Joe called again last night. All of today I couldn't stop thinking about it. This is screwing me up, man, I can't sleep, I can't eat, I'm always so damn cold, I almost hit someone with my car on the way to work today.

I think I aced the test in Fortran today, I finished it in time to get out of there, find a bench by the science building, and do my math homework. It turned out that I was about the only person in the class who turned it in.

I came home for lunch but I didn't eat anything. I had an idea that I might have hidden my gun in the garage. I looked but I couldn't find it. Joe doesn't believe that I can't find my gun, he says "You don't want to find it." I try to tell him but he doesn't listen. I told him he should give me one of his guns but he says that it's better that I use mine, he won't tell me why. It's no use trying to argue with him, he's nuts. I mean seriously nuts, I'm not exaggerating here. I'll give you an example. He used to sleep with his retarded sister until she bit off the head of his penis and he strangled her to death. That's what I heard anyway. And sometimes he gets all biblical. He claims that at some point he was actually ordained some sort of priest, but I think it's bullshit. Sometimes he puts on a collar and says that everyone has to call him father. That's how crazy this bastard is. I remember hearing, I wasn't there, that he gave this dinner party thing and came out dressed up like a priest, and during the course of the dinner one of the whores said something like "You're not a priest," and he leapt right over the table, knocked her right onto the floor, and said "I worship a vengeful god." That's how crazy this bastard is. Of course part of it is because he likes to have people think he's crazy, but half of it is real.

I've got an appointment with my thesis advisor tonight at 7. I've got a couple of ideas. I think my best idea so far is doing a paper on sun-orbiting satellites collecting water from the solar winds. According to my calculations you could get a pretty good haul, as long as there are no solar flares. If you wanted to have space stations orbiting the sun, solar water collectors a few thousand miles in would be the most efficient way. See I've got this theory, why bother colonizing other planets, colonize the sun, you've got hydrogen, oxygen, water, and load and loads of energy. The problem with doing this as my thesis is that people may think that all I'm into is space colonization stuff, especially since my masters thesis was about communication using the sun's magnetic wells. What I'm really interested is astrophysics, finding black holes and stuff like that in other galaxies.

Maybe I should go take a shower before I go. No, it's too cold to take a shower. Maybe I should eat something. I keep going to the fridge but nothing interests me, it all seems sort of mildly nauseating.

I'm lying in bed right now, I've got all the covers on me. I was listening to the radio but I got sick of the music a while ago. Now I'm just staring out of my window. All I can sense from this angle is the brown side of the neighbors house and part of a tree. There's a rain storm outside and the branches of the tree are thrashing violently It's kind of hypnotising in a weird sort of way.

I tried to tell Joe that I couldn't do it. I haven't shot a gun in years, and I've never shot one at a person. No matter what I say, Joe ignores it, he says "You can not fail, you are the instrument of my vengeance."

What he's talking about is this crazy occult thing he made up. Whenever he makes an important deal with somebody, like if they're joining the Society of Honor, Joe and this person would draw blood and write out this little contract on this little piece of paper, using weird bible-like words. Then they'd roll up the paper as joint paper, but they don't smoke pot, oh no, they smoke this weird shit, datura seeds. Oh man, that stuff is insane, you would have to be nuts to do that stuff, and I've done everything: speed, PCP, peyote, but that stuff is nuts. It makes you hallucinate and hear voices an stuff, but you don't know whether they're real or not, you're too fucked up to even care. And Joe does this stuff all the time. Joe thinks that if you break a contract you've smoked then it will cause your death. He needs me, of course, because I'm the instrument fate has chosen to cause this guy's death.

I don't even know this guy. I got out of that business a long time ago, back when I first entered college. Back then the Society of Honor had five members, now it has something like twenty.

I should have put in a clause about leaving the Society. Damn. It was all my idea, see. This is back in high school when me and Joe were, I guess, friends. I was dealing back then, and there was all this talk about how you couldn't trust anyone, how people would rip you off, shoot you, stuff like that. I told Joe we should create a sort of Society in order to make sure business was conducted fairly. It all sort of centered around this set of rules, rule number seven was that if any member breaks any of the rules, the other members have to come together and kill him. And if you're a member and you don't help kill the guy, they're supposed to kill you too. That's what Joe was implying.

But I quit all that years ago. I quit using, I quit dealing, I went to college and tried to forget that any of that had ever happened.

