Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical: A Novel
Author: Cameron Pierce; Adam Cesare; Shane McKenzie
Date: 2014-08-22 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Humour; Crime
Description: Thirty, jobless, and going pre-maturely bald, amateur director Simon has dumped every last dime into his pet project: a musical adaptation of the cult film LEPRECHAUN IN THE HOOD. With a week til curtains up, the production is a disaster. His actors can't act, his crew hates his guts, and his set has a tendency to go up in flames. And all that is before the actual leprechaun, a mythological beast with a penchant for limericks and grisly murder, catches wind of the whole operation. Gathering as many four leaf-clovers and wrought-iron spears as they can, the surviving cast and crew must band tog
Publisher: Broken River Books

“Unflinching and uncompromising, tough and talented, Shane McKenzie stands at the forefront of the next generation of horror writers.”

—Bentley Little on Shane McKenzie

“McKenzie’s prose strikes like a sledge-hammer to the belly and a baseball bat to the crotch.”

—Edward Lee on Shane McKenzie

“Of all the new writers busting out on the scene, Cesare’s the young guy with the greatest encyclopedic gorehound know-how, blistering cinematic pace, unquenchable love of both fiction and film, and hell-bent will to entertain.”

—John Skipp on Adam Cesare

“When it comes to entertaining, throwback, film-centric horror, Cesare has invented his own subgenre. It started with
Tribesmen, but
Video Night pushed it to a new level while simultaneously establishing its author as one of the most talented and engaging voices of horror fiction’s newest wave.”

—HorrorTalk on Adam Cesare

“Pierce is one of the weirdest, most imaginative writers around.”

—Lloyd Kaufman on Cameron Pierce

“Before he goes gently into that weird night by spontaneously combusting, Pierce seems hellbent on writing his fill of Bizarro lit. His tales include many standard tropes, like pickles and pancakes falling in love, or ass-shaped goblins who abduct children for slave labor and eating, or flying Biblical sharks. It’s a scene.”

—Cracked.com on Cameron Pierce

A Broken River Books original

Broken River Books

10765 SW Murdock Lane

Apt. G6

Tigard, OR 97224

Copyright © 2014 by Cameron Pierce, Adam Cesare, and Shane McKenzie

Cover art and design copyright © 2014 by Matthew Revert
www.matthewrevert.com

Interior design by J David Osborne

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Where the names of actual celebrities or corporate entities appear, they are used for fictional purposes and do not constitute assertions of fact. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

ISBN: 978-1-940885-12-4

Printed in the USA.

For Mark Jones and Simon Oré

A rainbow streaked across the sky, the air still heavy and moist from the recent downpour. The sun poked its face out from the center of a mass of inky clouds like an ultraviolet egg yolk in a frying pan. At the base of an old, twisted oak tree, the rainbow ended. The tree’s branches were bare of any leaves, and its bark was the color of ashy elephant flesh. Pinned to the bark was a flamboyant poster, copies of which were stapled to other nearby trees as well.

“What’s this then?”

The leprechaun waddled out from the doorway at the bottom of the tree which led to his underground lair. His hand—large in comparison to the rest of him, the fingers equipped with long, dagger-like nails encrusted in a mossy green film—ripped the poster from the tree. His nails punctured the paper as the ancient wee-person held the poster at arm’s length and read, his green pupils darting from left to right, left to right.

His thick, oily lips pulled back, revealing the rotten, jagged teeth beneath. A low growl rumbled from his throat and he balled up the poster in his fist, then strode back toward the opening he had just emerged from.

The leprechaun entered his lair, and with a wave of his hand, the door slowly shut behind him. As he trudged down the spiral stone steps, he opened up the ball of paper in his hand and glared at the flyer once more.

“Try as they will. Try as they might,” he said as he took the steps slowly, his scowl now pulled into a tight, hideous grin. “If you think you’ll get away with this, you’re high as a kite.”

He trudged across the den on his stubby legs, which were wrapped tightly with green striped spandex, his feet tucked into his shiny black shoes with golden buckles. The pot of gold sat safely in its niche, protected by a prison of thick tree roots. The leprechaun pressed the backs of his hands together, and then pulled them apart slowly. The roots stretched and parted, just wide enough for him to plunge his fingers into the tub of gold coins, let the cool metal slide over his palms. A whimper trickled from his throat and he licked his lips, whispered to the gold and giggled.

“Hello, my delicious little pretties,” he said, kissing each coin and chuckling. He counted them, as he did each morning, and his grin stretched wider when the hundredth coin dropped back into the pot. “All present and accounted for.”

He plucked the golden flute from amongst the coins and played a tiny tune before replacing it, running his fingers over its surface lovingly.

The leprechaun waved his hands once more and the roots writhed into an impenetrable cage, shielding the gold from prying hands. He faced the old wooden wall on the opposite side.

He glared at the poster, his fists trembling as he studied it. “It’s not nice to steal the copyright from a leprechaun.”

His hands rubbed together as if trying to keep warm, and as he pulled them apart and toward his chest, the wall began to rumble and warp. The wood reshaped as if made of putty, pulling out into a low shelf.

The leprechaun approached, and when he reached it, he hopped once, stomping his feet. A round stump rose from the floor like a wooden zit, glistening with sap, and the wee man took a seat, the shelf at belly-level.

He slapped the poster down on the desk, smoothed it out.

“A musical they plan, my character the star. I’ll toss their nuts in a pickling jar.”

The razor-sharp nails slid across the wood in circular motions, tapping and scraping. Small bumps began to rise from the surface like square pustules, making a creaking sound as they pushed themselves out. Tiny symbols burned into the surface of each key.

The leprechaun cracked his knuckles, shook his hands out until green sparks ignited from his fingertips. He made a square shape with his thumbs and forefingers, and when he pulled them apart, a bright green screen appeared on the wall just in front of him.

“Time for a little research.”

He placed his fingertips to the wooden keyboard and began typing.

As the images and articles scrolled across his magical screen, the anger inside of him began to boil—his eyes ignited into a blinding green light. He curled his lips and widened his nostrils as he read.

An instant cult classic, one article called it.

Promises not to disappoint.

Surely a must-see for all Lep fans!

The leprechaun growled and slammed his fist against the desk.

The ghastly films were bad enough, but the leprechaun had no choice in the matter. He had been bound by magical law. The filmmakers had found his gold, had demanded their wishes.

Six films, they wanted. Six films using the leprechaun’s likeness. And their wish was granted—it tore the leprechaun apart to see his kind mocked, to see what a joke he had become (though he had to admit he got a kick out of the Hood films. He had even tried picking weeds around the forest, stuffing it into his pipe, but never got the effect portrayed in the movies).

But this?

“They had no gold, they had no wishes. And now I’ll kill those sons of bitches.”

As he cackled, hopping up and down with glee at the thought of ripping those thieves apart and swimming in their entrails, the floor rumbled again.

“What…what’s this?”

The leprechaun went weak in the knees and collapsed onto his back. He could feel his powers draining from his body, as if he were a sponge being squeezed dry.

No…no!

He managed to sit up just far enough to watch his pot of gold fade in and out of existence behind its wooden prison. He reached his clawed hands out, his teeth chattering, and when the gold fizzled away into nothingness, he tilted his head back and shrieked. He shrieked until the back of his throat gurgled green blood.

“They stole me property! They stole me gold! I won’t stop until their blood runs cold!”

Once again, the cardboard Impala had burst into flames. Opening night was Friday, but their corn syrup blood was still too pink, their props malfunctioned half the time, and their leprechaun couldn’t act.

Or sing.

Simon ran his fingers through his thinning hair. He hung his head in disappointment and disgust. Three weeks on the set of Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical had ruined him, not to mention his cast and crew, who were all in as bad a shape, if not worse. Three weeks. That’s how long it took to destroy Simon’s greatest dream. His directorial debut was going to be a total disaster.

“Do you want to try that scene again?” The voice belonged to Marvin Brinks, the only midget actor Simon had been able to afford in Portland. Simon had posted Craigslist ads in cities throughout the Pacific Northwest, but no one wanted to play the part for free. Except for Marvin, a fan of the Leprechaun franchise with no acting experience.

Byron, Simon’s best friend and the musical’s hip hop star, extinguished the flames from the burning Impala as the rest of the cast stood around with crossed arms and sour faces. Byron’s character was the man in charge of facing off against their pint-sized villain. The Impala fell facedown, half-devoured, smoking.

“We could always run through some of the musical numbers,” Byron said.

Simon shook his head no. “Call it a day. We’ll meet up tomorrow at noon. This time, we’ll have two Impalas, in case something goes wrong.”

“You mean when something goes wrong,” somebody muttered, but Simon couldn’t catch who.

Everyone rushed off without a word. Everyone except for Byron and Marvin. They remained onstage, his rapper and his leprechaun, left staring down at Simon from the stage of the empty theater.

“I can get this right,” Marvin pleaded. “Just give me another shot. Let’s go one more time.”

“You’ve had your shot,” Byron said. “Opening night is Friday.”

Simon held up a hand to silence them. “I need a fucking beer. Anyone oppose?”

