"Lounge Lizard" by Angela Perry

Well into a rousing rendition of Manilow’s “This One’s for You”, Logan Weylan did his best to ignore the mangled corpse of an antelope as it floated through the casino doors. The ex-antelope wafted onto the stage and brushed against him lovingly before meandering to a potted fern, which it unsuccessfully attempted to nibble. The antelope was in good company: two dead jackrabbits, several field mice, and a mashed skunk milled among the audience as well, blending with the clouds of cigarette smoke.

Unable to help himself, Logan’s gaze kept drifting to the dilapidated menagerie. The animals, in various states of decomposition, returned his looks with soulful eyes. At least, those with eyes remaining did. Logan swallowed hard and signaled the live band to take a break as he sang the final chords.

He acknowledged the scattered applause from the octogenarians sipping virgin daiquiris—his only audience this time of afternoon—with a shaky wave, then headed for the bar. Logan did not even need to glance behind him to know that his ghostly devotees, invisible to everyone else, followed him between the ringing slot machines to the marble liquor counter.

Logan ordered a daiquiri. Not virgin.

“You’re not looking so good,” the bartender commented as he mixed the drink. “Maybe you should take the evening off.”

Logan mutely shook his head. His eyes stayed focused on his shaking hands, which he clasped together on the bar until the drink appeared in front of him. At the sight of the glass, one of the spectral mice scampered along the bar and attempted to climb into his drink. Logan growled under his breath and waved his hand at the mouse, which faded into mist with a reproachful pout. Clutching the beverage closely, ignoring the perturbed eye-roll of the bartender when no tip was forthcoming, Logan forced himself to spin on his stool.

A quick headcount determined that he had lost three mice, but gained another skunk and a particularly flat hedgehog. Tire marks stood out noticeably from the hedgehog’s flattened hide, and its floating waddle was rather squashed. It shambled up to him and nudged his shoe with a compressed nose.

“When I came to Las Vegas to find the night life, this wasn’t what I meant,” Logan muttered under his breath.

He had been singing in a lounge at the Luxor when the first animal (a raccoon, he thought, or possibly a pulverized antelope) appeared; needless to say, he had lost that job. The entertainment manager had not been especially open-minded. He and two burly coworkers had escorted Logan to the stage entrance, completely ignoring his continued supplications to just look, and left him sitting in the cool night air with a sore tailbone and a strong recommendation to sober up.

That had been three weeks ago. Since then, his spectral zoo had fluctuated in size and constitution but obstinately followed him everywhere.

Never one to say die, Logan had not been idle about the infestation. He had tried finding other people who could see them. He had made an effort to chase them away. He had even, in secret, attempted to have them exorcised at a local wedding chapel by the priest-for-hire. All his efforts had earned him were vociferous referrals to psychiatrists, suggestions to change his drug of choice, and a guitar lobbed at his head by an irate Elvis impersonator.

Lately, he had changed his tactics: he did his darnedest to ignore them. It was hard sometimes, though. Just when he thought he was getting the hang of it, he felt something brush up against him, only to discover it was a disembodied coyote head. Or he would turn around in the bathroom and find himself staring into the eye of a morose moose missing half its face.

It was affecting his appetite.

“Hey! Weylan!”

Logan looked up to see the drummer pointing at his watch. He sighed, finished slurping his drink, then slid from the stool and purposely strode through the specters, feeling bitter and defiant. It felt like he had walked through a shower of rancid beef fat. He accomplished a shudder-shimmy-stumble that greatly amusing a nearby elderly couple.

“Note to self,” he thought, holding his breath against the stench and gingerly wiping at his arms, “Don’t walk through the creepy dead things.”

Despite the appearance of a rather grisly animated deer carcass that persistently tried to graze on dinner salads, the afternoon passed uneventfully. Logan wowed his ancient fans with renditions of Barry Manilow’s songs that brought tears to some of the women’s eyes. He had always prided himself on playing to the women, though he usually targeted a younger crowd. In all humility, he was not surprised that even the older women fell for his debonair haircut and dazzling smile. They swooned and clapped, stomping their feet or their walkers with increasing enthusiasm as the evening wore on. One woman went so far as to throw her Depends up on stage, causing Logan to signal another break for the band.

By the time his second break was over, the evening crowd had begun to trickle into the casino, and Logan switched into his “sexy crowd” routine, as he thought of it. He was halfway through a set of the Beach Boys, crooning “Kokomo” into his mike toward a curvaceous blond at a second-row table, when the dragon appeared.