Then Joe phones up, tells me he's got a rule number seven that only I can deal with. I just pick up the phone and I hear him saying "Kirby, I've got a rule number seven for you." It took me a couple of seconds to figure out who he was and what the hell he was talking about.

When I was in the Society, no one got killed, that was the point, that fear would keep people from doing anything stupid. Kind of like nuclear weapons.

I saw Laura today. I told her I couldn't talk, that I was busy. It was true. She knows something's wrong though, she's angry that I won't tell her, that I won't even admit something's wrong. She gives me this look like I've hurt her feelings. I smile at her but she doesn't smile back. Oh man, I'm going to have to see her again tomorrow in physics. Maybe I just won't show up, I can get a copy of the lecture from that guy with the funny hair.

My damn Fortran line editor still isn't working. Mr. Ellis says that the way I pass information between procedures is bad and I should rewrite it, but if I do that I'd have to rewrite the entire thing. Tim says that's my fault for not writing my programs to be modular enough.

I hate programming. At first I really liked it, but now it's like... evil. I don't know, I just cant stand staring at that computer screen anymore. Today I couldn't stand the lecture anymore, so I figured if I stared right at Mr. Ellis for long enough, his entire face would just blank out, like they do for criminals on COPS. Our class is held in a chemistry lab, and I turned on the gas a little bit, just to see how long it would take for anyone to notice. The teacher smelled it and had us check all the valves. I closed it.

Oh Jesus, the phone's ringing. I'm not going to answer it, I'm not here. It might be some relative's died or something. Well I don't care, they'll stay dead. I'm not going to pick it up. It might be Laura, or even worse, it might be Joe. Joe said that he didn't know where this guy I'm supposed to kill is, but when he found out he was going to call me and tell me where and I'd go over there and shoot this guy. I asked Joe what if I hadn't found my gun yet, he said "find it."

Too bad I didn't hide any drugs around here. Right now a bit of Opium would go a long way. I always liked Opium, back when I was using, it's natural you know, I always liked the natural stuff better. And it has a history, you know, people used pot and opium and peyote for thousands of years, and society never fell apart.

But I wanted to be clean, I wanted to pass urine tests and stuff, I had a clean record up until that point and I intended to keep it that way.

The phones stopped ringing.

As far as I can tell I've got four options. Number One is that I can kill this guy and try to go back to my normal life, hoping that I never have to pick up the phone and hear Joe's voice again. Number Two is that I can kill myself. Number Three is that I can run away, move to somewhere else, drop out of college and get a job, hope that Joe doesn't find me. Number Four is that I kill Joe and hope that he hasn't told anyone else who I am and where I live.

Oh man, I just almost lit my bed on fire. I set my cigarette down on my mattress. Jeesh, how stupid can you get. I'm lucky I caught it before it did anything more then burn a hole in my sheet. What was I thinking? You don't set down a cigarette. I don't even smoke, not really, it's just that this whole thing is getting to me.

I guess I ought to get ready to go.

Well, I went to see my thesis advisor, Mr. McAve. I arrived a little early while he was still eating dinner. He said it was okay though, offered me some food. I ate a little bit. That Mr. McAve is a really nice guy. After we ate we went to his study. I told him my ideas about sun colonization. At first he seemed a little skeptical, but when I showed him my equations he started to get pretty interested. He even added a few ideas of his own. I went totally in depth about everything. I drew diagrams, wrote out equations. After a while he looked at his watch and said "Hmm, looks like it's getting close to my bed time."

"Okay," I said and made like I was going to leave, then I said "Oh, I forgot to tell you about the artificial gravity."

"Maybe next week..." he started to say.

"No, no. This will just take a second," and I started sketching out the graphs. He let me show him how the gravity worked. Then I started talking about the way ships would connect to the ship, and this was off the top of my head because I'd never thought about all the trouble ships would have connecting with a spinning satellite. And Mr. McAve starts giving me this real dirty look so I have to get out of there.

As I leave it's still raining and windy. I think to myself, that was pretty pathetic. If I don't want to go home, I won't go home, I don't have to look for excuses.

I drive around for a while. I planned on getting something to eat but I don't want anything. Eventually I end up going to a 7-11 and playing the arcade games until around midnight. Before I leave the 7-11 I decide that I want to start smoking a pipe, so I bought a cheap little pipe and some pipe tobacco and I smoked it for a while in my car.