Nobody did.

The Lovecraft Bar was deserted except for a goth couple sitting in a corner booth. Onstage, a DJ spun apocalyptic folk music.

“I’ll buy the first round,” Simon said.

Kay was tending the bar. She was a bleach-blonde punk girl with the complexion of a porcelain doll, eyes as green as emeralds. “How’s the musical going?” she asked.

“I’ll consider it a success if we don’t burn the theater down,” Simon said.

Kay laughed and asked what he’d be having.

He ordered three Pabst Blue Ribbons on draught.

She grabbed three frosty pint glasses out of the fridge. “You can sit down,” she said. “I’ll bring them over.”

“Do you want me to leave a card with you?” Simon said, reaching for his wallet.

“On the house,” she said, smiling.

Simon thanked her and shuffled to the booth where Byron and Marvin sat. He wondered if Kay was flirting with him or simply taking pity. He’d wanted to ask her out for months. Once Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical was out of his life, it’d be the first thing he’d do.

“You cannot sincerely believe Jason X is a better film than Leprechaun 4: In Space,” Marvin was saying as Simon sat down. Simon noticed that the man hadn’t even washed off his leprechaun makeup. They didn’t have professional prosthetics, just some spirit gum and paint, but in the dark bar he almost looked like Warwick Davis reprising his famous role.

Byron sighed, tired of this old argument. “All I’m saying is: Jason X is scary. You’re afraid for the people on the spaceship. Leprechaun 4: In Space isn’t scary. It’s just fucking weird. Straight-to-video, too. Jason X was theatrical.”

“Fear is in the eye of the beholder. And it doesn’t bow to budgetary constraints. Now if you don’t peep down, I’ll burn ye eyeballs out,” Marvin said, in an almost-convincing leprechaun voice.

“Hey, that’s not bad. It doesn’t rhyme, but it’s not bad,” Simon said. “Why can’t you bring that voice to rehearsal?”

Marvin slumped against the bench and stared sadly at his hands. His chin barely reached the tabletop between them.

Simon already knew the answer to his question. Marvin suffered from stage fright. He’d memorized every Leprechaun film by heart. He’d mastered the subtleties of the character, but he’d done it by himself, out of loneliness and boredom, so that when he stepped in front of a crowd, his secret talent vanished. His obsession came unraveled.

Kay brought over their beers, interrupting their reverie. As she turned away, Simon caught a glimpse of the freshly tattooed Crass logo on the back of her neck. He made a mental note to inquire about it later.

“Cheers, guys,” Simon said, raising his beer. They clinked glasses. “To the Lep in the Hood.”

“To the Lep in the Hood,” Byron and Marvin repeated.

“Now what I really want to discuss are the musical numbers,” Byron said. “I feel like ‘Bitches Be Spooky’ still needs a lot of work.”

“We’ll get to that,” Simon said, “but first we need to figure out what we’re doing with the Impala scene. It’s arguably the most critical scene in the entire musical, and right now it falls flat.”

“Way flat,” Byron said.

Simon glared at him, warning him not to interrupt again, before continuing. “Let’s run through this step by step. Marvin, when the gangster enters stage left, driving the hydraulic Impala across the stage, you’re lowered down from the rafters. The gangster slams on the brakes inches from hitting you. The car keeps bouncing. You say, ‘Bumpin’ ride, lad,’ then you use the Spider-Man web sprayer full of lighter fluid to blast him away. Lightning will flash, some thunder sound effects will play, and the audience will understand that you’ve just killed the gangster with lightning. He’ll go up in flames and you’ll hop into the hydraulic Impala. After that, it’s cake. You’re just on a road rampage, running over people in your bouncing car.” Simon paused for a slug of beer. “The problem we’re having is with the fire. You’ve got to shoot straight with the web sprayer. If you hit the cardboard car, then the car is liable to go up in flames when the gangster secretly sets himself on fire. You follow me?”

Marvin nodded in earnest even though they’d been over this a hundred times in the previous weeks. “Shoot straight,” he said. “Yeah, I can do that.” He couldn’t.

Byron drained his beer and slammed his glass down on the table. “Let me by. I gotta piss.”

“We’re in the middle of something,” Simon said.

“Look, man. Let’s just cut the flames. It’s dangerous and we keep fucking it up. We have the lightning and thunder effects. Isn’t that enough? I mean, when the theater finds out that we’re setting a dude on fire, they’re gonna cancel the whole show.”

“The flames stay.” Simon remained seated. “And they won’t kick us out because by the time they hear of it, the musical will be so successful, they’ll beg us to extend the run.”

“Maybe Byron’s right,” Marvin said.

Byron gestured toward the bathroom. “Hey man, I really need to piss.”

Byron groaned as he spotted the Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical poster taped above the toilet. The poster could be seen all over town, appended to telephone poles, in shop windows, in bars and cafes—even randomly stapled to trees in the woods. Marvin admitted he had been stoned when he posted those up, and they had wasted a good hundred flyers. Although Byron admired Simon’s enthusiasm, he worried that his friend had devoted more time to talking up the musical than in creating a quality production. Part of his misgivings stemmed from jealousy. He was painfully aware of that.

With no previous accomplishments—and without having shit to show for talent—Simon had successfully managed a small Kickstarter campaign to raise money for Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical. Rue Morgue, Fangoria, Bloody Disgusting, and everywhere else that mattered in the horror business had already run articles on Simon and the musical. The outlets praised the idea’s audacity while disregarding the fact that its creator was an unemployed horror fan who spent eighty percent of his waking hours drunk, stoned, and watching movies. One of the Portland weeklies had gone so far as to deem the musical “an instant cult classic” months before opening night. Nobody outside the cast and crew had even read the script. On Friday, the train wreck would finally go public. Part of Byron hoped it would go as badly as he suspected. He hated that part of himself. Simon was a good guy, a dependable friend.

Besides, what Simon was up to seemed to be the heart and soul of the genre business: hucksterism. Posters created before scripts, concepts that promised the moon but delivered shit. William Castle and Roger Corman would be proud of Simon.

It didn’t much matter either way; Byron played one of the two leads. If this ship was sinking, he was going down with it.

“Marvin, I swear. We’re not going to get sued. Even if we do, it’s my ass on the line. Not yours.”

Whenever doubts or reservations about the musical were discussed, Marvin reiterated his lingering fear of legal repercussions.

“My nephew got sued for illegally downloading a movie,” Marvin said. “I don’t want to get sued.”

“We won’t get sued.”

“You can’t guarantee that.”

Simon watched Byron exit the bathroom, but as soon as he came within earshot of the booth, he made a beeline for the bar. Byron probably overheard part of their conversation and decided he wanted no part of it. Soothing Marvin was a real pain in the ass.

Simon laid his palms flat on the table and stood, looming over Marvin. “What we’re doing is protected under parody law. We changed character names, storyline, dialogue, songs. Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical is a totally different thing than Leprechaun in the Hood or Lep Back 2 Tha Hood.”

“What about the leprechaun?” Marvin said.

“What do you mean?”

“What if they sue us over using a leprechaun in our musical? Maybe I should be a dwarf instead. Dwarf in the Hood has a nice ring to it.”

“We’re not changing shit. I didn’t raise money and spend all this time creating promotional material only to render it all useless at the last minute. Anyway, you can’t copyright a mythological creature. Vampires, werewolves, zombies . . . if all that shit was copyrighted, horror wouldn’t exist as a genre. Leprechauns are fair game. If somebody has a problem, they can kiss my Irish ass.”

“I didn’t know you were Irish.”

“I’m not. You want another beer?”

At the bar, Byron was putting back a shot of whiskey as Kay filled a pint of Pabst. “What was that about?” he asked Simon.

The director sighed. “Same old shit. He’s worried about getting sued when he should be worrying about not fucking this whole thing up for everyone.”

“Tall order for a short man,” Byron cracked.

Kay slid Byron’s beer across the bar and smiled at Simon. “Another PBR?”

“Make it two,” Simon said, trying to smile back at her in a casual, nonplussed way.

“I got this round,” Byron said. He took his beer back to the booth, leaving Simon alone with Kay.

“I like the new tattoo,” Simon said.

“Oh, thanks,” she said.

The two beers foamed over their rims and onto the bar, but Kay didn’t seem to care. She’d locked eyes with Simon. He worried that she could hear his heart pounding in his chest, or spot the nose hairs that had recently begun reaching beyond the rims of his nostrils, into the embarrassing light. He should have plucked.

“So . . . are you coming to opening night?” He said it in a pickup-line sort of way. Oh, man. Could he have come up with anything stupider?

“I don’t know yet. My boyfriend wants to go. If he’s off work on Friday, we’ll totally be there.”

Her. Boyfriend.

Kay had a boyfriend. He was probably big and tatted up, some rockabilly asshole with broad shoulders and a bad attitude. Well, a worse attitude than Simon.

“Can I get a shot of well whiskey, too?” Simon asked.

