"This is never going to work." Pig's laying by the side of the road, his belly hanging in the grass, Monkey stands with his thumb out, Mara using his shadow for shade looking at her phone. "Even if someone stops, the second we get in, her sword's going to cleave the car in half."

Monkey puts his thumb down.

"I didn't think of that."

"How bout this," Pig says rolling on his back, sunning himself and stretching his arms overhead. "How bout we bash her head in then we'll be in Florida before anyone knows what's happened."

Mara doesn't look up.

"We're not killing her." He scratches his head. "But we do need to find a sheath." He looks down the street. "Let's go this way."

Pig rolls onto his belly and props himself up looking at Monkey as he walks off. "Oh, so we're just blindly going in one direction hoping we'll find a magic sheath?"

Monkey doesn't answer. Mara, noticing her shade's gone, gets up, still on her phone and follows. Pig lays there, his fat pig cheeks resting in his palms then slowly pushes himself up and waddles after them following the highway along the outskirts of Memphis.

Dollar Trees and Denny's
disappear on the horizon
as they walk to where the plains of Tennessee
are interrupted by neon high heels
and the glowing blue musical notes
of a gentleman's club
plastered with signs like
OPEN
and
LIVE GIRLS
and
WE REFUSE THE RIGHT TO...
hand-painted across the cement blocks
drowned in a layer of pink
that drips off the building
and marks the empty parking lot lines of
Diamond Danny's Adult Disco

Pig stops, eyes transfixed as Monkey and Mara press on.

"Hey!" Pig calls out as they get further away.

Monkey turns around.

"We're not going in there. You know we're not going in there."

"There's probably a demon," Pig says. "I mean, it's a roadside strip club. How could there not be a demon in there?"

Monkey frowns, walks back to where he's standing, eyes turn to flames as his gaze penetrates the building then smolder into a black glare as he looks over to Mara.

"He's right."

Mara walks over and the three of them stand in front of Diamond Danny's watching the blue musical notes click on and off, the high heels kicking back and forth.

"On the one hand I'm glad women have the sexual freedom to be able to manipulate men out of their money," Mara says, "but on the other, they're still participating, and thus perpetuating, a sick male fantasy about being able to treat women as objects that can be controlled by money."

"I am also concerned about the emotional well being of these women," Pig says opening the door. "Let's see if we can help."

The empty seats
in a semi-circle around the stage
cast half-moon shadows
across the purple carpet
two silver poles
strobing colored lights
and Sal
sitting in his regular spot
reading the paper
occasionally peeking over
to watch Janet
crawl across the mirrored floor
to the wadded up dollar
he threw moments before
as the DJ paces the stall
talking to his boyfriend
and the mechanical lights
shift and move in no connection
to the music
Sal turns the page
as Janet hangs upside down
her forty-year-old thighs
clinging to the
cold steel

Pig goes to the front row and sits down. Sal looks over the top of his paper, folds it up then gesturing to Mara, "She can't be in here. What's the matter with you?" Mara pulls out her sword and points it at Sal's balding white head. He looks at the tip of her sword, over to Janet, shrugs, then opens his paper and continues reading.

"He's the demon," Mara says.

Sal looks over the top of his paper again. "Well you must know my ex-wife Sharon." No one laughs. "C'mon. I'm Sal," and then looking them over, "A monkey, a pig and a fourteen-year-old girl walk into a strip club..."

"I'm two thousand years old," Mara says raising the sword higher.

"You look good for your age." He turns the page. "You know, I'm almost 100 and like all old people I have some unwanted advice which you will not listen to but here it is anyway. Don't live to be 100. Sounds simple right? It's not. Everybody's worried about living a long life. When you're young you think, oh, I want more of this, sure, but what you don't consider is that when you're old, life sucks. The people you love die. Your body falls apart. And things get boring," Sal puts the paper down. "Do you know how many dead lovers I can't even remember?"

"He's just an old man," Monkey says to Mara.

