Mara stands next to the highway, cardboard sign cradled in one arm, her thumb out as the cars shoot by, looks back at Monkey and Pig peeking through the branches of a nearby bush.

"No one's stopping."

"Give it a minute."

"You know, if you transformed this would be a whole lot easier."

"Yes, but it wouldn't be as fun."

She rolls her eyes, drops her thumb, grabs the hilt of her sword, whips out her blade, walks to the middle of the highway, armor glinting in the light as a blue Safari minivan screeches to a halt. The driver, middle-aged in a polo, sticks his head out ready to yell then notices the girl, the sign in her arms, softens and waves her in. Monkey and Pig jump from the bush and climb in the back as Mara hops in the front.

"You're going to kill yourself doing that. Where are your parents?" Mara doesn't respond. He adjusts his rearview looking at Monkey and Pig, the nine pronged rake sticking out the window. "Going to Comic-Con, huh?" Mara nods. "Cool costumes." He pulls back into traffic. "My son is really into...this." Looks again in the rearview as Monkey and Pig stare out opposite windows. "Quiet bunch...though I guess it comes with the territory." He winces not sure what that means then follows with, "So, who are you supposed to be?" Mara closes her eyes and lets out a deep sigh. "Wait. Let me guess." He purses his lips and squints at Monkey. "Chewbacca?" Pig starts laughing. "No? Ok. Don't mean to be insulting. You've got quite a mish-mash of things going on there." Changes lanes. "Dr. Zaius?" Starts to merge on the highway heading east. "Strike two. How bout you," he looks at Pig. "Famous pigs. Famous pigs. Well, you're too ugly to be Piglet..." Pig stops laughing as Monkey needles him with his elbow. "You sure did a good job with your makeup. Those bloodshot eyes look so...real."

"Thanks," Pig mutters pushing away Monkey's jabs.

"Famous pigs. Famous pigs. There's...Porky," he glances back, "but you're wearing pants."

"I can take my pants off," Pig offers. Monkey stops poking and frowns.

"There's the pig from Charlotte's web. Oh! Are you that pig from the Lion King? What's his name?"

"Where are we going," Mara asks. "We're heading east."

"The Agricenter's right by the airport. What other Comic-Con would you be going to?"

Mara looks at Pig then without taking her eyes off him, "Pumba. The name of the pig in the Lion King is Pumba."

"That's right. I'm Dave by the way," Dave says. No one introduces themselves so Dave starts whistling. "You must be someone from Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones," he says glancing over to Mara. "That's a nice sheath you have there. Did you do that work yourself?"

Mara runs her finger over the filigree.

"An old man in a strip club made this out of a condom he found in a stripper's purse."

Dave laughs. His mind scrambles a bit then, "Oh, this is like a Marlon Brando type thing. I get it." He exits and curves toward the Agricenter. "Don't worry. Your secret is safe with me Buffy," he says winking.

Mara puts her hand on her sword and narrows her eyes, looks in the rearview to catch Monkey shaking his head, takes her hand off the hilt as Dave pulls up with a, "Well, I hope you kids have fun. If you see a teen dressed like the Incredible Hulk in his mother's purple jeans that's my Thomas. Please say hi. He's very shy."

"Will do," Monkey says as they pile out and head through the glass doors. Inside the convention center they see,

five Wonder Women in a circle
as Skeletor walks by
and Wolverine apologizes for running into
a man dressed like Princess Leia.
The Joker, Mr. Potato Head and Sailor Moon
wait by the tropical palm
stuffed in a glistening grey pot
exchanging numbers and making plans
to meet at the Applebee's down the street
and there's Poison Ivy
flipping her red wig
demanding to see her phone
to make sure her ass looks good
as they walk by
thirty-five Pikachu's doing yoga
a contest for which Goku has the tallest hair
and a snuggle room where thirteen Hello Kitties
just took Ketamine and are
flopping on top of a pile of Yogi's and Bubu's
as the soft trancy wizard music
lays over them like waves
and suddenly Pig's not sure
why he's slow dancing with Dora the Explorer
but her enormous head
feels good against his chest
and he falls into the lull
of the costumed cuddle puddle that is
Comic-Con

Mara grabs Pig by his waistband and yanks him out of the room as Dora falls and rolls, her tiny arms and legs sticking up like an insect.

"She is waaay too young for you," she says letting go in disgust.

"How do you know how old she is?"

