The tub filled rapidly, and blood flowed like a crimson waterfall over the edge and across the floor toward me.
I heard a tiny howling, and looked down.
I screamed and threw the soft, brown, fuzzy, squirming puppy-thing that had been a razor into the advancing tide of blood.
The fuzzy thing shattered when it hit the blood, and each of the thousand pieces became another tiny puppy-thing that grew and grew, yapping and swimming in the blood. The tide was now rising about my shoes.
I backed away from the mirror, trembling violently. I forced myself to slosh through the thick blood into the bedroom, groping for a bottle of whisky on the bureau.
"What the hell are you doing here?" the boss asked when I opened his office door and peeked in. "You're supposed to be in Palm Beach. Well, damn it, come on in!"
I clung to the door firmly as I maneuvered myself through the opening. And when I closed the door, I leaned back against it heavily.
I could see the boss—Carson Newell, managing editor of Intergalaxy News Service—half rising from behind his big desk across the room; but he was pretty dim and I couldn't get him to stay in one place. His voice was clear enough, though:
"Must be mighty important to bring you back from.... Damn it, Langston, are you drunk?"