As I smoked I thought about stuff, about when Joe and I created the Society of Honor. Back then, did I ever bother to think that I might actually have to kill somebody? No, I was too wrapped up in the idea of it. I was such an idiot back then.

After I had smoked as much as I could possibly stand, I started driving. The rain still had not ceased. I drove around for a long time. I felt nauseous so I opened the window and rain and wind smacked at my face. I drove around for a long time, into a quiet suburban business district where there were no other cars. I learned how to skid, you turn sharply and hit the brakes and you just sort of slide on the water. I got pretty good at it, I could go a good block and a half. I figure if you know how to skid, then you know even better how not to skid, right? Well, maybe.

Finally I got so tired I decided to go home. As I drove up to my little apartment I saw Joe and another man standing on the porch looking soaked. And Joe saw me, so I couldn't just drive off. I drove up into the driveway and rolled up my window. I got out of the car. I walked up to Joe and his friend. Joe looked good, the scars on his face were healing nicely. If you didn't know any better you'd think he just had a bad complexion. I knew, though, that Joe had been making some Meth-amphetamines when his lab exploded. His face and hands were burned and he got a sliver of glass lodged in her left eye. The doctors wanted to cut the eye out but Joe refused to let them. He claimed that he would use some sort of magic and herbs and faith healing to heal his eye all up. Well, it didn't heal, and one day he did some drug and passed out and stayed unconscious for a long time, but with his eyes open. The next day he gets up and looks in the mirror and he's got maggots in his eye. Now he wears dark glasses and everyone calls him Maggot Eye Joe behind his back, it really pisses him off.

You see, that's how Joe got all his power, it's those damn stories. If you're in the business at all, before you ever meet Joe you're guaranteed to hear five stories about him from five different people. By the time you finally meet him, he's like a legend. And he denies all attempts at stereotyping. He's all occult and stuff, but he's got this down to earth facts and figures business sense. He's one of the meanest bastards, but when you meet him he's a charmer. Joe is just this huge bundle of incongruities, the only way you could define him is in terms of being Joe. And when he acts like he's the greatest thing ever, you're ready to believe him because you don't know what else to think. I've never known a person who's meet Joe and hasn't been impressed.

Joe is white, very white. His pale face is set off by black hair woven into many tight braids tied together in a sort of ponytail in the back. He wears a neatly trimmed goatee and black Rayband glasses. He wears a black dress shirt with long sleeves and Levis. His friend is a large black man, a little fat, wearing a plaid sweater and black pants. He was the right size and shape to be a thug but his eyes betrayed a little too much intelligence. Then again, Joe never liked working with stupid people.

As I walked up the stairs, trying to look expressionless, Joe said "Ah, I see you've been enjoying this wonderful weather." He looked up at the clouds in appreciation, "Looks like we might be seeing some thunderbirds tonight." Joe was always having these stupid flashbacks that he called visions, and when someone said that he didn't see what Joe saw Joe would say "Of course you see it, you just don't realize you see it."

"You're looking well," I said as I walked up to the door. I took the keys out of my pocket and started unlocking it.

"I am aren't I," he said. "Kirby, I'd like you to meet my assistant Randolph, call him Rand, not Randy." I shook Rand's hand, he nodded to me. I opened the door and went in. Joe stayed outside.

"Aren't you going to invite us in?" Joe asked.

"I wanted to see if you could come in without being invited."

Joe stepped inside, Rand stepped in after him. "Of course you realize that the idea that vampires can't enter a house uninvited is a myth, along with them being afraid of crosses and not having reflections. Pure peasant tripe."

I went into the bathroom and got a towel to dry out my hair. I started to say something but Joe interrupted me, "Down to business then, eh? I happen to have located our friend, he's staying at the Emery Hotel. I don't suppose you've found your gun yet?"

"No," I said plainly.

"Kirby, Kirby, Kirby, what am I going to do with you? Haven't I always told you: keep your gun nearby?"

"I didn't think I was going to need it, I thought I was out of the business."

He shook his head, "You can't shake Karma that easily."

"It wasn't Karma it was you," I retorted.

"That's why people don't understand magic, because magic takes the form of least resistance, it would much rather be a car crash or a guy with a gun then be a bolt of fire or a winged demon. But that's besides the point," he took a gun out of his shirt and tossed it to me. It was a little black pistol. "A gift, for you, and you'd better not loose this one."

