Freddie’s eyes were still down, and he wasn’t awake enough to access his body, but he felt fear bubbling up from his stomach, like rising puffs of camphor.  That barking in the distance…  Panic?  Ah!  He could hear.  Ping, bleep, ping, ping-bleep, bleep-ping, each hard bead so adamant in its own tempo, ahead, then behind.  Another joined in, another…   Shit.  Panic!  Emergency room!

He searched for his eye muscles but landed in a thick, foggy stone-over that made him feel young again for several seconds.  He was lying down—that much dawned on him—in the wrong position: on his side with his legs hanging over the edge… of…?  But a knot in his neck confirmed the absence of a pillow.  And a creepy sense of burden and restraint could mean that he was still fully dressed.  In his best suit.  Without even wiggling his toes he recognized the unfamiliar fit of his new Italian shoes.

Something else was wrong.  The pings and bleeps were escaping like ping-pong balls thrown into an empty zero gravity pool.  They flew off, shedding clones, trilling into cascades, growling like saws and spitting fireworks.  Some evolved melodies he knew but couldn’t name.  The more complex the fugue, the more assertive each melody became, demanding attention, getting louder, insisting on being… answered.  Not ER monitors.  He was a paralyzed Indiana Jones surrounded by a hostile tribe of ringing cell phones.

Groans – real groaning behind him, and lungs gasping their first big breath of the day.  The rustling of satin, then metallic creaking, as if others were already sitting up, stretching cramped bodies and straightening clothes.  More groans, moans, male and female, zippers, handbags snapping open, the fumbling of half-numb fingers moving stuff around.  At least three phones clattered to the floor.  “Hello?—Hello—Y’ello—Yeah?”  A teen chorus reading some ‘cool’ spoken-word piece followed by an explosion of very adult swearing.  Then the dam broke.  Flying expletives tangled like New Year’s Silly String.  One girl yelled, “Shit!  It’s totally daylight!!”  The chorus skipped a beat and then took off again recharged.  Phrases jelled.  Every phone had rung, every phone was dead.

Freddie pushed himself up.  He felt lousy, twisted by the un-Freddie position he had apparently spent several hours in.  No real headache, not quite nauseous, but spacey and out of touch as if he were inside a baseball mitt…  Wait!  He didn’t drink.  Chronic Hep-C had deleted that option.  He had only forced down one sip of sour but, thankfully, fruity champagne so as not to jinx the wedding toast.  And those who sneaked off to share their stashes hadn’t thought to include him.  He was family, not one of the couple’s young friends.  And he was a gay man at a fertility rite.

Freddie’s eyes slowly opened, as if drooping in reverse.  Not home yet.  Still in the bus.  And it’s already…  He turned very slowly to his right to look out the window.  Yes.  He knew he would see this.  The old farm stand, a bleached inert gray under the sun, and the arc of yellow dirt that connected it to and from the road.  In moonlight the abandoned field behind it had been all midsummer wildflowers.  Now it was dry and suffering.

Freddie recalled seeing them stagger up the drive in the moonlight.  He couldn’t tell who was drunker.  They were laughing.  She took off her heels, handed them up to her man to carry.  No.  She was tall, way taller...  Freddie shook his head, and the people on the bus came crashing back in.

He turned around.  The same orange-and-black school bus (that had made him laugh!) the bride had wisely hired so all her friends could get wasted without having to drive back to the motel at night.  Freddie was still in the front seat above the stairwell, but the driver was gone.  Yes, the driver…


He remembered.

He had been talking to the driver with the braided pony-tail, the only other person over forty or with long hair of any kind, a scrubbed suburban biker from the ’70s who obviously spent a lot of time in the gym.  Don.  Walrus moustache, black leather vest and double-bleached jeans, so warm and comforting to Freddie who was exhausted from wielding his impeccably hip  plaid Ferre suit against the octet of taller, younger, absurdly handsome, annoyingly affluent ‘escorts’ in identical navy-blue.

