I woke up to the hushed sounds of someone talking, a man I thought. But who was it, and what was he doing in my apartment? Naturally my first thought was that I had a burglar in my midst and I needed to do something. I kept a baseball bat under my bed; not that my building had ever been infiltrated by such degenerates, but a midnight break-in at my first apartment in the city had put the habit in place, and I"d lived by it ever since. I sat up quickly and two things happened simultaneously; violent, simultaneous bursts of what felt like shrapnel-filled lightning thundered through my head, which then caused an immediate wave of nausea so powerful that my only recourse was to hang my head over the side of the bed and let it fly. I couldn"t be sure if the intruder heard my gastronomical explo