It was the beginning of another long night of shithead feelings and circular, pointless conversations. Another night getting drunk with his best friend and a dude dressed as a leprechaun, but in a few days, the biggest night of his life would be behind him. After opening night and the subsequent performances spread over the following two weekends, life would return to normal. He’d remember that he was broke and jobless, that he was approaching thirty, prematurely balding, carrying a beer gut incongruous to his beanpole frame, and had never been in a serious relationship. People would see his musical and tell their friends how bad it sucked. He wouldn’t be a hero. He’d be a joke. He couldn’t be sorrier to see this good time go.

Back at their booth, Byron and Marvin had rekindled their argument about Jason X and Leprechaun 4: In Space.

Yeah, just another night.

Waking up was bloody awful.

Between the rotten taste in his mouth, the pounding head, and the lead balloon throbbing in his gut, Simon felt like shit. Bleary-eyed, he attempted to climb out of bed only to realize he was on the floor. He scratched the back of his head and picked a pepperoni slice out of his hair. When had he ordered a pizza?

He rubbed the drunk out of his eyes and assessed his surroundings. He was on the floor of Byron’s living room. An empty pizza box lay open beside him. The grease was wiped clean where his head had rested. Okay, so he’d used a pizza box as a pillow. Not the first time, probably not the last.

Looking around he thought he was alone, before he caught sight of Marvin passed out on the couch beneath a mountain of crushed Pabst cans. Stacking was a favorite game of his and Byron’s. They’d never stacked on a midget before. Nice.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket to take a photo of Marvin only to discover that his drunk self had beaten him to it. He had a dozen texts from as many friends and acquaintances to a photo he apparently took last night of Marvin beneath the beer cans. The responses ranged from Do I know you? Why are you sending me this? and What the fuck? It’s four-thirty in the morning. to Sweet lord, this is righteous. and OMG. MIDGET STACKING. In all, he’d sent the photo to thirty-seven people. Kay was among them, but she had not responded.

He wondered how and when they’d acquired the pizza as he crawled to the bathroom, too hung over to stand. He turned on the hot water faucet in the bathtub. As the water warmed, he pushed himself to his feet and stumbled to the toilet to take a leak.

He’d unzipped and begun the process of trying to go (after a night of serious drinking, the first pee was always hard to get going) when he felt his eyes bug out. The toilet bowl was clogged with doughnuts. They’d gone soggy in the grimy, piss-filled bowl. “Shit,” he muttered. His stream was flowing now. It was too late to stop. He reasoned that since the doughnuts had already been peed on—most likely by all of them—then once more wouldn’t hurt anyone.

“Dammit, Marvin,” he said as he slammed the lid closed. The leprechaun actor had crashed at Byron’s apartment on several occasions, and each time, he’d deposited some sort of food into the toilet. Sometimes the food was flushable. Sometimes, as in the case with these doughnuts, it was not. The first time they caught him they’d questioned him thoroughly and even suggested that he’d be kicked out of the musical if he wouldn’t tell them why he did it. They were more curious than pissed, so when Marvin broke down crying, they let off. They could only presume that Marvin’s eccentric habit had something to do with the movie poster for The Ghoulies.

Bladder emptied, but the hangover fresh in his head, Simon genuflected before the great water faucet and rinsed the pizza grease out of his hair.

A pounding on the bathroom door, accompanied with panicked shouts of “Dude! We gotta go!” startled Simon. He reared up, slamming the back of his head against the faucet. His vision went fuzzy. He felt the back of his head, but it was hard to feel for blood with wet hair.

“What the fuck?” he cried, sounding angrier than he was to hide the pain.

“It’s eleven-thirty,” Byron said. “What are you doing in there anyway?”

“I fell asleep with my head in the pizza box. And Marvin clogged the toilet with doughnuts.”

“Dammit, Marvin.”

“That’s what I said.” Simon stood, found a bottle of aspirin in the medicine cabinet and swallowed four. He inspected the back of his head in the mirror, saw no blood, and combed his hair with his fingers, brushing down and across, a motion which masked some of the encroaching baldness. Water droplets fell onto his Cannibal Holocaust shirt, which he realized he’d worn for three days straight. Maybe it was fitting. If the musical flopped, he’d be the one with a stick up his ass so far that it would be poking out of his mouth. He’d have to see to it that his cast and crew didn’t fuck this up for him.

“So how’d we end up with pizza and doughnuts?” he asked, wondering if Byron was still standing on the other side of the door. He was.

“The pizza we had delivered. The doughnuts . . . I’m not sure.”

“We’ll have to ask Marvin. Is he awake?”

“I’ll go wake him now. Hurry your ass up.”

Simon checked out the back of his head one last time. It wasn’t bleeding, but it hurt like a motherfucker. Bile rose in his throat and he swallowed it down.

That’s when he remembered the Impala.

They’d piled into Byron’s shitty car and now Byron and Marvin were trying to calm Simon. He’d forgotten to make a replacement for the latest cardboard car casualty. Worse, he’d promised a second car, in case the first was inevitably destroyed. By the time they talked him down from suicidal heights, they were almost at the theater in North Portland.

“It’s Tuesday,” Simon said. “We have today, tomorrow, and the next day, then it’s show time. And now we can’t even rehearse the scene in need of the most work.”

Byron pulled into the theater’s parking lot. He turned in his seat to face Simon. “Don’t worry, man. We’ve got plenty else to rehearse. Just tell them you made a directorial decision to focus on the musical numbers today.”

Smooth, Byron, Simon thought. You always get your way.

“To be honest, I feel that would be most conducive to a positive, productive rehearsal,” Marvin said from the backseat.

“Then it’s settled,” Simon said, but the stress compounded with the motion of the car had left him anything but settled, and he hunched over and puked onto the floorboard of Byron’s car.

“Yo, I just got that cleaned.”

“Come on, we’re late for rehearsal.” Simon climbed out of the car, wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his smelly t-shirt, and charged into the building ready to command like all great directors do.

It must have been obvious to everyone that Simon was suffering from the hangover of the century. He didn’t care. At least nobody gave him any shit for being late.

With the whole cast and crew gathered around, he announced their plan of attack for the day. “We’re gonna start from the beginning and place special emphasis on nailing the musical numbers. This means that if you fuck up during a song, we start it over.”

“What about the Impalas?” asked Genevieve, a member of the chorus for “Bitches Be Spooky” and one of the hydraulic victims.

“We’ll be working to that today. It’ll be our starting point tomorrow.”

“Does that mean I can go home?” she asked.

She knew her choreography and had no speaking lines beyond a single, shrill scream as the Impala ran her over, but Simon shook his head no. “This is crunch time,” he said, feeling painfully aware that he sounded like his high school football coach dad. “Every one of us should know the whole musical well enough to perform it all ourselves.”

“I didn’t come here to sit around,” Genevieve said.

“I didn’t come here to listen to you whine,” Simon said.

That was enough to shut down all other complaints for the day.

Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical opened with a series of commercials for fake products, projected onto a bloody sheet that hung from the stage, barren except for a pot of gold.

Besides renting out the theater, the commercials were the most costly part of the whole production. The first commercial advertised a Hellraiser-themed cereal called Cen-O-Bites. It was arguably the greatest part of the entire show and an idea that Simon had lifted from a Facebook meme.

Onscreen: Meat hooks fly out of a cereal bowl, impaling a small boy, but the boy uses his spoon to break the hooks and regain his bowl of cereal, happy despite profuse bleeding. Pinhead enters the kitchen and sits at the table with coffee and the newspaper, like he’s Ward Cleaver. And the bleeding kid turns to face the camera and says, “What is your pleasure, sir?”

In bloody lettering, the word CEN-O-BITES drips down the screen, spoken as it does so in a Cryptkeeper-like voice.

Applause, laughter, and hoots of approval resounded from backstage. Whatever doubts they harbored about Friday night, nothing lifted spirits like a gore-drenched cereal commercial. Simon leaned back in his seat. He was the lone member of the audience.

The Cen-O-Bites commercial flickered out and the ominous child-whisper of the Nightmare on Elm Street theme song faded in on a dark screen. Freddy Krueger’s familiar claws slashed through the darkness, shedding light on a yard gone wild with grass. The rest of the darkness faded. Among the tall grass, skinny people painted green and wearing green costumes lurked. They were supposed to be grass, but between the initial concept and final product, something had been lost.

An overly loud, used car salesman voice emanated: “HAS YOUR GRASS GONE WILD?” The words appeared on the screen in large, aesthetically ill-advised, sans serif. The grass people began lifting their tops, flashing their “grass tits.” The salesman voice, uncomfortably loud now: “THEN YOU NEED FREDDY KRUEGER’S ULTIMATE GRASS-CUTTING CLAW HANDS.” A person in a shitty Freddy Krueger costume appeared on camera and slashed through the grass, murdering the grass people. The image was replaced by a short, green lawn that was clearly a putting green at the local country club. Freddy Krueger laid out a blanket on the putting green and his date—a young woman in a blood-splattered prom dress—began unpacking a picnic basket. “CUT YOUR GRASS DOWN TO SIZE WITH FREDDY KRUEGER’S ULTIMATE GRASS-CUTTING CLAW HANDS.” Then a more formal, robotic voice announced, “Call XXX-XXX-XXXX to order your Freddy Krueger’s Ultimate Grass-Cutting Claw Hands for just six easy payments of $6.66.”