Talking with Don about… forgotten bands at outdoor festivals on long hot afternoons, Freddie had cajoled him into offering to share a joint after the drop-off.  Then… it was like driving through a waterfall, the weight and warping of water pouring down from…  Freddie was instantly so ripped that his hand slipped off the bar over the front steps.  He only missed a wicked whack on the head when the sudden bump of running off the road slammed him back against his seat.

Bridesmaids and escorts tried yelling from the back of the bus, but they were trapped in the same aspic and could barely breathe.  Voices drowned.  Freddy saw Don collapse onto the wheel.  Their eyes locked, and they passed out together.

Then he was awake again, at least partially, but he couldn’t speak.  He could only watch the tallest blue suit, Walter, the Team Captain type, swaying with his insanely long arm around his woozy wife (Katie, K.D., Kate?  There were three of them, all slim, all tan, perfect skin).  Walter was softly asking Don to open the door.  Katie/K.D./Kate had to pee.  Don complied without a word.  Freddie followed them with his eyes, barely turning his heavy head.  The couple lurched off the drive into tufts of low weeds and crabgrass, presumably to duck behind the silver-gray stand.  Katie/K.D./Kate removed her white patent heels, gleaming in the moonlight, and handed them up to her towering husband.

The door sighed shut, and a narcotic silence dragged him down into sleep.

Later, it happened again.  Another couple, same words, same blank expression on Don’s face when he opened the door.  Tony had been Freddie’s lust object of the evening, and the chance to eye him unobserved was like a tiny rush of caffeine.  Definitely Italian, glistening obsidian eyebrows shading deep black eyes, high round cheekbones and massive jaw connected by a dangerous five-o’clock shadow; square hand guiding his blonde fiancée by the small of her back like a ventriloquist with his creation.  And she was taller.  The thought of that hairy hand on the small of his own back kept Freddie awake and watching as the two tottered up the drive.

Suddenly, Freddie’s skin froze.  Waist deep in wildflowers just beyond the stand, a shadow waited, so black it… he reflected no light.  Tony and — Kate? — were stumbling directly towards him.  He was big, like a football player, featureless and still; a stencil cut out of the picture with giant scissors.  In fact, he was oddly geometric: a box for his torso, a sphere centered above it for a head, with no visible neck and one of those leather Western hats with the brim, head-on just a line drawn on the scene with a black marker.  But Freddie knew the void was alive; he could feel it thinking, calling, drawing Tony and Kate towards him.

Freddie raised his hands to bang on the window.  He wasn’t sure he would be heard, but he had to try.  His mouth dropped open to shout something — anything — when the shadow saw him.  He couldn’t actually see the featureless sphere change, but he knew it rotated.  He felt the outraged eyes piercing his own and invading his brain.  A furious fist punched Freddie in the face, and he fell over as he passed out again.

And…  Hadn’t there been a third time?  Don.  He had opened the door, stood up and walked out himself.  Freddie could only vaguely remember it, lying on the seat with his head by the aisle.  Weight-lifter Don shrinking down the stairs, disappearing out the door…

***

“Where’s the fucking driver?” an escort shouted toward the back of the bus from the end of Freddie’s seat, one of the tall, generically handsome husbands Freddie hadn’t met, his face swollen with beet-red fury.  Accustomed to being obeyed, he spun on Freddie and stuck an amazingly long finger in the seated man’s face.  “Where’s the fucking driver?”

Indignation slapped Freddie alert and gave him the courage to smack the escort’s hand out of the way.  “How the hell should I know?” he hissed.

The chorus in back erupted again.  “Where’s Katie?” a woman shouted.  “Where’s Walter?” a man replied.  “Tony?” “And K. D.?”  Everyone on the bus joined in the shouting except for Freddie, who was distracted by something he saw in the distance through the windshield.  A car had just rounded the curve far down the road in front of them.  He stood up and, dodging the flustered escort, staggered forward to get a better look.  A second later, a row of red lights started flashing across the top of the newcomer’s roof.

