When his fragmented consciousness had finally, painfully stitched itself back together, Bull found himself lying on a rough, uncomfortable surface, legs hot and head and shoulders ice cold. A vague impression of blue sky filtered into his brain through gummy eyelids, glued nearly shut by congealed secretions. His feet were higher than his head, and his back higher than either. His body was one hard, aching mass of accumulated pains, especially around the old leg injury, but the stabbing pain behind his eyes was worst of all, and came from a lot more than just gravity-pooled blood.
     “I need another drink,” he croaked, or tried to. Nothing but a faint, wheezy rasp emerged from his throat. He wondered where the bottle had gone, and groped about for it without success. He attempted to open his eyes wider, but they wouldn’t respond. With an oath (another faint rasp) he brought his hand to his face and rubbed the glue from his eyes.
     Now he saw he was sprawled on top of an ash heap – the big one behind Old Santiago Church, no doubt – half in sun and half in shade, which accounted for the burning sensation in his legs. While a wealth of trash and debris choked the alley about the pile, there was no bottle in sight.
     “Damn,” Bull managed. He tried pulling himself upright, but the knife-point agony inside his head stabbed even deeper, sending angry silver sparks darting about his field of vision. He let himself fall back, cracking the back of his skull against the dew-cemented cinders of the heap and bringing a cloud of stinging grey powder billowing from beneath the fractured crust. “Damn,” he croaked again, squeezing his eyes tight against the dust. His effort robbed him of what little vigor he had left. He rested, panting.
     Several long minutes passed. Slowly, haltingly, Bull rolled from his back to his stomach, getting his hands and knees beneath him, and tried again to push himself up, taking care this time not to tempt the angry beast that threatened to once more scatter his fragile consciousness to the winds. It took a long time, but at length he did it, half-rolling, half falling back into a sitting position.
     He looked at the sky, and found the sun was sinking towards evening. His last coherent memories involved another evening, and he wondered what day it was. He grimaced at the idle, unhelpful thought – he didn’t know what day the recollected evening was, either, so knowing the current one would hardly help him much.
     His mouth was dry as cotton. He moved his tongue around in it and tried to cough up a bit of saliva, hoping to moisten it enough to make it functional. He began to feel a little water might be as welcome as the liquor he missed.
     A slight noise off to his right made him turn. Some fifteen feet away, curled in the shade of a low fence, sat a thin, sharp-featured little man. His knees were pulled up close to his body, with large yet delicate-looking hands clasped around them. He had big, hard eyes that seemed to lack whites, and he was watching Bull intently.
     “Who the devil are you?” Bull tried to ask, though the sounds that emerged from his mouth didn’t even come close to comprehensibility. The little man appeared to understand him, all the same.
     “I’ve been called that,” he said, “but that’s not who I am.”
     “—?” said Bull.
     The man shrugged. “Call me Curry, if you need a name. As for what I want with you, I’m just wondering if there’s anything inside that whiskey-soaked head of yours worth salvaging.”
     A hot rage started to build inside Bull. “Clear out, God damn you!” he grated, pulling the words together somehow. “I’ve had enough a’ assholes like you!” He made as if to rise, but his mind and body had other ideas, pulling him heavily back down in a shower of mental sparks.
     Curry laughed lightly and fluidly. “Well,” he said, “fortunately or unfortunately, they haven’t had enough of you. Even now you’re being sought out – did you know that? No, of course not – you can hardly see beyond your next binge.” The stranger tilted his head and peered at Bull appraisingly, stroking his long, large nose with two equally long fingers. “Should I help them, I wonder? Would you be worth the effort?”
     Bull looked around for something to throw at him. He came across the dry, stiff carcass of a small cat. His hand dipped down, came up with the dead thing, and pitched it at Curry. It spun upward in a high wobbly arc, inexplicably appearing to slow down as it went. Curry’s gaze followed its trajectory impassively.
     “I think I have my answer,” he said, as the object began to descend. “There’s too much rage and madness in you. Goodbye, Will Decker.”
     Speed returned to the world, and the cat came down with a thump where Curry should have been, but the stranger wasn’t there. Bull hadn’t seen him leave, and there was nowhere he could have gone without him seeing. Echoing in Bull’s ears was the loud chittering of a squirrel, unusual this far from the park. He shuddered with a premonition of the chill of evening.