Simon wriggled in his seat for that one, trying to figure out if he’d seen it too many times or if it really was that sophomoric.

The third and final commercial was Simon’s favorite, even though it was more groan-worthy than even Freddy Krueger’s Ultimate Grass-Cutting Claw Hands.

Byron, dressed in medical garb, appeared onscreen in the lobby of a doctor’s office. The footage was camcorder quality and shaky. In the background, a receptionist gazed at the camera with a concerned expression on her face. Byron began his spiel, rushing in a way that suggested they weren’t supposed to be there. “Haunted by a poltergeist? Pursued through a dark forest by flesh-eating zombies? Is your daughter possessed by Satan? Then you need . . . CONVENIENT-ALL! Convenient-All is the only FDA-approved pill that allows you to overcome your victimhood and conquer your demons by enabling implausible leaps of logic. Near death, in danger of dying, or already dead? Worry no more! You can escape it all with Convenient-All.”

The door that led to the patients’ rooms burst open in the background and a white-coated doctor charged Byron. “What are you doing here? Who are you?” the doctor shouted.

The footage went shaky as Byron and the cameraman, who’d been Simon, bolted from the waiting room, and as they made their escape, you could hear Byron shout, “FDA approval pending!”

Yeah, if only Simon had some Convenient-All. Then he could make the impossible leap necessary to transform this disasterpiece into something special. Maybe he should move the Cen-O-Bites gag to the end of the commercials, finish strong.

The curtains closed so the stagehands could set the scenery for Act One.

When they opened, Byron—in character as Christian hip hop artist Jesus Freak—stood alone, thrusting his hips in time to the opening beats of the musical’s first song, “Get Freaky.” The main riff was stolen from Halloween. In fact, their song was little more than a poor copy of Dr. Dre’s “Murder Ink,” except the lyrics were rewritten to summarize the general themes of the musical: professing love in Jesus while attempting to ruthlessly acquire fame and wealth, and inevitably dying a cruel death at the hands of a leprechaun. Standard lyrics were “Get freaky/get freaky/for Jesus/or the lep will shove a bong up your ass/and smoke you/and smoke you.” Perhaps there were no Grammys in their future, but Byron was the only rapper Simon knew.

While Byron rapped, Marvin in full leprechaun garb materialized from a papier-mâché tree stump in a cloud of fog.

The leprechaun stretched as if he’d been sleeping for a thousand years. In the films, the leprechaun tended to be revived from an immaterial or catatonic state when a human character stole or removed the object that subdued him, but there were no hard and fast rules in the Leprechaun franchise.

Rules were established only to be broken, usually within the same film. In this case, they’d chosen to introduce the leprechaun quickly because that’s what the audience would be paying for, and also because they wanted to keep the runtime short. Did anyone genuinely want to sit through more than an hour of Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical?

The leprechaun reached back into the stump to retrieve his pot of gold. This part of the play tended to run smoothly, but this time, “Get Freaky” ended and Marvin was still struggling to remove his gold from the stump. Jesus Freak’s posse appeared from stage left, in character and miming Christian hoodlum behavior as the script called for. Unable to improvise, they carried on as if nothing were wrong. But the leprechaun should have been long gone.

“Marvin, what’s the holdup?” Simon stood from his third row seat.

“The pot of gold . . . it’s too heavy.” Marvin held up a lone coin. “Someone switched out the plastic coins for these. They’re heavy as shit.”

Simon hopped onstage and joined Marvin, Jesus Freak, and the posse. They crowded around the papier-mâché tree stump, peering down at the pot of gold.

“Looks the same,” Simon said. He grabbed hold of the pot, figuring Marvin’s arthritis was acting up, and lifted.

He had the pot halfway out when his back kinked up and he dropped it, crushing the tree stump and scattering coins across the stage. The coins jingled as they settled. Simon held his back, twisted up in pain.

“What the fuck?” they all kind of said at once.

“Shit!” Simon kicked the ruined tree stump, distorting it further out of shape. He shouted so that his voice echoed throughout the theater. “Everybody out here! I want all cast and crew onstage. Now!”

Marvin scuttled about, collecting the dispersed coins as people, some in costume, some in plainclothes, filed out onto the stage.

“Whose idea of a joke was this? Whoever is responsible is fired. We’re days away from production.” Simon paced the stage, wishing he had a teacup to throw for emphasis, like Hitchcock.

“What happened?” somebody asked, raising their voice to be heard over the jaded murmurs of the crew.

Simon reached into his pocket and removed his cell. He slammed it against the ground, shattering the screen. “If someone replaced your phone with a plastic replica of your phone, what would you do?”

They were silent, probably scared.

“You’d ask for your phone back, wouldn’t you?” Simon said.

Everyone nodded.

“Right. Well, one of you has replaced our plastic gold with this shitty metal stuff. It’s too heavy for Marvin to lift out of the tree stump. Thanks for humiliating our star and wasting everybody’s time. Now, assholes, give us back our gold.”

Nobody stepped forward.

“Okay, then I want my hydraulic victims to step forward.”

Seven men and women approached Simon in a slow and cautious manner, Genevieve with her hands on her hips, eyes rolling, mouth opening and closing as she chewed a wad of green gum.

“I want you to run to Lippman and Co. and buy up all their plastic gold. Buy a new pot as well.”

“You want all of us to go?” asked one of them. “I mean, we won’t all fit in one car.” Simon wasn’t sure who this clown was. He could almost never remember the names of the hydraulic victims, or most of the cast and crew for that matter.

“You’re right. Half of you head to Lippman. The other half, stop by Lonesome’s and pick up a dozen large pizzas. Get some meat, some vegetarian, and a vegan for the dickwads in the room.”

“Who’s gonna pay for all that?” Genevieve asked, rolling her eyes again.

Simon reached for his wallet but remembered it was empty. Without knowing who paid for the doughnuts and pizza last night, his bank account was a big—possibly negative—question mark. So he stomped his feet, looked Genevieve in the eye, and said, “I’ve got a rehearsal to run here. You get the pizza and I’ll see that you’re compensated. But first, it’s my job to make sure you don’t look like an idiot Friday night.”

Genevieve shrugged. “My part’s not that hard. If anyone will look like an idiot, it’s—”

“GO!”

The gold and pizza collectors dispersed. It wasn’t difficult to overhear them gossiping about what an asshole Simon was on their way toward the doors. In fact, it sounded like they wanted him to hear. Whatever. He was feeling ready to puke again.

“I regret agreeing to be a part of this,” Trinie said.

“Dude’s just an asshole,” Mark said.

“It doesn’t excuse treating us like shit. Simon is so self-obsessed, he doesn’t even know our names.”

From the backseat, Lucas—who was a last minute addition to the cast—offered an ounce of reason. “If we weren’t in Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical, then we’d be among the poor fuckers paying to see it.”

“Good point,” Trinie said, turning onto Burnside Bridge to the west side of the city, where Lonesome’s Pizza, a literal hole in the wall, was nestled across the street from Voodoo Doughnut.

“Man, being on a Troma set was hell, but nothing compared to this,” Mark said. “At least they paid for the pizza.”

“Why are you just a nameless victim, anyway? You should be headlining this thing.” Trinie said.

“Yeah,” said Lucas. “You have, like, Troma experience. That’s more than Simon has.”

Mark shrugged and looked out the window, smiling to himself, glad to have the support of his fellow hydraulic victims. “I like it ’cause it’s easy. If the play or movie is awesome, well shit, you were a part of it. If it sucks, who cares? Your role was so minor, nobody holds you responsible. Being a nameless victim allows you to die in front of an audience. And if you don’t get paid, there’s still the chance of getting laid.”

“By who, tough guy?” Trinie pinched his thigh.

Hopefully by you, Mark thought.

Trinie was a brunette with a bowl cut and big tits. She was in grad school pursuing a dual degree in political science and environmental studies with hopes of entering local politics. She’d shared a psychology class with Mark when they were both at PSU as freshmen, but they’d only spoken a few times, mostly because Mark failed to last a year in college. He was kicked out for hacking into the university’s website and changing the homepage to a .gif of Porky the Pig stuttering, “Fuck the police.” He moved to New York after that, where he worked as a pedicab driver—since he wasn’t allowed to drive a real cab—and spent a few weeks in Buffalo to work as a P.A. and appear as an extra in Lloyd Kaufman’s Poultrygeist.

He’d weaseled his way into an audition for the lead male role, but bombed so bad he swore to himself he would never audition for a speaking role in anything ever again—a fact about himself that he would never admit to Trinie and Lucas. After washing up on the shore of Poverty with the Big Apple’s other rejects, Mark moved back to Portland and scored a job with a software coding company.

Writing code paid well and the hours were flexible, which allowed him to pursue his stupid fucking hobbies, like being a victim in Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical. The experience thus far had been mostly a nightmare, but at least he’d reconnected with Trinie.

