dragon. Well, that and the unearthly, Lovecraftian roar of a thousand tortured souls. And let me tell ya, it wasn't the "Oh, hey, that hurts so much that I should quite what I'm doin right now and retire to a life where I ain't terrorizin people and possibly eatin them" kinda roar. It was more like a, "you're tryin to stop me, but it's pretty ineffective and just makin me madder, so now I'm gonna devour you and take a thousand years to digest you, most of which will be painful" kinda roar. Sure, when you read the description, they seem completely unlike each other, but when you're standin there hearin it, it's a pretty subtle difference.

There was quite a bit of debate, after we'd teleported of course, about what went wrong with the plan. Mr. Cruise was convinced that the donuts weren't explodin exactly inside the dragon. I fiddled with my controls a bit and showed him the playback of the video my suit's always takin. Right there, in full HD color, on a frame by frame basis, we saw the donuts explodin exactly as they was intended to.

"I just don't understand," Tom said, holdin his head.

"Well, Mr. Cruise, I hate to burst your bubble here," and I did, I really did, "but I don't think you can get rid of angry alien ghosts just by throwin money at the problem."

"That can't be true," he said as he sat heavily on the ground. "I've thrown millions, literally millions of dollars at the Thetans. They all assured me that it was helping. Oh my god!" He began to weep. "I've wasted my life! To think, I could have spent all those millions tryin to help the poor. I could have fed millions of starving people the world over!"

"Don't feel so bad, Mr. Cruise," I comforted him, "you still have millions and millions of dollars. Plus, you can help this world now."

He stood up. "You know, Pat, you're right! I'm going to stop wasting myself on this alien ghost thing. I'm going to start living a new life. Heck," he scuffed the dirt here, "I may even let my wife leave the house once in awhile.

"Gosh," he sighed, "it feels so good to be free of that. It was such a burden for me to know that, if I just spent a little more money, I might become really happy. I feel like a new man! I'm going to shape up from now on. I'm going to be better, I'm going to be nicer and, most importantly, I'm going to be..."

And that's when the dragon ate him. One moment he was there, and the next there was this white streak, like I'd been slapped across the eyes by glowing cotton, and then he wasn't here any more. It's a shame, that, because he sounded like he'd really turned a corner. I don't know how to break the news to his wife. But I'm sure when she hears it, she's gonna need herself some consolin. She may need a strong shoulder to lean on and maybe even a beard to cry into. Then, to recover, she's gonna need a lot of love. A lot of sweet, sweet O'Neil love.

Course, all that was gonna have to wait until after I got rid of the dragon.

Tom and the Dragon

Once Mr. Cruise announced he was ready to go, it was a pretty easy thing to grab him and teleport back to meth world. The second his feet touched the ground, his eyes got real big, like a fly that was strainin real hard to see in the dark.

Then he started mutterin somethin like, "This is, like, pheeeeeew. Woah. I mean, it's, whoop whoop!" This last came out soundin like a crane was matin with a siren, fixin to have itself a couple little babies with long necks and rotatin heads. Honestly, I wasn't even real sure what he said was English, or any language for that matter. For a minute there, I thought I'd broke him. I figured I better cover my bases, so I started comin up with my excuse for what to tell his wife. I settled on tellin her that, when he was runnin in slow motion in the rain, I saw him slip and go over on his head. He got up and kept runnin, so I didn't think nothin of it, but, gee, Mrs. Cruise, it ain't like I'm a doctor who can diagnose a concussion super quick...I'll just be goin then.

But before I could think about makin my grand exit, which was gonna involve smoke bombs and flash pots and a daring helicopter rescue, Mr. Cruise started rootin around in his bag like he was a fat kid and the last slice of cake on earth was in the bottom, mutterin to himself the whole time. He got himself almost halfway into the bag, and I was thinkin he was about to crawl in there and set up camp when he pulled his hand out triumphantly and yelled, "Here it is!"

He held up that grey machine I saw earlier with the two paddles attached and handed it to me. "Here, hold this," he said.

I grabbed ahold of the machine, letting the paddles dangle down. I wasn't quite sure what the thing was. It had a couple switches and knobs, along with one big gauge in the middle. It looked like somethin you'd use in a mechanic's shop to test alternator charge or somethin similar, but I couldn't see any clips on it anywhere.

