was concerned about William. Immediately after he made the astounding suggestion that Dirk might still be alive, his eyes rolled back, spittle started foaming from his quivering lips, and he collapsed on the studio floor and began writhing uncontrollably. A grand mal seizure? A bad reaction to all the drugs he’d been taking? Vengeance visited upon him by some malignant deity? How would I know? I’m no doctor, I scolded myself, as I frantically dialed 911.

The medics finally came and stabilized William and put him in the ambulance. They graciously allowed me to join them. I held William’s hand the whole way and tried to send him positive thoughts, wishing I could borrow Dirk’s telepathic powers for a short time. William was unconscious, of course, and the medics kept muttering something about his weak heartbeat and whether or not a brain scan of some sort would have to be run once we reached the hospital. They were trying to speak so that I couldn’t hear them, but it was clear by their nervous glances that William was in a bad way and getting worse.

Again, I was tortured by unpleasant thoughts, not unlike those that filled my wretched brain that horrible Halloween night when William and I had accidentally created a vicious vampire when our attempt to merge Dirk and Frank into one magnificent hypertext novelist failed disastrously. I shuddered, remembering how incredibly painful it was to have vampire canines gnawing on my neck...

Then it occurred to me. I didn’t remember what had happened next. How did I manage to survive? Why wasn’t I a vampire? And why wasn’t William, since I assumed he had been attacked, as well? Something wasn’t right.

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