He was happy to have met Lucas, too. He didn’t really understand why Simon agreed to cast Lucas since the script only called for six hydraulic victims, but Lucas was a good guy, was a horror movie and comic book guru, and any friendly face on the set of this shitstorm of a production was very welcome. Lucas even owned his own comic book shop in town. Occasionally, he’d bring a comic to rehearsal for Mark to borrow, and most of the time, Mark liked them. Most recently had been Uzumaki, which was some real fucked-up shit. Uzumaki was the first and only manga Mark had read, but he liked it. Mark also appreciated that Lucas had done artwork for some of the major studios back in the eighties and early nineties, or so he said.

Above all, what Lucas and Trinie had was what Mark valued in people. They actively contributed to their chosen field of interest. He didn’t care what they were into or how small their contribution was. All that mattered was that they did something with their lives that in some way aided or influenced other people. Trinie would do this by entering local politics (her passion for politics was even more appealing to Mark than her bombshell tits). Lucas had done it. Hell, even Simon, arguably the biggest asshole Mark had ever met, was doing something with his life. If only Mark could find a way to make his own footprint in the world. Until then, he’d be a failure by his own standards. He’d be a nice guy with a decent job, maybe, but still a failure.

Trinie finally found a parking space and then posed the million dollar question. “So how do we want to divide up the cost of the pizzas?”

Mark could feel Lucas shrink behind him. “I got it,” Mark said. Lucas’s relief was palpable. “My treat.”

“Are you sure?” Trinie asked, but that she loosened her death grip on the steering wheel suggested that she shared Lucas’s relief.

“It’s no trouble at all,” Mark said, and then dared to add, “If you’ll go out with me after rehearsal tonight.”

Trinie pursed her lips in a devious but noncommittal smile.

“Do. It. Do. It. Do. It,” Lucas chanted in the backseat.

“Fine, but only for you, Lucas,” Trinie said.

Lucas leaned forward and raised his hand to high-five Mark, who opened his door and hopped out of the car, a shit-eating grin splayed across his face so wide he could’ve passed for the Cheshire Cat’s dumb jock doppelgänger.

Back at the theater, Simon and Byron were having it out. It’d started when Byron criticized Simon’s handling of the gold crisis. Simon held his tongue. He said nothing for a moment, then asked for everyone to pick up at the top of the “Bitches Be Spooky” number. Simon restrained a smile as Byron’s face turned to ash.

“Bitches Be Spooky” was the one song Byron had failed to memorize. No matter how he tried, he just couldn’t do it. The scene, which took place about halfway through the performance, was set in a strip club. Borrowing the “if a leprechaun bites you, you turn into a leprechaun” rule from Leprechaun 3, they’d written a scene where the leprechaun bites a handful of strippers, transforming each of them into nude lady leprechauns, who quickly lay waste to the gentlemen in the club. That was Byron’s cue to take the stage and sing “Bitches Be Spooky” while pole-dancing for the leprechaun ladies, who heckle and taunt him. Eventually, they charge the stage and pull down his pants, cutting the performance short and leaving Byron no option but to flee pants-less out of the strip club.

Either because he had trouble pole-dancing while singing, or because he got nervous with his junk flopping around onstage while rapping for a handful of naked women, Byron consistently failed to remember all the lyrics. Most days, Simon sympathized, but today, he’d had enough.

“Cut!” he said, for the umpteenth time.

“What this time?” Byron asked. “I remembered the words. I had it dialed.”

“You sounded like shit.”

“Come again?”

“You’re a shitty rapper, Byron.”

“You’re not much of a director.”

“You wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for me. I just wanted to help you out, seeing as you’ve done shit-all for your so-called ‘hip hop career’ yourself.”

“If that’s what this is, you doing me a favor, then fuck you and fuck this play.” Byron hopped off the stage, heading toward the exit.

“It’s not a play, it’s a musical!” Simon said.

But Byron did not pause to respond. He walked right out the door.

Marvin leapt off the stage, landed in a roll, bounced to his feet, and ran after Byron before Simon had a chance to stop him.

He hoped for a moment that Marvin was chasing down Byron to bring him back, perhaps tell him to shape up and get serious, get his head in the game, but then Simon saw that this was not the case. Marvin had hoisted his tiny middle fingers and was saluting Simon with both of them as he headed out the door. Simon had just lost his two leads—and the only two people in the city who still cared to hang out with him.

When Mark, Trinie, and Lucas returned to the theater, they learned of the drama they’d missed. Simon had apparently fled the theater after a huge blowout with Byron. Instead of heading home, everyone had stuck around. Even without the two lead actors, they managed to run through the majority of the musical.

“Everything’s running smoothly,” Mark said to Trinie as the two of them worked backstage, crafting a cardboard Impala to be used in their death scene.

“It’s going better,” she said.

Perhaps Friday night wouldn’t be so bad after all, as long as the guy in charge wasn’t around to screw everything up.

“Don’t take it personally,” Marvin said, cracking the tab on a beer. “He didn’t mean that. To be honest, I think you’re a really good rapper.”

“Shit, maybe Simon’s right. I don’t have a chance in hell at a hip hop career,” Byron said.

“No, man. You’ve got talent. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”

Byron grabbed a beer from the twenty-four pack at his feet. He had to piss, but he remembered the doughnuts in the toilet, so he sank back into the sofa, set on holding it.

“I gotta ask you something,” Marvin said.

Byron tensed up. Shit. He’d suspected Marvin might be gay. Would the little dude ask him out? Did he want to wank each other off? “I’m listening,” Byron said.

“You’ve got good taste. So how in the hell do you believe Jason X is actually a better film than Leprechaun 4: In Space?”

Byron tilted his head back and made a prolonged “aaahhhh” sound, like “you got me that time, old dog.”

“I’ll tell you what. We’ll watch them back to back and I’ll show you why Jason X is better.” Byron stood and scanned his wall-to-wall movie collection for the films.

“You won’t show me nothin’,” Marvin said. “I mean, in the third act of one you’re introduced to Super Jason, who looks dumb as balls. In the third act of the other, you get not one but two kickass monsters: the giant leprechaun and Mitten-Spider. Leprechaun 4: In Space is gonzo.”

“Yeah, I agree. It’s a weird-ass movie. Doesn’t change my opinion. Jason X is better. And scarier.”

“Put it on. Here we go,” Marvin said, crushing his empty beer can and reaching for another.

“I got a better idea,” Byron said. “Hang on a minute.” He vanished into his bedroom and returned carrying a large—and judging by his grunts and wobbly knees, heavy—television. “There’s only one way to settle this.”

Marvin covered his open smiling mouth like he couldn’t believe what he’d just seen.

“That’s right.” Byron bobbed his head like he’d just swished a three-pointer. “Head-to-head. Simultaneous viewing.” He lifted the television onto the other television.

Marvin checked the movie boxes. “Leprechaun 4: In Space is ninety-five minutes. Jason X is ninety-three. They’ll end at almost exactly the same time.”

“Perfect,” Byron said, plugging in the second television.

Maybe he’d lost his best friend, but he felt he was in the process of making another.

In his dream, Simon was attending the Broadway premiere of Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical. In this new production Marvin had been replaced by Warwick Davis himself. The actor had taken singing classes just to be able to reprise his role onstage. The crowd was massive, the buzz had reached a fever pitch after the show’s initial Portland run had been so successful, breaking records and garnering a year of extensions. Kay was on his arm, wearing a black designer dress, her earrings tiny silver shamrocks.

As they walked down the red carpet, a reporter stopped Simon and asked him what he thought about his success. The reporter had bright red lipstick, white teeth and a low-cut dress, so he deigned to answer her on his big night.

“Well it’s amazing, I never would have guessed that I could come so far. I used to sleep on my friends’ floors, you know.”

“Oh, I’ve heard,” the reporter said, her smile turning vicious, her red lipstick now a dark green, her teeth crooked and rotted. “And what are your thoughts about the curse of the leprechaun?” she said in an Irish accent.

Simon was just about to ask her what she meant before he awoke.

Fuck, not again, Simon thought, waking with a familiar throb in his lower back—the pain that only came from a night sleeping on bare floors.

He couldn’t open his eyes, didn’t want to face the shame of waking up on someone’s floor again. He could already feel the pizza grease seeping into his scalp. Wait a minute, I don’t have any friends, he thought, recalling last night’s walk-off.

Forcing himself to lift his eyelids, he was greeted by an unfamiliar ceiling. With two fingers he touched the back of his head, searching for the source of the wetness. His fingers returned dark with sticky, coagulating blood.

He remembered scraping his head against Byron’s faucet, but had it really done that much damage? Besides the familiar dull throb of a hangover, his head didn’t hurt any worse than usual.

The tide of half-sleep ebbing away, he sat up and began to wonder whose apartment he was in. It wasn’t Byron’s, and though he’d never been to Marvin’s place, he doubted that it would be this tastefully furnished. Or this clean.

It was a studio apartment—from the looks of the high ceilings it was one of those trendy lofts built out of an old warehouse. He wondered who it belonged to and how he got there. Had he gotten lucky? Was he in Kay’s apartment, the blood at his scalp a wound sustained during coital bliss?

