Stoner: Duuuuuuuuuuude....that stuff that we had at the show...soo powerful.

Ghetto: Yeah we're going to need to get ahold of St...

"Me?"

Ghetto: Aw, fuck man. Can you ever make an announced appearance around us?

"No. "

Yasmin: How's it going, Camo?

"Shits alright I guess, Jennifer has really been breakin' my balls lately. I've started wrestling at an Indy fed again. This economy hasn't been so kind to my finances. Even being the rich fucker that I am, I still gotta go out there and earn my money the old working man's way. Which is also why I asked you guys to start wrestling again."

The sounds of Led Zeppelin's cover of Otis Rush's bluesy classic "I Can't Quit You Baby", was playing in the background. Yasmin had gotten up off of Stoner's lap and was grabbing two coke bottles...and by coke bottles I mean the soda. Ya turkey.

"So, I really didn't get to have Thanksgiving with her, or you guys. I was working a show in Watsonville. ON THANKSGIVING, who the fuck books a show on family day!?"

Ghetto: Hey got an idea homie. You know since we're going...

Stoner: GOING, GOING, BACK, BACK TO CALI!

Ghetto: No turdjammer. I was going to say the States..

"Oh yeah that's right. I got an email from Stern. Heard the company basically got bought by China."

Yasmin: I love Dragon Gate!

Stoner: That's in Japan babe, but that's ok your tits are still gnarly huge and I still love you.

Yasmin:

Stoner:

Ron the Obese Lawn Gnome:

Ghetto: ANYWAYS, I was just saying that since we're headed back there, we should have a belated Thanksgiving at my grammy's house in New Mexico. We could get everyone back together. Alexxx & Hammer if they're free. Which I'm sure they are, I hear Jabbar's movie is in post-production.

Stoner: Ron can stay outside on the lawn, cause he sucks like a vacuum, all the food would be gone faster than I'mma smoke this 'jay.

"Have you thought about inviting...Ac.."

Ghetto: Naw, fuck that fat cracka!

The song in the background changes to "High Power" by the O.G. himself Dr. Dre.

"Alright, just asking. But yeah that Thanksgiving idea sounds great man. Also, what I was leading into about the indy thing...I was wondering if I could come in as a full-time member...?"

Ghetto: Nigga, what the fuck you askin for? You are Thee Man to us!

Stoner: *cough* What about Jenny bro?

"Well I figure now since you bring up the Thanksgiving idea, that should be the perfect time for her to move in with your grammy and Jasmine."

Ghetto: Hey sounds good to me. Three lovely ladies living under one room.

Stoner: Move over Golden Girls, it's all bout Ghetto Girls now!

Ghetto: Fasho.

"Yeah I think Jenny is going to be needing someone to look after her, and if I can't be there..."

Stoner: Dude, you're talking about her like she's a little girl...

"Well on the contrary, I think in the coming months she's going to be proving that she's a strong woman..."

Yasmin: ZOMG!

Stoner: Are you saying, she has a little special brownie baking in the oven?

"Yessir."

Ghetto: A mini-camo! Oh shit man! This shit is epic...well I saved some of that stuff we got at the show yesterday, and I want you to smoke a blunt of it, to celebrate.

"Well, alright then..."

Stoner: Shyeah and then in about an hour our bus should be passing through Mexico....we gotta stop for some cock-fighting...

Ghetto: Baaah! Stone likes cock!!!!

Brickey: ".........."

Yasmin: Hahahaha.