"You're two thousand years old! I don't have to know how old she is. Besides, what makes you think it's a girl? Because the foam-padded outfit has eyelashes?"

Pig adjusts his waistband.

"I've had a hard day. If I want to unwind by snuggling with a 20-something dude who likes to dress like Dora the Explorer then that's what I'm going to do."

"Oh, that's what you're into now?"

Pig looks back in the room. Dora's not gotten up possibly because she is enjoying being spooned by Bubu's on all sides but also maybe because her head is so big she can't stand.

"I think I'm ready to go now," Pig says. "I don't know how much more of this I can take."

"Yeah, what's the plan here?" she says turning to Monkey. "We're further away now than when we started."

"Maybe we should ask for a ride," Pig says as a naked woman painted in blue walks by.

"We're not listening to you anymore," Mara says, then looking to Monkey, "I've got an idea. I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier but some of my friends hop trains. If we caught the right one we could be there in a day or so."

Monkey nods, turns to go, then stops, looks around again, his eyes engulfed in flames.

"Do you feel that? Someone's here."

"Yeah. It's Comic-Con. There's a thousand people here. Is one of them is evil? Sure, but...c'mon, they're just kids," Pig says tugging on Monkey's tail.

Monkey jerks it out of his hand and slaps him in the face. The crowds swarm in and out of the convention hall, the brightly colored costumes and red face paint swirl together as Monkey sweeps his gaze across the room.

"Maybe you're right," he says relaxing, takes a step toward the door only to be encircled by a mob of Pikachu's, their black eyes staring, reflecting the overhead fluorescents, the scratchy yellow felt stretched over large chunks of foam remain still as the murmur of the crowd starts to dim and the lights go out. A strobe flickers above then forms into a man made of static, the grey and white noise pulsing and glowing as he hovers above, arms crossed.

"Welcome to the worst day of the rest of your..."

Pig steps forward. "Nope. Nope! I'm sorry. We've already done this today. One demon per day. That's it. That's my limit. I can't. I just CAN'T! You seem like a nice person," he says looking up toward the ceiling," or, whatever you are, but I haven't eaten in...I don't know how long and I'm tired and I almost made out with Dora the Explorer," he says motioning past the Pikachu's, "and I'm not even sure if she was a woman so I'm a little confused."

"I knew it!" Mara says pointing her finger at his snout.

"And honestly, I just want to go home." He turns to Monkey. "This has been fun. Really. I've enjoyed this whole...thing, but it's not going anywhere, and I want to go back and have people wait on me, and yes, so I eat the occasional person. Is that so wrong? I mean, with everything we've seen in the last few days, I feel like I'm doing pretty good."

The man made of static hovers silently above then, "Oh, are you done? I didn't know if you'd finished. You started to ramble there and I didn't want to step all over your speech because, you know, I'm a considerate human being."

"You're a considerate human being?" Pig says crossing his arms.

"Yes."

"You're a human being?"

"Well, I was speaking metaphorically."

"So I imagine you're planning to attack us with...what exactly? All your Comic-Con minions? Is that considerate?"

"Well, I..."

"And that you're static because, oh I don't know, you've been copied so many times you've turned into noise? Is that it? You're a reflection of the fact that everything's a reference to the original except YOU because you've been copied so many times you've disintegrated into something truly unique?"

"It's more complicated than that but...yes"

"Do you know who this is?" Pig says pointing to Monkey. "This is Sun Wukong. The Monkey King. The Great Sage Equal to Heaven. He's one of the strongest beings in the universe, not to mention the fact that he's IMMORTAL and you were going to send a mob of teenagers in superhero outfits at us?"

"I have a plan B."

"Of course you do." Pig puts his hands to his head. "Of course you have a plan B. Do you know what we have? We have The Lord of Death's daughter with a fucking magic sword. Does your plan B take that into account?"

"He's not the Lord of Death," Mara says frowning.

Pig starts to pace around exasperated. "Why are you attacking us anyway? We're not doing anything. We came here accidentally. We just got here! And we were about to leave. Go on and keep doing...whatever it is that you're doing. You want to turn these teenagers into zombies? Great. Go for it. I'm not here to stop you. Are you here to stop him?" Pig says looking at Mara. Mara shakes her head. "Are you here to stop him?" Pig says looking at Monkey.

"He is a demon." Monkey says.

Pig turns back.

