Chris started awake, jolted into the morning by the shrill sound of his phone ringing. "Yeah?" he barked as he put the receiver to his ear.

"Dude, were you in a coma or what? The phone rang like eighty times." Rick’s voice sounded far too loud in Chris’s ears.

"Sleeping, man," Chris grumbled. "You should try it some time."

"Nah. ‘s for old people like you. C’mon, man, get up. We’re going to the Hockey Hall of Fame today, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember. You picking me up?"

"It’s a gorgeous day outside, man. Walk down and meet me by the studio."

Chris sighed. "OK, OK. Give me thirty minutes."

"Cool. Later."

Chris sat up and stretched and tried to remember why he hung out with Rick’s chipper ass to begin with. Slowly, he made his way to the bathroom, followed by a trip to the kitchen for a glass of orange juice. His Toronto apartment was small and cozy, which was all he needed it to be. It was no more than an occasional refuge from the insanity that his life had become over the past five years.

After a quick shower, Chris headed down to the lobby of his building. The elevator doors opened to reveal an unusually dark foyer area. Just as he was about to investigate the cause of the shadow, something caught his eye. Off to one side, half-hidden in a corner, stood JC, casually smoking a cigarette. "Jace?" Chris said, despite the fact that JC was too far away to hear him. But somehow it seemed that JC did hear him, because he looked up and made eye contact with Chris. Chris felt rooted to his spot by the elevator; he was in shock at the sight of JC with a cigarette in his hand. Of all the musicians he knew, JC was the least likely to do anything to compromise his voice. Yet there he was, coolly eyeing Chris and puffing away.

As soon as Chris made a move to walk toward his friend, JC turned and pushed his way into the revolving door at the front of the building. Chris followed quickly, but when he got to the heavy brass door, it wouldn’t budge. He struggled against it for a moment, then gave up and went to the ordinary door. Preston, the building doorman, greeted him warmly, as if he hadn’t just watched Chris fight with the apparently broken revolving door. "Have yourself a lovely afternoon, Mr. Kirkpatrick. Be careful in that weather outside. Not fit for a duck, I say."

Chris said hello in return, but looked at Preston quizzically. What did he mean about the weather? Rick had said it was a beautiful day, and Chris’s cursory glance out the window of his apartment had seemed to confirm that. Preston ignored his confusion, however, and swung the door open wide for him. Shaking his head, Chris walked out onto the sidewalk, where he was immediately greeted with a gust of wind so strong it nearly knocked him off his feet. Rain lashed at him, splattering his clothes so that they were soaked in seconds. Holding a hand in front of his eyes, Chris glanced around to find that the trees were bent at crazy angles, looking like brown and green elbows against the deep slate gray of the stormy sky. The wind was relentless, but the gusts were of warm, humid air. Chris had lived in Florida long enough to know that this had all the hallmarks of a tropical storm. But a tropical storm in Canada?

He turned to go back into his building, to try to sort this out in his head and maybe go back upstairs for some dry clothes. But his building was gone. For just an instant, Chris started looking around for Toto or a Munchkin. Then it occurred to him that he just needed to get inside somewhere, anywhere where it was dry. Looking around to choose a direction to go in, he suddenly spotted JC again. He was leaning against a building across the street, still smoking his cigarette, still infuriatingly calm in the face of the storm that was battering him, too. Chris grumbled under his breath, convinced that this was somehow all JC’s fault, and started across the street to ask him what the hell was going on. He turned his head to check for traffic, and when he looked back, JC was gone. This time, though, Chris spotted him as he slipped into the improbable throng of commuters making their way up the sidewalk through the deluge, and he took off in pursuit.

No matter how fast he ran, it seemed Chris couldn’t catch up to JC. His view of JC was often blocked by the crowd, as the slender man wove in and out of the foot traffic, never seeming to move faster than an easy lope. Finally, JC turned and disappeared into an alley. Chris, by now drenched through to the bone, followed him and managed to catch just a glimpse of him as he went through a door. Giving silent thanks that they were finally going indoors, Chris pulled open the door and dashed inside.

A flowery smell assaulted his nostrils the instant the door closed behind him. Chris nearly gagged on the thickness of it as, slowly, his eyes began to adjust to the dim surroundings. He was standing in a warehouse of sorts, vast and mostly empty. JC was nowhere to be seen, so Chris tracked the magnolia scent to a far corner of the building. Draped from the ceiling like a tent were huge sheets of pink chiffon and satin, and there was light and music coming from within the enclosure. Between the pink frills and the floral perfume, Chris was beginning to wonder if he’d stumbled into the Barbie Dream House. Nonetheless, he cautiously approached the opening in the material.

"Chris!" came a happy shout. Chris turned his head to find Joey standing there beaming at him. "We were beginning to think you weren’t going to make it."

