She pulled the door back harder than she needed to. It hadn't been locked. Reason the doorbell was ringing was the friazzle-haired folky hanging on it by the fingernails of his right hand. His patched Levis showing large freash patches of stain, he was buckled over barely keeping himself half-upright. He wore what must have once been an off-white home-spun collared and bloused peasant shirt. It wasn't off-white. It was bright, bright red.

He tumbled toward her through the doorway gasping a long rattling intake of air, as though he would never get enough. From the color of his face it looked like he wouldn't.

Lucky recognized him as Ned Loonbucket, the oddball singer with the overnight bag shaped like a guitar. She grabbed him by the shoulders as he fell and strained her bag lowering his long, pot-bellied frame to the barrom floor. She fought down a scream and grabbed the nearest touniquet she could find, a bar-towel half soaked in spilled whiskey.

"What the hell," she thought. "It's disinfected, right?"

She tore open the soaked peasant shirt and raised him into a half-sitting position. He was gasping for air again, the rattle in his throat stronger this time than the man himself, stronger than his life. She knew he was going.

"Ned! What happened to you!!" she cried out, shaking and shocked by the cold vision of certain dying in the face of the man she was holding.

"Peeeeepssss-i-i-i-iii!" he whispered, and he weakly raised one hand. It held a matchnook with bright blue lettering on the outside informing the lucky holder, "You Can Advance Your Carrer!!". The folksinger slumpoed in her arms, rolled up his eyes and left the body behind.

She stepped back, horror on her beautiful face, one hand against her mouth, frozen in horror and amazement. Her senses were running double speed and the world was bright, hard, vivid, and much too present. She stared at the small hairs settling down on the dead folky's head, the drips oozing to the floorboards, and time seemed to stand still in a vivid unquenchable moment of pain. Then she noticed the sharp flavor of wet sulphur.

She pulled the matchbook away from her mouth and glanced at it. The last thing he had done in his most important instant was to hand it to her. Why?

She opened it and saw a single word, scrawled in a childish hand.....

Cosmo