***
Deputy Ramirez seemed increasingly bored or stoic; it was hard to tell, the sameness of his subordinate routine unrelieved by the peculiarity of the situation.  But in Sheriff Hoeven’s religion rank bestowed the privilege of walloping others with his moods, and the Sheriff was getting annoyed.  His meaty hands landed almost audibly on his hips as he spun to confront the line-up Ramirez had organized in blooming chicory beside the Halloween-colored school bus.

“Right,” he rumbled, launching his most resonant, attack-mode baritone, “y’all passed out at the exact same second.”  Nods up and down the line were about to escalate into words.  He cut them off.  “None of you, not one of you, saw anything…” he paused to allow his incredulity to sink in, “…except this guy…” he poked a sausage size finger in Freddie’s direction, “…who was totally sober, and passed out with the rest of you?”

Freddie shrugged theatrically, palms out toward Hoeven.  “I can’t explain it, Sheriff”, he began.  “I can only tell you…”

“What I want you to tell me, Mr…?”

“Conti,” Ramirez read off of Freddie’s ID, which he happened to have open in his hands.

“Conti,” Hoeven continued, “is what the hell is really going on here.  I’ve known Don McKenzie since junior high.  He’s not in the habit of ditching a busload of clients on the side of the road and evaporating into thin air.”

“He’s not the only one missing!” the blondest escort dared to interject.

“Thank you, Mr…”  and he cocked his ear towards Ramirez who fumbled with the stack of IDs.

“Tessler,” the escort crowed, as if the Sheriff should be impressed.

“Mr. Tessler,” Hoeven smiled with a whiff of sneer.  “But may I point out that I have no way of confirming exactly how many of you there actually were in the first place?”  This was a bit much for the guests who, on top of varying degrees of hangover and thirst, had already endured quite enough for one night and morning.  Tessler boldly stepped forward, interrupting the chorus of “Oh, come on!”, “Really!” and several words they would not normally have used directly to a police officer, with “What are you saying?”

“What I am saying, Mr. Tessler,” the Sheriff enunciated carefully, “is that a man I know very well is missing under, if you will forgive me, extremely odd circumstances…”  Tessler tried to protest, but Hoeven stopped him, “…and the only witnesses are repeating the exact same far-fetched story using suspiciously identical words.”

Freddie, who had been scratching the stubble on his chin during this exchange, raised a forefinger into the air. 

“Except for Mr. Conti here,” Hoeven acknowledged with a condescending smirk.  “Mr. Conti claims he saw both couples...”

“And the driver,” Freddie added.

“...and my friend: Don McKenzie,” the Sheriff conceded, his smile dropping several degrees towards absolute zero, “leave the bus of their own free will.”

Struggling against the Botox re-boot he had gotten for the wedding, Freddie’s brows pinched together into a frown.  Hoeven was far too experienced to let that pass.

“What, Mr. Conti?” he probed.

“Nothing,” Freddie stumbled.  For quick recovery, he blurted out, “That man in the field…”

“Ah, yes,” Hoeven conceded.  “The Black man in the field.” 

Freddie saw that one a mile away.  “No!” he insisted.  “He was not African-American.  He was black.  I mean he was all in black.  His face, too”

“With a black hat?”

“Yes.”

“Back there in the field behind the shed?”

“Yes.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“Well, yes.”  Freddie knew he had already lost.

“So his face was in shadow?’

“Yeeeessss,” Freddie surrendered.

Hoeven let a moment of silence confirm his defeat of Freddie’s rebellion, folded his burly blond forearms and glanced at Ramirez as if the latter were keeping score.  He bent slightly from the waist and addressed the short, fancily dressed out-of-towner as if he were talking to a child.

“Perhaps Mr. Conti could show us where he saw this man?”

Freddie didn’t relish getting his new shoes dirty, but a light on-and-off drizzle the day before, that had thoughtfully ended before the outdoor service and been thoroughly absorbed by the stony soil, had hardened any dust on the yellow driveway.

“Yes, I can,” Freddie chirped.  “Remember, I saw him twice and both times…”  and he crumbled a little realizing the absurdity of his story, “he was standing in the exact same place.”

