the dice added up to 34.  durer. melancholia 1.  1514.  as a child, arthur thought he had discovered the magic square.  he was extremely disappointed when he learned he had not.  later he learned that it didn't matter.  there were more hallucinations on the road.  it looked like a billboard of a hazy, rust-colored image, but it seemed like the hooks were objects.  there were three of them.  spaced about 100 meters apart.  he thought later, maybe they were real.     

then dice, you said.  gigantic blocks of dice, parallel.  the hitchhiker seemingly ran through them. 

you said that for the next five miles you had three images of a hand with a pistol on the right side of the car.  they floated,  parallel to you, like the running hitchhiker.

you passed by a diner where the first hallucination occurred.

he never even looked at you.  you sped off.  you said that was the first time.

and then exited the car and ran. he ran parallel to your car for a mile or so.  you were calling to him.

then you said that famous man turned into another famous man who said, "good luck".

then the boy turned into a man, a famous man, who didn't say a thing.  

a boy entered your car.  his face glowed.  the few things he said were garbled. 

there was a man riding a bicycle coming in the opposite direction.  it all seemed suddenly rushed.

you told me a light sphere had landed on the side of the road. 

you were uncertain, but you decided to pick up the hitchhiker along the way.

you have already told me that you are the one in the car.

you can believe us, or you can believe them.  we can feel your presence.  we will prove it to you.  

after the fourth shock, after the house, we will have some more time to tell you things.

the dancing girl with the funny skirt.  and it is supposed to mean something.  you may think that.

it also occurs to me that some of you, probably most of you, think this is some kind of charade.

it just occurred to me that i should start talking to you, the few of you listening, watching our every move.  

his father was not one of us.  at least i have not seen him.  we will live forever.  you will too.

at times arthur would see his father watching him.  he was a gunsmith.  he is deader than a doornail now.

(he has a penchant  for people tripping,  falling, and fainting.  those people are the salt of the earth.)

arthur felt a certain closeness to riedenschneider.  arthur too had a weakness for dancers.

but when he learned that doc had been arrested when he lingered on a dancer too long,

arthur liked to visit the 1950s in those days.  he never trusted doc riedenschneider,

i could have told him the reason she left him,  but it would have created difficulties.

he said that he could never figure that one out.  and that it bothered him a great deal still.

his first wife ran away just before the ceremony.  arthur didn't change faces those days.

he said his favorite movie was the asphalt jungle.

he said he took it hard.  he was a sentimental man.

he drove to the hospital with the dangling finger stuck in his hair.  he thought that had been a mistake.

but arthur knew that had been an abstraction.  it was more like this.  fast.  then fast confusion.

he said that he recalls the accident in 16 squares with durer's numbers adding up to 34.

and was bitten by a parrot.  he lost a finger, and he said that he was never the same.

he said that he entered the wrong room once,

arthur was a wild boy of the road.  trouble was his middle name.

there was the time when i mistook one thing for the other.  and he saved me.

i certainly know the tricks the mind can play.  

maybe arthur will be cured of taking shadows too seriously.