I sat down on the couch and looked at the gun for a long time. Joe watched me curiously. Then I looked up, "New rule."

"Eh?"

"New rule, rule number nine, if a member participates directly in enforcing a rule #7, that member has the option to leave the society of honor without penalty, an honorable discharge."

He laughed, "I've never had an honorable discharge."

"I'm serious," I said.

He looked at me carefully, his head cocked to the side slightly. "So you are. Okay, rule number nine is hereby added to the rules of the Society of Honor."

"In writing."

"If you wish," Joe said, he sat down cross-legged on the floor and removed from his shirt his deal-making equipment. First was a razor sharp dagger which he used to slice one of his and one of my fingers. Then there was a tiny clay pot which we dripped blood into. Then there was an eagle feather quill pen, and some little squares of paper in which he wrote in small letters "Let it be known a new rule is incorporated into the rules of the Society of Honor which reads that any member directly participating in the enforcement of the rule of death has the opportunity to leave the Society without ill will or Karma being thrust upon him, so mote it be."

Then he filled the paper with some of those damn crushed seeds and rolled it up into a joint. "Do we have to smoke that crap?" I said.

"It is not crap," he intoned, "The Dhatura is like the world, it favors the strong, making them stronger, and punishes the weak, making them weaker."

We sat around in the circle, cross-legged on the floor, and smoked the joint. Joe's rules dictated that we had to smoke the whole thing. I tried to take the smoke only into my mouth and not into my lungs. It looked like Rand was doing the same thing. Joe inhaled deeply, smoking the majority of the joint. Finally we finished it off. The room stank.

Joe was sitting perfectly still, looking straight forward and trying not to move his eyes. I guess the Dhatura had already gotten to him. He spoke slowly, "Okay folks, here's the plan. Kirby, you and Rand go over to the Emery Hotel, it's on Ferris by Laurel street. This guy is staying in room 108 on the second floor. Kirby, you're going to go up there with your gun and wait by the door. Rand will be at the car in the alley. I am going to get this guy to leave his hotel room and the moment he steps out the door you shoot him. If you go to the end of the hall you will find a fire escape, crawl down it, Rand will meet you there, drive you back here, there he will drop you off and pick me up and we will leave and you will have the option to leave the Society of Honor. Do you have that?"

I was starting to feel a little swimmy, my mind was slipping off of thoughts. "Room 108, second floor, Emery hotel, Ferris and Laurel."

"Yes. Do you have a watch?"

"Yes," I said. I was starting to get nervous, I kept seeing little flashes of movement in my peripheral vision and looking around to see what they were. Joe was still staring straight ahead like some sort of Buddhist meditating.

"He will be leaving his apartment shortly after 3:20, so you had better hurry."

I looked at my watch, it was 2:57. Rand got up, he was trembling slightly, "Let's go," he said to me.

We left the house and walked down in the rain to a little burgundy Volvo. As I walked it felt like I was floating. I felt the wind and worried that it would blow me away. "I'm going to kill you," Rand said.

"What?"

He turned and looked at me, "I didn't say anything."

I leaned against the car, I was starting to sweat all over. Then there were a lot of little bugs hopping down all over me, I spun around, trying to swat them away. Then I realized they were raindrops. Rand got in the car and I got in after him. I buckled my seat belt, but then I looked and it was unbuckled. I buckled it again and then it was unbuckled. I did this a couple of times, then I realized that we were moving. I looked over at the speedometer, we were going ninety on an empty street, Rand was hunched over the wheel, staring into the night.

I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate. "Rand," I said slowly in as powerful a voice as I could muster, "Slow down and turn on the headlights."

"Oh yeah, sorry," he said. I felt the car slowing down. I opened my eyes again. Everything was blurry, I couldn't read any of the names of the streets.

Rand said something but I couldn't hear him over the music. "What?" I yelled. He repeated what he was saying but I still couldn't hear it over the loud rock music. "I can't hear you," I yelled, "turn the music down."

He turned to look at me, "There is no music," he said and the music was gone instantly.

I pulled up my knees and held them tightly. "Oh Jeesh, we can't do this, we have to wait until this wears off." Of course I knew from experience that trips with Dhatura could last up to three days. I tried to remember if there was anyway I could lessen the trip. I seemed to remember something about sugar and cigarettes. Eat a candy bar and smoke a cigarette. Who had told me that? I saw a gas station "stop in there."