“Right,” Hoeven snorted.  “Danny?” he called to Ramirez.

“Boss?”

“Keep your eyes open.”

“Right, Boss.”

Freddie leading the way, the three had only crunched several paces up the drive when Ramirez, in the rear, called out.  Freddie and Hoeven stopped and turned.  Ramirez was on one knee, his long bony fingers sampling tire tracks in the dirt.

“Fresh?” Hoeven asked.

“Yep.”

“Last night?”

“Can’t swear to it.  Maybe afternoon, after the rain.”

Hoeven scanned the even curve of the drive.  He pointed to where the tracks blurred by the steps of the shed and made a sharp change in direction. 

“Stopped there.  Check for prints.”

“Right, Boss.”

Hoeven gestured for his guide to continue on towards the field, but Freddie, too, stared at the dirt.

“Mr. Conti?” the Sheriff asked.

Freddie pointed to several sets of footprints between them, one set obviously changing from heels to petite bare feet.

“If two couples left the bus at different times, and a man in boots even later, why did they follow each other?” Freddie thought out loud.

“What do you mean?” Hoeven asked with a serious frown.

“The prints,” Freddie explained, squinting at the trail they made up the drive and then off between stunted islands of grass and weeds.  “They’re on top of each other.   There’s no path here, no fence, no obstacles to go around, but they’re less than three feet apart the whole way.”

Hoeven, obviously uncomfortable, quickly sputtered an explanation.  “They were all heading for the back of the shed where they wouldn’t be seen from the bus.” 

“But we were all…”

“…or from the road.”

Then Freddie got it.  “They’re all going in the same direction,” he gasped.  “Nobody came back!”

The Sheriff immediately took charge again and very discreetly undid the snap on his holster.  “Please continue, Mr. Conti.  Just avoid stepping on the evidence.”

Without any shift in color, the abandoned shack changed completely as they slowly walked parallel to its side wall, flanking the trail of prints.  What had been a soft blue-gray (like the required cedar in the Pines, Freddie thought) suddenly grew cold and aware, as still and threatening as a tomb.  But the trail never went any closer.  When the two men passed the shed and realized the prints continued in a straight line into the field they gazed silently into each other’s eyes for a brief moment and became a team.

“Right,” Hoeven whispered.  He glowered at the path and jerked his head for Freddie to continue.  But the smaller man only took one step.

“Shit!” Freddie spat.

“Mr. Conti?”

“They went straight to him.”

“The man in black?”

Freddie nodded once, very slowly.

Hoeven looked up the trampled swath in the wildflowers, pulled his gun from his holster and said to Freddie, “Stay here.”

At any other time, a Manhattanite would have savored the sprays of late August blooms, mostly tall variations of yellow and mustard flowers he couldn’t name, an occasional burst of neon purple thistle, inkberries and the cornflower blue of the chicory asserting itself wherever it had a chance.  But Freddie’s eyes were on the wide tan uniform of Sheriff Hoeven who hugged the edge of the toppled plants.  In an oddly silent field, the Sheriff didn’t rouse a single bird or bug.  The lack of life aside from still slightly under-watered flowers made Hoeven’s rustling of the untrammeled growth seem loud as a tractor.

A dozen yards into the meadow, Hoeven stopped.  Frowning at the ground, he turned back to face Freddie.

“Is this where you saw him?” he bellowed.

Freddie glanced back over his shoulder at the bus and yelled, “Exactly!”

Hoeven waved for Freddie to join him, gun gone from his hand.

“Stay off the path,” he added needlessly.

The Sheriff was waiting by a perfect square of crushed plants, their flattened corpses radiating from its center like spokes in a surrealist wheel.  “Like one of those alien crop circles,” Freddie noted despite the obvious geometric contradiction.  Hoeven didn’t smile.  He simply pointed to the end of the path.  The footprints all lined up at the edge of the 10-foot square and stopped.

Freddie’s hands went cold.

“Trap door?” he whispered.

“Doubt it,” Hoeven replied.  “You check that way.”

When they met on the far side of the square, they had nothing to say.