"Just an old man." Sal laughs. "When you're young and you start out, you think, oh, this is meaningful. No one's ever experienced THIS. We're so SPECIAL. And then you do it, and you do it again, and again. And then one day you find yourself in a relationship and for the first time you start thinking about all the work and it starts to seem like more of the same, like, I've already done this and now I'm doing it with someone with a slightly different personality, with a slightly different body or whatever." Sal looks them over again. "It's like sex. The first five hundred times are pretty damn exciting. But then you've done just about everything. What's left? I'll tell you what's left. Sitting in a strip club and making friends with the girls while you read about the accomplishments and failures of younger men." Sal pauses to see if anything sunk in. "You don't know what I'm talking about. Why am I bothering talking to you?"

"Sal, you're gonna scare the customers away," Janet says putting her tube top on as her song ends. She turns to Mara, Monkey and Pig, "Welcome to Diamond Dan..." and for the first Janet takes it all in, the chubby demon pig sitting in the front row, a hairy ferocious-looking monkey in tiger print pants and a small girl holding a sword as large as her body.

"We're monks on a holy journey," Monkey says watching the panic spread across her face.

"He's a monk. I'm just a pig looking for a good time," Pig says winking at her.

"If you want me to kill him," Mara motions to Sal. "Just nod."

Janet, overwhelmed, does what Janet always does when she's overwhelmed, laughs and leaves the room. The DJ, who's just returned from the bathroom, picks up the mic, and looking at his 3 x 5 notecard resting on top of the mixer calls out, "Next up at Diamond Danny's we have a new girl. Please put your hands together for NASTY NATALIE!"

Natalie comes out and all eyes move to the stage. She twirls around the pole and sticks her ass in the air and jiggles it a few times before everyone loses interest except Pig.

"She's not new," Sal says turning to the Style section. "They say that about all the girls. It's supposed to get people excited."

"Shut the fuck up Sal," Natalie says doing another twirl, the pole between her legs as she stops and hovers over the floor, her arms outstretched.

"Yeah, shut up Sal," Pig says leaning in to get a better look.

"I'll tell you another thing," Sal licks his thumb and turns the page. "In my day, young people didn't talk to their elders that way. We didn't use those words."

"You mean when you were a young man hanging out in a strip club in the middle of the day on a Tuesday you didn't cuss at the old pervs that were there?" Mara says.

"You," Sal looks her over, "I don't like."

"Oh for fuck's sake." Natalie climbs off the stage. "If no one's gonna throw money up here, I'm sitting down with y'all."

The music keeps playing then finally cuts out halfway through as the DJ's voice comes back, "Uh, ok. Thank you Natalie. That was...um....nasty. Everyone give a round of applause for Natalie!" No one claps except Natalie who laughs and gives a couple of "Woo woo's!" then back to the DJ, "and next up. We have a new girl all the way from New York City. Let me hear you make some noise for.......Ashleeeeey!"

Blue skin and yellow cat eyes
long slender figure wearing
a black sequined slip
pushes through the velvet curtain
vinyl purse in one hand
an Apple-tini in the other
like sacred relics
she holds them
arms outstretched
as her head spins revealing three faces
and the stage lights up
in a soft blue flame

Monkey pulls out his cudgel. Pig grips his nine-pronged rake as Mara raises her sword.

"That's the demon," Monkey says.

Pig drops his stance. "Oh, really? You're sure it wasn't Natalie?"

"Go on then," Monkey says.

"Why me?"

"Because I got the last one."

Pig readies himself, takes a deep breath and leaps, his rake raised above his head as Ashley's head spins, locks onto him, points her martini glass and a firehose of Apple-tini shoots him back into the DJ booth. Pig wobbles then falls over the makeshift wall into the tables and chairs below as she sets her drink on stage, opens her gold clutch and sucks Pig off the floor and into the dark recesses of her purse as she picks her drink up off the stage and the blue flame burns brighter.

Monkey and Mara leap toward opposite sides as Ashley points her Apple-tini and sprays missing them both as they break through the wall of flames surrounding the stage. Ashley spins, throws the glass at Monkey and catches him smack in the face sending him tumbling to the floor. Mara raises her sword and slices at her cutting the slip revealing her blue naked body. She tries to open her purse but Mara brings her sword down cleaving her in two.