"We're not here to stop you. We just want to get on a train to Florida. Is that so much to ask? Can you help us get to Florida? Please! Help us or my Monkey friend is going to go berserk and butcher every living thing in this convention center."

The man made of static looks down at Pig, the prongs of his rake glistening under the overhead lights, to Monkey baring his gold banded cudgel, eyes lit in a fiery gaze, then to Mara, her small hand on the hilt of an enormous sword. He descends to the floor, pulls out his phone and starts typing.

"You know I think there's a train that goes from Memphis to Orlando."

"We don't have any money," Mara says.

"Well I can just loan you...I mean, I can give you some if you..."

"We can't take money either," Monkey says. "We're monks. We can only accept food and a place to stay."

"Ooookay." He types faster on his phone. "Well, there's a freight train that leaves from Memphis tonight and looks like it's going to Mobile. That's pretty close to Florida. How does that sound?"

"That's great," Pig says taking the phone and looking at the map and schedule.

"I really did have a plan B. All these superheroes were going to start attacking you and I have this neat static stuff I shoot out of my hands that scrambles your mind."

"I'm sure it's really cool," Pig says walking away.

Monkey stops in front of him, looks at the kids then, "If you don't let them go I'm going to come back after we're done and smash you with my cudgel and if that doesn't work I'm sure there's some magic horn I have to find that when I blow it your head will explode or your body will come apart piece by piece and I'll take my time so you feel every second of your entire being slowly ripped apart," then he smiles showing all his teeth.

Outside they regroup and start walking to the train yard. Monkey catches up with Pig.

"Hey, I just wanted to thank you for what you did back there." Pig looks over surprised not sure if he's being made fun of. "You were right. If they attacked I would've slaughtered them."

Pig gives a worried glance then, "Now don't go getting all soft on me. We're not even to Florida yet." They pass a gas station and he motions to it and says, "I'm going to grab a bite and use the bathroom."

Mara sits in the shade of a small tree and looks at her phone. Monkey sits next to her in the sun cross-legged and closes his eyes.

"What're you doing?" Mara asks annoyed.

"I'm meditating."

He doesn't see it but he feels her eyes roll.

"How're you doing?"

Monkey opens one eye to look at her.

"Not good since you keep talking to me."

Mara puts her phone away and leans back against the trunk.

"I thought the whole point was to get better at dealing with distraction?" Monkey frowns. "So, you should be able to ignore me right? If I'm bothering you then you're doing it wrong." Monkey closes his one eye, sits upright and concentrates. "How many people have you killed?" Monkey scrunches his face and doesn't answer. The sound of traffic turns into the waves of the ocean then to a white noise. "So what's it like being immortal? Do you ever regret not being able to die?" Monkey lets out a sigh then starts breathing more deeply. The sun is high in a cloudless sky and he can feel his nose and cheeks and chin getting hot. "If you're going to live forever what'll you do when the sun eventually swallows the earth and they'll be no more people left? You'll just be floating in space for eternity looking for other signs of life, but what if there isn't any? Just floating in the void forever."

His eyes snap open and he jumps to his feet, dusts off his legs. "I'm going to go check on Pig," he says, gives her a hard look then walks to the gas station and peers inside. There's a couple standing in front of the donut display, the woman pointing to a chocolate long john, laughing. He walks to the back hopping from one cement block to the next till he's at the bathroom. Bangs on the door. No answer. Looks around, scans the highway. "Could he have..." Looks at the door. "No. Too much work."

The cement blocks end in a patch of crabgrass. There's a butterfly sitting on the tip of a blade. Monkey squats to look as it flies off, the rest of the blades emerge in anxious repetition as he scans them looking for other signs of life, a ladybug, grasshopper, small trail of ants. His gaze rests on a small red splatter, runs his fingers up the blade and feels the wetness of blood, looks at the bottom of the door and sees a trickle running down the white paint of the trim, stands, rips the door off the hinges, tosses it aside and this is what he sees.

Pig's hands holding
the small body of a woman
the head half-eaten
her arms
and sunflower dress
hang limp
the soap dispenser
porcelain sink
and toilet
shrink back
as Monkey raises his cudgel
and the whites of Pig's eyes
look on in terror

Pig cowers turning his head toward the body making him lose balance as he slips on the blood and falls into the toilet smashing it. Monkey lowers his cudgel and stares as Pig wails and shivers on the floor. He looks away disgusted. "What good does it do?" he thinks to himself looking at a small maple tree planted in the median, the metal ring around the slender trunk, three wires pulling it in different directions staked into the ground holding it to a shiver.