***

Sheriff Hoeven stopped pacing.  He didn’t like being made a fool of, especially not by young rich kids from the city.  As he scrubbed his unshaven beard with his hairy knuckles, he made an inventory of the sparkling earrings, thin diamond bracelets, oversized engagement rings and cleavage-kissing pearls on the identically dressed, identically slim bridesmaids.  They were rich, all right.  Even their plain, pale blue sleeveless dresses somehow looked like money.

Another argument broke out in the knot of guests still waiting for Ramirez’ cell phone.  All the phones that had been on the bus were out of charge, and Hoeven needed his own line free, so he ordered the grumbling deputy to let the guests pass his around.  One woman, palm over the microphone, was trying to keep it from being grabbed out of her hands.

“Right!” Hoeven bellowed like a teacher in a playground.

The woman with Ramirez’ phone yanked it away from the flock of clutching hands.  “When are we getting out of here?” she snapped, accumulated irritations honing a dark sexy voice that matched her rippling hair.

“As soon as the licensed bus driver gets here, Miss,” he repeated, knowing full well she was a Mrs.  He had spent years perfecting a tone of condescending annoyance that no lawyer could prove if his words were quoted in court.

“Meanwhile, I have a couple more questions…”

The collective grouse was theatrically exaggerated.

“Can’t we at least sit on the bus?” another woman whined.

“Until I’m convinced the allegedly missing persons left of their own free will, we have to consider the inside of the bus a possible crime scene.”  (Gotcha, ya little brats!)

One woman threw her purse on the ground in disgust.  “If you want to sit…” Hoeven chuckled.

After a moment’s hesitation several women grabbed their escorts and enlisted their aid in sliding into the dirt and weeds.  Then, legs tucked under or straight out in their tightly tailored gowns, they pulled their men down to have something to lean against.  Hoeven struggled to keep his amusement only slightly visible.

“Right,” he began again.  “All that jewelry you ladies are wearing… The missing women, too?”

A stunned silence as the guests realized the Sheriff might know what he was doing.  “Yes,” one man replied.  “K. D. had her sapphire!” a woman chimed in.  They all began talking at once.

“Boss,” Ramirez whispered in Hoeven’s ear.  The Sheriff leaned his head without taking his eyes off the guests’ reactions.  “These kids were all high, right?”  Hoeven grunted his agreement.  “What if someone let off a tank of hospital gas on the bus?  That would’ve knocked ’em all out pretty quick, wouldn’t it?”

Hoeven raised his wiry blond brows.  He knew Don was a pothead because he had let him off at least a dozen times.  “You watch too much TV,” he mumbled, then added, “OK.  Check it out.”

Ramirez lumbered over to the bus.  Hoeven was about to distract the guests who were watching his deputy when one of the men blurted out, “Walter!  Remember?  Showing off his new Rolex?” and they all went back to chattering among themselves.  All except the little guy in the fancy suit.  The only guest left standing, Freddie Conti leaned against the bus, hands in his trouser pockets, and smiled as he watched Hoeven work.  The Sheriff, however, wasn’t sure he appreciated Conti’s approval.

“Question Number Two,” Hoeven boomed, and the guests were suddenly as attentive as an ideal classroom.

“The footprints go right over the tire tracks at this end of the driveway, so the car must have passed first.  Anyone see a car parked in front of the shed?”

Shoulders shrugged, heads turned to discuss.  Hoeven didn’t want an agreed upon answer, but before he could interrupt one escort blurted out, “I don’t think any of us had time to look out the window.”

“Thank you… Mr. Hewlett, is it? … for speaking for the group, but I was looking for individual recollections,” Hoeven snarled.  Instead of repeating his question, he simply raised his bushy brows and opened wide his exceptionally dark blue eyes.  All the guests shook their heads as if choreographed.  All except the short guy leaning against the bus, who covered his smile with his oddly small hand.

“Something to add, Mr. Conti?” the Sheriff growled.

Freddie stifled his laugh and replied, “No.  I have to agree with Chad.  Could have been a car there, but I don’t recall actually seeing one.”

