"You likin' this place?" From the Bird, softly at his side.

"Whhoooaa." From Bob.

Chapter 2.

1.

For Bob, the summer of 1976 was his season of change.

His priorities had changed, or more accurately, were created. His only priority in the past had been television, not by choice, but by default.

But things were different now. He had discovered music, and now had a music habit to uphold. He had discovered pot, another financial obligation to feed. Clothes, munchies, all the things previously denied, he now surrounded himself with.

Bob's mother caught wind of the changes. A heathen music system and heathen music to go with it in his bedroom, candy bar wrappers in the garbage, she even took notice of the ever growing inventory of clothing in his closet.

Each new discovery prompted a screaming fit of hell, damnation and wastefulness. Bob endured these flatly. He was now constantly flat out stoned; the pot an effective barrier for the rants of his mother that he had come to despise.

Once, when confronted with a discarded Snickers wrapper, he responded by planting his headphones on his ears, ramming Foghat into the socket and then laying back on the bed in utter defiance of this mother who stood in the doorway rendering her speechless; utterly speechless.

The message got through. His mother retreated to the sanctuary of her kitchen. She felt at risk, the boy now reminding her of the tormentors of her own childhood. She could no longer pray for his soul. She feared him, and whatever Satan-inspired thing he may do next.

She turned to her comfort. Cups needed to be counted. Soup cans needed to be checked, their labels perfectly forward and with an equal amount of space between each. Door handles, stove handles, cupboard handles, locks, drawers, curtain cords, - touch, touch, touch, touch.

Bob didn't care. When he should have been celebrating liberation from his psychotic over-bearing mother, he felt nothing.

Thanks to the pot.

The panacea had been everything for him. It had brought good things into his life. It even helped him find the happy medium at work, no longer racing around like a demon and no longer stuck in lethargy counting and recounting spoons. He found his pace, did his work, cashed his checks, and spent every last nickel appeasing his straining pleasure receptors.

For a while he had limited his pot smoking to encounters with the Bird. But the Bird wasn't always available and other times when he was, he was in the company of stoners that took disdain in Bob's presence, calling him 'son,' 'Bobbie' or the old throwback Demon.

Again bob felt the angst of not being able to respond to the torments. And oddly, the Bird did nothing to stop it, sometimes even laughing at bob's expense.

Eventually, the Bird fluttered out of Bob's life. With no other options, Bob resorted to smoking alone.

Part 6.

Loser.

Chapter 1.

1.

Loser was a pathetic case. At the age of 18, almost 19, he had all that mattered to chronic burnouts. He had pot, what more could you want.

As he was on most days, Loser was up late. Banging and re-banging the snooze alarm on his alarm clock or having forgotten to set it in the first place. He awoke to emptiness, both around him and inside. Where there should have been adventures of Junior legion baseball, the senior class prom, or even the pending release of "Star Wars" there was merely a black bottomless pit. The emptiness inside him was not unpleasant; it just was just what it was.

Having glanced at the clock for the first time with any meaningful thought, Loser threw off his bedding in disgust. He saw that he had slept with his clothes on again. He thought about changing, then decided that the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders wouldn't be in town today, so fuck it.

Blowing off another day of school was an enticing option but his grades were already bad; potentially repeating his senior year, bad. The guidance counselor had made it crystal clear that he would have to work diligently to meet the minimum criteria to graduate.

"Suckwads." He hissed. He fumbled around the shambles of his room, kicking away dirty clothes, fast food wrappers and empty soda cans in search of his car keys. "Fuck me running!" he agonized. "Where are my fucking keys!" His hands went to his pants pockets. Pipe and baggie in one, and on the other side...keys. "Christ" he muttered pathetically. He bailed directly out of the house, bypassing the bathroom and his mother who had long ago learned to keep her distance.

On the way to school he hit the pipe hard. Having mastered little in his lifetime, the one thing he had become an expert at was loading, lighting and hitting the piece while driving with his knees. By the time he hit Jefferson drive, the pot was doing its work; he was feeling normal again.

"Gawd, what a fucking loser." Bronwyn Poe was on the athletic field doing morning stretches with the rest of the varsity Spirit Squad. They watched as the rusting Chevy Vega labored into the parking lot, blatting out plume vectors of gray and blue exhaust. "Don't worry, next year he'll be gone and we'll be at college." Dee Schuster had already been accepted into the nursing program at Notre Dame University. She took every opportunity to bring up 'college' to anyone who had not yet been accepted, especially thrift store trash like Bronwyn Poe, who had the nerve to think that she belonged with the cool people.

Loser found a spot and pulled in. He yanked on the handle. The door flew open, leaving a healthy door nick on the car to his left. "Fuck em" he muttered, slamming the door and stomping off to class.

World history had started 10 minutes earlier. The students were now absorbed, hunched over their mimeographed semester final exams. Mr. Stonehoecker sat sentry. He had made the exam surprisingly easy, there were three members from last fall's district football champs and one highly talented member from this year's marginal basketball team in the class. Each of the young men had good prospects at the next level and he didn't want to compromise their chances.

The door opened.

Several heads popped up cautiously and curious. The last of which was Mr. Stonehoecker. He knew who it would be and he knew how he was going to handle it.

Rising, he made a declaration to the class. "Keep working on your tests. I'll be right outside that door and I want no monkey business." Several heads bent back to work, a few though followed his progress as he stepped outside...and closed the door.

"I'm sorry Mr. Stonehoecker, my car wouldn't ---"

"Save it." Mr. Stonehoecker held out a piece of paper. "Here's your final exam. Done. Graded. Finished." He put extra emphasis on the last.

