The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

anything to it."
    "You fucking pothead. If I tell you to let something lie, you let it lie, do you understand me? I'm not talking about your job now,Crowe, I'm talking about life as you know it. I hear another word out ofNorthCounty and you are going to be getting your dance card punched by every AIDS-ridden convict inSoledad.Leave Leander alone."
    "But…"
    "Say 'Yes, sir,' you bag of shit."
    "Yes, sir, you bag of shit," Theo said.
    "You are finished, Crowe, you-"
    "Sorry, Sheriff.Battery's going."Theo disconnected and headed back to his cabin, shaking as he drove.
    Molly In Flesh Eaters of the Outland, Kendra was forced to watch while a new breed of mutants sprayed hapless villagers with a flesh-dissolving enzyme, then lapped up puddles of human protein with disgusting dubbed sucking sounds that the foley artists had obtained at Sea World, recording baby walruses being fed handfuls of shellfish. The special effects guys simulated the carnage with large quantities of rubber cement, paraffin body parts that conveniently melted under the Mexican desert sun, and transmission fluid instead of the usual Karo syrup fake blood. (The sugary stage blood tended to attract blowflies and the director didn't want to get notice from the ASPCA for abuse.) Overall, the effect was so real that Molly insisted that all of Kendra's reaction shots be done after the cleanup to avoid her gagging and going green
    on camera. Between the carrion scene and some salmonella tacos sewed up by the Nogales-based caterer, as well as repeated propositions by an Arab coproducer with halitosis that made her eyes water, Molly was sick for three days. But none of it, even the fetid falafel breath, produced the nausea she was experiencing upon watching Steve yack up four fully masticated, partially digestedHolsteins.
    Molly added the contents of her own stomach (three Pop Tarts and a Diet Coke) to the four pulverized piles of beefy goo that Steve had expelled onto the pasture.
    "Lactose intolerant?"She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and glared at the Sea Beast. "You have no problem gulping down a paperboy and the closet perv from the hardware store, but you can't eat dairy cows?"
    Steve rolled onto his back and tried to look apologetic – streaks of purple played across his flanks, purple being his embarrassment color. Viscous tears the size of softballs welled up in the corner of his giant cat's eyes.
    "So I suppose you're still hungry?"
    Steve rolled back onto his feet and the earth rumbled beneath him.
    "Maybe we can find you a horse or something," Molly said. "Stay close to the tree line." Using her broadsword as a walking stick, she led him over the hill. As they moved, his colors changed to match the surroundings, making it appear that Molly was being followed by a mirage.
    Theo For some reason, the words of Karl Marx kept running through Theo's mind as he dug the machete out of the tool shed behind his cabin. "Religion is the opiate of the masses." It follows, then, that "opium is the religion of the addict," Theo thought.Which is why he was feeling the gut-wrenching remorse of the excommunicated as he took the machete to the first of the thick, fibrous stems in his marijuana patch. The bushy green weeds fell like martyred saints with each swing of the machete, and his hands picked up a film of sticky resin as he threw each plant onto a pile in the corner of the yard.
    In five minutes his shirt was soaked with sweat and the pot patch looked like a miniature version of a clear-cut forest.Devastation.Stumps. He emptied a can of kerosene over the waist-high pile of cannabis, then pulled out his lighter and set the flame to a piece of paper. "Throw off the chains of your oppressors," Marx had said. These plants, the habit that went with them, were Theo's chains: the boot that Sheriff John Burton had kept pressed to his neck these last eight years, the threat that kept him from acting freely, from doing the right thing.
    He threw the burning paper, and the flames of revolution whooshed over the pile. There was no elation, no rush of freedom as he backed away from the pyre. Instead of the triumph of revolution, he felt a sense of sickening loss, loneliness, and guilt: Judas at the base of the Cross. No wonder communism had failed.
    He went into the cabin, retrieved the box from the shelf in the closet and was beating his bong collection into shrapnel with a ballpeen hammer when he heard automatic weapons fire coming from the ranch.
    Ignacio and Miguel