I used to think I was a simple guy. Living a normal life. But the last few years have taught me that nothing is normal. No, life is one big puke-soup full of abnormal disappointment and gritty ass-cream.

Anyway, my name’s Zak Wang. I’m adopted, in case you missed that point earlier.

Yeah, that makes me a white Wang. I’ve heard all the jokes before so spare me. The kids in school certainly didn’t…

I was running my late father’s hardware store, Wang’s HardWare and Wontons—damn, no longer offering wontons. Daddy-san’s been gone six months, but his memory still follows me around like a crack whore with a flaming boner. (That was a hangover I’d like to forget some day.)

As I mentioned earlier, the store’s not doing so well. It’s the same sob story you’ve heard so many times before: trapped in a backwater town, running a humble and mostly-honest business on a neglected corner of a rundown neighborhood. Then the Big Corporate Chain Store came to town, selling third-rate goods made by fourth-rate slave labor at “Prices That Are Too Low To Believe!®” You know the cliches, so I won’t bore you with the rest of the petty details. You’re here for the zombies, and we’re getting to that point…

This wasn’t the life I expected for myself at sixteen, baked off my ass while perched on the edge of Hangman’s Bridge, musing about my future dreams with the rest of our misfit gang. At that age I wanted what every other heterosexual sixteen year-old dude wanted: pussy pokin’, weed tokin’, and guitar-strokin’ 80’s metal—preferably at the same time. (Hey, if you haven’t had a girl riding your pole as you’re sharing a dank blunt listening to Crazy Train blasting in the background, you don’t know what heaven is like. Minus points for you.)

At the time I didn’t think that was too much to ask from the future, but reality eventually begins to smother you with its sweaty ass-cheeks as time goes on, doesn’t it?

My own reality crushed me senior year when Daddy-san got sick and I had to take over his responsibilities at the store. What was once a part-time job for weed money and bass strings became my waking, sleeping existence. No more partying like it was 1999 every weekend. No more going west to the land of abundant sunshine, skimpy bikinis and legal weed with my Brother From Another Mother, Max. No chance of getting a useless Arts degree from some nameless coastal college, and rocking-out-with-our-cocks-out all night long.

Nope: my Bro from Another Ho left me alone, fleeing to his fancy West Coast School. I got left behind here in Somerset, caring for my dying father while working my ass off trying to make ends meet at our slowly-sinking ship of a hardware store.

If it wasn’t for the weed, I would have went mental after a day or two—

“Z?”

I froze, silently cursing myself for forgetting that someone had entered the store.

It was a female voice, throaty, behind me and slightly off to the right. Sounded young and cute, too, although voices could be deceiving. Don’t ask how I know: I still have the scars from that one. But this voice had an air of familiarity to it that I just couldn’t place.

I probably would have remembered instantly had I been stoned.

That was also probably the reason why I remained motionless behind the counter, dick still in my hand.

“Little cold in here, huh?”

What? Wait, I knew that voice…

“Still rockin’ out with your sock out, huh, Z?”

I looked up over the thankfully waist-high counter, carefully putting Little Z back into my pants, while trying my best not to look like I was stuffing my dick back into my pants.

She was standing at the end of the counter by the register, dressed in skin tight, faded jeans, and a semi-transparent wife-beater that revealed she still hadn’t taken to wearing a bra. Over that she wore a black leather jacket, unzipped, hands in the pockets; and her head was crowned with shoulder-length, raven-black hair.

I hesitated to look into her eyes, but when I did they were just as blue as I remembered the day she was riding me on her bed that one summer, and my heart dropped into my shoes.

“Ajax!” I smiled. “You grew your hair.”

“Hey.” Her right cheek twitched, cracking into that cute, weirdly shy half-smile I remembered. She brushed a strand of hair from her cheek and sniffed, looking around, her brow creasing.“Smells rank in here—the wonton machine got gremlins again?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” I glanced down at the bucket between my legs, a single tongue of flame still burning. “Just a little fire drill. You know, we have to be prepared for things.” I motioned to the signs behind the register as I stamped down the remaining flame in the bucket, mashing it into the pool of urine-soaked paper on the bottom. I could feel wetness seeping through the hole on the sole of my shoe as I hastily removed it from the basket.

