Sean — sorry, Shawn — Shawn is telling me about the time he pulled this thing out of the ice that wasn’t of this earth, like no way did our lord in heaven ever concoct such a monster, because why bother? The thing obviously served no purpose except to terrify. And I said Well maybe it ate something at the bottom of the lake and if that something didn’t get eaten then we’d all be screwed. And Shaun or whatever said he’d rather take that something over this monster any day of the week. What with the black oily skin — skin, mind you, Josh, not like fish scales — so the black skin and the spine and the teeth and the no eyes to speak of and the … I dunno what you’d — like the wings, maybe? Like fucking bat wings? Holy god what a horror.

What’d you do with it? I ask, and Sean says he threw it on the BBQ back home and had it for a kind of late lunch. What’d that do for you? I ask, and he says his nightmares — you know how he gets the nightmares all the time, since the thing at Dairy Queen? Well the nightmares disappeared, like that very night and ever since. You don’t dream anymore? I ask, and he says he dreams every night just like every other red-blooded American but the dreams rule now. Floating in warm water, flying through forests, finding that one record with the guy playing harmonica, you know? The one he can’t track down anywhere? And plenty of high-school honeys, a couple times a week at least.

I ask him if it was this lake where he got the thing and he says no, it was further up at Munsungan. So I finish the coffee, pack up my gear. I tell him this was an even bigger waste of time than I thought.