"We don't need gas," he said.

"Just do it man," I said. We stopped at the next gas station. I got out and went to the little snack shop. Rand followed me. Inside there was a man at the counter, he had a mustache and a blue baseball cap. "Can I help you?" said his hat. I stared in amazement for a second. Then I realized that it had to be a hallucination.

"Uh..." I said, "Can I have a pack of cigarettes?"

"What kind?" he said.

"Uh," I said, searching my mind for anything that had to do with cigarettes. I remembered the Marlboro man. "Marlboros please."

He looked at something behind him. "Marlboro 720s?"

"Yes," I said.

I bought the cigarette and pixie sticks, the most sugary thing I could think of. We went back to the car, I gave Rand a cigarette and told him to smoke it. We smoked a cigarette then ate pixy sticks. For a while Rand couldn't figure out how to get his pixie sticks open, I had to help him. After resting a bit I was feeling a bit better, maybe it was the cigarettes and sugar or maybe it was a placebo effect. I could remember that I was on Dhatura and that most stuff was probably a hallucination. I saw my grandma and I thought "is that normal?" I figured that it probably wasn't, seeing as my grandma was dead, so I looked away and my grandma disappeared.

"Jesus man," Rand was saying, "I hate that Dhatura shit."

"I know what you mean," I said, staring up into the sky. The stars were dancing with each other sort of an Irish jig sort of thing. "That was damn stupid of Joe, making us smoke this stuff before an important mission like this."

"It was your idea to smoke it," Joe said.

"Yeah," Rand said.

"So," I said, "I don't get how this plan's supposed to work."

"What do you mean?"

"How is Joe going to make this guy leave his apartment, from my house."

"Easy, he phones him up in his hotel room. When this guy answers, Joe is quiet a second while the guy says 'hello, hello' and then Joe says, like he's talking to someone else, 'He's at the Emery.' This guy gets panicked and tries to leave, and then you kill him."

"You think he's going to fall for that?"

Rand walked carefully around to the other side of the car. "He's tired and scared , he won't be thinking."

"I hope not," I said, getting in.

We started driving again. I saw a few things but within a few seconds I managed to realize they weren't real. I checked my watch and was horrified to see that time was going by at twice it's normal speed, I told Rand to hurry or we'd never make it in time. I was nervous, jumping at every little movement. I began to get sick of the damn floating feeling.

"Does this guy," I said, "Have people with him."

"No," Rand said, "he's alone. Don't worry about him, he's a nobody, no one's going to miss him when he's gone."

We got to the hotel. It was big and yellowish. Rand let me out. I went in, there was no one in the lobby. The counter was locked away from the rest of the lobby by metal bars and a Masterlock. The elevator had an out of order sign on it so I took the stairs up.

As I went up the stairs I was amazed to find how strong I was, I could leap up several stairs with each step. I thought that it had to be the Dhatura that was making me so strong, I felt powerful, brave even. I got up to the second floor and went into a dimly lit corridor. I found room 108 and sat down right next to it. I looked down the hall and saw a door labeled fire exit. I looked at my watch. Thankfully time had gone back to it's normal speed, it was 3:19.

I sat down on the floor next to the door so I could shoot this guy when he came out. Then the phone was ringing. As it rang it grew louder. Louder, louder, louder. "Answer the phone" I sobbed. Then it stopped. I got the gun ready and waited. Then the door exploded open and I fired. And I raced up to the man and fired again and again, each time hot blood splattered all over me. His face was gone, just a mass of blood and he was writhing on the floor, flopping around like a fish, moaning and screaming. I shot him again and again but he wouldn't stop screaming. Then the gun ran out of bullets. I stuck it in my pocket and started stomping on his head, trying to kill him.

And I was back on the floor. I looked around in surprise, the hallway was empty. There wasn't even a drop of blood to be seen. My gun was still in my hand. "Oh no," I moaned, "I can't do this." Then the phone rang. It rang three times and then stopped. I could hear voices from inside the room. "There's this little guy named Kirby," came Joe's voice, "He's sitting on the floor right outside of your apartment. I want you to kill him."

"Okay," said another voice. Then the phone was set down.

