Three days.

They kept me in the hole for three days. No food, no water except for the cold rains that came every night. Nothing to see but grey skies through the boards covering the hole.

Beyond my hole, in the tents, I could hear worn music being played on cheap radios. And every night, like a haunting dream, they played old rock anthems on mournful six-strings, and the breezes brought me scents of sweat, pot-smoke, and feces.

On the morning of the third, she came.

She pulled one of the boards back from my hole, and the gray, transparent glow of dawn bled on me. She looked down on me for a long time, like a physician studying a malignant growth. Her hair was long and dark, and her eyes looked sad in the ghost-light.

Maybe, I only imagined those eyes.

"Are you the one," she asked, her voice flat like a dull knife.

Rain drops began to fall on my face.

"Yes," I replied. "Was I expected?"

"You were inevitable," she said, shaking her head sadly. "The end of the poem."

I said nothing. Standing in the middle of my hole, standing in my own waste, I suddenly felt... embarrassed. It felt like all my sins were crawling on my skin, and my history was being burned in the sky for all to see.

"Here," she said suddenly. Metal rattled as she unlocked the rusty padlock that secured the heaviest board of my tiny prison. Her small hand reached down to me, and she pulled me out with ease.

"Write a poem with a good ending," she said and vanished in the direction of the tents. I stood there watching her. She never looked back.

I moved through the trees towards the trail-heads, and I could feel the pine needles with each step. In the shadows of the trees, pot plants spread their fronds, and the world seemed to hold its breath.

Where were the ubiquitous guards? Where was everybody?

I continued up the trail as the moisture in the air clung to my skin, and on my back, I could feel the pressure of a hundred unseen eyes.

* * *

The trail led to an old shed. It was ramshackle construction of rough, pine boards and tar paper. Rain-faded album covers were nailed over the shed's most gaping holes, and the blurred features of Mick Jagger stared, emptily into the woods.

He was sitting out front cleaning his .357 Mag revolver. A beaten guitar rested beside him. He wore dark shades, tattered jeans, and a t-shirt proclaiming, "Fear and Loathing." The dark glasses reflected the practiced movements of his hands as he cleaned his piece.

"You're looking for me," he said, not looking up from the gun.

The rain began to fall a little harder.

"Yes," I replied.

He casually began to load the gun with bullets that lay in the dirt and pine needles at his feet.

"They never found the car until the water level in the reservoir fell in the last drought," I said as I walked towards him.

The old man nodded and slid the last shell into the gun.

"They found five skeletons. Four male, one female," I said as I settled into a half-crouch beside him. "They figured it was the last of the BoneHead gang."

He smiled and slipped the cylinder into place.

"I know there's one more BoneHead left," I whispered.

The old bastard was fast. The blast of the gun destroyed my left eardrum as it went off inches from my head, but I was already diving towards the guitar. As he swung the gun to track me, I sent the guitar arcing towards his grizzled head, and it splintered when it connected. We both went reeling, and the revolver spun into the dirt.

I scrambled among the shards of the Horner, clutching a length of nylon string. I threw myself across the old man's back and wrapped the string around his neck. His fingers scratched the ground as he futilely groped for the gun. Slowly, his breathing became a hiss.

I rolled him over, and his purple lips slowly moved. I leaned over him with my good ear.

"The lameness. The lameness," he whispered, then died.

The heavens opened up, and the rains fell.

* * *

I dragged the body into the shed, and set it aflame with a Camel lighter I found inside. The shed set a pall of greasy, black smoke into the sky. I felt sick.

The marijuana tribesman were filing solemnly up the trail. One them carried a battered boom-box that echoed a funeral dirge played by hyper-kinetic robots. None of them looked at me as they filed past, towards their leader's funeral pyre.

Except for the girl.

I swear she was smiling as she quietly breathed, "Lick 'em."