The two halves of Ashley keep dancing, fill themselves out. Mara slices those in half cutting across their waists, now making four, the tops falling to the floor, the bottoms, not missing a beat as they dance and sway to the electro pop synth keyboard solo. Surrounded, Mara cuts them into tinier pieces, each growing into a new Ashley.

"I would stop doing that," Monkey says getting up and holding his head.

"What else do you want me to do?!" Mara yells, and just as she's about to raise her sword again, Ashley opens her purse and they're sucked inside. As they disappear the blue flames surrounding the stage turn to a white heat, Sal's paper bursts into flames and they last thing they hear is, "Hey, I wasn't finished reading that."

Inside the purse Mara hacks at the soft blackness at her feet and that surrounds them on all sides.

"It's no use," Monkey says. "There's no bottom to this thing."

They look around and this is what they see,

a tube of lipstick the size of the empire states building
a gold condom 50 feet square
a pair of keys like a jagged metal bridge
connect a hotel key card to
her phone
the display lighting up
each time she misses a text
from her friend Betheny
who seems to be going through some things
with Steve
an orange plastic pill bottle
from someone else's grandma
a crumpled Bed Bath and Beyond receipt
from that time she bought bath salts
laying underneath
bath salts
two yellow submarine sized tampons
a silver skyscraper of Red Bull shining in the distance
half eaten pack of white cheddar Cheez-It's
next to the phone number from that guy in Dallas
and a pack of Parliament Lights
opened
with a pink lighter shoved inside
surrounded by five different kinds of coconut scented moisturizer
and that lip balm that looks like an egg
on top of a couple of Burger King napkins
with six bobby pins lying like telephone poles
and a hair clip like a bear trap
its teeth stuck in a Betty Boop Scrunchy
and a picture of her dead mother
sandwiched under her
contact case
wet naps
pack of Wrigley's gum
a sleep mask
replacement press-on nails
her pink mace
mouthwash
avocado face scrub
an eightball of coke sealed in cigarette cellophane
nail clippers
pregnancy test
pyramid scheme vitamins
and in the middle of it all
Pig
still drunk
passed out on
a giant white bar of Xanax
the size of a refrigerator

Suddenly a soft blue glow appears in the distance that fills the empty spaces around them, billowing up from the ground in a smokey ethereal haze that takes the shape of men, thousands of men, lost souls of the bachelor party milling around hands raised in the air with the only sound they can make a strained and hoarse, Woo! Men in suits, wife beaters, Patagonia sweaters or no shirt at all. Men with conference name tags still clipped to their polo's that say Bill or Mario or Dennis. Lost souls who cheated on their spouses the night before their wedding, on a business trip, or just some weekend, so worried about getting caught, they didn't notice Ashley sucking their soul which now wanders aimlessly through her purse forever looking for the bathroom.

Monkey, looking on his phone trying to find a good song for being trapped inside a stripper's purse, doesn't notice the ghost horde. Mara walks over to Pig and pushes him, "Wake up!" He doesn't move. She pulls out her sword and smacks him flatly on top of the head. "Hey!" Nothing. She looks around, sees the giant cigarette cellophane and slices through, the smaller pieces of coke falling down as she catches one, puts it on top of a nail clipper the size of a yacht and chops it up. She takes the dust and smashes it into Pigs face some of it going up his nose, most of it turning his face white like a mime.

Mara steps back and watches Pig's body start to jerk and convulse and then in a jolt, jumps off the Xanax and lands on the ground, eyes wide and searching. She walks over to Monkey and grabs his phone, pushes a few buttons and the first bars of "Love on the Brain" begin, gives him a look as if to say, 'of course this is the song playing in a strippers purse.'

"And you got me like, oh
What you want from me?
And I tried to buy your pretty heart,
But the price too
high"

The ghosts all start swaying with the music as they walk through them, trying to dance but not really dancing but still moving their body and looking around to make sure they're pretty much doing what everyone else around them is doing, and then going back to trying to act like they're really into it, then getting uncomfortable and stopping, then starting again because, really, there's nothing else to do.