Pig's breathing slows. The sobbing stops before he lets out a quiet, "Please don't tell her." Monkey doesn't look at him again, walks back and sits cross-legged next to Mara who's still typing on her phone smiling and laughing to herself. She puts her phone down and says, "So, can we leave yet or are we still waiting on that idiot to finish eating?"

He doesn't answer. Mara looks up questioningly as Pig emerges from the gas station dressed in a black polyester shirt with racing flames rising up from the bottom and a pair of black meshy shorts to match. She smiles. "I didn't think I could hate you anymore but...wow. I'm impressed."

"Let's just get out of here. Sooner we leave for Memphis the better."

Monkey gets up and heads out without looking back. Mara follows with Pig trailing behind.

It's dark when they arrive at the train yard. They peer out from a thicket of bushes that runs along the fence to the rows and rows of trains. "How do we know which one is ours?" Mara asks holding the branches back. Monkey leaps into the air hundreds of feet above, the trains turning from hulking freight cars to a multi-colored patchwork. His eyes catch every detail, every word scrawled across every boxcar, every number stenciled to the sides, every color and curve staggered and snaking toward the horizon.

He lands on the other side of the fence as Mara jumps from the bushes, slashes the chain link, runs over followed by Pig carefully ducking through then waddling to where they're standing. They hop the couplings and find the car. Monkey throws the door open and they crawl inside, closing it as quietly as one can close a rusty door.

"Shhhhhhh!!!!" a voice hushes from the darkness then the soft blue glow of a vape pen lights up a bearded face, then another and another, like fireflies, each letting out a puff of smoke then disappearing back into the darkness. As their eyes adjust they make out,

a grizzled beard
cowboy shirt with pearl inlays
perfectly worn Big-E Levi's with the cuff turned up
1967 Silvertone guitar leaning against
the atmospheric rust stains behind
can of locally sourced beans in one hand
and in the other
a phone
documenting his time
in tiny tweets
and meandering soliloquies
to an audience
of thirty-one
as he charts his progress
and extols life lessons
from his time
on the road

"What you boys doing here?" another voice calls out, a similar slender frame wearing a black jean jacket, Minor Threat patch safety pinned on the back and a slightly less grizzled beard. The first man turns to the second. "Are you really speaking in a southern accent? It seems a little...culturally appropriative."

"My grandfather was southern and I did go to Davidson."

"That's right. I got you confused with Sandbox."

Sandbox, who is busy tuning his one-string banjo, looks up and says, "I went to Princeton."

"Everyone knows you went to Princeton. Jesus Christ. Can we talk about something else."

"Wow, look at that guy," one of them points at Monkey. "What I wouldn't give to look that grizzled."

"If those wrinkles could talk, am I right?"

"So what brings you to down to the train yard? You boys running from the law?"

"Why would you assume they're criminals?" Sandbox shoots back. "Because they're ugly? Maybe they're just, you know, living," then looking at Monkey, "I've been on the road for two months trying to find myself."

"But you're right here," Monkey says.

"I apologize for my friends," the first one says. "My name is...Name."

"Your name is Name?" Mara says as condescendingly as she can trying hard to make sure everyone sees her eyes roll back in her head.

"That's right," and then taking another hit off his vape pen, "I'm not as privileged as these boys. I went to...a state school."

"You went to the University of Michigan, Kaleb," Sandbox says, "and your parents paid for the whole thing."

"I dropped out though," Kaleb says, "for a woman. Did a little time in prison..."

Button interrupts, "You got a DUI in Long Island. You spent three hours in a holding cell."

"It was rough though," Kaleb says picking up his guitar.

"Please don't," Mara says. "Please?"

He aimlessly picks the same lines of a distant blues song then, "I can tell you a thing or two about The System."

Mara looks at Monkey. "If you don't stop him I'm going to throw myself off this train." Monkey doesn't respond. "Can I at least cut his head off?" Mara sighs and goes to the furthest corner of the boxcar, lays down, covers her ears with her hands and tries for sleep. Pig follows. Monkey goes and sits next to the three men as a whistle howls in the distance.

"I have a drug problem," Button offers excitedly showing faint marks on his arm.

"We've all wrestled with death," Kaleb says closing his eyes and nodding his head.

