Your Next-Door Neighbor Is a Dragon:. Zack Parsons

into sausages. My experiment was a resounding success. I had proven that a car door can completely shut with a juicy human hand wedged between the frame and the door.

      I heard the horrible crunch of the door closing an instant before I felt the pain. Then I screamed and bit down into the glazed doughnut I was carrying in my mouth. I exhaled a curse into the fried dough so terrible I have subsequently scrubbed it from my memory.

      When I stub my toe I shout the f-word. I can only imagine the sort of twisted, high-yield, weapons-grade version of “fuck” that emerged from my mouth at that moment.

      Things did not improve in the immediate aftermath of slamming my (motherfucking) hand in the car door. It was unfortunate, but my brain, the human brain, never evolved the ability to cope with that situation. My instinct when confronted with the explosive pain in my hand was to yank that hand in the opposite direction.

      It’s understandable. That instinct has served the hands of fifty generations of my forebears well, protecting their fragile digits from fire, explosions, rolling boulders, giant tusked tigers, and dinosaurs. I’m sure that instinct will work just as well to protect my great-great-great-grandchildren’s hands from vengeful robots and laser dinosaurs.

      At that particular moment, with my hand shut into the door of my car, with a spit-covered doughnut tumbling in slow motion from my wailing mouth, I yanked my hand away. I yowled and I yanked my wounded hand from the door with all of my might.

      That was my brain’s rough draft at least.

      The reality was a door that had somehow latched shut, securing my crushed hand in a vise. When I yanked with all my might my hand caught for a moment and then, with a unique ripping sound I will never forget, I freed my hand.

      Or at least the inside part of it.

      I looked at the bloody mass of my fingers, twisted and crimped and dripping blood, and I very nearly passed out. What I left behind between the door and the frame was a bloody glove bearing the fingerprints of four fingers and part of a thumb.

      My doctors would later refer to this as a “degloving” or a “40 percent avulsion.”

      “You should have open door first, Dumb-Dumb,” Dr. Lian, my Chinese doctor, would scold me in the coming days and weeks.

      But that’s jumping ahead. That’s skipping the moment of horror as I realized I had just compounded a terrible injury.

      I staggered back, my eyes flicking from the exposed pink and red insides of my right hand to the tattered cuff of bloodied skin dangling from the rim of my car door. I could barely even move my gory fingers, owing mostly to the severe fractures but also at least in part to the amount of pain I was experiencing.

      Those people who tell you getting shot or breaking a leg barely hurts? Lying jerks. They’re just saving the surprise for you.

      Gentle reader, you probably bought this book, which means I owe you. I don’t know you, but I like you. You have sound judgment. I sincerely hope a straight-shooter such as yourself never has your hand crushed and degloved. But, if such an accident befalls you, I feel you should be fully informed as to the degree of pain you might be expected to experience.

      Allow me to go ahead and clear up any misconceptions on that subject.

      It will hurt. A lot. How badly it hurts is difficult to say, but it will be measured in profane increments like “fuck loads” and “shit tons.”

      You may scream a great deal as a result of this pain. You might even urinate in your pants. Really. You don’t think about that sort of thing, but when you experience a lot of pain, sometimes you lose control over other body functions. This may extend to defecating in your pants as well, although I was spared that level of indignity.

      Don’t worry about peeing. You won’t even notice, what with the pain and most of the blood falling out of your body through the exposed meat of your hand. I didn’t notice as I began to empty my bladder. I was yelling incoherently and rolling around in a puddle of blood and doing a good job of smashing my doughnut.

      Taking the groceries home was right out. Forget it. That frozen food could go ahead and thaw itself out in the trunk. Those Klondike bars could go ahead and melt. I had some serious yelling and peeing and bleeding to do.

      My cell phone began to ring.

      “Say, baby, put down that pipe and get my pipe up,” said Bill O’Reilly as his Robo the pimp character.

      I was unable to stop yelling and bleeding, but I was able to reduce my crazed thrashing just enough to dig into the pocket of my blood-soaked jeans and grab my phone.

      “Say, baby, put down that pipe and get my pipe up,” Bill O’Reilly repeated.

      I managed to flip the phone open with my left hand and hold it up to my ear. It was covered in blood and smelled like pee.

      “Aaaaahhh!” I screamed into the receiver.

      “Whoa, baby, turn down the volume,” exclaimed the voice on the other end.

      It took a moment through the brain-curdling pain, but I recognized the voice. It was Lonnie Saunders, my editor from Kensington Publishing.

      “Ahhhhhhaaaaaaaaa!” I replied.

      “Zack, baby, what’s with the screaming?” Lonnie sounded like he was chewing gum.

      The best I could manage to reduce the screaming was holding the phone away from my head. People in the grocery store’s parking lot were beginning to gather around me. It seemed like they wanted to help, but they were afraid to touch me.

      I can sympathize.

      “We looked over your book proposals, baby,” Lonnie explained. “It’s all good stuff, really amazing stuff.”

      I had just enough sense in my brain to doubt Lonnie’s sincerity. When Kensington requested a list of potential book concepts, I had given them two real choices larded with a bunch of ridiculous wizard-themed proposals.

      There was no way Lonnie thought the wizard books were “good stuff.”

      “Wizard erotica. I love it. Potion recipes? Great. You really know your wizards. I love the mercenary wizards book, too, but I think you need to flesh it out a little more. Now this other idea, this darkly humorous apocalyptic horror novel, what can you tell me about that?”

      “Aaaaaggghhhhhhmmmmmmphh.” I rolled my face into the puddle of blood as I screamed.

      “Right, right, you mentioned an October one date. Do you think you could deliver by September one?”

      “Aaarrrgh!” I demurred.

      “Whoa, calm down.” Lonnie cautioned. “We’ll split the difference. How does September fifteen sound? Good, good. Now there are some things, baby. I love the idea. Love it. But I think we need to change it up a little.”

      “Aaahmphph.” I let my face sink back into the blood as I sobbed my reply.

      “You know it, baby. It’ll be twice as good. What I’m thinking is, what if, imagine this, instead of end of the world, you do the Internet. And instead of darkly humorous, you just skip the darkly part. Times are too crappy for that sort of thing. People want to be cheered up. Let’s make it peppy. Oh, and instead of a novel, it’s a guide. Sound good, baby?”

      “Do you think he’s dead?” asked a woman standing over me.

      “No, look.” Her husband nudged me with the toe of his shoe. “You can see the bubbles in the blood. He’s still breathing.”

      “Breathing, what’s that?” Lonnie seemed to half catch the conversation taking place over my head.

      I tried to gasp a response, but all I could manage was a weak gurgle.

      “Look, I know you’re the best. You can write it all. Write a big hit about the Internet and people or whatever. Sound good?”

      The man and the woman helped