Angel and Devil

Characters

"Glib" The setting; a demon-infested town of old Route 66.
"Cookie Monster" My Mexican friend with MS.
"Tecomde" My mother, before
Angela - Cookie Monster's aunt
Diablo - No good Cracker
"Rice " distant Caucasian cousin of Cookie Monster
"Mayor" Cookie Monster's Uncle, his Diabetic mom's brother. The head of the Mexican Mafia in that town
"Loco " Mayor's renegade nephew, made all these guys look like model citizens
"Other guy" Your token Mexican gang-banger
"Blitzen" girl in our bus-stop group
"Weedon" boy in our bus-stop group - huge Buffy fan, especially when he was stoned

In Glib, I had this friend with MS. I'll call him Cookie Monster. He looked and sounded like him after all. He couldn't stand without a walker, but he learned how to ride a bike. Because of the walker, he had massive forearms. He was quite proud of them. He was always challenging people to arm-wrestle. I actually beat him twice. That's about a 0.5% victory for me though.

He was inspirationally the only kid in that town to graduate from our senior class in a High School 50 minutes away. He went through some shit, though. Thankfully his uncle ran the town of Glib, so people didn't make fun of him. But most people didn't hang out with him either. My mom says he asks about me from time to time, all these years later. I should drop a line, but I'm not nearly as strong as he.

His mom had Diabetes. She found out when they amputated her foot. By then she was so set in her ways, the loss didn't change her. She had another stroke a few months later. That time the ambulance to her home was a hearse to the hospital.

So Cookie Monster's aunt, Angela, moved in to take care of him and his little sister. She always had car trouble, but nobody knew the extent to which it would go.

The night of her birthday, my mom was trippin' on something but I didn't care. She was laughing and not twitching so I figured I'd deal. She found this old Army cargo/freight belt. It had a buckle like the ones all us California boys wore to bold up our baggy pants. But it was so long that I had to roll it up and tuck it in my pocket. As a joke, I crammed it down my pants, to bulk up my package. Then unzipped my fly and let it roll out. We all thought it was so hilarious, we decided to use it to amuse Angela at her birthday party.

That was A RIOT! She was pretty buzzed, so the look of slack-jawed astonishment was compounded. I can't even think about it without laughing out loud.

For some reason, later that night, she went to run some errand with Diablo who had since healed up from his run in with Chuck. On the way out of town there was an accident. The car flipped, slipped under the barb-wire fencing and down the embankment near the bridge where Sammy Davis, Jr. was said to have lost his eye. The car's roof caved in, crushing Angela's larynx against the steering wheel. Somehow Diablo was thrown safely from the car. The Officials who responded to the scene said she died quickly. Of course they said that.

The next day, at the bus-stop, obviously Cookie Monster wasn't there. Neither was "Rice", this mildly retarded white boy who was somehow related to The Family. Just as we were discussing the accident this car comes screeching to a halt right in front of us. Three guys jump out and run up and over the railroad tracks. Two had rifles, "Loco" ("Mayor"'s other nephew) and some guy I'd seen only once before. "Rice" was with them, and he was packing a shotgun.

We hadn't even collected our breath when the shooting started.

They thought Diablo had something to do with Angela's death, seeing as how they were alone in the car, despite the bad blood between them.

"Rice" wasn't seen at school until the following week. "Loco" went on to be chased out of town by his Uncle, only to return later and stab the man who gave me the carbide that got in so much trouble. As for Diablo, well... he was never seen again. At least not in "Glib".