I couldn't breathe I was so scared. I tried to get up but I couldn't find my legs. I groped at the walls, in a panic, trying to find some way to get myself standing. I could hear bullet after bullet sliding in to the chamber of a revolver. I started to sob in fear. Then I saw the doorknob turning out of the corner of my eye and suddenly I was on my feet, running faster than I had ever run before. I slammed in to the metal door on the end of the hall that might have read fire escape. Then I was out on a metal grate a floor above the blackness of an alley. There were metal stairs leading down and I took them down to the street. I ran out of the alley and saw Rand in the car parked across the street. I ran across the car, the cars in the street barely stopping in time to miss me. I got to the car Rand was in and tried to open the back door on the drivers side. It was locked. "Open it up!" I said to Rand urgently. Rand was staring straight ahead, he didn't turn to look at me. I started banging on the car "Let me in!" I pleaded, "Let me in!"

There was a loud horn honking behind me and I was so startled it hurt my chest. I felt like rubber, leaning against the car. Slowly I turned around and saw Rand in a car in the street right next to me, the engine running. "Get in!" he shouted through an open window. I opened the front passenger side door and got in.

"Did you do it?" Rand said, taking off in to the street.

"Yeah," was all I could think of to say.

"I didn't hear a shot," he said.

"I did it," I said, trying not to sound as panicked as I felt. As Rand drove towards home all I could think about it how scared I am and how I don't know what I'm going to do when I see Joe again. It's his gun, he's going to take it back and he's going to take it back and realize it hasn't been fired. Then I really understand: he's going to kill me. That's the only thing he can do, I broke rule seven and he had to kill me. He'll shoot me right in the stomach and I'll lie on the ground with all my blood spilling out on to my carpet. And Joe would shoot me right in the heart too, no way I could ever survive.

When I recognize my street I become senseless with fear. I realize that the only way I can survive is to kill Joe and Rand. I look down at the gun in my hands, trying to figure out whether the safety is on. It is. I look at Rand, wondering if he would notice if I switched the safety over. I figure I'll walk slightly behind him as we walk up to my house and do it then.

We drive up to my house and in to the driveway. We both get out and close the doors behind us. I walk around the car and Rand waits for me. As we walk up the driveway he walks right beside me. I don't dare slow down and get behind him for fear that he might suspect something. Rand stops at the door, waiting for me to go in first. I turn the knob, unlocked, and open the door. I walk in, with Rand following me. Joe is still sitting cross-legged in the middle of the living room floor, the exact place that we left him. It takes a few seconds before his eyes turn up to look at us.

"Is it done?" Joe asks.

"It is," I say.

Slowly he gets up. "Now, according to rule number nine, you have the option to leave the society of honor with no ill will or karma being thrust upon you. Do you wish to avail yourself of that option?"

"Of course I do!" I say, "What's wrong with you."

"Then you are hereby no longer a member of the society of honor," he turns his one good eye to look right at me, "assuming that your words are true that you participated in the enforcement of a rule seven."

His eye stares at me, not blinking. It gets larger and larger until everything else becomes a blur. "You can't lie to me Kirby," the eye says, "I'll know. You can't lie to me. You can't lie to me. You can't lie to me. You can't lie to me." I try to move but I find that I'm paralyzed, I can't turn my head away, I can't even blink. "Give me the gun," the eye says and I can feel my right hand, the gun gripped tightly in it, raising up towards the eye. I'm being pulled closer and closer towards the eye. The harder I try to move, the more impossible it seems, my body is acting on it's own will. My eyes well up with tears and the eye becomes cloudy. I don't want to die.

Then Joe stumbles, falling to his knees. Suddenly I can see the living room, suddenly I can move. My finger wraps around the trigger. I pull the gun up quickly to aim it at Joe. Out of the corner of my eye I see Rand moving, I turn to aim my gun at him but he isn't there. I spin around madly, trying to find him. Then I see him, he's feeling his clothes trying to find his gun. "Hands up," I scream, aiming the gun at his head. I turn the gun back to Joe who is on his knees, "Both of you, now!"

Rand raises his hands above his head. I turn to look at Joe, his hands are hanging at his sides. He has a little bit of a smile in the side of him mouth. "Kirby, Kirby, Kirby," he says with a bit of a laugh, "What am I going to do with you?"

"Hands up or I'll kill you," I scream.

"You can't kill anybody," Joe said, "You don't have the guts."

The gun is trembling in my hands as I aim it at his head. "Maybe I don't have the guts," I say, "But I know if I don't kill you, you'll kill me. That fear will let me pull the trigger. Are you going to question my fear?"

