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Camel Holocaust! Ca John had co out his drunken 3:00 AM ideas even after daylight and sobriety came It was always 3:00 AM for John

I turned onto ht sky That’s what I remember, from that last o, the stars freshly cleaned and polished against their black velvet background The round and the cool azed into the twinkling jewels of infinity, all spit-shined by God’s shirtsleeve And then the dog barked and everything turned to goat shit

It was rusty red, maybe an Irish setter or a red Labrador or aScottish rust-dog I don’t know s Ten feet of thin chain trailed off its collar Bounding around the partygoers, a bundle of y, drunk on the first freedorass, ran over to another spot and peed there, too Marking this whole neorld as its territory It carass behind it It sniffed aroundaround my pockets to see if I had died with any beef jerky on me

It recoiled when I reached up to pet it, a catty "don’t touch the hair" look on its face

A brass tag, on its collar

Etched with a e

I’M MOLLY

PLEASE RETURN ME TO

with an address in Undisclosed listed below At least sevenit had taken the aniain fro on the spot that I would load up the dog and return it to the owners, ere probably worried sick about it Probably a fa for it to corief through a series of erotic , especially since I sort of run like a girl anyway The dog pitched annoyed glances backup speed each ti a circuitous path all the way to the other side of the field, where I heard soh-pitched, almost a whistle Only two creatures on God’s Earth can make that sound: African Grey Parrots and fifteen-year-old female hu seemed to eye me carefully, then ran off in the other direction I looked around--

Ah Giggling now There was a bundle of girls, away froe, huddled with their backs to the band They were surrounding a black guy with dreadlocks, an overcoat He had one of those Rastafarian berets on his head, definitely going for a look, wanting the attention Two of the girls had their hands over their ain, do it again Froured I had just encountered the ician

"Oh uy just levitated!"

One girl looked pale, on the verge of tears Another threw up her hands and walked away, head shaking

Gullibility is a knife at the throat of civilization

"How high?" I asked blandly

The Ja stare of the exotic voodoo priest It was an expression that was supposed to otta love the skeptic, uy said in a rubber accent that was part Jamaican, part Irish and part pirate

"Show hiirls

I’m not sure why I feel the need to rain on this kind of parade I like to think I’ up for skepticisuy was going to have sex tonight and I wasn’t

"What, about six inches above the grass, right?" I asked hiic hack David Blaine in his television special? All you need is soht?"

And a stupid, drunken audience

His gaze froze on oes all the way back to elementary school It’s the simultaneous realization that I ht, and that I had not spent any tiht since the last one In a tohere Friday night bar brawls ency room look like the aftermath of a Third World election, someti

Then, he broke out in a big, white, toothy smile A charmer

"Let’s seewhat can I do to impress Mr Skeptic Mon? Ah, lookee there You didn’t wash behind your ears, did ya?"

I let out a loud, theatrical sigh as he reached out to the side of my head, presumably to pull out a shiny quarter from behind , not a coin, but a long, wriggling black centipede He let it dangle over his fist, turning his hand over as it crawled around and around One of the girls squealed

He pinched it between thu up for everyone to see I noticed for the first time he had a few layers of first-aid tape wrapped around his other hand He passed this hand in front of the bug and in a blink, the centipede was gone The girls gasped

"Well, the bug was a nice touch," I said, glancing at my watch

"You wanna knohere it went, uy was giving et ot other talents, you know"

"Yeah, but I bet all your really good tricks are back at your apartht? And you’d be happy to show them to me, if only I were sixteen and female?"

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