Stoner: Ahh, shut up and toke up muthatruckas....

~~~~~~~~~~~

"So I have to scramble the brains, of an already brain-scrambled pothead?"

"Yup!"

"How fun."

*The highway. Chalkboard black, as if lines from the previous writing were only half erased. The day sticky. Suffocating.

The sun was rising.

On cue, the rooster crowed.

"Ghetto, shut your fucking cock up, before I eat it." Stoner settled back into Yasmin, who giggled. He got it then, laughed a little with her. Wasn't the same without the weed, but she had the last light up.

"Don't fuck with my cock, Saltine. It will EAT you." Ghetto didn't open his eyes.

The gnome farted.

"So. Tires slashed. Sugar in the tank...and all for one bird."

"Bird's my hero. He would have took the muthafucker out."

"Didn't say it wasn't the right thing to do, I'm just saying we're fucked for doing it." The bird was half blind, one eye missing. It had gashes down the other side of it's neck. All of it's wounds earned when it went batshit insane, and attacked it's trainer instead. Almost won too, before the guy picked up the chair he was sitting on, and knocked the bird out.

That's when....

Stoner concentrated.

Shit. Was a blur. Yasmin was too hot. Not in a good way. They were sticking together. But man, even her sweat smelled fine. Sometime you had to take the good with the bad.

Besides, the guy had fucked with the Ghettofire. Fight one. Fight all. Stoner had to kick Ghetto's ass for being a hero later. That was all.

When it wasn't so fucking hot. "So, we going to move?"

"Not ready."

"You seen Camo?"

"He's making things happen. Connections."

Blood is blue. Blood is red. Together they blend, pour out on the street.

"You know who I am?"

"Yeah, I know who you are."

Blood on the street is like camoflague, it makes you invisible to all.

"Only connection I need right now, is to find the one that makes my head stop ringing." Stoner was tempted to kill the bird himself, but you didn't turn on a brother.

He'd wait for Ghetto to kill it himself. This couldn't last forever.

"If you know who I am, then you know that I killed that man." Said the pale white snowman. Paler than white. But then white wasn't white, now was it?

Camo just nodded his head. "So then it's got nothing to do with us?"

"Nah, it's got everything to do with you." Said the snowman with a silver smile. And that silver smile could cut you just as easily as the silver smile in his hands. "See, it's just that I'm on vacation, and I came to see the cockfights."

He dropped the man he held in his hand, the blue blood who bled true red. The man was no longer a man.

Just the body is nothing like a man....

"Relax." Said the snowman. "Killing you is too easy for it to mean anything. I'd lose." He reached into his pockets, sewn together from someone's last scream. Rolled a joint in his hand. Blew on it to light the fire.

Held it out as a gift..*

"I got our tickets!"

The little girl bounced into the dirty hotel room. There was something wrong with her brain.

"Tickets for what."

The big guy left no room for inflection. There was something wrong with his soul.

"Plane tickets, silly. We're going on a trip!"

As she danced around the room, his frustration grew. If he were a lesser man, he'd have slapped her. He was a lesser man, so he did. Except he was charged with protecting her, so he really didn't. But he thought about it. And that was new.

"I suppose it can't be any worse than this backwater shithole."

"Hey, I kinda liked it here. No one asked any questions... But I think it's time to go home for the holidays..."




"Woaah, Cam, this is some goood shit!"

The entirety of Ghetto Grass enjoyed an eerie calm, the kind usually reserved for the eye of a hurricane.

"Duuuude, look at Brickey. He's so mellowed out that he's not even movin'!"

"......"

"Heh heh heh heh... Man, he always... He always... He can't... heh heh heh heh!"

"Camoooo, broooo... You gotta get us some more of this green!"

The one in purple stepped back out of the van, back into the heat.

"Isn't it a little warm to be wearing that jacket?"

"Isn't it a little brown to be wearing that camouflage?"

"I need another hit."

"This one'll cost you."

"Isn't that always the way."

A purple clip held together a stack of bills.

"Your money's no good here. There's going to be a little party later, up north. Forget about Thanksgiving in the desert."

"Right now, I could convince them to go anywhere."

"Of course. Here. This stuff is a little more potent. I'll see you there."

The snowman melted into the sand.

"What're we supposed to do about the bird..."



A dirty headstone marks a small plot in the woods. Nearby, a house once stood. The den was half-way through being converted to a second bedroom when she was murdered. Slaughtered brutally, flesh ripped from bone, her child ripped from the womb.

Years later, that child returns. The frosty ground crunches below her as she steps through the pile of ash that would have been her home.

