And that’s why I should have known better. I should have trusted that drowning feeling I get when I’m in way over my head. But back then I didn’t believe in faeries, or magic, or any of that shit. Even though everyone was talking about them, and Maury – Goddamn Maury, told me that he’d run into some honest-to-god trolls hanging around a bar in the meat-packing district. And if you knew Maury you’d know he barely believes the sun is coming up tomorrow. So when he goes on to tell you that the dude in the sharkskin suit with the ten million dollar smile is an elf, it probably… no… it definitely behooves you to take it at face value.

But I figured I could handle an uppity guy who called himself “The Prince” who thought he was all that. And no one, not especially some pretty-boy who looked like his entire body was made out of cheekbone, was going to pull one over on a kid from Queens.

Not that I was anyone who should have even been anywhere near a fancy club like that, you understand. But Philip, the owner, and I had been friends when we was kids, and I’d been spending a lot of my over there since I got back from… that thing. And man, it’s fun to rub shoulders with movie-stars and the like. It helped me forget.

But The Prince—he was a different story. The guy was there every night, surrounded by his little pack of boy-girls who always hung around him, and on him. I never liked the look of him, or the sound of him, or the smell of him, so I did my best to keep out of his way. But the guy noticed me anyway. Maybe it was  because I was so obviously punching above my weight. But Philip let me hang around because I could tell a damn entertaining story and make people laugh.

And I was doing just that. Talking up this beautiful LA chick who plays the main girl in that series—you know the one—about the doctor who is also a superspy. And it looked like she was starting to give me the good news smile when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up, and smiling down at me with a grin that had never touched shit was The Prince, but I couldn’t hear him over the music. Then he leaned down and whispered his words in my ear in some weird-ass fairy way that made everything else in the world go quiet. “You like to talk a lot, don’t you?” was what he said.

“Yeah well,” I replied, “and most people like to listen.”

He made a thoughtful frown and nodded his head. “Well now I have something for you—an offer of sorts,” he said.

“One I can’t refuse, no doubt.” But by the time I’d said actually said that, he’d already walked away.

Sue me, I like mystery, so I followed him over to his corner of the room and took the seat right across from him, trying to ignore the superior looks from his oh-so-adorable little misfit crew.

“What would you give me for your deepest darkest secret?” he asked me.

“Nothing.” I said, leaning back into the sofa. “I’m pretty sure I already know that one.”

I’d never heard a totally sarcastic chuckle before, but this was one of those.  “I don’t want to give it to you Greg, I’m going to take it away.”

“Make all my troubles go away? Sure. And then what am I going to do for you?”

“Not all of them. Just this one.” He leaned toward me and smiled in a way that looked like someone splitting open a ripe melon. “And all I want is for you to tell the world your story.”

And I guess he kind of had me with that, because glamour or no glamour, it seemed like a good deal. And then he leaned in and sucked my little secret straight out of my right ear. And for a minute it felt like I could fly. I’d been holding that bad memory inside of me for too damn long, and suddenly it was gone.

And when I finished he smiled even wider, which I didn’t think was possible, and said “Now here’s your punishment.”

And ever since then… Yeah, yeah, I am getting to the point! And ever since then, once I open my mouth to start talking to someone I gotta keep talking. I gotta keep talking until I either tell them my secret, or they tell me to shut the hell up, whichever comes first. And that’s where we’re at now.

And just so you understand how it works, it ain’t just me who’s stuck now. Because, if you try to get up you’re gonna find you can’t get out of that chair until we end this, and I’m here to tell ya… Well, I’m here to tell you a lot of things, but the most important thing of all is that I’m going to talk a long, long time before I’m going to tell anyone my secret. Because if you find out then so do I.