“Very helpful, Mr. Conti,” Hoeven drawled just as Ramirez popped out of the bus.  The well trained deputy waited until he reached his boss before whispering a verdict with his back to the guests: “Nada.”

Hoeven decided to get aggressive.  He snorted once, scratched the back of his head and made his first move.

“OK, we have a new problem.”  Groans again from the guests.  “At the moment, our only viable explanation for y’all passing out at the exact same time is that a person or persons unknown let off a canister of some kind of anesthetic gas on the bus, motive as yet unknown but possibly robbery.”  Gasps from the guests.  “Since no evidence of such a canister has been found we have to assume it was intentionally disposed of by the perp or perps.  Therefore the interior of the bus is now off limits until it can be swabbed for residue.”  He paused while objections reached a point where he had to raise his voice.  “Therefore we will have to wait here until another bus can be dispatched and return y’all to your motel.”

“No way!”, “Are you out of your mind?” and a fusillade of swearing stoked Hoeven’s smile like straw in a campfire.  He wasn’t about to let this situation go on any longer.  Either all or some of the city folk in front of him knew what was going on.  Or perhaps only one.  Sheriff Hoeven lost his smile when he noticed Freddie Conti was laughing to himself.

“This all strikes you as funny, Mr. Conti?”

“Well,” Freddie chuckled, “if you posted it on YouTube…”

“None of us think it’s funny,” snapped the woman with the restless brown hair.  Her eyes narrowed and her face hardened with an unattractive flush of pent-up anger.  “It’s our friends who are missing.”

Freddie smelled trouble.  “My sister’s daughter’s best friends who are missing,” he corrected.

Hoeven liked this.  Get them at each other, and we’ll find out who’s in on it and who isn’t.  He decided to grill Conti like a suspect in front of the others.

“Mr. Conti,” the Sheriff asked slowly, as if sorting out clues in his head,  “when was the last time you were in this area?”

“I’ve never been here before,” Freddie replied defensively, uncomfortable with Hoeven’s tone.

“Really?”

“Never,” Freddie repeated.  “I’ve lived in Manhattan for over twenty years and never had a driver’s license the whole time.  You can look it up.  And you know trains and buses don’t come anywhere near this place.”

“That doesn’t prove anything,” one of the escorts grumbled, picking up the scent.  His eyes suddenly lit up as he caught a whiff of his own cleverness.  “Somebody could’ve brought you in that car!”

Foolishly, Freddie wagged his finger at all the members of the bridal party, further isolating himself.  “Two of you got married out here at the Inn.  That’s how Nina knew about it.  Nobody else in my family has ever been anywhere near here.  Hell of a long way to come for a wedding.”

Hoeven knew it was unfair, but he had been handed a stick and he was going to use it.

“You’re not married yourself, Mr. Conti?’

Freddie raised up his left hand to let everyone see his naked ring finger.  His gay pride was goaded, and he spoke without thinking. 

“I’ve been with the same man for twelve years,” he bragged, engaging every pair of eyes in turn, daring anyone to say something.  “We’re not allowed to get married in New York State.”

“Surprise!” mumbled one of the escorts Freddie’s gaze had safely passed.

Hoeven saw his chance.

“You got something against people who get married?”

Freddie gasped.  Everyone was staring at him like spectators in a Hitchcock courtroom convinced of a murderer’s guilt.

“Whoa!  What is this?” he struggled.

“Yeah!” someone said.  “Answer the question,” demanded another.  “I’ll bet the driver was married,” a third tossed in.

Tessler stood up so suddenly his wife fell over into the dirt.  “I’ll bet he knows what’s going on,” he snapped.

All the day’s anger, frustration and fear broke loose.  The bridesmaids and escorts stood as fast and charged as college students at a football game and began shouting, mostly at Freddie but some at Hoeven.  “It’s him!”  “He’s the one!”  “He knows!”  Even “Arrest him!” and “Make him talk!”  Hoeven merely folded his wooly forearms, waiting for the perfect moment to jump in.  Finally, the woman with the Medusa hair shrieked, “He’s not one of us!”