Eww.

“Some things never change, huh?” she said. “Looks like you’re still setting things on fire.”

I looked at her, noticing the twinkle in her eye as my cheeks flushed hot. She was always a pro at making me feel uncomfortable while being turned-on at the same time.

Strange how that only worked with her.

“Hey, there was just that one time!” I said. “And your hair grew back fine.” But then my brain misfired and I blurted: “Well, there was our X-mas tree when I was eleven. And that time at Vince DeBrow’s birthday party. Oh yeah: Chemistry, 5th hour—”

“Mrs. Beetlejuice was SO pissed at you.” (We called her that because of her hair, which stood up in all the wrong places and had an odd, green tinge to it.)

“Yeah, she almost got me expelled.” Her hair hadn’t been so fortunate in regrowing…

She laughed. “You haven’t changed a bit.” She glanced down and up again, raising an eyebrow. I looked down and my cheeks grew warm as I did my best to nonchalantly zip up my fly.

“What did you expect? It’s only been five years, two months, and—” I glanced back at the clock, “—about three hours. Give or take…”

The twinkle in her eye faded as she glanced out the clouded glass of the front window of the store.

“Not keeping count at all, huh?”

“Sorry, Ace. I missed you,” I said. “Some things are hard to forget.”

“Well, you were always better than me at math.”

“Yeah, but you could always kick my ass, so let’s just call it even, k?”

She laughed her infectious giggle, and I couldn’t help but join in.

“It’s good to hear that laugh again,” I said.

“Only you could ever make me laugh like that, Z.” But I noticed that the smile on her face wasn’t enough to cover the hint of sadness creeping into the edge of her voice.

I had to know where she’d been all these years. “What happened?” I asked.

“I need a screwdriver.”

Now she was speaking my language!

“Don’t we both,” I said.

How convenient it was that there were two bars right across the street from my place. (Well, one was a gay bar, and I wasn’t sure I could be stoned enough to enter the place, but with Ajax, anything was possible!)

“No, Z, I mean I need a screwdriver—you know: steel shank, plastic handle, screws things, remember? I broke the one Gran had this morning. The Sanitarium has a giant bug problem, which I need to take up with them Monday morning.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I sighed. There always seemed to be a buzzkill waiting just around the corner after witnessing a glimmer of hope shine upon my cursed existence.

“Oh, right,” I said. “Ick. Sorry—aisle 4, halfway down, left side. Can’t miss a good screw.” I winked at her.

“Thanks, Z. Be right back.” She walked by me, winking back as she turned down the aisle.

“I was driving by on my way to Avalon…” she called out.

I spat a curse upon the ground at the sound of that retail abomination.

“I saw the Nova out back—I figured you would have been long gone by now. Weren’t you and Max going to go out West?”

“Yeah, well, things didn’t work out the way I’d wanted them to…” (What I would have given to have things work out right for a change…)

“Ah, this should work,” she said. She rounded the corner, and my heart jumped as her eyes met mine for the second time in five years..

“She still running?”

“Who?” I asked, then caught myself. I always had difficulty thinking straight when I stared into those eyes.

“Ah, the Nova,” I quickly added. “Yeah. Doing as well as can be expected for a car about as old as both of us combined.”

“I told you there was a little magic left in her,” she said.

Yeah, it was just too bad that statement didn’t reflect the rest of my life—it had been quite a while since there was any magic anywhere near my life. That well had long run dry.

“Well I figured I’d rather give you two my money than the Billionaire Bozo—did you see he has a television show now?”

“I don’t need to be reminded, thanks,” I said sourly.

“Anyway, I thought I’d stop in and check up on you two,” she said as she waved the screwdriver and nodded down the counter toward the cash register.

“Thanks, Ace, that’s sweet of you,” I said as we walked down to the register in stride, the glass counter separating us further than I wanted. “Daddy-san would have been touched to hear that.”

I smiled to myself, lost in the thought of the possibility of it being like the old times again; the core gang was all back in town now that she had returned. Maybe there was some magic left in my life? (Or maybe I was delusional, but one doesn’t throw back the few maggot-filled scraps life tosses at you.)