"No, not like that," he yelled. "Grab the handles."

He took the box away from me and stuck the paddles into my hand. "Yeah, like that," he nodded. Then he started playin with all them knobs and switches; a turn here, a flip there. You ever see that old Frankenstein movie? The one in black and white where the old doctor guy is about to bring his offense to nature back from the cold, dark hand of death? And he's runnin around turnin stuff here and flippin stuff there and yellin at that poor hunchback for bein scared of lightnin that's shootin out all over everywhere. It was a lot like that, except there weren't no hunchback. I mean, sure I may not have the best posture sometimes, but I ain't about to take a job ringin a bell and yellin "Salvation!"

I didn't know what all this twiddlin was doin, and I kept glancin nervously at the sky. I didn't see that ghost dragon nowhere, but, bein both a ghost and a dragon, I assume it was downright mobile, so it could really have shown up any time. I don't wanna sound like I was thinkin Tom Cruise, of all people, would exaggerate his ability to fight angry alien ghosts, but I was hopin he'd get to it before that dragon got back and made us all shuffle of this mortal coil, if you know what I'm gettin at. Thus far, though, it seemed like his entire ghost fightin thing consisted of twistin knobs, noddin slowly and sayin hmmm about a dozen times.

"Ok," he mumbled, as I saw the form of the ghost dragon rise above the horizon. "I think I see what your problem is."

"Is that so?" I asked, wonderin how he saw the problem when the problem was comin up fast behind him.

"It sure is. You see, your thetan levels are far too high."

"Thetans?" I wasn't seein this connection.

"Yeah, the angry alien ghosts!" He explained it like I was in kindergarten again. "They got trapped in a volcano when they were frozen and now they're angry and getting inside of you and making you sad. Don't you know anything about Scientology?!"

"I guess not as much as I shoul."

"Darn straight! Let me ask you, Pat, do you ever feel nervous?"

"Well, sure," I told him. "I'm feelin pretty nervous right now on account of..."

"Thetans!" he interrupted.

"Actually," I corrected him, "I was gonna say, 'on account of the big dragon comin to make us dead.' But, hey, you got your thing, I got mine."

"The dra..wha?" He turned and looked over his shoulder.

I dunno how most people would react when they turned around to see a pure white dragon what looked like it was lit from the inside by the anger of a million tortured souls and said dragon was snakin its way up on them like a bus made out of jello, and not the kind of jello filled with pineapple and bananas, either, but the kind that's filled with sadness. You know, the sugar free kind.

On the other hand, I do know how Tom Cruise reacts in that situation. He tends to jump backwards, spread his arms out wide and yell, "WHOA! WHOA!" Then he turns to someone standin there (in this case, it just happened to be me), stare at them wild-eyed and yell, "WHAT IN CRIMENY IS THAT?!?!"

To which I responded, "That's the dragon I been tellin you about. You know, the one made of angry alien ghosts. You may want to grab onto me." I said this last part because the dragon was now mere feet away, comin up on us like a roaring subway train. I could see down its maw, making out the elongated, screaming faces of the souls which made it up. Also, I could see it had chili for dinner.

Tom did as I suggested and grabbed the arm of my exo-suit and I teleported us a few miles away, figurin that would give us a bit of time.

As soon as we were in our new position, Mr. Cruise bent over and threw up. He also had chili for lunch. "Ok," Tom panted, wiping his mouth, "ok. Get ahold of yourself, Tommy boy. You can do this. You can do this."

I scanned the sky while he pulled himself together. "Ok," he said, sitting up. "I'm ok. We need a plan."

"We sure do!" I agreed, seeing the light from the dragon begin to ripple again on the horizon.

"Is that a rail gun you've got mounted to your suit?"

"Yeah," I nodded, "it sure is. It only shoots donuts, though."

"Regular or filled?" He asked, becoming animated again.

"Filled," I said, "some with poison and others with strawberry and some with I don't really know what. I just put the thing on."

"That's fine," he was practically jumping by this time. "That's exactly what we need."

He went diggin in his bag again. "I'm going to need your help preparing this."