Logan screeched, wrecking his suave rendition. He couldn’t help himself.

The band ground to a halt. The startled crowd glanced around, trying to locate what had frightened the lounge singer. Seeing nothing, they began muttering to each other, glancing askance at Logan frozen on stage.

“Man, what are you doing?” whispered the lead guitarist frantically, “You trying to lose your job?”

Flustered, Logan shook himself and attempted damage control.

“Sorry folks, just the old hemorrhoids acting up,” he joked weakly, winking at the blond. A chorus of groans echoed through the audience. The blond curled her lip at him and turned away.

“Oh, that helped,” muttered the guitarist. “Stand-up comic you’re not, pal.” He struck a chord and the band launched into “Conga” by Gloria Estefan. Luckily, the audience took the bait, and a conga line started weaving between the tables.

His face red, Logan followed the band’s lead, stumbling through the next several songs semiconsciously. All thoughts of flirting had dribbled from his mind, his eyes frozen on the poisonous green wraith towering over him. Its serpentine form nearly filled the three-story casino lounge, meandering between, over, and through the slot machines and gambling tables. It had no legs that Logan could see, or wings for that matter, just a hairy scaly face with perky ears and crossed eyes.

Unlike the other specters, the dragon was not content with sipping martinis or browsing on salads. Rather, it wound itself sinuously among the dancers, a dragonish grin upon its face. Logan could have sworn he heard it humming to the music once or twice.

Nine o’clock came, and Logan gladly went. He turned the stage over to Silver Sally, with her glittery costume and air-headed voice, and ran out the stage door behind the casino. The smell of baked garbage pressed into his nose, making him hold his breath as he skirted the Dumpster and abandoned the alley for the main sidewalk.

Once among the late-night throng, Logan slowed to a fast walk and cast a quick glance over his shoulder. As he had feared, the dragon was pouring through the doors of the casino. The smaller critters energetically pranced around the dragon as it pursued Logan.

Using all of his willpower, Logan managed to keep from breaking into a run. Barely. He collided with several people as he scurried down the Vegas Strip, murmured apologies, and continued his backward-glancing flight. The dragon seemed amused. At least, Logan guessed that was a smirk on its face. Maybe it was hungry and wanted to devour his soul.

Logan faltered at the thought and tripped over his feet, stumbling into a poster-encrusted wall. He felt the touch of something cold brush his shoulder and crumpled into a ball, wailing.

“Go away,” he pleaded, sobbing, “Please, leave me alone!”

“What you talking about?” a Latino voice demanded.

Logan looked up and found he had accidentally brushed against someone standing against the wall. The cold touch had been one of the many zippers gracing the man’s leather pants.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, uncurling.

“You on drugs or something?” the man asked. He flicked his cigarette ashes at Logan and adjusted his silver chains. “’Cuz if so, that’s too bad. You not half bad on the eyes.”

He winked at Logan.

“Uh, thanks,” Logan smiled lopsidedly and began backing away.

“I think you should take him up on it,” a sweet voice commented. The dragon’s huge head materialized over the man’s head.

Logan screamed again.

“Yo, no need to scream about it,” the Latino guy said irritably, “If you not into that…”

“You…you can talk!” stuttered Logan, sitting down hard on the sidewalk and scooting backward, crablike.

“You trying to make me mad?” Leather-pants demanded, his face folding into a scowl. “I don’t take that offa nobody, not even a pretty boy like you.”

“I think he thinks you’re prejudiced,” the dragon shook its head disappointedly. This time Logan knew it was smirking.

“You loco, man,” Leather-pants swore, throwing up his hands. He strode off into the fluorescent night, oblivious to walking through the dragon that hovered at his shoulder.

Logan backed as far as possible into a recessed alcove in the brick wall.

“What do you want?” he sniffled, “Why are you creatures following me?”

“Glad you asked, gorgeous,” the dragon purred, passing effortlessly through the sheltering wall to curl around Logan. “I need your help.”

Feeling the icy mist wrap around him, Logan buried his face in his hands.

“Go away! Leave me alone,” he wailed, words muffled.

“Come on,” the dragon coaxed in a throaty voice, “A big strong handsome man like you. How could you resist coming to the rescue of a helpless little damsel in distress like me?”