But that thought was interrupted as I heard her stop abruptly just as I reached the cash register.

“Oh, Z—Daddy-san? I’m sorry, I didn’t know…”

I’ve never saw Ajax cry, not even after some of the things her dad did to her, but as I turned and looked at her, lost and staring at the floor of the store, I thought I saw the closest she could get to that expression of emotion. Daddy-san doted on her like the father her dickhead dad never was.

“It’s okay, Ajax,” I said softly. “It’s only been a few months since…”

I cleared my throat, looking away as I felt my eyes getting moist.

“He got sick not long after you disappeared.”

“Z—” she began.

“Look, it’s not a big deal, Ace. I’m sure you had a good reason to go. I was just worried about you, you know?”

She walked over and set the screwdriver down on the counter between us, her gaze fixated on it.

“You know father,” was all she said.

Yeah, I knew her father: alcoholic, unemployed, abusive, and a general, all-around shit-for-brains useless sack of meat.

No, I didn’t like him, in case you missed that.

“Yeah, he was a fucking prick.” I couldn’t resist saying that out loud. “Sorry,” I added. (I really wasn’t.)

She looked at me and smirked. “Don’t be.”

I rang up the screwdriver, smiled and said, “That’ll be $8.95.”

“What?” she said, squinting as she looked at the butterfly-flickering blue led numerals on the register. “For a fucking screwdriver, really?”

“Ajax—” I stammered. “Wait, do you think I’m ripping you off? I—I don’t make the prices!” Well, yeah I did, but it’s not like I overcharged people. On purpose. Most of the time.

She was still staring at me like I imagined a mother would do had she caught me with her panties around my head.

“Damn discount Avalon stores,” I swore at the ceiling, but I knew there was no one up there who gave a damn.

She winked, her infectious giggle bursting forth, accentuating the spark that was back in her eye as she stuck her tongue out at me.

“You still have a mouth that runs into the ground when you’re nervous, Zak Wang.” She laid a twenty between us, which I took while I calculated her change. School had been good for something, especially since the register was broke and could only tally up.

“How’s Gran?” I asked. I hadn’t seen her since some time before Ajax left, but I wasn’t about to press that fact again: her smile made me as high as some good dank skank.

“Bones are deteriorating bad, and she’s in a lot of pain. I got some green from T-bone—”

“T-bone? Ace, don’t buy from him, he hasn’t had any good shit since the 60’s.” T-bone was an old stoner hippie who’d hang with us from time to time. Cool dude, but his grass was worse than ditch weed, and wasn’t worth smoking even when everyone else was dry.

He also had a little narcolepsy that made for some fun times when he’d pass out.

“Yeah, I found that out the hard way. Gettin’ some new stuff tonight. Supposed to be some new knock-out strain.”

“Max and I have heard rumors that there’s something new coming out soon, but I don’t buy into it too much. Peeps are always blowing their nuts off about new and better grass coming just around the corner, which never seems to happen. It’s probably somebody’s last crop, repackaged into a cleaner baggie.”

I counted out the change and tore off the receipt, which ripped off in the middle like it usually did.

“Eff me,” I cursed.

“Promises, promises,” she shot back, giving me a look. Well, I thought it was a look… It had been a long time since we last hung out, and I wasn’t sure if she was joking or being serious. She was always tough to read.

I liked that about her.

I laughed more nervously than I wanted to, thinking back to that one time we hooked up.

“Not like I could ever forget that,” I blurted out.

I attempted to tear off the remaining part of the receipt. It took three tries to get it all. She looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language on her wedding night as I handed her the change and the torn confetti of her sales receipt.

“You’re blushing, Z,” she said. “My girlfriend would probably find you cute; she likes it when I blush, too.”

Wait—what!?

I wasn’t sure if the sound of screeching tires came from the street outside, or from my imagination? It had been at least a year or so since I’d had an auditory hallucination…

As I was working my brain back up to speed—and about ready to ask about this ‘girlfriend’ my ears thought they heard—my cerebral functions were interrupted when the front door dong-dinked again.

I couldn’t see who was coming into the store since Ajax was standing right in front of me and the curved security mirror that was supposed to have been installed above the entrance by Max two weeks ago was still in the back, doing fuck-all in its box on an otherwise-empty wooden palette.

