A couple of days ago it had all come crashing down. The bad things came, like a winter storm. Pushed over the edge, I found myself in the cold no-man's land between right and wrong. No road-signs. On a crash-course with the local Hudderites. With nothing to lose. The Mennonites were trailing me by the dotted line of empty orage peels that I left behind. I was trying to look for the answers, but every hay bale, instead of closure, was just another itchy brick with more questions chaffing up. A spreading labyrinth of questions, like a pool of hot whizz spreading on the snow.

The car stops in the traffic lights. Outside, the light paints snow red, like the whole town was in flames. But inside, in the shadows of the car, it's all done in blues. I know I'm lying to myself. No amount of painkillers can keep this ache away. No lie can hide it. I'm not really in the back seat of this car. It didn't start in the diner with Sebastian. It started three years ago in my garden. And I haven't left that garden since. The vandalist knocked unconcious at my feet on the floor.

PerryWinkle lying on the rotting pumpkins. Cracked and smashed. That wire driveway refelector, like an exclamation mark to end it all, the answer to all my questions, had already rung out a long time ago, even its echoes gone. The fist was fused to my hand from that moment on. That garden inside me everywhere I go.

Especially now as the town presses close to the windows of the car, its monstous german immigrant heartbeat under the tires. My squinted eyes in the rearview mirror. My hands numb and held awkwardly behind my back. Everything that came after that room is a hopelessmess, a chaotic swirl, rising nausea that tastes like rust in my mouth.

In loving memory. PerryWinkle

In the backseat of a moving car, I am cut loose from the
town of Steinbach. It watches me pass with sharp neon eyes. The night has gilded the Window factories in silver. Every brick wall is covered with graffiti. The image of a red "M' with a Maple leaf and skull drawn in, repeated over and over. M for the 31st Mapple Street. The Gang. The red and blue of the police car's lights flash on the white snow. Something goes clank in the night, and the sound is close enough to a can of peaches hitting the wall, to take me back to the beginning. My last meeting with Sebastian before he went undercover. Sitting in a crummy diner opposite me, he had grinned, a friendly bear, but I had seen it in his eyes. We hadn't been on the side of the winners in a long time. He was playing it safe. It must have been there. The sign of things to come. Clear in the fear in Sebastians's eyes, in the darkness of the Nestea I was drinking, in the way my missing pie fork dug painfully into my side. But we were blind to it then, closing our eyes to it. Refusing to see it. I had time to take a surveillance shot eariler that day... rumours from what I heard Hudderites from the Riemer Bros Posse are getting restless.

Above: choppy video surveillance that was taken eariler that morning, it shows some local thugs from the Riemer Bros Posse or "RBP" are up to no good with those horse carriges. Petty primitive auto theft is a a major source of income for the RBP gang.

Tonight is not a good night,  the local gangs are getting restless. The cops won't do anything about it because the aligations were based on rumours and were discredited. They've infitrated one of the free-agents into the ranks a local hardware store that appears to be behind the distribution of the money. Things look bad, there might be an all out gang war if one gang is driven to the extreme. My crafting service prices have trippled due to the overwhelming demand of my supplies. Profit is rolling in, but at what cost? Sooner or later, one will disperse, that'll be a great time from me to pick up some free-agents.

Above: I've hired local window worker, Sebastain, aka "But I want Chicken Teryaki" for a little extra security around here...and to wash my car if it get's filthy, I hope he uses the good wax, none of that PEP Boys crap either.