Dunkelnacht.

It only lasted an hour or so, but I wish y'all could have been here for the patchy Montrose blackout that occurred around 2:45 AM on February 8, 2006. You wouldn't have known it, but Dave Smith was some kind of alive right then, a corpse walking the neighborhood with candle in hand, dead heart smiling, veins burning with Sangre de Toro wine, lungs thick with the smoke of Karo cigarettes, brain etching patterns into the three-quarters moon and the dark streetlights and houses.

And when the lights came back on, the cadaverous, solitary happiness did not disappear from his clotted heart.