Loser took the paper. Scrawled in heavy red strokes across the face: Score: 0 Grade: F Final Grade: F "You." He was now poking a practiced finger into the tender meat spot of the chest. "You, are nothing more than a loser. Let me give you some advice loser. Get off the pot, you reek of it. Look at you, you look like you slept in your clothes and haven't taken a shower in weeks. You are worthless. You're going to end up in some dead end job, living in a rat infested flophouse just so you can keep frying your brains out every night.

Now get over to the administrators office and then clean out your locker. You're done!"

Loser searched for a rebuttal, then gave in. He was done. At least now he wouldn't have to worry about the impossible calculus final that awaited him after lunch.

He would do what needed to be done: Take his lumps from administration, clean out his locker, and then have his day free for cranking up some tunes and getting royally stoned.

2.

Had it been another day and a different car, it may not have mattered. But Dee Schuster had been watching the loser. And when the loser had pulled in next to her new car, a pre-graduation gift from her gregarious father, and had put a healthy ding in the side, she went ape. "Oh my gawd, no!" she wailed. Pompoms tossed aside, she ran first to the chain link fence surrounding the field, then the long way around to access the parking lot. By the time she got to her victim, the perpetrator was long gone.

"You'll pay you loser! Oh how you'll pay!" She bent down and soothed the damaged paint. If cars were patients, she had chosen the right career path. She was born to be a nurse.

Fuming, she turned toward the rust-bucket Vega, half tempted to perform an eye for an eye, however one more mark on the piece of shit would hardly matter. What did matter though, was what she saw in the Vega's passenger seat. Her eyes lit up. "Oh yes, you will pay!"

To save time, she used the phone in the athletic office.

Loser endured his additional chidings from both the principal and the guidance counselor before being dismissed to clean out his locker. What little was his he stuffed into an old backpack that rarely had made the trip between school and home. He left the building, uncaring, and embarked on what had routinely become his most challenging duty each day; trying to remember where he had parked his car.

Today, it wouldn't be a challenge at all.

In the geometrical symmetry that characterizes all large parking lots, the sight of a Elmwood police cruiser angled behind a pair of cars was blatant.

More blatant was the sight of three figures lined between the cars. One, a miss Dee Schuster, two, Mrs. Albin, head of girls athletics and the cheer and pep squads, and three, and most ominous, a tall, meaty member of Elmwood's finest. True to her nickname, Canyon was spouting off rants that were more emotionally charged than factual. The officer took the important bits and noted them on a metallic clip board.

Loser gave the trio a wide berth. It only dawned on him where he had parked when Canyon screamed: "There he is! You hit my car! I saw you do it! It's a new car! A graduation present, I'm going to college! And you hit my car!" She was almost weeping with madness. "Oh but you'll get yours!"

"Suppose you let me handle this." The officer took the reins. "Is this your car?" He motioned toward the Vega.

"Yeah" Loser moved in as the fourth member of the party. "What's the problem."

"Would you mind opening your driver's door. There appears to be some paint transfer and we'd like to see if it matches."

Loser dumped his backpack on the cement and opened the door.

"I'll take it from here." The officer stepped in and swung the door until it nearly touched the neighboring car. There could be no mistake, the doorframe matched the dent.

"Jesus, it's just a scratch." Loser protested. But the cop wasn't done. "And what can you tell me about that." He pointed the other way, to the interior of the Vega.

Occupying the passenger seat was a baggie; its substance of highly questionable content. And more obvious, a pipe; one that very unlikely had been used for late evening bowls of Borkum Riff.

Busted.

In his hurry to salvage his final year of school, he had toked up, scarred the bitches car, and then left his goods right out in the open.

It was the pot. It makes you forget.

Chapter 2.

1.

True to his name, Loser lost everything.

He lost his standing as 'member of the senior class -1977.' He lost his driver's license on the spot, impounded for 90 days. He lost his baggie and his pipe. His job at the prospect hole (now a dishwasher) he lost in the form of a handwritten note mailed to his home along with his final check.

"We don't employ dopers. Final check enclosed." B.M.

Word certainly did travel fast.

And as his court hearing approached, he lost the most important thing of all his mind.

The first few days without pot, Loser struggled to endure. The physical cravings were tough, but the psychological cravings were unbearable. As time passed and the residual THC in his body was eliminated, the cravings became maddening.

For two years the receptors in his brain had been pacified by daily doses of weed. Their demand had been insatiable and Loser had responded with higher and more frequent doses. Now denied, they screamed for more.

The artificial wall that he had created in his brain was crumbling. And the evil blackness that lived within him roared against its rusting cage. Where there had once been mere filaments threaded through pinpricks, there were now multi-tentacled arms extending through gaping portholes.

The blackness threaded through his mind, ravaging emotional receptors that had been smoked into oblivion. Loser's thoughts became a jumbled mass of unease, paranoia, and in a last ditch effort to deal with the unknown, hate.

"Cocksuckers!" He screamed. For about the hundredth time, he toyed with the idea. He could jump in his car, cash his final check, go to 'the house,' roll a doob with newspaper if he had to, and get busted all over again.

No. It was no good. Even if he got away with it, he had heard of the piss tests they could make you take. He would have to tough it out, accept whatever probation or community service bullshit he had to fulfill and then go back to smoking doob.

2.

Loser seethed as he entered the courthouse and faced the judge.

Save for the bailiff, the judge and the two attorneys, one county and one public, the courtroom was vacant. This did nothing to ease his paranoia or his madness. His mind cycled uncontrolled. Belligerent, penitent, obstinate, shameful, hateful.

The evil blackness fed greedily on the confused mind. It pulsed and surged. Full sections of the protective cage gave way. The evil shrieked victoriously and redoubled its efforts, slamming itself into the crumbling ruins.