Chapter 2: Midnight Runners

“Stacy, you’re crrrrrrrrazy,” Quincy O’Snappers declared. “I realize that being attacked by the Blood-Eyed Cat Syndicate is quite the traumatizing ordeal, but I’m telling you, there’s no such thing as this ‘Lizard Man.’”
“Quincy,” Stacy began angrily. “You just don’t know. I mean for serious, you just don’t know. You can’t know. Not unless you’ve been there. You just don’t know, you know? I know. And I also know that you just don’t know what I know because you weren’t there when the time came to know what I know, and therefore your knowing prowess in regards to knowing the Lizard Man is nowhere near my knowing-ness. Of this much, I know.”
“All right, all right. But can you explain to me why we’re going to go see your senile grandpa Dustin right now?”
“He’s not senile. I mean, OK, he’s a bit eccentric. And more than a bit excitable. But he has his heart in the right place. And anyway, when I was but a wee lass he told me stories about how he hunted some kind of lizard man. I have to know what he knows.”
“Um…you do realize that you’re asking for advice and knowledge from a man who hijacked a bus full of nuns because he thought they were demon penguins from the Netherworld?”
Stacy Powell and Quincy O’Snappers continued on in silence, making their way to the retirement home where grandpa Dustin resided. Along the way, Quincy O’Snappers looked out of the window at the passing scenery. Nature always calmed the raging heart of our lion Quincy O’Snappers, and today was no exception. As the trees and houses and various fuzzy creatures whizzed by before Quincy O’Snappers’s eyes, he mused that life right now, here with his beloved best friend Stacy, could hardly be any better. And then, a thought came across his mind, that there was indeed one thing that could make this car ride better, namely the ballad of “Come On Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners. The beauty conveyed through that song was incomparable to anything but Mother Nature and the wondrous planet Earth itself. As the car pulled into the parking lot of the retirement home, Quincy made a mental note to himself to make sure to burn that song on to a CD the next chance he got, otherwise it would be totally stuck in his head.
The team of Stacy and Quincy O’Snappers walked into the retirement center, signed in at the front desk, and then proceeded to make their way to grandpa Dustin’s room. They knocked on his door, but heard no response. They knocked once more, and a symphony of silence was all that greeted them. Stacy opened the door (just a crack), and peaked her head inside, only to see an empty bed. They gave each other similar, quizzical looks. Then, all of a sudden, as if from nowhere, the ceiling above them gave a great lurching noise, as it collapsed on to the ground a few feet in front of them. The two ran over, in total shock, seeing that it was grandpa Dustin who had inexplicably fallen from the ceiling. The two picked the crazy old man up, and when he saw it was his grand daughter that was visiting him, put a gigantic, goofy grin on his face, the face that the man wore in his younger days whenever he decided to be even more mischievous than usual.