If the brunette had not run her slender fingers across John Carlson's broad shoulders he may have woken up in his comfortable king-sized bed. Instead, he laid facedown in the grassy knoll beside a dirt farm road at 2:30 in the morning. And, he would have missed his own burial.

In his condition, he might of slept through each event that occurred. However, a blustery, cold wind cut down the neck of his plaid shirt and roused him.

Shaking cobwebs from his head, Carlson asked himself, "Where the hell am I?"

He rolled onto his back. A stabbing pain branded his kidneys. His right eye nearabout swollen shut, he stared up into the moonlit leaves of tall hickories. Dizzy, his sense of perspective marred by the whiskey in his veins.

Carlson wondered, 'How the hell did I end up in this condition?'

Clearing his mind, he remembered something about a party and a redhead. No, that was not quite accurate. On second thought, he recollected a brunette with a caramel mocha swirl.

Carlson recalled her smile charmed him as she spoke. In the crowd, she snatched another draw off her lit Salem Light. The pack's sheathed kelly green foil crumpled when she dropped it into her velvet clutch. Carlson's quick glance noticed it was a strapless Louboutin Fold-Over. A favorite playtoy of the well-to-do.

He saw her lipsticked mouth form words, but they couldn't be heard above the blared music that rattled the windows in the dingy dive. An ancient hip injury sidelined him as others danced on the floor.

Carlson cursed himself for his health issue, "You old fart! And, not even halfway through your thirties yet."

Part of his mood that night had been downtroddened by the Hip Hop music played. A fine connoisseur of the Big Band sound, Carlson much preferred the virtuoso clarinetist "King of Swing" the jitterbug, and the boppy jive. He could not differentiate Krumping, with its high energetic and exaggerated movements, from the improvisional style the younger generation called the Boogaloo. Nor would he waste his time trying. He would not have bothered to come if Regina Dorsey had not sent him a handwritten invitation to attend.

Despite the note, champaign glass in hand, Regina mouthed him a polite, "Welcome to my celebration" and strolled over to a group of her lady friends huddled near the hors d'oeuvres.

Her mother, Dame Margaret Bidener, seemed friendly, her intended goodwill displayed in her interest for why he attended the party. She offered a simple salutation, "I am surprised to see you here, Mister Carlson. Do you write the society pages for the Maryland Eastern Shore now?"

He kept his response to a pleasant minimum.

For eons, Joseph Bidener, the birthday girl's socialite father, despised Carlson. His repugnate aversion, and look of contempt, not wasted on the undesired attendee. Unaligned political candidates and newspaper editors seldom made good bedfellows. He gave Carlson a cold-eyed stare that discouraged conversation between them.

Carlson noticed an inebriated Barnabas and Felicia Dorsey zeroed in towards him. For a change, Felicia looked almost sober. He planned to kibitz Gonzo counterculturism about authoritarian oppression with Barnabas when they caught up to him.

"We've just talked Regina and Thomas into tagging along for an after-hours rendezvous on our plane," Felicia disclosed as though she needed to reveal a secret that should have remained concealed.

Carlson feigned the false impression of interest in her remark. He replied, "A moonlight flight in the spacious interior of your Piper Aztec sounds inviting."

With arrogant swagger, in a profound effort to make himself sound important to the human species, Barnabas chimed in, "I purchased the Falcon Arrow for Thomas's birthday three months ago. As you are aware, our son is an avid pilot."

Carlson did not ask the obvious question but wondered if Felicia was to be the captain of their idiotic voyage. If so, that explained her near sobriety.

Carlson knew the Aztec was not the most expensive plane the Dorseys could afford. The cost mere pocket change to them. He lamented, "Aren't Aztecs known to be docile airplanes?"

"If you mean comfortable, then they are," Barnabas responded.

"There is almost a full moon," Carlson stated. He sucked the olive out of his martini glass and thought to himself 'I could show you another full moon! One you never saw before.'

Carlson walked away. He held strong suspicions Felicia arranged this flight to pull Regina away from the party and irritate Margaret, her one time best friend and now bitter rival. After all, the Dame had opposed Regina's marriage to Thomas. She held bigger plans of bluer blood than his for her only daughter, especially after the fallout with Felicia occurred. The arrangement remained a bitter pill to swallow for the eccentric.

Regina possessed a fire inside, a sparkling glow that drew others to her warmth. Carlson watched the bunch of them smile stiffly as a member of the paparrazi snapped their photograph.

He juggled the steps in his mind, 'Aim the camera, focus the lens, eject the used flashbulb, insert a new one, repeat the process. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah.' He had seen the act a thousand times.

Carlson asked himself why the hell he bothered to come to a party he would never fit in? His derby and blazer in hand, he attempted to leave. Regina hurried to his side. She snatched the items out of his grasp.

Draping the jacket over her shoulders, she laughed, "Don't be silly, Uncle John. It's nowhere near time for you to leave yet."

"Be careful, you will ruin your dress."

"The hell with the dress! This coat is rather comfortable and it smells of tobacco and whiskey and ink. The things that make you, you," Regina remarked. She took the blazer off and began, "Uncle John--."

"Does your mother know you still call me by that name?"

"She can go flip off!"

"You two on the outs again? Is that why you insisted I come to your twenty-first birthday party?"

"Of course not. You always tell me the truth and I need--." Regina replied. She saw Thomas made his way toward them and fumed, "Damn, he would come now!"

With hope in his voice, Thomas questioned, "Leaving so soon, John?"