“Well, Z,” she said, “we’ll have to get together one of these days, burn one, and reminisce about old times, but I have to get back to extermination duties.” She made a stabbing motion with the screwdriver that looked way too much like she was giving a handjob.

Or maybe she was mimicking the many slasher movies we used to watch while baked off our butts? Either way it was kinda turning me on.

She must have noticed the dumb look on my face and added: “Wait, you still toke yet, right?”

My mind was still a little tongue-tied from the girlfriend comment, and all I could do was stare at her.

“Cheezus, don’t tell me you’ve turned into a straight-eight, or found religion or something…” She stood with her hands on her hips, screwdriver sticking out of her right hand, looking at me like a teacher scolding her very naughty student.

Yeah, I was definitely getting a stiffy.

“Ajax, you’re talking to the Z-man, remember? ‘The stoner with a boner—’” (Wait, that wasn’t right.)

She raised an eybrow. “I don’t remember that nickname.”

“Oh, right. Yeah. That was, uh, after you left,” I lied. “Hmm, how about the ‘mean, green, stoner machine’?”

She chewed on her cheek for a bit as she stared at me. God she was cute.

“Good,” she nodded. “You had me worried for a sec, Zak Wang. The day you stop toking is the day the world ends.”

That would make a good life mantra. I might have to steal that one…

She turned, about to leave my life for a second time, and part of me—not just the below-the-waist part—was fighting for one moment longer with her.

“Hey, Ajax,” I called. She stopped and turned her head, glancing over her shoulder with her ‘what evil are you up to now?’ sparkle in her eye.

“Look, I know it’s short notice—and you’ve got insectile genocide on the brain—but it’s Halloween. My Weediversary, remember?”

“That’s right,” she laughed. “How could I forget?”

“This will be the first time in years that we’re having our Halloweed Horrors Night again. And Max is going to be revealing his first home-grown crop tonight at twelve-bells. What do you say?”

She turned and gazed out the door.

“I have plans, Z.”

“Aw, come on Ace. We’re a little old for trick-or-treating now, but we’re still gonna costume it up. Max wanted to play some Bludgeons and Demons, too. Then maybe a couple of 80’s B-movies after that, and some Grade-A, hella-smella funky-skunky? Come on—it’ll be like old times again.”

I hoped I didn’t sound like I was whining, but I did use my best ‘poor-me’ voice. This had always worked on her in the past, but I winked at her for good measure.

She hesitated for a beat, then giggled like the school-girl I remembered, that image burned into my brain before the not-so-innocent age of sixteen.

“I have to help Gran first, Z, but…” she paused and gave me that school-teacher look again.

Thank god for the counter standing between her and my bulging crotch.

“I’ll try to stop by, okay? I owe you that,” she smiled, and I felt all fuzzy inside. “And an explanation.”

(Yes! I praised the gods of weed that I still had it.)

“Same crib, or have you moved down in the world?”

Now it was my turn to laugh.

“Yeah, still across from the beer-pits, although one’s a homo-bar now.”

“Z!”

She was giving me that teacher-look again, only this time her brow was twitching.

“Sorry,” I said. My stupid mouth again…

“I’m sure they’re fine people,"I added. "I mean, a dude like me wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like that, though. Not my thing, you know?”

“How would you know if you’ve never been in one, Z? You might actually enjoy yourself and have a little fun.”

I sighed, knowing she’d got me.

“You’re right, Ace,” I said. “Sometimes my brain makes my mouth stupid.”

She snorted. “Just sometimes?”

“Wait, I’m not that bad,” I stammered.

She laughed. “Well, it can be one of your more endearing qualities. Most of the time, anyway.”

She smirked, winking at me.

“You’re alright Zak Wang. But I gotta motor.”

She turned and stepped towards the door, pulling it open with a very unromantic dong-dink, glancing back one last time over her shoulder.

“See you ‘round, Z,” she said.

Then she walked out the door and was gone.

’See you ’round, Z.’

Those had been the same last words she said to me before she disappeared from my life five years ago.

An unwelcomed shiver slid down my spine at that thought.