Looking behind him, he got the answer to at least one of his questions, but he didn’t like it.

Genevieve’s face was paler than usual, probably because her head had been severed from her body and impaled on one of the corners of her four-poster bed. Her mouth hung open, the tongue resting against her chin like raw clam meat. Two plastic, gold coins were pressed against her eyes. The top of the bed post pushed against her cranium from the inside, giving her head a cone shape.

“Holy fuck!” Simon pushed himself away from the bed, slipping in blood and knocking the wind out of himself on the ottoman.

Gasping, he pushed himself off the floor, his left side covered in blood, splotches of it sticking to his chest hair. He was wearing boxer briefs and nothing else.

Pieces of the annoying chorus girl were strewn across the bed—big sloppy chunks like she had been hacked up by a dull machete. Her severed breasts lay on the pillow, soaking it with blood and globs of fat. Below those was what Simon could only identify as what used to be her pussy, the lips sagging and glistening, the wiry pubic hair matted with blood and gore. The tattered vagina was pasted to the pillow sideways, under the breasts, like some ghastly smiley face. Above that, between the back two posts of the bed, her intestines had been nailed to the wall in the shape of a four-leaf clover. Flies were already zooming around the room, suckling at the juices, buzzing in Simon’s ears.

Tears stung Simon’s eyes. Who had done this and why was he here? He tried to remember last night but couldn’t.

On the couch his jeans and t-shirt lay folded. Simon never folded his clothes, especially while drunk, but he was too panicked to dwell on how strange this was. He picked up the jeans and started rifling through his pockets for his phone.

He found it and began dialing the first two numbers of 9-1-1, having trouble seeing through the cracked screen. He shouldn’t have used his phone as a prop to threaten the cast.

“Oh Jesus,” he screamed, watching as his fingers left red splotches on the glass of the knockoff iPhone, a Blackberry five generations out of date. He couldn’t call the police, they’d lock him up.

He dialed Byron, got no answer and then tried Marvin, who picked up on the second ring. Simon gave thanks that the little man seemed incapable of holding a grudge.

He took a few sharp breaths and summoned all his willpower not to break down on the phone. “You don’t happen to know where Genevieve lives by any chance?”

Marvin said that he did, sounding confused.

“Good, I need you and Byron to meet me there. Can you get ahold of him?”

Who would have guessed Mark’s passing interest in the Cold War and trivial knowledge of Communist Russia would be such a turn-on for Trinie? Mark would have to send that professor at PSU a thank you note, maybe even go back and finish her class, learn what happened after 1985.

The date had been the most successful of Mark’s (admittedly limited) experience, not only because it had ended in sex but because he liked Trinie and enjoyed what she had to say. Most of the dates he went on were experiments in boredom, the possible make-out session in the end barely enough incentive to keep Mark from walking out if he found the girl tedious.

Trinie, beyond the boobs, was electrifying. Passionate about world and local politics the same way he was about Alejandro Jodorowsky. She never alienated him with her knowledge. Every tidbit she offered was the result of his genuine interest.

The only sore part of the night was when she had chastised herself for talking too much. “Oh, you don’t want to hear about Oregon’s gillnetting regulations.” But he did and he told her as much.

Waking up in her bed, Mark got the feeling that he’d gone where few men had ventured before, and none of them probably ever on the first date. How should he deal with the morning? He could try to slink out of bed without waking her and try to cook breakfast, but that seemed corny. Never mind presumptuous. What if her fridge was stocked like his? An open can of Coke that had gone flat a year ago and some Chinese takeout that was so putrid he kept the fridge closed at all times so his apartment didn’t reek.

Unable to decide, he stayed in bed listening to the softness of her breath. She slept on her back without snoring—was there anything not awesome about this girl?

There was a slight buzzing sound somewhere nearby, a phone set to vibrate. The noise woke Trinie, her eyes half opening, a look of confusion on them before they fell to him. Then she smiled. That smile made Mark very happy.

Trinie reached under her pillow, the sheets shifting enough to give him a show. The movement was effortless, but also seemed deliberate. She giggled to herself before flipping open the phone that she’d kept stashed under her head as she slept.

Whatever she read on the screen caused her to scrunch up her face. “Looks like practice is canceled today,” she said.

“Two days before opening night? Why?”

“I don’t know, it’s from Simon and that’s all it says: ‘Practice canceled.’”

“Well. That’s weird,” Mark said. Trinie looked more concerned about it than he felt. In fact, to him it felt a bit like this was a gift from the gods. “So, do you want to go get breakfast?”

He smiled and she lifted an eyebrow.

“Can’t get enough of me, eh?”

“Nowhere near enough.”

She pulled him down to the bed and a half hour later they got dressed and went out for late morning pizza.

Marvin would not stop crying, even while he was puking. It seemed impossible that all that liquid could fit inside Marvin’s tiny frame. All Simon was doing was gibbering semi-coherently about how he didn’t do it and needed Byron’s help. Byron just stood by the bed, sweat gathering at the creases of his shirt.

“You don’t need my help, you need the police,” Byron said. “Marvin and I shouldn’t be here.”

Marvin stopped sobbing long enough to agree. “He’s right, we shouldn’t. Oh God the smell! Poor Genevieve!” There wasn’t much of a smell that Byron could detect beyond Marvin’s vomit.

“The police will think I did it! We need to clean this up,” Simon said. “No one can know I was here. No one can know that we were here.”

Byron saw what Simon had done now, what he was implying with all this “we” stuff. They were now in this together. Just by entering the room they had contaminated the crime scene. This was doubly true now that Marvin was contaminating the evidence, spreading sizzling DNA all over the place with every heave.

Without much thought about what he was doing, Byron swung his fist wide and caught Simon in the cheek with the side of his hand. He must have hit him hard enough, because Simon crumpled and pain blossomed in Byron’s hand like he’d slammed it in a car door.

“You son of a bitch! What possesses you to do these things and use people like this? Do you realize how much trouble we could all be in?”

“I’m sorry.” Simon was crying now—it was unclear whether it was from the sock in the face or the pressure of the situation. “I didn’t know what to do. You guys are my only friends.”

“Then you have no friends, asshole. Have fun in prison. Come on, Marvin.”

“But we can’t just…” Marvin started, hoisting himself off his knees using the edge of the coffee table.

“Yes, we can and we should,” Byron said.

“What’s this?” Marvin asked, no longer listening to Byron’s tirade against Simon’s selfish, and maybe even murderous, tendencies. Marvin held up a small green note that had been folded in half lengthwise and placed face-up on the table. It was addressed to Simon.

Marvin opened it and read aloud:

“Ye fuckers ripped off my intellectual property

“That was not a great move for your physical longevity

“So consider this my cease and desist letter

“To fuck with me you should have known better

“Prepare now to pay for your larceny.”

They all stood in stunned silence for a moment. Byron glanced over at the grisly shamrock wall art, unable to keep his gaze on it for more than a second. “Give me that,” he said and snatched the note away from Marvin.

The words were dark green ink on pale green paper, the handwriting a delicate old-timey cursive. “It’s a limerick. A bad one, but a limerick.” They were standing in the middle of a Leprechaun-themed murder.

“You did this to me, you little fucker!” Simon screamed and launched himself at Marvin. “I knew there was something wrong with you the second you told us that the Leprechaun series was your favorite horror franchise. It’s nobody’s favorite horror franchise, you fucking psychopath!”

Simon lifted Marvin up by the shirt, stretching and tearing the fabric. The small man’s arms flailed, legs kicking. Both of them were crying.

“How did you do it? Did you drug us? What happened last night? Was she awake when you did this sick shit to her?”

“I didn’t do anything, I swear!”

“Put him down,” Byron said. “He didn’t kill anybody. He was with me the whole night.”

Simon wasn’t strong and his arms shook from the weight. Reluctantly, he released Marvin’s shirt. Marvin landed with a thud, his stunted legs doing a poor job breaking his fall.

“We stayed up all night watching movies. I nodded off around four. There’s no way he left. He was too busy stuffing the contents of my fridge down the toilet.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Marvin said. “Even I don’t know why I do it sometimes.” There was a tiny stream of blood trickling its way down his chin and he wiped it up with his sleeve.

“Someone could be trying to frame you, Simon. Know anyone you’ve pissed off recently?”

“Um. Everyone?”

“Those were my thoughts exactly.” Byron walked toward the kitchenette, taking big steps to avoid the puddles of Genevieve that spotted the studio apartment. Someone had taken their time on this. The level of violence was staggering. There was no sign of a weapon, though, and Byron wondered what kind of machinery could have done this. The magic of an ancient mythological creature? It seemed ludicrous.

But there was the limerick. It had been phrased like a C&D. Could someone be getting revenge on Simon for adapting a movie he didn’t hold the rights to? This seemed a little extreme, even for Harvey Weinstein.

Byron started opening kitchen cabinets until he found what he needed. Genevieve kept a box of yellow dishwashing gloves under her sink—she had seemed like the type of girl who liked to avoid dishpan hands.