"Just retrieved my lighter from my coat pocket."

"Excuse us, but there are important people waiting impatiently to wish Regina a happy birthday."

The lovebirds walked away. Regina's pouty lips mouthed "later" in Carlson's direction.

He whispered, "Love is a trick of the mind and it is all done with mirrors and lights."

Regina made no further efforts to approach him again.

Carlson knew himself to be a sorry drunk. "Self-pity makes for a lousy chaser!" He called out loud after his fourth round grabbed his better senses.

A confused brunette yelled back over the roaring music, "What?"

"Nothing," Carlson responded.

He filched two glasses off a passing waiter's tray and offered one to the brunette. She smiled thanks. Carlson scanned the packed crowd for Regina. He knew she was sort of a troublemaker. The character flaw raced rampant in her family tree.

Surprised by some of the roughnecks he saw at the party, Carlson told himself, 'You will never understand the wealthy.' He downed the drink in his hand and watched for another nearby waiter.

The brunette interrupted his concentration when she ran her fingers across his shoulders. An instant later, Carlson felt a strong hand jerk his collar and pull back hard. The motion cut off his breath. A giant bald-headed man clenched a fist and landed a knockout blow. That was all Carlson remembered of the party.

Feeling the wind, and the rough terrain beneath him, Carlson shivered. He forced himself into something similar to wakefulness and pushed himself to his knees. He attempted to conduct an inventory. Every piece of his body throbbed.

He pondered why the lunkheaded hayseed, and, yes there were at least two other accomplices who attacked him, left him alive? Near frantic, Carlson patted his shirt pocket in search of the gold-plated pocket watch his grandfather gave him when he was a lad of ten.

Carlson placed the watch back inside its pocket and felt his bruised ribs. He assured himself, 'At least none seem broken.'

He felt his thigh, and the contusion there. Gently, he eased swollen fingers into his pants pocket to make sure his keys were safe.

Carlson reached for his wallet. Relieved he had not been robbed he said, "Still there."

Staggered from the combination of too much alcohol and the assault, Carlson stood up into a shadowy world. He inhaled the rich campfire smoky aroma that came from the trees around him. He assumed the grove had been placed there in the distant past by some unknown entity as a windbreak.

Carlson observed a barbed wire fence on the opposite side of the dirt road. To his surprise, no animals grazed the empty pasture. The metallic roof of a dairy barn glistened in the moonlight. The inviting building beckoned as a cool spot to recover. Behind him, the growl of an engine commenced.

Concerned the assailants may be in search of further amusement at his expense, and shaken from the beatdown he absorbed, Carlson stepped into the shadows of the majestic hickories. The fleeted image of awakening one time in the back of a Range Rover crossed his mind.

He did not know how, but he recalled its off-white paint job and rust around the rear fender. Beyond that, he had no independent recollection of how he arrived to where he found himself. For several long moments, Carlson closely monitored the road before he realized no vehicles traversed it.

His gait uneven, painfully, he limped forward. Each inhaled breath created a burning sensation in his lungs. He paused against the trunk of a large tree and looked around. Only his unswollen left eye provided a small relief to his disorientation.

A fallow field laid in front of him, but that was not what drew his attention. A white Range Rover, that obviously had been in an accident, did. The car's crumpled front end contained folds that angled back toward the shattered windshield. This presented the vehicle a forever frozen flinched posture. Its grill buckled inward. A motor sound, not coming from the Range Rover, emitted once more. The noise of a distinct diesel engine.

Carlson wondered, 'Was it a bus? Or maybe a truck?' He scanned around, 'Where was the agitator?'

The engine strained as gears shifted. Carlson saw an illumination. A forty-five degree beam tilted over the field. In disbelief, he watched headlights emerge beyond the SUV, apparently from the ground itself. A tractor headed straight for him. Carlson's stomach lurched when, in the brightness of the tractor's lights, he witnessed bloodstains on the Range Rover's decimated windshield frame.

The sight forced Carlson to hide from the tractor driver. Cloddish, he waddled with short steps deeper into the trees and crouched under a low branch. The tractor's rumble made his head pulsate as it circled the Range Rover, halted in its tracks, and idled.

The driver, a hideous and deformed hunchback, climbed off. He carried a heavy rusted chain over his shoulder as he strolled to the vehicle. Carlson watched him go about his business of attaching the chain to the axel of the Range Rover.

The dwarf crawled back onto the seat of the tractor. His stubby feet strained to reach the pedals. With effort, the clodhoppers he wore achieved the maneuver. Once more the gears shifted as he yanked the Range Rover inch by inch across the pasture. A trail of dragged earth followed behind. He neared a ramp that led down into a shallow chasm. Tall mounds of dirt stood like sentries at its edges.

The driver stopped the tractor, climbed down, and removed the chain from the Range Rover. Squirming back onto the tractor, he propelled the vehicle down the ramp into the mouth of the hungry pit. Carlson heard the clamorous groan of metal as the victim halted somewhere against the ground beneath.

As though shackled, Carlson lumbered deeper into the trees. The tractor motor rumbled again. Carlson attempted to elongate his excruciating stride. In haste, the tractor navigated the sward's topsoil and grass. Carlson knew the driver sighted him.

The penetrated ache in his ribs cumbered Carlson's breath. He remained in the thicket and watched the shadows of the tree trunks inflame in the tractor's near headlights.

Just before Carlson slipped into a world of pitch blackness he thought, 'At least the little clubfooted prick can not come in here with his murderous tractor.'

Or could he?