"What? Make it to what?"

"To our tea party, of course. You didn’t forget, did you?"

"Um… no. No, I didn’t forget. Just, there was this tropical storm and I kept trying to follow JC and…."

"A tropical storm?" Joey laughed. "In Canada? Have you been smoking with P. Diddy again?"

"No, seriously, Joe – " Chris looked down and realized his clothes were completely dry.

"Anyway, come on and have some tea with us," Joey said, leading the way to a round table covered with still more frilly pink material. A tea service for three was neatly laid out.

"Who else is having tea with us?" Chris asked.

"I am. Twinkie?" Lance said as he emerged from the back of the tent structure, bearing a silver tray covered in Twinkies.

"OK, so where’s JC?" Chris was getting more confused by the second.

"I don’t know," Joey shrugged, "Haven’t seen him all week."

"Twinkie?" Lance asked again, more insistently this time.

Chris recognized the tone in Lance’s voice and knew he’d better take a Twinkie. "Thanks," he said, grabbing one of the yellow cakes off Lance’s tray and sitting down at the table. Joey hastened to pour some tea in the cup in front of Chris. The snack cake made Chris very thirsty, and he reached for the tiny teacup, only to find it was filled with some sort of white goo. "Joe? What the hell is this?"

"Tea. What’s the matter?" Joey replied.

"It’s not tea, Joe. It’s…. I don’t know what it is, but it ain’t tea."

"Sure it is. It’s special Chinese tea. It’ll make you grow taller."

"What?" Chris asked, his head spinning. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Suddenly Lance was looming over him in his chair. "Just drink it."

Chris shrank away from Lance’s threatening posture. "Dude, Lance, I can’t drink this. It’s nasty. What’s going on with you two?" Just then, a new odor sliced through the heavy floral cloud around Chris’s head. This one he identified immediately as the sickly-sweet smell of clove cigarettes, and he turned to find its source. Somehow, the opposite side of the pink tent had now become translucent, and through the filmy haze, he could see JC leaning against the far wall of the warehouse, ever-present cigarette dangling from his lips.

"See, Joe? There he is!" Chris said. But Joey was gone. So was Lance. "Figures," Chris said, to the now-empty tent. And now JC was on the move again. Chris scrambled up out of his chair and chased after him. JC slipped through a door and vanished once more, but this time Chris was close on his heels. As Chris hit the bar across the door, however, a sudden loud screech pierced his eardrums. He noticed too late that the door was marked "Fire Exit Only – Alarm Will Sound." But it hadn’t sounded when JC went through! Chris was getting increasingly pissed off at this whole situation. Covering his ears against the noise, he burst through the door, expecting another Toronto alleyway.

Instead, he found himself on the shore of a vast lake. It was an idyllic setting, complete with birds chirping and the gentle smell of honeysuckle wafting on the breeze. More confused than ever, Chris looked around and saw no one. Absolutely no one. Where could JC have gone this time? Then, somewhere inside his head, he heard a low voice singing to him. The song had no actual words, just syllables put together in a random order, but the voice was unmistakably JC’s. But it was inside his head. Chris looked around desperately for JC, afraid he was truly losing his mind. A glimmer of something on the far side of the lake caught Chris’s eye, and he lifted his head just in time to see that it was the blue of JC’s eyes, reflecting the sunlight. JC turned and began to retreat into the woods off in the distance, as Chris sank to the ground, defeated. He could never catch up to JC now. He didn’t even know how JC had gotten to the other side of the huge lake so quickly.

Chris sat on the grassy bank of the lake, hugging his knees to his chest and feeling sorry for himself. This was crazy. Who cared what JC was doing, anyhow? He would just sit here and enjoy the beautiful scenery and peaceful solitude. And the lack of anyone trying to get him to drink white goo.

The crunch of tires on gravel alerted him to an approaching car. Chris wasn’t expecting any vehicles here, much less the arrival of a roadster like the ones they had used in the "Girlfriend" video. Justin turned out to be behind the wheel, and he hollered at Chris to hop in. Chris contemplated ignoring him but decided that he’d rather have the company. Climbing into the passenger seat, he asked, "What’s going on, J? Where’d you get this car?"

"Oh, it’s just been sitting in my granddad’s garage forever. I’m taking it to The Antiques Roadshow to see if it’s worth anything."

"I didn’t think they appraised cars," Chris said, amused.

Justin shrugged. "I think they’ll want this one."

"Have you seen any of the other guys today?" Chris asked.

"Nope. I think Lance is in Russia."

"No, he and Joey – "

"Hey, there’s JC now."

"Where?" Chris nearly jumped out of his seat.

