My first thought was, did I leave a window open? Then I realized it wasn't raining.

I opened my eyes. Before they could focus, I saw the hulking form standing by the bed. My heart jumped.

I reached under the pillow for my revolver. As I did, my eyes focused. The figure finally came into view:

It was Travis. He stood there, flexing his biceps. They were larger than his head. His chest muscles touched the bottom of his chin. His neck was as thick as an oak tree. There was fury in his eyes. And that belt I gave him was tight around his waist. It crackled with power.

"Look what you did!" his voice said. Only it wasn't his voice. It was cold, mechanical, unfeeling.

"Son?" I grasped the revolver and clicked off the safety.

"Not no more! You gave me this belt, sucker! You dumfuck! You're not the boss of me no more!" Then he laughed. It was a frightening chuckle.

His massive veiny hands lifted me out of bed. I was helpless in the air. He shook me like I was a kitten. "Nobody tells me what to do! Ever! I tell YOU what to do!"

I held out the gun. My arm trembled with confusion and fear. When he saw the gun, he laughed louder.

The bullets bounced off his chest and whizzed by my head. The contempt in his eyes turned to cold fury. He threw me down on the bed. Then he reached for the strap of the belt and tightened it. The room filled with blinding bright light and the deafening boom of thunder. I watched him grow, his muscles bulging out, growing stronger, thicker, harder.

And then I saw his dick. My heart skipped another beat. It was longer than my arm.

He let go of the belt and stroked his dick. "Fuck you, Dad." He pumped his dick and looked in my eyes. It was a look of hatred. "Fuck you."

Then he turned me over, and entered me with his...

The phone woke me up. It rang and rang. I shook myself out of the dream and sat up. "This better be important."

"Um, Lieutenant, uh, you better get over here... it's..."

"Who is this?"

The uncertain voice, a rookie patrolman, slowly told me a crazy story about a skyscraper landing on the lakefront, in one of the ritziest neighborhoods in town. "You, you b-better get over here, s-s-sir..."

I hung up the phone. The disgust I felt was like an old friend. So many times that phone had rung, waking me up, cutting short a night of sleep I needed badly.

I sighed and got out of bed. Whatever the crisis was, it could wait 'til I'd taken a piss.

The bathroom was next to Travis' room. I eased his bedroom door open and peeked in. He was asleep. He'd kicked the sheets away. He was sleeping in boxer shorts. He had put on a little bit of muscle, but it wasn't out of the ordinary. He was just a teenage boy.

I looked for the belt. It was draped over a chair, entangled with his T-shirt and jeans.

The horror of that dream faded away as I emptied my bladder. Now I had two things to do: get dressed and hope to hell there was someplace open that had coffee to go.

* * *

The universe smiled down on me. There was a Wendy's drive-through still open. 24 ounces of black coffee saved my life.

How the fuck do you describe something you can't even believe? I'm at a loss for words. But I saw it.

I saw that damned building, 68 stories high, broken off a base of steel and concrete thicker than my house. I saw it fallen on its side, It spanned halfway across the fucking Hamilton Park Lake. Office furniture floated in the water. Some was washed up onshore. Beached desks, coffee makers, microwaves--you name it--littered the beach. And paper. Fucking paper everywhere. It looked like a parade had passed by.

The break was done by something---or someone---with amazing strength. It was wrenched apart, like you or I might break a Milky Way bar in two.

I knew how it was done, and who had done it.

I needed the results from the prints I'd gotten off the wrecking ball. The feds said they'd run it, but it would take a few days. I couldn't wait to see if they matched the ones we took when we booked the motherfucker, in those precious few hours when I'd caught him.

I asked one of the forensics guys to look for impressions of prints in the metal base of the building. And then, aside from just standing there like a loon, half-awake, with the onset of acid indigestion from Wendy's coffee, my work was done there.

I was too awake to go back to sleep. I went into the office. It would be quiet there for another few hours, and I could catch up on paper-work.

I logged onto my e-mail account, and in my inbox was this message from the FBI:

PRINTS IN SAMPLE ANALYZED NO MATCH IN OUR RECORDS NO MATCH IN STATE OR COUNTY RECORDS GOING BACK TO 2000 AWAITING YOUR REPLY

Reflux gurgled in my stomach as I took in that news. There was another one of them out there, running wild, powered up with another one of those belts.

I felt like throwing up. I put my arms down on the desktop, and laid my head on top of them. I didn't want to puke. I tried to calm myself by taking deep breaths.

I must have fallen asleep. A knock on the door awoke me. Disoriented, I shook myself and answered the door.

It was McCloskey, with a smirk on his face. He lives to get my goat. He held out the morning paper. "Read it and weep, Dick Tracy," he said as he walked away.

I sat down and read the headlines. Then I realized I really did have to puke... •