to be able to stand this morning. These are not the most creditable of witnesses, and yet by triangulating their stories we may be able to reach something close to a true account of the events of that morning. Surely it is plausible that at the moment Myron sighed and said, “Look. Look. I’m sorry I beat you.”
“You didn’t beat me, moron,” the Indian man spat out. “You beat my brother.”
“Your bother?”
“My twin brother. Did you think I was chasing you across the country just because I lost some silly game to you? You really are stupid.”
“Your twin brother?” Myron said. “You mean you’re not Dantaghata?”
“Of course I’m Dantaghata, you nitwit. Who else could I be? My brother died in the West Village, gunned down thanks to your monkeyshines.”
Myron was beginning to get a little flustered from the constant stream of insults. “You’re after me because you think I killed your brother? I didn’t even kill him.”
“Try to listen to what I say, you ugly retard,” Dantaghata said. “I didn’t say you killed him, just that you caused him to die. You lured him to his death, and so it’s your fault.”
“I didn’t even know he was dead! Why aren’t you going after the Illuminati?”
“You must think I’m crazy. Attack the Illuminati? Are you trying to kill me? They’re the Illuminati!”
“They were at the conference you busted up. Why didn’t you go after them then?”
For a moment Dantaghata’s face became a mask of absolute terror. “They were there?” he managed to stammer out. But he shrugged it off. “That’s all in the past. I’ve tracked you from coast to coast, and I’ve brought with me the Pashupatastra.” He flexed his bow, and the arrow’s blue light flared and dimmed. “When this arrow strikes, it unmakes not only this universe, but also the next two universes to be created in the future. Lord Rama disdained to use it, but I am not about to be talked out of things as easily, you stain.”
Myron looked to his right and left for an avenue of escape. The fence along both sides would not have been much of an obstacle to anyone, say, five feet tall. The only way Myron could go was straight back, which didn’t seem like a good idea.
“I really don’t want to die,” Myron said.
“Boo hoo hoo. We don’t always get what we want.”
“Are you sure it’s a good idea to unmake the whole universe just to get me?”
“Am I sure? Are you kidding? Of course I’m sure!”
Myron probably looked sad at that moment.
“Any last words?” Dantaghata said, testing his pull one last time. “Before I kill you, I mean, loser.”
“As a matter of fact . . .”
Witnesses were unable to report with any degree of accuracy, so greatly were they swooning just then, what Myron’s words were, but I feel safe making the assumption that they were in the neighborhood of: “Pax sax sarax . . .”
Dantaghata fell sideways against the railings; then his legs gave way, and he hit the ground. His bow and arrow clattered around him, and his quiver spilled out as well, arrows everywhere. According to one witness, a teenage runaway with high hopes (as they all have) who had ended up six months later addicted to compressed air and half insane (as they all are) on the bridge—but who was fortuitously out of earshot—Myron ran forward immediately to grab the archer’s weapons, but his foot, in his excitement, hit the bow, and it skidded under the railing and over the side of the bridge, to the river below. Myron went to pick up the blue glowing arrow, but none of them were blue and glowing at that moment, and whatever eldritch symbols had been carved in the wood Myron could not read, so as Dantaghata began to stir, he grabbed an arrow at random and ran ahead, past him some space. By the time Dantaghata had struggled to his feet, Myron had fished his own little battered compound bow from his backpack. The arrow, when he nocked it, was comically overlong for the tiny bow.
“What does this arrow do?” he shouted. “Does it unmake creation?”
Dantaghata had struggled to his feet again. He was sweating profusely (the witness reports), and looked horrified. But he was canny enough, his faculties had already returned.
“That’s the suicide arrow,” he said.
But the arrow, at nock, was changing and shifting. Its bronze tip became the head of a snake, which opened its mouth to display long, cruel fangs, and hissed.
This,