Frank was waiting in line at an airport, absently slapping his ticket against his thigh as he waited for the family of circus performers to try to assemble all their meandering clowns—honking and beeping around the concourse.

The voice coming from the overhead speakers announced bizarre arrivals. Now arriving, Flight number pi, arriving from that spot behind the soap that collects hair that you're pretty sure doesn't belong to you.

Frank glanced over his shoulder at the line that continued down a blindingly white corridor into infinity. Everyone was absently checking their watches or nodding their heads to whatever music pumped through their headphones.

A child dragging the head of an oversized stuffed bunny was suddenly tugging at his pant leg. "Hey kid," Frank said. "What's up?"

"Everyone's gonna die up there," the kid said simply.

At the moment, it didn't seem like an odd thing for a child to say. Frank just nodded and patted the little boy on the head.

Then the kid tried to bite his hand.

Frank yanked it away in time and then pulled the shotgun from the holster on his back, cocked it and splattered the kid's head against the wall. Calmly, the kid replaced his missing head with that of the stuffed bunny.

"Doesn't change a thing," the bunny-head said and coolly walked away.

Frank looked around at his neighbors in line. They were shaking their heads at him disapprovingly—an annoyed disapproval, like when some asshole is on speaker phone in a crowded restaurant.

"What? Kid tried to bite me," Frank pleaded.

Suddenly, he was on the plane and it was shaking like crazy.

The oxygen masks plopped down from the overhead compartment and attacked the passengers like demon snakes. Everyone was screaming but to Frank, all the pained, terror-stricken noise blended like the ending note of a choral arrangement. It sounded beautiful. He looked out the window just as an engine exploded.

The woman sitting next to Frank turned to him. "Where are you headed?" she asked with a warm smile.

"Home," Frank said to her.

"Well, home is where the heart is."

For a second, he was lost looking at her.

She was gorgeous.

Of all the flights to meet the hot chick, I get the one that's about to crash, he thought. He turned and looked out the window and saw a swirl of color reminiscent to the kitschy backgrounds used in 60's era psychedelic music videos.

He heard another engine explode.

"You hear that?" he asked the beautiful woman.

But she didn't answer. Instead, she threw a rock directly at his face.

Frank woke up with a jackhammer headache, a severe case of the shakes and a neck stiff as wood. His body had slumped at some point in his coma like slumber, wedging his head between the fridge and peeling linoleum at a particularly uncomfortable angle. He was still clutching the empty bottle of vodka.

The events of the night before swirled around in his skull in a murky soup. He couldn't remember if the rock throwing incident had been real or if it had just been part of his twisted airplane dream.

He rubbed the heels of his hands on his eye sockets and said, "I gotta get a handle on my drinking."

He sat up with a strained grunt. The pain in his head came with an annoying buzz—not the good kind—a subtle but persistent vibration like the wings of a thousand angry wasps. The Venetian blinds were left open and Frank saw dull light streaming through. He wasn't sure what time of day it was but honestly, it wasn't important. What became supremely important was the way two slats on the blinds were turned the wrong way.

How does that happen? Frank thought as he got up, staggered over and straightened them, scanning the room to see if anything else was out of order.

Small clusters of disorganized stuff taunted him from every corner.

The DVD shelf was blatantly un-alphabetical, the celebrity magazines on the coffee table were fanned improperly and the table itself was not in line with the pattern on the throw rug which if you looked carefully was also slightly skewed in relation to the walls.

Well, he sighed, at least I've got something to do. But before he could get busy aimlessly organizing, he heard a distant rumble.

The sound of a car.

He froze.

He knew it was impossible but there it was, very distinctly growling just outside the walls.

He couldn't move for fear his reanimation would make the sound disappear. He needed time to study it—make certain it was real. It periodically got louder, revving like a showoff at a drag strip.

As he took his first step toward the front door to further investigate, he was startled by the metallic grinding sound of gravel spraying rear quarter panels. His momentum leading him in the direction of the door shifted instantly, setting his joints popping, then cleaving to muscle as they were flooded with adrenaline, straining to carry him away from the rising cacophony.

Frank knew in that instant, had this been a movie, this would have been where the slow-motion sequence would have started, or where the freeze frame was inserted with the ironically casual sounding voiceover stating something clever about his obsessive-compulsive behaviors taking a bit too much priority in his thought process.

But things didn't move slowly from that point. On the contrary, they moved blazingly fast.

Frank was halfway to the kitchen in the back of the house when he heard the porch shred beneath spinning tires, he felt the percussive impact slap his back as the front door and surrounding walls collapsed inward in a shower of noise and wood splinters, he landed face first on the peeled linoleum as the guttural sound of the car's engine filled what remained of the shuddering house on the edge of town.

When he looked up through the settling dust, he saw the remaining working headlight dwindle and die in time with the choking sound of the stalled engine.

In moments of extreme duress, the mind will manage to retain enough focus, tenacity and perspective to point out the blatantly obvious.

"There's a car in my house," Frank heard himself saying.

Then the mind gets angry.

"There's a fucking car in my goddamn house!" he shouted.

It was true. There was an old, 70s era Chevy in his foyer, spilling over into the destroyed living room.

Those magazines will never get straightened now.

Frank stood up carefully, checking himself for injury.

Aside from the high-pitched ringing that was twisting around his head he seemed okay. Maybe a few extra scratches but nothing major.

It was then, he started putting things together.

Someone had to drive that car, he thought. Someone was trying to kill me.

He spun around and opened the drawer containing the snub-nose he had brandished the night before during the rock throwing incident.

Maybe, he thought, it's the rock thrower driving th-

Before he had a chance to finish the thought, a rock bounced off his forehead, knocking him unconscious.