Logan looked up and nearly choked. Little? The dragon stretched and curled across five lanes of traffic. He opened his mouth to comment, but it—she, he amended—bared rows of glistening teeth in a “charming” smile, and he thought better of it. Instead he buried his face in his arms again.

“Can’t you just go away?” he whispered hoarsely, pleadingly.

The dragon stuck out her hairy lower lip in an obvious pout.

“Fine, be that way” she sulked, hunching her coils petulantly, “I came to you in good faith, because the others told me…”

Logan’s head snapped up again.

“Other dragons?”

“No, you know, the others,” the dragon snapped, nodding toward the mangled rodents floating nearby, “The ones that died like me, on the freeway.”

Logan couldn’t help himself. This had gone from pants-wetting scary to beyond crazy. He let out a bark of laughter.

“You’re telling me that some driver plowed into you, a dragon, on the Interstate?”

The dragon smacked the back of his head with her tail. At least, she tried to. Her tail passed through his head, making his eyes bug out and his sinuses throb.

“I’m telling you that some driver ran over my human body, you dufus. Hello? I was born in the Year of the Dragon. That means my soul is a Dragon. Obviously you didn’t pay much attention in high school social studies; did you even bother to read the placemats at Chinese restaurants? Sheez!” She rolled her luminous yellow eyes in disgust.

“Okay, fine,” she continued, settling her coils and resting her head in his lap, which brought their eyes to the same level. “Interlife 101. Souls born into human bodies can take twelve different forms between lives, depending on the year in which they can be incarnated. You’re a Rabbit (and not a bright one at that, I might add). I’m a Dragon. If you want to know about the rest, look them up.”

“Wait a second,” Logan interjected, holding up his hands, “Are you telling me all those animal ghosts that have been haunting me are dead people from the freeway? No way.”

            The dragon shook her head, heedless of the chills it sent through Logan as her chin passed through his legs.

“Don’t be silly. Those are just poor dumb bunnies, not people. I asked them to search for someone who could help me. For some reason, they were attracted to you. Probably shared mentality, if you ask me,” she muttered, but not too quietly for Logan to hear. “They’ve been hanging out near you until their next life begins, trying to guide me to you. One of them, a polite little armadillo you may remember, finally reached me with a message about a Rabbit with the second sight in Las Vegas. So here I am.”

“How come they talk to you and not me?” demanded Logan, feeling annoyance bubbling up. “Why did they decide to pester me? Why are you pestering me?”

The dragon sat up, forcing Logan to squint into the flashing bulbs above.

“Enough twenty questions,” she said, with a teeth-baring yawn that made Logan start quaking all over again. “They talk to me because I’m a ghost who was killed on the freeway; you might say we have a lot in common. I have no idea why they think you can lend a hand, but I need you to help me find out who killed me. Otherwise I can’t go on to my next life. Vengeful spirits and all that.

“So,” she bent down and fluttered her eyelashes, sending a spectral breeze icing through him, “will you help me?” she cooed.

“What if I don’t?” Logan growled. Tomorrow was his day off, and he had dates with three women; helping a ghost was not high on his list of priorities.

“Then I’ll haunt you for eternity,” the dragon shrugged, her expression indifferent, “If I can’t incarnate, I won’t have anything better to do, eh champ?” She grinned widely.

Logan felt his stomach drop and rattle around near his toes.

“Fine,” he conceded through clenched teeth, “Where do we start?”

“Glad you feel that way,” the dragon chirped, “I thought we could head out to the freeway and look around where it happened.”

Muttering under his breath, Logan dragged himself down the stairs to the employee parking garage and climbed into his shiny new Gallant. He’d always pictured himself as more of a Beemer guy, but that would come with time and fame. For now, this was better than his old, beat-up Corsica, which he had luckily wrecked on arriving in Las Vegas. The insurance payout had helped him trade up and into bed with a higher class of girls.

For a fleeting moment as he wound up to street level and merged onto the Strip, Logan thought he might lose the dragon. A glance in his rearview mirror dashed his hopes: the dragon floated languidly behind him, seeming to have no trouble keeping pace at thirty miles per hour or—as he entered the Interstate—seventy-five.

Logan and the dragon cruised northward for a good half-hour. Blinking against the sleep that always pressed in on him while he drove, Logan gagged down cold coffee left from that afternoon. Stars gradually came into focus as the light pollution from Vegas receded. They were well into the desert when the dragon stuck her head through the passenger door. Logan nearly jumped out of his sparkling cummerbund, spewing coffee on the dash. The crushed Styrofoam cup dribbled the remainder of the java into his lap.