"And I run for miles just to get a taste
must be love on the brain"

Pig stumbles, still drunk, hands outstretched feeling his way around as Monkey walks up behind Mara. "Just let him go for awhile." Pig walks around and introduces himself to the objects he runs into. "Oh, hello lipstick." He does this a couple times then falls over and lies there awhile before rolling over, his belly facing the black vinyl sky and says, "I want a cigarette." Monkey's ears perk up and he smiles.

Beneath the immensity that is Ashley's pack of Parliament Lights, they stand looking up, the top of the pack is opened and they can see the white filters protruding out into blackness of the sky, the blue rectangular logo bisected by a silver line towering above them. "Climb on my back," Monkey says to Mara who reluctantly gets on and closes her eyes as he hops and in one leap lands on the edge of the filter. She jumps down into the recessed end, the white walls encircling her as Monkey disappears and comes back in a few seconds with Pig who he tosses in, before hopping down himself.

"This looks like an insane asylum," Mara says walking in a circle around the foam floor running her hands along the wall. "So this is your plan? Wait here, till she gets drunk enough to want a cigarette?"

"It's bound to happen sometime." Monkey says lying down watching for any hint of light.

"And then she's going to pick one, and eventually, she's going to pick OUR cigarette and put it in her mouth, and then what?"

"And then I'm going to go down her throat and rip up her insides."

Mara walks over and sits down cross legged.

"What about us? She's going to eat us too."

Monkey side-eyes her for a moment then goes back to looking above.

"You'll be fine."

She looks up at the vast blackness. Not a single speck of light.

"It was my father," she says pushing on the foam with her hands leaving two small imprints, "that stabbed me." Monkey turns his head toward her. "The dagger had been there for." Her eyebrows scrunch up. "I don't know how long."

Monkey gives her a long look then finally says, "How's your side?"

She touches it. "It's fine."

Pig rolls past giggling, "I'm on the MOON!" before running into one of the paper walls. Monkey gets up, walks over to him, takes a cigarette out of his pack, punches a hole and carves out an arched window with his hand then lights one and stares down to the mess below. He takes a couple drags and blows it out the window looking far into the distance.

"What are you doing?" Mara says walking over.

"I don't know," Monkey says looking at his cigarette. "I see people do this in movies. I think you're supposed to have deep thoughts like this."

"Are you having deep thoughts?"

"No." He takes another drag and exhales. "I feel like I could've said something to you back there, that was, I don't know, important, but I couldn't think of anything. If Tang Sanzang were here he'd know what to say."

"I'm not looking for advice," Mara says folding her arms at the base of the window and setting her head on top. "I don't tell people things so they can solve my problems." She looks up at him. "It just feels good to share something you've been thinking about but haven't wanted to say out loud."

Monkey smokes in silence then throws it out the window. They watch the tiny red cherry fall.

"Sometimes...." Monkey pauses. "I don't know if I'm making things better or worse." He smiles showing all his teeth. "How was that?"

"Pretty vague. But a start. I guess. Do you feel better?"

"No."

"Yeah, me neither."

A giant crack of light appears in the sky that opens up to a yellow almond shape. A hand reaches down, fishes around, finds the cigarettes and pulls them out. Monkey and Mara cling to the foam as Pig falls over and tumbles smacking into the flimsy paper wall crumpling it, and then over the side. Monkey grabs Mara and leaps off the end, catching Pig and shouting, "Change!" as they grow to their normal size and hit the strip club floor. Monkey spins around only to find Sal sitting at the table, cigarette in hand, the head of the demon stripper on the table with a newspaper folded next to it.

He lights his cigarette, takes a couple of drags then, "You know I haven't had a cigarette since 1996." He sets the cigarette on the end of the table so the cherry hangs off the side then opens his paper and continues to read. Monkey puts his cudgel away as Mara and Pig collect themselves and come over. Sal looks over the top of his paper at Mara and says, "You know you really shouldn't cut up an Asura like that, though I suppose you know that already. Gotta twist their heads off with your bare hands. But... what do I know. I'm just an old white guy." He turns the page.

