I stood in the cemetery, dressed in my tuxedo, staring down at my father's tombstone, the first thing that came to my mind: We only buried a symbol, for closure.

No body. No remains, hence no coffin. No urn.

Just a marble headstone with the epitaph, "THAT'S ALL FOLKS."

Dad wanted one of his crazy cartoons etched into it, but we didn't have the money.

A nice funeral, but I felt no more closure than I did before we arbitrarily declared him dead. I still thought he might be hiding out in Japan with all those Anime types.

If you've read anything at all about me in the Nevada papers, you'll believe it when I say I never knew my father.

I'd been in my mother's womb when dad killed Mr. Glenwood in a fit of jealous rage.

Mom had been Mrs. Deebs back then, but since dad kept "too busy with his damn cartoons to pay attention to her," she started sneaking out with chiropractor she met at the health club.

When dad caught them sleeping together, he shot him.

I heard the guy pulled a knife or something, but the guy, being naked and clearly in the middle of something, probably didn't have enough time to defend himself. Not sure how they brought it down from Murder One to Manslaughter.

Dad's bedroom.

Dad's gun.

Dad clearly had the home field advantage.

I've often wondered what it'd have been like if he'd premeditated a bit further, maybe stayed off the police radar enough to be a real father to me. At least, for awhile.

While he served time in a Federal penitentiary, mom busied herself getting sonograms and throwing up.

Thanks to the divorce settlement, and a part time job at a doctor's office (not the chiropractor, of course), she got cared for well enough. Even though dad couldn't do that much from prison, he did have a successful comic book franchise going, and that's what he used to pay for alimony and child support.

From what I heard, Jack Deebs had been a model prisoner. His good behavior earned him a cell to himself, access to a drawing table, and art supplies that most inmates are forbidden access to.

That good behavior also got him out of prison early.

I don't remember a lot about the incidents immediately following his release. The papers said some terrorist released a million gallons of lysergic acid into the Las Vegas water supply.

I guess there might be something to that, the way dozens of people still report strange flashbacks and weird delusions about turning into animated cartoons, but that answer never completely satisfied me.

I swear, at the age of nine or ten, I was playing in my room, and suddenly became a mouse with unnaturally illuminated paws the color of Bugs Bunny's butt.

I sat in front of my TV, staring at my fingers until a pink cartoon elephant dressed like Mom saw me and shrieked in pachyderm fashion.

Whenever I told mom about it, she just said I was making things up.

Maybe she's right. Or maybe I did ingest some of that acid when I was little.

No one knew what happened to Dad after they saw him at that hotel. One witness swore Dad turned his hands into animated ones and climbed to the top of the building, but everyone said the witness was high.

I guess we all were.

What Dad did on top of that hotel...No idea.

Someone said he fought a woman, or a man, or escaped from the cops.

Some say he put the LSD in our water supply, and the cops were hunting him down.

Some say he got pulled into oblivion by that big black cloud everyone seemed to be hallucinating.

Mom said he merely shared a room with a strange whore/singer from the hotel, nothing supernatural about it.

The idea seemed plausible enough. Witnesses at the epicenter of the whole mess claim that a woman in a tight skirt enthralled casino-goers by seducing a lounge singer with a thoroughly suggestive performance of Sinatra's Let's Make Love just moments before transforming into a cartoon clown.

When alimony stopped, and his taxes went unpaid for so long, the FBI went on a manhunt for Dad, but didn't find anything.

From what mom heard from the officers, he was seen purchasing his own books from a comic book shop.

Twice his neighbors spotted him going out of his house, once with a scantily clad blonde woman in a bun hairdo, once with a square jawed gentleman in a raggedy 1940's style two piece suit.

He visited briefly with one neighbor, a teenaged blonde girl named Jessica, from whom he borrowed transportation. Mom thinks Jennifer drove Dad to the hotel/casino and slept with him, but none of the witnesses spotted her in the hotel proper. Plus, other sources say the girl was actually pre-teen. Dad might be scum, but not that kind of scum. Give him some credit!

Mom thinks Jennifer matches the description of the hotel floozy to a T, but from the reports, the blonde seemed to be several inches taller, and at least a decade older.

The weirdest thing about the Cool World comic book series: It kept going, even after my father's disappearance.

The FBI and the IRS have both investigated the matter as far as they possibly could, but nothing added up.

The publisher claimed the packages Just started showing up at his door.'

Upon searching, the police found no return addresses on the shipments, no customs forms, no distinct clues as to their origin.

Brand new comics, all done in my father's style.

Although suspicious...Not considered substantial proof that my father still lived. Someone could be doing forgeries. The cops even insinuated that I did them, even though I have no idea why I would ever invent a character like Amanda Bunny.

Amanda was weird. Depicted as a stylized cartoon character in one panel, a hyperrealistic human portrait in the next. I couldn't even follow what went on with her half the time. Yet there was something about her curves, those hips, the way her body was drawn...I just couldn't stop staring at the pictures.

One time the police sat me down and tried to make me draw Amanda. I failed miserably.

I draw with my left hand. Can't make more than a stick figure, yet they found my absolute lack of skill unconvincing. They accused me of holding out.

I even met with a police psychologist. You know, just to make absolutely certain Sybil didn't draw those pictures while Sane Me pretended to fail art class.

Math. Science. Gym. That's what I aced at school.

I got a diploma, got a job, planned to take out a student loan for med school in the upcoming fall semester. I thought I'd study hard, get myself a practical, well paying job.

Everything changed when I started poking around "The Deebs' Estate", that itty bitty piece of shit rental property two miles south of the Vegas strip.

It seemed my acid induced nightmares had only begun.