“We’re getting close,” the dragon informed him, “I’m not sure exactly where it was. They’ve probably towed my car by now.”

A pale moon peered from behind the clouds, illuminating the road. Logan shifted in his seat. This stretch of road was familiar to him, too. He turned up the air conditioning, cursing the heat that rose from the desert even at this late hour to coax beads of sweat from his forehead.

“Here. Stop here.”

Logan braked and pulled off onto the wide gravel shoulder. The dragon withdrew her head from the car and Logan followed, though he paused to open his door first. Stygian black, the hot night pressed in on him, making his armpits feel as damp as his coffee-stained lap. Outside the bright city lights, the dragon seemed larger, glowing with a jade radiance that made the shadowy sagebrush and cactus cast eerie shadows.

Logan swallowed.

“What are we looking for?” he queried, voice cracking.

The dragon zigzagged across the road, calling to mind a gigantic mutant firefly.

“Just something to help,” she replied absently, eyes focused on the freeway, “It was here on the southbound side…there! Look, you can see the skid marks where the bastard slid into me, then peeled out and left me for dead. Come on, help me look.”

She scoured the hill next to the freeway, looking under sagebrush and in rabbit holes, with Logan making a half-hearted attempt beside her. Finally, exhausted, Logan sank into the dust and glanced at his watch. The luminescent numbers told him it was 12:32.

The dragon settled glumly beside Logan and breathed a deep sigh.

“We’re not going to find anything, are we?” she asked, her soft voice defeated.

“Probably not,” Logan admitted, “After all, it’s been three weeks.”

The silence deepened between them for several heartbeats.

“What did you say?” the dragon finally asked, faintly, her eyes floating in the green mist before him.

“I said, it’s been three weeks…” Logan repeated, then stopped as realization struck him.

“How would you know that?” the dragon hissed, her eyes an inferno.

Logan cringed back, trembling at her tone.

“It was YOU!” she roared, rising above him to her full considerable height. “You ran me down. I’d set my emergency flashers; you could see me. But you never even slowed down.”

Flames were licking at the corners of her mouth now. Logan cowered beneath her, trying to make himself invisible beneath the scrub.

“It was an accident, I swear…I never saw you in the road! I didn’t mean…I was going to be a star, you see…if I’d stopped, it could have ruined my career…”

The dragon roared furiously, sending a gout of blue flame at him. He screamed as it licked his face, sulfur and death in his nostrils. It took several moments for his brain to register that he was still alive. He cracked his eyes. No charred flesh. No burning pain.

Her ghostly fire could not touch him.

“Ha!” He sprang to his feet. “You can’t hurt me, you pathetic roadkill, you. Go ahead, haunt me all you want. I’ll ignore you just like I do all the other insignificant rodents that hang around.”

In anguish, the dragon howled to the sky. The very stars seemed to quake at her beseeching cry.

“Eternal gods, grant me my revenge!”

She began to glow, brighter and brighter, until Logan was forced to shield his eyes. A resonant voice bellowed from the dragon’s mouth:

“Unfaithful hare, listen well. Just like the rabbit you are, so shall you ever be. At the end of this incarnation, you are henceforth stripped of your humanity.”

The thunder of the voice grew until it was beyond hearing, the glow blinding even through Logan’s covering hands. Then, it faded. Cautiously, Logan removed his shaking hands and peered out. The spots that danced in his vision did not conceal the emptiness of the desert. The dragon was gone.

The dancing spots in his eyes resolved themselves into two shining headlights, the distant roar into the rumble of an engine. Before Logan could react, the lights swerved and tires squealed. In the instant before the car plowed into him, he saw the rabbit that the car had been trying to avoid bounce off the fender and land in a crumpled heap on the road.

Blackness swirled around Logan for several moments, then cleared. Shaking, unsure of what had happened, he dared to open his eyes. He was lying on back, staring up at the stars. His vision was partly obscured by a long furry…ear? He raised his hand to brush it aside, but instead of a hand, a furry paw moved into view.

Breathing in shallow gasps, Logan sprang to his feet. Gravel crunched behind him, causing him to whirl. A lone rabbit, glowing faintly green, its face a mangled mess, sat staring at him. A lopsided grin split its face below a dangling eyeball.

“What a night for traffic!” it said. “Looks like they ran you down too, eh, brother?”