The Final Showdown

I apologize for the delay in posting, gentle comrades, but it's difficult to find time to type while struggling to survive amidst the chaos of the streets. It surely is a jungle out there!

A lot has happened in the two weeks since we last communicated. As you know, I plotted the demise of two of my friends, Dingy Joe and Strychnine Sally, who at the present time share the misfortune of also being my mortal enemies. That plan did not go as smoothly as I anticipated, but everything has a funny way of working itself out in the end.

As I informed you in my last post, the idea was to have Joe "take over my lease" on the 15th and have Sally show up on the 16th. But ever being the horrid wench that she is, Sally forgot which day we had agreed upon amidst the clutter of LSD flashbacks that regularly swamp her neurotransmitters like fat kids at a Star Trek convention, and she showed up a day early. Just as I began walking away from the railcar fully satisfied that my plan was coming to fruition, my nostrils detected a stench with an all too familiar blend of urine, fecal matter, and dead horseshoe crabs that I recognized immediately as the calling card of Strychnine Sally. Curses!

Knowing full well that I had to face this dilemma before it festered and exploded like a zit on the face of one of those fat kids I was talking about earlier, I picked up an old railroad spike that I saw sticking out of the grass, tucked it securely in the waistline of me pantaloons, and turned to face a very agitated, and seriously drug-addled Sally, who was already pounding her firsts against the sliding metal door of the railcar.

Joe opened the door slowly to steal a peek at whomever it was causing the racket. He didn't bother to remove the needle from the inner crook of his elbow.

"What's goin' on out here?" he begged in a tired drawl that is a common characteristic of a man entangled in a heroin daze.

"Getty on outta my house, you!" Sally screamed. "Quint sold it to meh fair and square!"

Fully aware of the escalating tension, I decided to sneak around the car and allow them to fight it out, but just as I made my move, ole Dingy stumbled out of the car and spotted me.

"Hey Quint, what's she on about? Is this all true?"

"Quiiiiiiint!!!" Sally shrieked like a banshee, all the while hobbling in my general direction.

"Keep away from me ya brigands or I'll brain ye!" I shouted, unsheathing the railroad spike from me pants and slashing wildly in front of me.

There's one thing you should always keep in mind when dealing with deranged hobos, and that is that they wake up to death every morning and they smile. And rightly so! Why fear death when hell boasts a warmer climate than Philadelphia? Such is the logic of a hobo.

Sally was on me like that busty blonde was on Jerry Maquire in the film of the same name when she screams, "Don't ever stop fucking me!" Except Sally was screaming, "How dare you fuck me!" and instead of having intercourse with me, she was clawing at my eyes with her overgrown fingernails.

I began to wonder where exactly my plan had gone so wrong, when all of a sudden Sally landed a knee in my groin and I fell to the ground like a sack of retarded midgets in mid-coitus. My peripheral vision detected Joe standing off to the side, a sly grin on his face, and I recognized immediately what was happening. Joe decided to employ my logic by watching Sally and I kill each other off so that he could escape with nary a scratch on his person. We'll I'd have none of that!

As Sally jumped on my back and attempted to bite through my right shoulder, I regained my grip on the spike that had fallen on the ground at my feet, and swung it around hard and smacked her squarely on the face with the blunt side. She plunged to the ground in much the same fashion as I imagine that same sack of fornicating midgets would, only there would also be snakes and rats inside the sack, and the sack would be on fire...and one of the midgets would have SARS.

She appeared to be unconscious, but I decided to give her a swift and solid boot to the gut just to be sure. While not dead, Sally was definitely down for the count. Either that, or she's one hell of an actress, and if that's the case, the lump I had just administered to her forehead should be halting any auditions she might have in the near future.

Joe pulled a length of pipe out of his trench coat and whirled it about his head like a madman. I pounded my chest and charged at him like a bull with incredibly large testicles. We clashed like titans as we wrestled to the ground.

My attempt to drive the spike into his solar plexis was thwarted when he walloped me on the right arm with the pipe. A normal human being might have cried out in pain, but I bellowed a war cry the likes of which this world has not known since the days of Crazy Horse the wild Injun, and I jabbed fiercely at my assailant.

Joe attempted to ensnare me in a headlock, but as he did so, I jerked his arm behind his back and slammed his face into the dirt. That's when I realized that the needle still dangled from his vein like a turd too long to expell in one push. But a new detail had also grasped my attention. Joe had yet to shoot the hit!

Seizing the opportunity, I injected the drug into Dingy Joe's arm and waited for him to lapse into a heroin induced coma. I did not have to wait long. The reaction was immediate and powerfully effective. He no longer struggled against my grip, so I backed off in an effort to regain my composure.

Sally was still sprawled out in a heap not far away and Joe remained slumped on the ground in a vegetative state with a vacant expression on his face; one that I had seen many times before. In a way I was sad to leave. After all, these people were like family to me. Only they were slightly less abusive that me own.