"Dragonhead" originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction , July 2003, and was reprinted in The Year's Best Science Fiction , St. Martin's Press, 2004.

Dragonhead

by Nick DiChario

This is what you know:

Kermit the frog is left-handed. Charlie Brown's father was a barber. Twenty-one percent of Americans claim to be regularly bored out of their minds . In Iowa, sixty-five traffic accidents a year are caused by cornstalks. According to Genesis 1:20-22, the chicken came before the egg . Thirteen people a year are killed by fallen vending machines.

#

This is what you hear:

--What are his chances, doctor? <Female voice of someone you think you might know.>

--I won't lie to you, Mrs. Lang. There is currently no known cure for Dragonhead. <Unknown male voice of reason.>

            --Dragonhead. I hate that term. I hate it. <Familiar female voice again.>

            --Everyone hates it. It's becoming the disease of the millennium. We're finally beginning to understand what digitalia addiction is doing to our children. But I have to be honest with you, for most young people that understanding comes too late.

            --Digitalia. Another term I hate. Fancy word for digital implant. Fancy word for brain sex, is what it is.

--Actually, Mrs. Lang, mind fuck and information masturbation are the most common slang terms for--

--You don't have to talk like that. I know what it means.

--I'm sorry.

--That's all right...I'm just...I'm just desperate. Your program comes highly recommended. You've had success, haven't you, in some cases?

--Yes, a small percentage of patients have shown some improvement through a controlled regimen of neural shock therapy, but the results are varied. Most patients can't pull their minds out of the information stream, not even after the implants are removed and no more new data is getting in. Your son's chances are slim. You must understand that. Are you sure you want to put him through this? <Oh, doctor, my doctor.>

            --I don't have a choice, do I? I have to try something. I can't lose him like this, so senselessly. I'll try anything...anything to get him back. Ian, Ian, do you hear me? Please come back, please. I'm your mother. You have a family and a life here with us, a God-given life. Doesn't that mean anything to you? <Mother, eh?>

            --Please, Mrs. Lang, come away now. He can't hear you, or if he does, the words mean nothing to him; they're no different than any other words streaming through his head. It's time for us to start his first treatment. <Voice of Doctor Moreau, Doctor Spock, Doctor J., Doctor Suess, Doctor Who, Doctor Iguana, Doctor Jet Engine, Doctor Alarm Clock, Doctor Demento, Doctor Boiling-Screaming-Dying Lobster wanted in New Jersey for petty larceny.>

            --Doctor, Ian told me that the digitalia was harmless. He said it was nothing more than a tattoo, a tattoo in his cerebellum. Jesus. God. All his friends were getting it done. Why shouldn't he?

#

This is what you know:

Stars. Black stars dancing the bumblebee polka--stinging multiplying, imploding inside your brain, hot honey drip drip dripping down your spine. Leather straps. Cool smooth taste of airy neural electricity. Every hair follicle whispers sweet nothings in your skull. Subtle weight of iron and blood in your mouth. Is that water leaking from your eyes, or whalebones, or tailbones, or baseballs, or mothballs, or dictionaries, or pictionaries, or barbed wire, or haywire? Hard rock music makes termites chew through wood at twice their usual speed. A sneeze can travel as fast as one hundred miles per hour. 0.3% of all road accidents in Canada involve a moose. Babe Ruth wore a cabbage leaf under his baseball cap to keep his head cool. On the wall, a clock reads 4:20 AM or PM. In the movie Pulp Fiction , all the clocks remain frozen on 4:20. 4:20. 4:20. Wouldn't you like to be a fly on
that wall?

Forever.

Pinprick...pinprick...kiss...kiss...kiss...

#

This is what you hear:

            --Ian, it's me, your mamma. < Female voice of someone you think you might know. >   Can you hear me? Talk to me, my beautiful baby. Say something. Anything. Please, Ian, come back to me. Come back. <Kiss.>   He's not responding, doctor. He's not responding at all.

#

This is what matters:

            A raindrop falls at approximately seven miles per hour. South Bend, Indiana, 1924, a monkey is arrested, convicted, and sentenced to pay a $25 fine for smoking a cigarette. "False Dragonhead" is a wildflower, a member of the mint family, indigenous to the riverbanks and thickets of Minnesota, Quebec, and the mountains of North Carolina; when its flowers are pushed right or left, they stay that way ; common nickname: obedient flower.

Nick DiChario is the Director of Education and Programming for Writers & Books in Rochester, New York, www.wab.org , one of the largest non-profit literary centers in the United States. His short fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies in North America and abroad, including The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century , and he is the Fiction Editor of HazMat Literary Review www.hmlr.org , a journal that encourages new voices and socially and politically aware poetry and prose. His plays have been presented in Geva Theatre's Regional Playwrights Festival in upstate New York, and he has been nominated for two Hugo Awards and a World Fantasy Award. Mr. DiChario earned his BA degree in English from St. John Fisher College and is currently pursuing his Masters degree at Empire State College in New York. Obscura Press, in 2001, published his collaborative fiction in a collection called Magic Feathers www.wunzpub.com , and some of his short stories can be found at www.fictionwise.com .