Each step closer to the grave is harder to take. The closer she gets, the louder the screams echo through her skull. Still, she pushes on, slumping to her knees in front of the dark granite slab.

Behind her, the snowman steps out of the forest. The big guy steps out behind him.

"Don't bother. We're not looking to play."

"Oh, but that's exactly what you're here for."

Running her hands over the cold ground, the girl takes a deep breath. Attempting to quiet the screams, to find her mother's voice in the crowd.

"I know who you are, demon."

"And don't think that just because you're wearing your new skin that I can't see your old face."

Leaning on one knee, he dusted his white fingers through the black ash of the ground.

"The kids aren't exactly subtle. She'll feel them coming for miles. She'll hurt them. Bad."

Dark sprinkles of soot floated on the wind.

"I know."

"Don't get involved."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

"No, but even demons dream sometime. And that's when she'd come for you."

"You don't need to worry about me."

"I'm not. How's your girlfriend?"

In silence, nothing is given a form and defined. The snowman listened to the silence, and smiled.

"My girlfriend...? Is that your idea of a threat?"

One step closer to the abyss.

The silence between them grew, testing it's cage. To the broken girl, it seemed filled with promises. If only that emptiness were inside, maybe she could listen to the right voice. Maybe she could find her mother, maybe she could find herself. Maybe it was best to worry about that later. This game was interesting too. There was something else growing inside...

Her guardian sensed the NOISE. "A threat? It is what it is. If it's nothing to worry about, why not answer?"

The broken girl's voice could barely be heard. "Because he knows he can make you answer for him." The NOISE was deafening now. It wanted out of her skin. It wanted to scream. It wanted to tear her apart with a thousand mouths.

A thousand mouths that would eat the world. "Yum, yum." She giggled.

*****

Lips touched. Smoke shared between. Feeding each other in a kiss.

"Whoa." Said the stoner. He felt on the verge of something big. Like, love and death big. Like....shit. Bigger than words big.

The other set of lips broke the kiss. "Yeah, I know. I blow your mind."

"Yeah."

"Hm." She sounded disappointed.

"I mean it." He didn't know what she wanted. Sometimes, she was just a bitch. C'mon, don't start shit now. The mood was perfect. Everything was perfect. He wanted her, bad.

They listened to the sound of the gnome throwing up. "Course you mean it. You mean everything you say."

"So?" She made it sound dirty.

"So...I guess I won. You need me."

"No. THAT..." He burned himself grinding the joint's ashes into the ground. "Is bullshit. I choose to.."

She peeled out of her shirt, watched his eyes dancing.

"That's not fair."

She took his hand in hers, pressed his palm to nipple. He could feel it grow at his touch...her heartbeat in his hand, steady as a summer night's rain. "Don't make it out to be something it's not."

His heartbeat racing. "Look, whatever you think it is..."

"Is all that it is."

"Yeah."

She shrugged, and he was lost in the motion. "Yeah. That's fine." For now, it would do. She closed her eyes, and lost herself in his fantasy...

*****

The Gnome had enough of the cock. "Damn cock." Said the gnome.

But it was terrible what Bricky did.

*****

The big guy was scared. He didn't know why. This was new. The demon and the girl seemed to be on a private frequency he couldn't share, laughing at a private joke...

It was friendly laughter. Unspoken. Dancing in their eyes. In his eyes, of a shattered black night. "You have me at a disadvantage...you seem to know me better than I know you."

"I know lots about you. I've watched your tapes. Listened to stories..."

"And waited for this moment, no doubt."

"Yes."

"You're going to make me pay." The demon was near her, without warning. Offering his hand. "And I'm here to help."

"I'm not stupid. Just because I hear voices..."

"No, you're not."

"Stop." Said the big man, but he was ignored.

"You're everything I'd hoped for, when I decided on the abortion."

"The abortion...of my mother...you shit..." Her fingernails tore into his skin. Red moons. The NOISE. She couldn't think.

"Yes."

"What..."

"Am I doing? Don't wait for dreams. I'm giving you everything you want. I am yours, now. If you ask me to die, I will. If you ask me to cut myself, I'll tear away the skin in tiny strips. Make me your slave. Make me your weapon. Anything you want. Your revenge begins now..." His blood sealed the deal.

The NOISE softened.

"You think there's nothing I can do to really hurt you. That anything I imagine will be a joke compared to Hell."

He didn't bother to deny it. "Let's go, shall we?"

*****

It was time.

One by one, Ghetto Grass closed their eyes.

Their dreams were an open door for the wolves...