“Put these on,” Byron said, tossing the other two men a pair of gloves while he unrolled a large black trash bag.

“You can’t be serious, Byron,” Marvin said. Despite his protestations, Marvin was slipping on the gloves, the ends of them going beyond his elbows, the fingers bunchy and loose.

Byron ignored him and looked to Simon. “Did you let everyone know that practice was going to be canceled?”

“No, I hadn’t even thought of that,” Simon said, checking the time on his busted phone.

“Well you should have. If everyone shows up with you not there, they’ll be even more suspicious than if you canceled. Send a text.”

Simon did as he was told. The director who less than twelve hours ago had been chewing out his cast for the slightest mistake was now taking orders with no questions asked. Byron’s newfound control made him feel strong. He always suspected that he’d be able to keep his cool if real horror movie shit ever went down and now was his chance to prove it.

“You hold the bag, Marvin. If you’re going to hurl, just do it into the plastic, not on the floor anymore, okay?”

“Okay,” Marvin said, staring down into the black mouth of the bag.

“What do I do?” Simon asked.

“You start scraping that shit off the wall. We’re not going to be able to get it perfect, but hopefully she has some cleaning products we can use to get rid of most of the blood. I’ll go look, then I’ll help you.”

“And what do we do with the bags once they’re full?”

“After we wipe down every surface any of us could have conceivably touched, we’ll put them in my car and drive out toward Tillamook and leave them in the woods. Just Simon and I can handle that. I’ll drop you back at your place on the way, Marvin. We need to talk.” Byron eyed Simon with that last part and Simon shivered. Good, let him be scared. He should be.

“Poor Genevieve,” Marvin said again.

“Yeah, poor Genevieve,” Byron agreed. “And poor us.”

“That is some sick shit,” Mark said, thumbing through the copy of MPD Psycho that Lucas had handed him.

After Mark and Trinie were through with their pizza brunch and had said their goodbyes, Mark had decided to swing by Lucas’s comic shop, Bloody Vengeance Comics, to make sure that he wasn’t planning on showing up to a rehearsal that’d been canceled.

“Yeah, and that’s just the first volume. In the next one the police get sent a naked female torso in a cooler, everything amputated so that she’s just tits and beaver,” Lucas said, giggling.

“You are a grade-A creep, brother,” Mark said, eyes glued to the page. The comic was an uneasy blend of gore and pornography. Only in Japan. He realized he was in public and it would be best if he put it down.

Mark looked around The Vengeance, the shortened name that Lucas liked to throw into conversation the same way you’d give a child a nickname, and took in the store. It was not a big shop, but there were a few customers, mostly young kids, pawing through binders of Magic cards.

“Take it. None of these kids can fucking read anyway.”

“Hey!” one of the kids said, looking up from the binder.

“It’s true. Now are you going to buy anything? Then scram.”

“Nah, man,” Mark said, attempting to hand the book back to Lucas. “I don’t want to be taking stock off your shelves. This is your livelihood.”

“Mark, take the book. You picked up the pizza yesterday. I appreciate it.”

“I’ll come back in when I have cash.” Mark looked down and fanned the pages again. “Or if you really want me to read it that bad, do you have scans of it? Can you just email them to me? Then we’ll call it square for the pizza.”

The goodwill that their conversation had brought to Lucas’s large red face, the expression of camaraderie, vanished. Lucas started to speak, but there was a tremor in his voice, almost a growl. “I...as someone who runs a comic book store, a brick and mortar store that tries to keep the art form and community alive, do not download or produce scans of copyrighted material. I just don’t.”

Mark raised his hands. “Hey, neither do I, man. It’s cool. I understand, people gotta eat.”

This seemed to calm Lucas, but only a little.

Mark searched for something, anything, to reel Lucas back from the edge. “So I had my date with Trinie last night.”

A switch was thrown somewhere in Lucas’s brain and he eased off the attack, got a handle on the anger that he clearly kept just below the surface. Mark would have never guessed. Some people get real serious when it comes to comics.

“How did it go?” Lucas asked, propping his elbows up on the counter and resting his head in his hands, looking like an oversized teenage boy with too much stubble. “Details.”

“Well,” Mark said, unable to suppress the smile that probably told Lucas everything he needed to know. “Really well. I like her a lot.”

“That’s good to hear. It will most likely be the only positive experience anyone has in connection to Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical.”

“Oh, you love it,” Mark said, not sure it was true. Even Mark, Troma vet and glutton for B-movie punishment, was having a hard time putting up with Simon’s flights of megalomania and sets that spontaneously combusted.

“Speaking of which: what do you think is going on with the show?” Lucas asked. “Think the Three Musketeers called it quits? Do I need to make new plans for the weekend?”

“I doubt it. They’ve fought before. Besides, I think they’re in too deep now. Maybe they’re spending the day running through the Impala gag. That’s the only thing that’s totally fucked.”

“Yeah, everything else is only moderately fucked.”

“I bet we’ll get a text tonight telling us to be there bright and early tomorrow to make up for lost time.”

“I can’t wait for this shit to be over,” Lucas said, taking the manga from Mark’s hand and dropping it into a plastic bag. He pushed a few buttons on the antiquated 1970s register in front of him until the cash drawer popped open. Lucas put the bag into Mark’s hands. “Look, I entered it as a sale. Now take this and read it. For me it’s an investment in the future, because you’ll be back to buy the rest of them.”

“I’m not going to argue with you,” Mark said. He wanted to reference the burst of Lucas’s nerd rage that he’d witnessed, but somehow “I wouldn’t like you when you’re angry” didn’t seem appropriate. So instead he just said thanks and told Lucas that he’d see him at rehearsal tomorrow.

If they had rehearsal.

Byron’s car wove through the forest northwest of Portland. Simon could still smell the vomit from yesterday’s hangover and felt guilty for having puked on Byron’s freshly cleaned mats. Byron was willing to help him out like this, was such a good friend, while Simon was just a douchebag who bummed rides, slept on his floor, and then had the audacity to trash the car.

“You need to level with me,” Byron said, breaking the silence. Neither of them had spoken since loading the three black plastic bags into the trunk. “Did you do this?”

“Byron, I swear I didn’t.”

“You’ve been under a lot of stress lately, man. Is it even remotely possible? Is anyone in your family schizophrenic?”

“Jesus, I’m telling you, the only thing I remember was having weird dreams and then waking up in her apartment almost naked and her…” Simon paused. “She was like that. You know what gives you weird dreams like that? Sedatives.”

“Yeah, like the double dose of Nyquil you take to get to sleep every night.”

“I didn’t do this,” Simon said. He wanted to bring up Marvin again as a possible suspect, but then remembered that Byron had vouched for him. It didn’t seem likely, given what a gentle guy Marvin seemed to be, even if he did most resemble a leprechaun.

“Then who?”

“You said it yourself: I’ve pissed off every member of the crew. You could be mad enough to have done it.”

Byron took his eyes off the road to toss him a look.

“I mean, you would have had motive. Not that you did it, obviously.”

“I barely ever talked to Genevieve.”

“I didn’t either, but that doesn’t mean she’s not in pieces in your trunk right now. It could be anyone, even people we’ve never met. You saw how pissed off some of those internet commenters got when Fango linked to the Kickstarter. There’s a whole reddit thread dedicated to how I’m the type of ‘hipster trash that’s ruining horror.’” Simon used air quotes for that last part; the post still rankled him.

“You’re saying that this is someone’s elaborate attempt to troll the musical?”

“I’m saying that it’s more likely than me having done it because I did not fucking do it.”

“Enough. We’re here.”

“Where?”

“Far enough away from civilization that I don’t want to talk about it anymore, I just want to dig.”

There was nothing but trees on every side of them, and they stepped out of the car, took turns digging the hole, and buried Genevieve in the ground. They didn’t say anything when they were done. Simon would have liked to have given some kind of informal eulogy, but he wasn’t even sure of Genevieve’s last name.

Marvin’s cat was an orange tabby named Brian Trenchard-Smith after the Australian journeyman director who had made the first two direct-to-video entries in the Leprechaun series.

Brian Trenchard-Smith—the human—had also directed Dead End Drive-In and Stunt Rock, which meant that he was cinema royalty who’d never gotten his proper due.

Brian Trenchard-Smith—the cat—was Marvin Brink’s best friend.

Fed up with blood and gore, Marvin sat on the couch, Brian in his lap, and watched Willow. He studied Warwick Davis’s mannerisms and intonation, occasionally parroting back lines to see if he could get the actor’s lilt just right.

He reached toward the coffee table for his green bong. Since the musical had started, he had been smoking twice as much as usual. It was the last of his cash, but he badgered Byron to stop by his dealer’s house on the way home from Genevieve’s. He needed something, anything, to clear his mind of entrails and severed body parts. A new strain, his dealer had told him, called Four-Leaf Clover.

“It’s got real four-leaf clovers mixed in there, man,” his dealer said. “Like…fuckin’ magical shit. You’ll love it, I’m tellin’ you.”

Marvin knew it was bullshit, but he was curious enough to try it. Only ten bucks more for a quarter ounce. And with all this Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical business, it just seemed too fitting for him to pass up the offer.