"Damn, Chris. Settle down. Over there." Justin directed Chris’s gaze to the left side of the car, where JC was walking along the side of the road. When he saw Chris looking at him, JC smiled a tiny bit and turned down a crossroad.

"Go after him, Jus!"

"What? What the hell is wrong with you?"

"I’ve been trying to catch up to him all day. He can’t outrun a car. Go! Turn!" Chris reached over as if to grab the wheel of the car and turn it himself.

"Get the hell off my steering wheel. OK, OK." Justin turned the car in the direction JC had gone. But a cloud of dust rose from the gravel road when they made the hard left, and they were momentarily blinded.

"Go, Justin, come on."

"I can’t, Chris. I can’t see anything. And my granddad will kill me if I get the car all dirty. And I’ve gotta get to the show, anyway."

"Oh, forget it," Chris said, "I’ll go myself." With that, Chris jumped out of the car, ignoring Justin’s pleas for him to stay put. Putting his head down to try to avoid breathing in the dust, Chris started jogging up the road. But the dust was thick, and it was choking him, making his eyes water. Yet somewhere in his head, he heard that song again, and he knew JC was nearby. He persevered, slogging through the dust that seemed more like mud. The singing grew louder in his ears, and his nostrils caught just the faintest whiff of clove. He was so close now. If he could just see through all this damn dirt….

And then suddenly, he was on the other side of the cloud, and the air was clear and clean. He took in a great gulp of the fresh air, savoring it inside his lungs. The clove smell was strong now, and Chris whirled around to find JC standing just inches behind him. Chris gasped with the surprise of it. After all this time spent chasing JC, his friend seemed almost hyper-real now, standing right here in front of him. JC’s eyes were crystalline blue like the sky above them, his skin impossibly smooth like the surface of the lake. Silently, JC held out the pack of cigarettes, as if to offer one to Chris.

"Um, no. No thanks, Jace." Chris was breathless, although he wasn’t sure if it was from the exertion of running through the dust or from the presence of JC so close to him. "What’s the deal, man? Why have you been running away from me all day?"

JC smiled his cryptic smile again and shook his head, taking a long drag off his cigarette. The resulting clove fragrance nearly made Chris dizzy.

"Jace?"

"I’ve been here all along, Chris," JC said quietly, "You just had to know how to find me." He stubbed out his cigarette on the ground and moved smoothly toward Chris. JC was so close to him now… and Chris couldn’t breathe at all, and it had nothing to do with dust.

And then there was an awful ringing in Chris’s ears. He tried to turn his head away, to focus on JC, but the ringing wouldn’t quit. He reached his hand out and found that Justin was there, with some noise-making contraption. But it was no longer the Justin who had been driving the car just a few minutes ago. Instead, it was annoying-as-hell-pubescent-Justin, who had somehow been resurrected to torture Chris right at this exact moment. Chris tried to push him away, but the ringing was everywhere, filling his ears and mingling with Justin’s childish, taunting laughter.

"JC?" Chris said, desperately, realizing that JC was gone again. "Jace? No, Jace, come back. Dammit, Justin!" He reached out one last time to try and stop the ringing and somehow found a telephone in his hand. "Yeah?" he barked as he put the receiver to his ear.

"Dude, were you in a coma or what? The phone rang like eighty times."

"Huh? What? JC?"

"No, jackass, it’s Rick. Hockey Hall of Fame. Remember?"

"Oh. Hi." Chris tried to sit up in his bed, but a terrific wave of wooziness overtook him immediately. "Oh my God," he groaned, falling back against the pillows.

"Chris? You all right?" Rick asked.

"I don’t know. Hold on a second." Chris set the phone down on the nightstand and tried to do an inventory of his surroundings. His sheets were soaked with sweat, and his whole body felt like it was made of lead. Lifting a hand to his own forehead, he decided that he wasn’t going anywhere. "Rick, dude," he said, putting the phone back to his ear, "I think I have the flu or something. I’m burning up over here. I can’t even sit up."

Concerned, Rick said, "You need anything? I can come by in a little while."

"No, I think I just need some more sleep. I feel like hell."

"All right, well, you know how to reach me if you need me."

"Yeah, man, thanks. ‘preciate that." They exchanged goodbyes and Chris replaced the phone on its cradle. He tried again to sit up and failed miserably. Realizing he was at least temporarily trapped in his bed, he gave up on moving and tried instead to remember his dream, pieces of which were already slipping away from his mind. But not the last piece. The last five minutes kept playing over and over like a filmstrip loop on repeat.

Grabbing the phone without even thinking first, he dialed. "Tyler? Hey, it’s Chris. Is JC there? I need to talk to him."

Author's Note: I owe a debt of inspiration for this story to an episode of The X-Files titled "all things" and written by Gillian Anderson.