It's one of the reasons I became a doctor. So having to change the tire because I couldn't get cell coverage was definitely not within my usual character.

What's more, it was certainly not a more enjoyable experience, all things considered--drive along, and then the THUD, get out, wonder "What was that" and ask "What was that" aloud, once more, on the way back there, as if someone were paying attention (they never do) and why today and why me and who might, perhaps, die because I had hit whatever I had hit and done whatever I ahd done and how could that be fair and who could ever allow such a thing in a fair universe if it were fair and if not well...in any case, it was a mouthful, and by the time I actually got back there and found the tire needed changing...well! I was quite exhausted already, and this seemed like a job for my brother, Stephen, a mechanic, but as the cellphone didn't work...here again, isolated and here, at this very moment, someone might just have been in a horrific accident which would require every last lucky second and break along the way he or she could get and the best care she could receive...and that's me.

What if I wasn't there, what then?

The back road that I take to work was desolate as always, though. When I finally had cell coverage again, my phone exploded with voice mails and text messages, which I ignored. With fifteen unheard messages and twenty frantic texts, you'd think my wife or my secretary actually cared about me.

But as I stepped up to the desk, the grime still annoying me, one look at the vaguely familiar, livid-red face towering over me told me I should probably have checked those messages after all.

"Where have you been?!" she yelled, without pausing for breath, "I thought something awful had happened to you!" I thought about the grime under my fingernails. Something awful /had/ happened to me.

It was only then that my mind began wandered through memories of that moment; playing with my iPod while flying through the woods to get home. There had been "strange things" happening recently, cow mutilations, farm girls gone missing for a day, and then something that was all-together *not* a dog ran in front of my car. The odd smelling goo from the beast was all over my blown tire...and now it was tingling under my finger nails.

My string of excuses was no match for the recalcitrant rage spewed forth by my secretary. "You are two hours late for the meeting with the CEO!" she bellowed. With my suit torn and frayed, my hair a mess, and hands covered in the still-tingling mystery fluid, I begrudgingly entered the conference room.

"Pastry?" my secretary asked, her voice reeking of sarcasm as she stared at my filthy hands and held a platter in front of me.

I never could resist a good pastry

Quickly grabbing the pastry, I took a bite as I entered the conference room. Big mistake. The tingling sensation on my tongue could mean only one thing: I accidentally ate the mystery goo.

The goo, I just realized, was the third part of the parasite. I had already gotten the tire gunk in my system, and the coffee. But who would have given me the coffee???

The hospital CEO and Chief Resident were both in the room and both were glaring at me. I knew my day was about to get even worse...

"James, sit down. The hospital is having financial difficulty and your appearing like this just reinforces our concerns about you. Last month you went behind the back and ordered a procedure that Dr. Frankel said was risky."

"Well the patient not only survived but is recovering remarkably well. She is doing even better than she would be if we had done nothing as Dr. Frankel suggested as the course of action." I cut in. In my mind I was calling Frankel, Frankelstein, what all the residents called him behind his back.

My mind getting hazy from the mystery goo, I tried to remember what procedure the administrators were talking about. Was it the experimental frontal lobotomy? The penis enlargement? The facial transplant? The room started to spin as Dr. Frankel frowned at my response.

Ovaries! I had removed her ovaries, of course...and them ate them with a nice plate of asparagus.

Wait, that couldn't be right. I /hate/ asparagus, letting alone the thought of eating the raw, bloody flesh of another human, a concept that... Wasn't as repulsive as it should be. Squeezing my eyes shut to stop the nausea inducing duplication of the world, I moaned softly in pain an confusion. What was that goo?

Why had we taken out the woman's ovaries? She was an otherwise healthy, normally functioning woman with no history of ovary issues. Suddenly, I remembered - her ovaries had the same mystery goo in them!

I woke with a jerk, unfamiliar with my surroundings and isoriented for a moment. "That dream was fucked up, man!" I said to no one in particular. Seeing it was 5 AM I decided to get an early start on the day...

I went into the bathroom to shower and shave and noticed a strange goo dripping out of the shower head. I reached out to touch it...

And woke with another jerk! Two strange dreams in one night, what are the chances? I sat up and noticed an odd colored stain on my pillow. I reached up and felt my face and there it was - goo dripping from my nose!