Joe raises his hands just barely above his shoulders, the unbuttoned sleeves of his black dress shirt fanning out and exposing triangles of white wrist. "You were always my favorite student Kirby," Joe says.

"Just shut up," I say, turning the gun on Rand for a second, then back to Joe. "I don't want to hear it. I'm tired of your stupid words, talking all the time like you understand more about the universe than anyone else."

"But I do Kirby," he said sweetly, "I know more about the universe than anyone else. You could have learned, I could have taught you, but you never had the courage. That's why you can't kill me Kirby. We're not on the same level, we don't operate in the same plane of existence. Even now, you think you are drugged, you think you are intoxicated, you don't understand the nature of the gift the Dhatura has given you, you think it a curse. I understand it's true power." Joe stands. "If you think you can kill me, go ahead and try it."

Joe started to move closer and closer. "Stay away," I yelled angrily as he came closer and closer to being at arm's length, "Don't come any closer or I'll kill you."

"He's not moving," Rand says in a thin voice. I realize that it is true, Joe's feet are not moving, he is planted squarely on the carpet, yet with each heartbeat he looms closer. I step backwards.

"Rule number ten," Joe said.

"What?" I asked.

"I didn't say anything," Joe said with a smile.

"You said rule number ten."

"There is no rule number ten Kirby, you know that."

Then inspiration hit me. "Rule number ten will say, rule number ten will say that any member of the society of honor can leave the society of honor whenever he wishes. We're going to sign it and you're going to smoke it and you can't go back on it or you'll die."

Joe just looked at me.

"Do it now," I yell, "Write it up."

Joe kneels back down to the floor where his pouch of deal making equipment still lies unrolled. He pulls out the dagger. "Okay Kirby," he says, "let's do this."

I walk over towards him, still aiming my gun at him and occasionally turning to aim it at Rand with my right hand while I extend my left hand, palm up, to him. "Do it slowly," I say. Slowly he presses the blade to the tip of my index finger until it presses a groove in to the soft flesh. Then he yanks the dagger way, slicing the flesh apart. Blood immediately starts to well up and he catches it in a clay pot. Wen he gets several drops in the pot he pulls it away leaving me to drip on the floor. I put my hand to my side, ball it up in to a fist and drip down my thigh. He cuts his own little finger and dips in to the pot. Then he gets out a little piece of paper and his quill pen. Slowly he starts to write with careful calligraphic letters, he speaks as he writes. "Let it be known a new rule is incorporated into the rules of the Society of Honor which reads that any member who so wishes can leave the Society without ill will or Karma being thrust upon him, at any time, provided that he never buys or sells illegal substances for the rest of his days, so mote it be."

"Let me see it," I say. He picks up the piece of paper and shows it to me. It is covered with wiggling red letters and it reads "You are going to die."

"Write it again!" I yell angrily, Joe turns the paper around and looks at it.

"Human weakness," he mumbles. He turns the paper back to me, "This time read what the paper says, do not read your thoughts in it." I look again, squinting hard to read the blurry words, and this time it reads the words that Joe spoke.

"Okay," I said, "Now fill it."

"With the Dhatura that you detest so much?" he laughs.

"We do it exactly like we always do it so the agreement will be official."

"Are you not afraid to stand in judgment before her Kirby?" he asks, removing a tiny glass perfume bottle filled with seeds from his pocket. He sprinkles the flat dusty brown cruched seeds on the piece of paper and then carefully rolls it up in to a joint. He pulls a lighter out of the bag and lights the thing up, sucking in the smoke. Then he takes it out of his mouth and offers it to me. I take it carefully, the gun pointed at him the whole time. I suck the bitter smoke in to my lungs and immediately cough it out. I hand it back to him.

"Come on, smoke it, quickly," I say nervously. We pass the joint back and forth between us several times. I eagerly smoke the last tiny bit of it down and let the last bits of paper burn up in my fingers. "Good," I say, "it's done. Now, I officially request to leave the Society of Honor."

"So mote it be," Joe says, bowing his head slightly. "As of now, you and I are nothing, no debts owed, no wrongs needing to be avenged."

"Good, now get out of my house now, the both of you."

