Stanley found his answer. Unfortunately, he found it by rear-ending a police car while he was distracted and messing with the radio.
* * *
—
Later that night, Stanley was lying low, or hiding out—or whatever you called it when you were trying not to be found by a homicidal maniac—at a bar. Because Chris had seen his license and knew his home address, Stanley was afraid to go back to his apartment. Though he had called his neighbor and asked her to feed his cat for him. Fluffles would be very upset if he didn’t get his supper. Stanley couldn’t go back to his office, because that was where Chris had already found him once, not to mention Mr. Knudsen was still really pissed off about his muscle car.
Home, where it was just him and Fluffles, and work, where it was a bunch of virtual strangers he never really had an actual conversation with, were the places he spent about ninety-five percent of his time. Which was kind of depressing when he thought about it.
So after the police had questioned him and then kicked him loose, he had fled to the place he spent the last few percentage points of his time, a sort of Irish-themed pub called Ox Knuckles that was midway between work and home, across the street from the hospital. He frequented this establishment because it had $12.99 bottomless loaded nachos and a weekly trivia night. Stanley loved nachos and trivia.
Now Stanley sat in a booth by himself, sullenly eating his nachos while holding an ice pack to the bump on his forehead caused by Mr. Knudsen’s steering wheel, and feeling generally miserable. The police hadn’t found any sign of his attacker. He’d told them about the trick with the radio, and how Chris had walked away from not one, not two, but three fatal car crashes, and so he had asked for protective custody, except the detectives had just kind of laughed at that. They’d said that Chris was surely just your run-of-the-mill, off-his-meds, lunatic stalker, who would most likely show up at an emergency room or morgue soon due to his injuries. Until then they’d just send a patrol car past his apartment once in a while. Other than that their hands were tied, budget cuts, so on and so forth.
Ox Knuckles was crowded with a happy, cheerful, Thursday after-work crowd. So if Chris did show up to murder him, at least there would be lots of witnesses. Plus, nachos.
But poor Stanley’s head was still spinning. The more he thought about the day’s events, the less sense everything made. There was no way he had imagined the weird bits due to stress, like the detectives had suggested. He was pretty sure Chris wasn’t normal, and if he wasn’t normal that meant he was abnormal, or maybe paranormal. And that idea really freaked him out, so he shoved it out of his mind.
“Hey, Stanley.” He had been too distracted to notice the most beautiful woman in the world walking past his booth. “What happened to your head?”
“Lisa, hey. Yeah. Car accident.” Because Lisa was basically a goddess, he tried to play it cool. “No biggie.”
“Bummer. You doing trivia night tonight?”
“Trivia? What? That’s tonight? No.” As usual, when he saw her, Stanley struggled to form coherent sentences and turned into a stammering idiot. “Tough day. Tired. You know.” He gestured at his nachos like an idiot. “Stuff to do.”
“That’s too bad.” Her smile made him even dizzier than he’d been before, and that was saying something since he’d headbutted a steering wheel earlier. He didn’t know what Lisa did, or where she was from, or anything about her because every previous attempt at conversation had degenerated into him being unable to use multisyllable words. All he knew was that Lisa was superhot, and that she was smart enough she usually dominated Ox Knuckles’ trivia night. “You’re my only real competition. Maybe next time?”
“Yup.” And as with every time he talked to Lisa, his brain made it so he could not word good no more. “Bye.”
Lisa left. He watched her go, then sighed and went back to ruminating on his inevitable assassination by a possible cyborg who might be from the future.