“Hey, where’d you get that t-shirt, Frank?”
“I got it from–”
“HEY guys, what’s up? What’s next? Rob a bank? Steal some jewels? Beat some alien loving hippie to a bloody messy pulp, ha ha? Just kidd’n guys. I love you two. Big fan actually.”
Frank Lynn couldn’t look. “Jeez, Mikie, I thought you said he was *dead.*”
“Well. Apparently not. Hi Trevor.”
“*Strevor* to you. Philip Strevor.”
“Of course. *Mr.* Strevor.”
“Seriously. I’m not… me. I was acting all the time. You knew that, right? You knew that all along?”
“Riiight,” the other two said almost at once, then stared at each other, a tiny bit of doubt creeping in because of the book. “Strevor, you say?” said Mikie, taking him in again. Seemed like the same old psychopathic idiot on the surface. Tattoos checked out, shirt, pants, shoes, hair, crazy wild look on his face. Always looking for trouble this one.
“Not Trevor,” Philip Strevor repeated anyway. “No need to be killed off. I’m from a different game.”
“Well what f-ing game is *that*?” issued Frank, fed up with this fiction already. He’d written the character off in his novel. This is his novel. How the heck did a character manipulate his own storyline?
“Um, I don’t know right off. Something about second. Another life maybe. Second life, I suppose.”
“Alternate life, right right,” said Mikie. “Convenient name, then, just your real one kind of reversed.” He stood up more defiantly. “So tell us about yourself. Strevor.”
Philip walked up to him. They were almost chest to chest. He resisted the urge to poke Mikie’s bulging bosom with his finger. That would be a Trevor move. He’s not Trevor, as stated. “Okay okay,” he tries, backing off a bit. “I was part of a gang. Like us three. I mean, if I was *Trevor*. Guy named Marion.”
“Um hm,” said Mikie. “Like *Maid* Marion?”
“Um, kind of like that yeah. Except a man. Then there was little Heidi but don’t let the size fool ya. She was a woman through and through as we found out later. Shapeshifter.”
“Shapeshifter huh? Got it. And tell me about these… shapes.”
“Well,” Philip said, looking down, trying to recount them all. “There’s the woman, like I said. The *wife*. And, uh, the older woman, the mother I think we called her. Then the girl, the little woman. Then the *dog*.”
“Dog?” questioned Frank, resisting the urge to run over and smack him, hoping he’d disappear again with the action. Never returned — remained deceased. “What’re you talking about Trevor?”
“*Strevor*” he repeated. “Strevor Phillips, I mean, Philip Strevor, pheh.”
“What kind of dog, fool? Not that I’m believing any of this.”
“Oh, I don’t know. A black one. Maybe a white one. Little… littler than the girl. But not by much. *Not* a poodle. I remember that much.” He looked around, as if the answer was physical and in the immediate area. Was he looking for the dog? Frank thought. Like the dog appeared to *him*?
“What you looking around for, boss?”
“What did you just call me, huh? HUH?”
“Boss… hoss. Just a name.”
“Oh it’s much more than that.” Then he began to whistle loudly, like calling for one.
“Oh come on, Frank. Let’s get out of here and let *Trevor* finish his trip, whatever he’s on, mushrooms I’d say by the size of his pupils.”
Frank remembers his last mushroom trip. The last time he saw the dog. “Listen, Mikie. I know this sounds crazy. But… I’m starting to *believe* this fool. I don’t think this is Trevor!”
“Say whaaaat?”
Sunklands 