"I wrestled death once," Monkey says looking at each of them. "I fell asleep one night and my soul was dragged to the underworld in chains. I fought so terribly that all the demons trembled with fear. I crossed out my name in the book of the dead. It's one of the ways I became immortal."

The guitar stops. The men look back and forth at each before Kaleb starts playing again.

"That's some deep poetry man. Deep. You've been to hell, but have you been to heaven?"

"Multiple times," Monkey says now happy to talk about something he knows. "I don't like it up there. Too much bureaucracy. Besides, no one likes me since I got drunk and trashed the place. Lao Tzu tried to burn me alive in his furnace. He's not a bad guy. He works at QuikTrip now. I haven't been there in a while." Monkey pauses. "Heaven. Not QuikTrip. I was at QuikTrip the other day." He shifts a bit then settles down. "They're probably still pissed at me there." Pauses again. "In heaven." Thinks for a moment. "They also might be pissed at me at QuikTrip though." Shrugs. "It's hard keeping track of all the people you've wronged when you've lived thousands of years."

"I feel like I've lived a thousand years just in this car," Kaleb says looking around at the steel walls.

"Have you been here that long? I spent five hundred years under a mountain once."

"Haven't we all," Kaleb says. "Haven't we all," then starts to sing, "Five hundred years under a mountain..." He trails off because he can't think of what comes next.

Monkey sees him struggle then offers, "They fed me iron balls and molten bronze."

Kaleb gives an appreciative nod, surges back with, "Iron balls and molten lead..." He winks at Monkey. "Lead sounds better." Strums for awhile then follows with, "Five hundred years under a mountain...Most days I wished I's dead." Kaleb smiles at himself for completing the rhyme then, "Yeah, I like that. Think I'm gonna steal that from you if you don't mind." Monkey nods as they all sit around and listen to Kaleb try and fail to come up with a second verse before he leans the guitar against the wall with a, "Well, that's all I got tonight."

The train lurches forward and starts moving, the sounds of rusty train parts scraping together fills the awkward silence as the vibrations from the floor shake them filling their heads with the rhythm of the track. Monkey looks backs at Pig, then around to the group. "Do you think," he pauses not sure how to say it, "that people can change? I mean, really change." All three of the vape pens light up in quick succession, communicating some strange language Monkey doesn't understand. Finally, Button offers, "Well, I had an ex-girlfriend who majored in Behavioral Genetics and she seemed to think there's a confluence of variables in terms of what makes us who we are, both social and genetic. The problem is, are you talking about personality traits, like the Big 5 that have been empirically documented or behavioral scripts that can be modified like, I don't know, alcoholism?" He pauses to see if Monkey is following. He can't tell so continues. "So to answer your question I think change is possible on a spectrum. You know, if someone is born with extremely high levels of anxiety, they could move the needle a bit in one direction, but I don't think you can have a massive personality shift..."

"Unless you suffer some kind of brain injury," Sandbox offers.

"Yeah, there've been documented cases of people who have personality shifts with brain injuries."

Monkey ponders then asks, "So if you hit someone hard enough on the head they become a different person?"

"Technically...yes, but the changes wouldn't be ideal. We're talking about things like a greater loss of self-control. Things like that."

"I guess it depends where you hit them."

"Yeah, whether you're talking about the cerebral cortex or the..." Button pauses not being able to remember another part of the brain. "It also depends on what stage of life the person is at. It seems we're much more malleable when we're younger and then as we age and get closer to death, we're more set in our ways."

Monkey looks back at Pig sleeping on the floor, the large black polyester shirt with flames shining in the little light that's managed to get through the cracks of the boxcar, the small body of Mara beside, her chest expanding ever so slightly with each breath.

"What if you don't die? What if you're immortal?"

Button thinks for a moment, "Well...I guess that'd be a real interesting test of how much an effect the environment has over shaping personality. I mean, if you're immortal and you live through civilization after civilization and don't change that much then that would point to some more innate features that aren't as malleable as we imagined."

Monkey doesn't answer and the conversation dies. Button fills the void with his one-string banjo as Monkey lies down in the corner opposite Mara and Pig, lays there with his eyes open, rocked slowly by the train, the constant rhythm of metal on metal mixed with the occasional sound of Pig snoring, the plucking of the banjo finding a few scraps of a song and following it for a while before the whole thing falls apart and becomes a bunch of random notes struggling to pull themselves together. He closes his eyes and tries for sleep.