I dressed in my best suit. That old song played in my head, "Put on your Sunday clothes when you feel down and oooout." I shined my shoes as the sun streamed through the window.

I got off the elevator at work, briefcase in hand, nails as clean as a manicure.

...Meanwhile, on a lonely stretch of road in the middle of a dense woods, the sun trickles through the blowing leaves to shine down upon a small puddle of goo with deep tread-marks like a truck having run through a tar pit.

The creature slowly rose in growing heat of the sparse rays of sun, forming first a rough outline, and the the full form of a small dog, a poodle in fact, yet a poodle that had reacently gone swimming in said tar pit.

Its head cocked to the side and its hind leg reached forward to scrath its ear...and with sudden panic, it realized its ear was gone!

In an instant its nose expanded like some sort of demented cartoon figure and it sniffed the air, searching for the trail of it's missing gooey ear.

The poodle followed the puddle trail with a pang of hunger in its belly. Her name was Ruth - but that was unimportant - and she needed to find her owner. Ruth headed west, toward the setting sun.

The irony, of course, thought Ruth as she trotted along, was that being a hyper-intelligent being from the dimension of Pi, whereupon she regularly performed experiments upon the human universe they kept in a glass jar on the shelf in the foyer, was that she found herself...well, it's obvious, isnt' it???

Anyway, she expanded her jowls and consumed a passing deer in one bite and continued on her merry way, seeking the gluton that she knew somehow was licking her ear, because she could still *feel* through the extension of her body still residing in dimension Pi...

Ruth spotted a squirrel across the road and, being an alien poodle, she just had to chase it when *thump* she was run over by a semi and it's wheel's took all kinds of body parts with it. Her head good was attached to the front bumper flying 65 down a 35 backroad. Her right hind leg and tail were stick to the right rear tires going *thumpa thumpa thumpa* round and around. She really didn't know *how* she was going to get herself back together now.

Ruth wished she had paid attention in biology. What she really needed was a talented doctor who could color outside the lines.

But none of that really mattered. What her mind soon wandered to was what she would be wearing later tonight. What, with the Senator taking her out to dinner and all.

..."James? JAMES! Snap out of it! You've got a procedure to prep for! What, you back on the bottle again?"

"No...it...it's just that I keep hearing things. Like this morning I thought I heard a deer screaming and a huge gulping sound....then just a minute ago I could swear I heard a semi as I was sitting on the can, and I didn't eat *that* many beans last night. I just have the sneaking suspicion that someone...some-THING...things?....might be after me..."

I zoned out. I ignored the rebuke I was receiving. What godforsaken drug was in that burrito? Or maybe it was in the hot sauce. Where was Kurt Vonnegut when you needed him?

Probably out dropping with Philip K Dick, I realized, and laughed hysterically at my own joke before collapsing to the floor in wild hysterics.

That's when i noted the men in white with the net hoping out of the ambulance. Twas an old style ambulance like you see in film noir.

No way I'm going back to the booby hatch - been there, and it ain't pretty. Electro-shock, burly oderlies always giving you a hard time. Meds at breakfast, meds at noon, meds at night time. No thank you, not this guy, not ever again. I'll die before they ship me back to that hell, and maybe, just maybe, I can take a few of the bastards with me.

Then I thought again....boobies....drugs. "I'm ALLLLLLLLL in boys!!!" and I prostrated myself on the floor, hands held high, wrist locked together waiting to be cuffed.

I thought about everything for the last couple of days. About my wife, my secretary, my job, my dog. I grew up on a farm out in the county and moved away fast as I could. My brother Daryl still lives out there, having inherited the profession from my father and lent the land by our uncle. During these long dark teatimes of my soul, my mind returns there, to the place where I first learned to hate dirt under my nails, a place that I long to go, a place where I know that I am loved.

It's always pleasant to remenisce, but what's done is done. Wife? Dead. Secretary? Dead. Dog? Dead. I'm not ever sure I know which parts were whos. It's a good thing this old Buick has a big trunk. Daryl has already dug the hole. That's the beauty of Daryl with that old farm; he always needs fertilizer. I've been a killer for as long as I can remember - and never once doubted my sanity until this moment. Now all of the suddenly I started thinking funky ass lame shit like, "teatime of my soul" and want to blow my brains out for being a pretentious asshole. Get it together, James. Gotta keep it together.