"Who are you?" Monkey demands. Sal folds his paper and sets it in his lap, picks up the cigarette off the table. "Who I am is probably the least interesting thing about me." Takes a drag. "I do know who you are Sun Wukong, Zhu Bajie and Mara, Daughter of, um, Mara. And I have something for each of you on your quest. I don't offer magic relics, just the wisdom of an old man, and I'll start with you Monkey so you can relax and stop pointing that damn thing at me." Monkey relaxes his posture a bit and rests the end of the cudgel on the floor. "Thank you. Ok. Where was I? Right. Monkey, the man you seek is in Florida."

"I already knew that," Monkey says frowning.

"Oh....Well now it's confirmed...so, it's always better to have confirmation, right?"

Monkey continues to frown as Sal turns to Pig, red rings around his eyes, his face still covered in white powder and says, "What you don't know is a lot."

"That's it?"

"That's it," Sal says directing his gaze to Mara.

"This is bullshit."

Sals eyes go back to Pig.

"Well I used to have all sorts of magical relics to give wandering adventurers but you know after years and years of people coming through here and taking them all, at some point you just run out. What do you think you can go down to Target and buy a mechanical golden owl of wisdom or a staff that, I don't know, turns into a snake? It takes thousands of years to craft these things, and do you think after it's all said and done that people are like, 'Oh thank you Sal for saving my life with your eternal fishnet of justice. I guess since I've vanquished my mortal enemy I'll return it back to the person who gave it to me? No. They just leave it there. No use for that anymore!"

"It is a gift though, right?" Mara says. "You don't expect someone to return a gift."

"Ok, you know what?" Sal looks flustered. "Let's just get on with this." He turns his attention back to Mara. "So, a total stab in the dark but I'm willing to bet you aren't interested in my advice. Am I right?" Mara nods. "Right. So I do see you've been carving some nice abstract designs in my floor with that sword of yours, and, you know, I just had these floors redone a few years back by these Iranian brothers. They yell at each other the entire time but man do they do good work. Not cheap either. Not that I'm going to send you a bill."

"Get to the point," Mara says.

"Fine. Give me your sword."

Mara puts her hand on the hilt and takes a step back.

"Look, if I wanted to hurt you, your head would be sitting up here next to Ashley. Now c'mon. You're in a rush and I want to get back to my puzzles."

Mara looks at Monkey who shrugs then motions with his head toward Sal. Mara tentatively steps forward, takes her sword out and hands it to him. Sal flips it over and examines it.

"You know I said I wasn't going to give you any advice but I just can't help myself, so here it is. You're not using this thing right. If you were using it right it would be bursting with flames, like in the pictures. You've seen the pictures of Manjushri holding his sword right? Above his head. Like this." Sal raises it above his head with his right hand and then with his left palm facing out with his thumb tucked under." Pretty...what do the kids say now? Badass."

"We don't say that." Mara says. "No one says that."

"Well, be that as it may. The point is that this isn't the sword of Justice, darling. It's the sword that cuts through ignorance and duality, if you don't mind me getting a little metaphysical for a moment. I mean, go ahead and continue to chop people's head off, but it's a lot more powerful if you use it right. I'm not going to ask why you have Manjushri's sword because I know he's probably missing it, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway," Sal sets the sword down on the table and rummages through the purse. "I've said my piece." He plucks out the gold condom, puts it in his left palm, and waves his right over a few times. The condom starts to glow a golden yellow as he picks up the sword and pulls the glowing gold aura all the way down to the hilt, where it lets out a final blast of light before transforming into a golden filigreed metal sheath.

"Gross!" Mara yells as Sal hands it back to her. "I hate you so much."

Sal smiles. "That's fine. Keep on hating me. See where that gets you. Now if you don't mind," he says as he unfolds his paper and disappears behind it. "I've got some work to do."