Volume 01, Story 12
Homeboy shows up at Chino’s door with a Christmas present in name only: a tin of PTSDream, five joints hand-rolled by Uncle Rob and pitched as a cure for nightmares and old curses alike, smelling of lavender, burnt sage, and a little bit of menace. It smells like Lucy. It smells like heaven. They don’t get to test it. Mary Jane’s at the door reminding them they’re due at the dispensary, where Mr. Dealer is losing his mind because today’s the day El Cucuy and the Nightmares play The Colosseum, and Mr. Dealer’s Dispensary has the exclusive on party favors. Chino and Homeboy get handed two boxes, Trixie’s Fairy Dust Chocolate Bars and joint samples, and pointed at the parking lot while the Dealers run the THC Truck and the Kush Monsters haul product. On the way over, a white product van gets pulled over: a corrupt cop cracks a baton across the Kush Monster driver’s head, and out of the Ominous Forest come Billy and Cliff with a crew of rednecks, who climb into the van and lace the whole shipment with LSD before vanishing.
A borrowed badge and some smooth talking get Chino and Homeboy past a vending-machine-shaped Security Guard (we don’t need no stinking badges), and a young staffer named Alice, clipboard in hand and unconvinced they belong, until Homeboy produces the PTSDream tin like a passport. That buys them all-access VIP passes (plus a Durban Poison tube for Alice, tucked somewhere secure) and a green room full of legends: El Cucuy himself, wrinkled, sharp-eared, bald-headed, beard groomed by the gods, already calling them by name: I’m El Cucuy. I know everyone’s name. His band shouldn’t exist outside of bedtime stories your abuela told you to make you behave: La Llorona in a ghostly white gown, spinning a drumstick and sipping from a dragon-claw wine glass; Baba Yaga in the corner, looking exactly like Keanu Reeves wandered into a Slavic legend, lost in a traveler bass; Krampus behind the bar, towering and horned, mixing drinks with centuries of practice; and Nixie at the bar swirling whiskey: call me Nixie, she corrects Homeboy, who’d called her The Näcken and immediately forgot how to breathe. El Cucuy is warm, curious, and very interested in what’s in their pockets. No threat in him at all, just a rock star working an angle. He wants Alien OG and Durban Poison for the afterparty, and has the production assistant take their numbers. We gots it like that.
Back outside working the crowd, Homeboy can’t shake the feeling that something’s wrong with the product they’ve been handing out: a smell he knows but can’t place, and he’s right about it. Partway through the set, with El Cucuy mid-song on Empire to Ashes and the crowd packed shoulder to shoulder, a multicolored cloud starts curdling above the venue, and it isn’t the weed smoke. Homeboy cracks a sample tube open for a sniff and the cloud curdles all the way into dark red and black, raining down visions of torment, slaves in chains, rotting masters, screaming mouths, while the crowd panics. Acid! All the weed they handed out was laced. The band gets rushed offstage straight into Chino and Homeboy, and El Cucuy is staring at a riot he has never seen in all his centuries. Homeboy holds up the tin: PTSDream, designed to stop nightmares. Five joints for thousands of people. Chino’s fix: dose the band. The Nightmares have never played high (we don’t talk about that, El Cucuy snaps, when Baba Yaga mentions the one time; I drove the bar insane, Nixie corrects, their powers just amplified it), but there’s no alternative, so: smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. They go back out and open with Lux Intima, and what follows is a visible war in the sky: the band’s multicolored cloud of love and longing colliding with the red-black mist of horror, verse by verse, until the light burns through and the whole venue glows white. The crowd erupts. Alice throws her arms around Chino and kisses him full on the mouth. And Homeboy sits alone on the steps, staring into the empty tin, head in his hands.
The night ends at the penthouse afterparty, Kush Fairies lighting joints mid-flight, the band sprawled across couches, Chino and Alice trading kisses between hits, and El Cucuy takes the mic for the only speech that matters: I want to thank Chino and Homeboy. You guys are the real MVPs.
Featuring Chino, Homeboy, El Cucuy, Alice, Mary Jane, Mr. Dealer, Mrs. Dealer, Baba Yaga, La Llorona, Krampus, Nixie, Kush Monster Driver, Corrupt Police Officer.
Read the full story in The Adventures of Chino & Homeboy, Volume 01