“You’re all nuts!” Freddie shouted over the din. “Gays don’t attack straights.  You got it backwards.”

The timing was perfect.  Hoeven opened his mouth to speak, but a single movement from the center of attention stopped everything.  Something grabbed Freddie’s thoughts so powerfully he forgot the pack of hounds baying in his face and jerked his head to the right.  As if he had heard a gunshot, he knew the man in the field was back.

Everyone turned to see why Freddie was ignoring them.  One woman whispered “Oh, my God!” and the ensuing silence was a sharp as a slap.  He was there all right, exactly as Freddie had described him.  Only he wasn’t there at all.  He was a graphic of a man, a geometric void cut with a box cutter out of the sunlit field.  A now hatless sphere on a rectangle of nothingness, terrifying in its sheer absence of logic.

Utter silence.  No one even breathed.  For a moment nothing happened.  Then a distant rumble rose in the blackness like a hidden waterfall rushing closer, a breaking tsunami funneled through the sharp confines of the cut-out.  Hoeven and Ramirez unsnapped their holsters and drew their guns.

A blast of orange light, clear and solid as extruded plastic, burst from the figure’s chest.  It shot from the field beyond the shed, expanded to a ten-foot square and slammed to a halt a few yards in front of the spectators, a shimmering tangerine wall that rippled with liquid fire.  Then, just as suddenly, it was gone.  On the ground side by side lay three men and two women, naked, limbs missing, breasts and pecs sliced off and all the wounds black and dry as if cauterized.  Only one man moved, shivering but still breathing.  Walter.

Bridesmaids screamed; escorts too afraid to do anything else grabbed their women into their arms and tried to shield their eyes with uniformly huge, manly hands.  The empty man retracted into an enormous sooty cloud, large as a skyscraper, which had begun to coalesce above the distant trees.  In just a few seconds the cloud rose up and disappeared into the clear morning sky.

Freddie had been blessed with the ability to snap into an emotionless robot when faced with an emergency.  The first to unfreeze, he rushed forward, snagging Hoeven’s shoulder with his hand.  The touch was all the Sheriff needed.  They fell to their knees on either side of the once tall Walter, but Hoeven stopped Freddie from touching the victim with a sharp “No!”  They locked eyes and Freddie understood.  The cop was concerned for Freddie’s safety.  Freddie wrenched off his suit jacket, balled it around his fist and stopped Walter’s head from thrashing.

Walter’s eyes popped open in terror.  He didn’t recognize Hoeven, but focused for a few seconds on Freddie.  Then his bloodshot eyes darted back and forth from the bride’s uncle to the bright blue sky between the two heads floating above him.  He gagged several times as if something was blocking his breathing and then burst into tears and laughter at the same time.

“Walter!  Walter!” Freddie snapped harshly, determined to prevent the mutilated man from losing his sanity.

“We ... saved … the … world,” Walter gasped and burst out laughing again.  He panted rapidly until he could fill his lungs with a solid breath.  With hysterical glee he proclaimed to the sky, “Party Animals Save Earth!”

Springing into action, several escorts rushed forward, whipping off their jackets to cover their friends’ nakedness.  Walter’s sweating face flushed with eagerness as he raised his head off the ground to get closer to Freddie.

“They were so angry,” he sputtered.  “They …  didn’t expect us to hear their thoughts the way they do.  Once they realized, they screamed at us.  They were so pissed off!” And he burst out laughing again.

“Walter,” Freddie crooned, softly and comfortingly this time, trying to calm the man down.

“You don’t understand,” Walter continued trembling with impatience.  “They harvested the dinosaurs.  So many of them to feed.  Planets and planets of them.  Then… they came back for the big mammals.”  Walter’s eyes glazed over, his eyelids fluttered and he seemed about to faint.

“It must have been the booze and the drugs,” he gasped.  “We made them sick.  And they couldn’t get rid of the aftertaste!”

No one wanted to admit they understood what Walter had said.  They just stared in horror at his radiant, glistening, triumphant face. 

---