Joe gets up, takes Rand by the shoulder and leads him to the door. He opens the door and motions for Rand to go out first. He steps in to the doorway but stops to look at me. I still have my gun pointed right at him. "The thing that gets me about you non-magicians," he says, "Is that you think you can control your own destinies. Without even understanding destiny you think you can control it." He laughs, "And you think I'm arrogant. Nothing that you do will change anything Kirby. That fool that betrayed me is still going to die, and so will you."

"But..." I start to say.

"Oh, no, I will not pass judgment on you, it is beyond my power now. Lady Dhatura, she will judge you now. You see, what we just smoked wasn't just Dhatura seeds, it was Dhatura seeds soaked in the extract of Dhatura seeds. Just the sort of thing the Thugees in India used to kill people."

"But...."

"You are going to die."

"But you smoked it too," I say pleadingly.

"I have traveled in the kingdom of Dhatura many a time," Kirby said, "She has granted me strength to withstand what would kill ordinary men. Besides, I have a ride to the hospital. I'm afraid you don't. Goodbye Kirby." He steps out and shuts the door behind him.

I feel as if I am floating, not standing. I want to turn but I don't know how. I try to remember where the phone is, but I can't. I know that I should know where my phone is, but I can't think. Then I am at once standing and lying on my stomach. Then I am only lying, and I feel the fibers of the carpet snaking their way in to the flesh of my face. I perceive a distant noise but I can't tell what it is. It gets louder and louder, it seems as if it is coming from everywhere. I realize that it is a million voices, all speaking at once, all speaking to me. I remember the phone, I need to get to the phone. I remember a phone in the kitchen. I look up and can't tell where the kitchen is. I crawl over to the couch and pull myself up on to it. Then I notice the phone throbbing on the desk next to me. The voices are so loud now I can't see anything else. I reach out to touch the phone, but it touches back and I pull my hand away.

Then a big bus is driving past me, it's big black tires just barely missing me. The smell of bus exhaust fills the air, choking me. As soon as it passes, another one comes through. The deep sounds of the engines are audible even over the chatter of the millions of people. Bus after bus rushes by, swirling gray exhaust around me. "You're going to die," one says to me.

"I'm not going to die," I say, "I don't want to die."

"You're going to die," the next bus says.

"Shut up!" I whimper.

"You were never good enough," the next one says, then another one comes though and says "You were always a wimp," then another says, "You never had the courage to do anything with my life."

"You know what courage is?" Joe asks me. "Courage is not reading your own desires on to the universe, it's seeing what the universe is actually trying to tell you."

"You never had that courage," says the next bus, there are old women with bluish waxy skin aboard it.

I realize that my mouth is dry, heat is pounding in my face, I can't see straight. I remember the doctor that wanted me to phone him. I pick up the phone off the hook, but instead of numbers there are fruit. I try to remember the number for emergency. It try to call lemon lemon cherry, but that doesn't work. It try grape grape watermelon, but that doesn't work. Finally someone answers. I try to tell them what's happening but they keep saying "What? What? Calm down. I can't understand what you're saying." I'm explaining, but they don't seem to understand. "I'm going to hang up now," the voice says.

"No," I cry. Then there is a dial tone. I call "O" for operator, but the operator tells me that I can't get an ambulance because I didn't pay my phone bill. She says, "If you had paid your bill when we asked you to, I could get an ambulance for you. It's your fault, there's nothing I can do about it."

I put down the phone. My throat is so dry. I need to get a drink of water. I get up and try to go to the kitchen, but then I find myself in the backyard. I lie down on the grass and try to drink moisture form the grass. Then, thinking becomes too hard, so I quit.

I was no where near consciousness when the paramedics came and got me. My first lucid memories after that were of being in a hospital bed with tubes in unpleasant places. When I was better the cops grilled me for information. I told them that I didn't remember anything, a believable enough story when it came to datura. They had me listen to the tape of the anonymous 911 call, asking if I recognized the voice. It was Rand, but I kept my mouth shut. Later, I heard on the news that Rand had been found dead.

Later I came up with a scenario like this: Rand goes to the hospital, checks in Joe, then goes to a payphone and calls 911. When Joe gets better he finds out and kills Rand. Then, because he feels some sense of remorse over killing a good assistant, he decides to make Rand's death mean something. In Joe's twisted worldview he figures that Rand gave up his life in exchange for mine, so now Joe doesn't have to come and kill me.

I'm not sure if I really believe this scenario, but it's the only one that lets me sleep at night.