After my third beer I was feeling much better, I was feeling decently buzzed, and I palled around with Bill and Frank while I continued ordering, Dr. peppers and various pub food off the menu and let the alcohol slowly get leeched out of my bloodstream. Add to that a big cheddar cheese melt burger, and chatting about politics with the old guys got me out of my funk.

This is one of the advantages of having a bar that you can go to unwind even if your girlfriend forbids it. But hey, that is a big part of the allure, isn’t it?

Before I knew it, it was six o'clock in time to go. I went to the restroom, bade goodbye to the geezers. By now the place was starting to fill up. Too bad, I would have liked to have stayed.

I’d entire forgotten about my worries and fears, and actually looking forwards to the drive out to the boonies.

As expected, it was dark and a mix of rain and sleet was pelting down, but by that point I didn't mind. I got in my car and started on the trip up to Vaclav’s

And as I was driving, I could let the slow and steady pace relax me further.

If you live in a big city that is anything like T.O. you know that around six o'clock things are pretty much at a standstill. But that didn't bother me much tonight, I turned on the satellite radio and listen to the public news channel while I slowly inched out of the city on my way to the suburbs and the surrounding forested greenbelt, and there, 23 Pangbourne Place’s vampire lawyer.

Yeah, I could have listened to some music channel, but I knew not having something to think about would lead me back to what I was trying to avoid thinking about? So it was reassuring to think about the financial mess the city was in, or how our sport’s teams keep disappointing their fans. And after that, I listened avidly about what was going on in the Middle East. Yeah, not relaxing, but certainly diverting.

So yes, while I watched carefully the cars ahead, all of us making our way out of town, it was good to think about countries where one group’s zombie soldiers were being used against our zombie soldiers to blow each other into tiny bits.

And after that, of course, a compelling documentary on the rates of how many of the dead were immediately sent back into combat, to be blown up, and then sewn back together to be sent back to do it all over again.

I wonder what that Vaclav would have to say about that. It sounded pretty depressing to me, how the war was being handled. They had this woman on who was talking about her husband and wondering how many bits of him would ever get to come back after the army had finished using them all up. Unfortunately for me, the story finally made its way on his teenaged decision to become a soldier, and how he was unprepared for the war he was ultimately compelled to fight.

Yeah, stupid teenaged decisions. No matter what you listen to...

But still, I was making a tempest in a teapot, wasn’t I? Even if there was some fallout with my own protections from my tenant’s stupid cracking spell, I could fix things. I’d fixed them before and I could do it now.

Come on, does any magic last forever? Nah, I told myself as the traffic finally began to break up and open out, leaving a clear lane in front of me to step on the gas. Nothing last forever, I was sure, not even the re-animated.

And who’s to say anything is even about me!

Maybe the nut in 213 had cast a spell to try and do something that had nothing to do with me, and the magic I had somehow lost was a case of wrong place, wrong time. And maybe the dream was a wakeup call, and not a stupid omen like I’d thought it’d been a few hours ago.

I knew what I had to do. Tomorrow I’d dig up the old manuscripts I’d kept from when I had worked on the anonymizing magic. I’d just do the whole thing over again. Tweak it a bit of course, I didn’t want my friends to forget who I was again, but I could clean the slate and just keep going as I had been.

By the time I reached Vaclav’s I had a plan, I was ready. There are no problems, only solutions as the first zombie Beatle once sang. I could deal.

I pulled the car off the highway, and down the tree-lined road that led to Vaclav’s, I was upbeat again and looking forward to the future.

Stupid me.