He took a big hit, held it in as long as he could, then coughed it all out. Brian shot him a dirty look, clearly unappreciative of Marvin’s jerking body as he coughed, but the fat cat didn’t budge, was dead weight in Marvin’s lap.

Weed was the only thing that helped Marvin with his aches and pain, and most importantly…his little problem. When he was high, for whatever reason, he didn’t get the hankering to stuff food down his toilet. He would much rather stuff it down his throat. And since money was tight, he couldn’t afford to just piss food away like that. He was still bitter about the doughnuts, which he clearly remembered paying for.

Something under the TV caught Brian’s attention and the cat slinked off the couch to investigate. Although Marvin loved the companionship, Brian was not a small cat and he was thankful to have the weight off his sore legs.

In his thirty-two years of life, Marvin had undergone three surgeries, two for his legs and one for his back. The number was lower than some little people he knew, but Marvin understood that he would probably have a few more in his later years, once his joints began to go. Being dropped on the ground by Simon may have added another procedure to his future. He would have to make an appointment with the doctor after the show had concluded its run.

“Whatcha got there, Brian?” he asked the cat. Marvin knew that it was probably a cockroach. He tried to keep the apartment as clean as possible, but it was an old building and rent was cheap. Roaches happened, so at least Marvin had Brian to stalk them, keeping the numbers mercifully low.

Brian slipped under the TV stand and Marvin turned his attention back to the movie.

How could such a versatile actor be considered a joke? Prejudice, that’s how. They were living in a fart and dick joke culture, and in a fart and dick joke culture a person like Marvin, even if they were as talented as Mr. Davis, would never be anything but a joke.

Even Peter Dinklage was at times treated like a punch-line. The cruelty of the world churned Marvin’s stomach, which is probably why he elected to spend as little time in it as possible.

All he needed were his movies, his weed, and his cat.

Brian Trenchard-Smith mewed from under the television set. He did this sometimes, became so caught up in the thrill of the hunt that he tangled himself up in the wires.

Marvin groaned, his spine burning as he straightened up and dropped off the end of the couch to go help the cat.

“Silly little bugger. You stuck again?”

Brian howled in response, the sound helpless and adorable.

“Did I catch a fat cat with my fat cat traps?” Marvin asked, going to his hands and knees to help Brian.

He put one hand on the cat’s rump and the touch must have frightened the animal, because he rolled the power cords wrapped around him taut and then the apartment, which lacked natural lighting, went dark.

“Shit, Brian.”

The cat was free now and zipped out past Marvin’s feet, while he fumbled to reconnect the television, DVD player, and lamp.

The knock on his apartment door was so loud it caused Marvin to bump his head on the TV stand.

“Just a minute,” Marvin yelled and the knock came again, loud and insistent.

Somewhere in the dark apartment, Brian hissed.

“Oh shush up,” Marvin said, pissed at his feline friend. He kept his hands in front of him, attempting to traverse the darkened room without injuring himself any worse than the day already had.

The knock had become a pounding.

“I said I’m coming, one minute,” Marvin said, the darkness and clatter scaring him now. What if it was the police? He hadn’t even thought about that, hadn’t had time to iron out his alibi with Byron and Simon. He could be going to prison for a crime he had nothing to do with. In his imagination, he saw the headlines. Pint-Sized Massacre. Dwarf Suspected in Violent Slaying. The New York Post would probably run leprechaun-based puns on its front page for a week. Pot O’ Gore! Leprecarnage!

Approaching the door, Marvin pressed his face to the specially-sized peephole he’d had the landlord install. He saw nothing. There was no hallway even, which meant that someone was blocking the other side of the lens.

“Marvin Brinks?”An authoritative voice asked. It was a voice he recognized, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

“Yes?” Marvin said.

“You need to open for me, Marvin.”

Looking down, Marvin could see that Brian was rubbing himself against his leg, purring.

“It’ll be okay, buddy.” Marvin said as he unbolted the door, reassuring himself more than he was Brian. Brian Trenchard-Smith feared no man, only vacuum cleaners.

It was not the cops.

“We need to have a discussion about your involvement in Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical.”

Marvin stumbled away from the man, tripping over Brian and landing hard on his ass. Brian yowled, darted across the dark apartment. Marvin ignored the thumping pain in his hips as he stared up at none other than his idol.

“W-Warwick…Warwick fucking Davis?”

The actor stepped in, wearing a crisp black suit and bowler hat. He smiled for a moment, but the friendly expression quickly melted away as he removed his hat and closed the door behind him. “You’re in a world of hurt, Marvin. You and all your friends.”

Marvin struggled to get back to his feet. He had so much he wanted to say to Warwick Davis, so many questions. All he could manage was, “You’re Warwick fucking Davis!”

“Yes, Marvin. I figured that out some time ago. Now if you’ll kindly unwrap yourself from my nutsack, we have some things to discuss.” Warwick shuffled across the apartment, having no issue finding his way in the dark. The second he took a seat on the sofa, the power came back on. He slapped his knee when he saw Willow playing on the television. “You know Ron Howard tried to get me to suck him off? He was obsessed with the idea. Guess he figured his tiny cock looked bigger in a dwarf’s mouth, you know what I mean?”

“Um…I guess,” Marvin said, taken aback by Warwick Davis’s vulgarity. Star struck, he couldn’t make himself walk across the apartment and sit beside the real Willow. He was sure this was some kind of strange dream, that he would wake up at any moment, his toilet stuffed with ramen noodles or something. “Mr. Davis…what’s this about? How did you…how did you find me?”

Warwick unbuttoned his jacket, folded it nicely, then set it on the arm of the couch. He patted the cushion beside him. “Please, friend. Have a seat.”

Marvin took a deep breath, then forced himself to walk across the room. The colors of the television splashed across Warwick’s face, deepening the creases and pock marks. His grin stretched wide and his eyes sparkled as he watched Marvin sit beside him. Warwick reached out, took hold of Marvin’s thigh, squeezed.

Even though Warwick’s tightening grip made Marvin want to scream, he could only smile. I’m sitting in my living room watching Willow with fucking Willow!

“Now…as I said, I need to talk about this play you’re doing—”

“Musical,” Marvin said, then, “Sorry.”

“Have you or your friends ever heard of copyright infringement?”

I knew it, Marvin thought. I fucking knew it. I tried to tell Simon, but noooo. Now we’re all going to get sued. Just like I said we would.

“I told them. I told them this would happen. Simon was saying something about parody laws and how if we changed this and that we could… Look, Mr. Davis. You have to believe me. This wasn’t my idea, okay? It was Simon. All of this was his idea.”

“Yes, yes. I’m sure it was. Quite sure.” His grip tightened even more, and Marvin could have sworn Warwick’s hand had changed somehow. Looked leathery, filthy, the nails long, bits of green flecking the cuticles like fungus.

Just a trick of the light. That’s all.

“Mr. Davis…you’re hurting me. Could you…please…?”

“Ah,” Warwick said, pointing at the television with his free hand. “My favorite part.”

The scene playing was when Willow was doing magic tricks in front of the dwarf village. Only instead of Willow standing before the congregation of little people, it was the leprechaun holding up the baby pig with his clawed hands. No…not the leprechaun—not the one from the films anyway. This one looked different somehow, slightly smaller, different facial features, larger and more menacing claws.

Onscreen, instead of making the pig disappear like in the movie, the leprechaun pressed his hands together, squashing the piglet from snout to corkscrew tail, squeezing it flat. Purple organs oozed out of the pig’s mouth and anus like jelly filling from a doughnut.

The little people of Willow’s village shrieked, scattered in all directions. The leprechaun cackled as he chased them down, one by one, and bit into them, tearing out mouthfuls of flesh. As each dwarf was bitten, they would fall, clutching at their wounds and grimacing, but within seconds they were on their feet again, now leprechauns themselves, their grimaces becoming verdant rictuses as they danced and guffawed.

“What the fuck…ahhhh!” Marvin gripped Warwick’s constricting hand, tried to rip it free from his leg but couldn’t budge it.

“The leprechaun character is mine, me lad. You and your friends have been awfully bad. I don’t usually hurt other folk who are wee. But you forced my hand when you fucked with me. Now you’ve gone and made this old leprechaun mad.”

Warwick’s claws dug into Marvin’s thigh, tearing past the fabric and into his flesh.

“Please! L-let me go!”

Warwick released him, snickering as Marvin fell over the couch to get away from him. Marvin yelped when his body hit the floor, Brian Trenchard-Smith immediately at his side, licking his fingers and purring.

Warwick stood on the couch, unbuttoning his white dress shirt, and then taking it off and folding it nicely beside his jacket. He did the same with his pants, his underwear. Besides his hideous hands, one now stained with Marvin’s blood, the creature still looked like Warwick Davis, only now completely nude.

The television filled with static, hissed and crackled. When more images filled the screen, it wasn’t Willow playing anymore, but a mash-up of the Leprechaun films—just the death scenes. But as the scenes played on, Marvin realized he didn’t recognize any of them. He had seen each film again and again, had the death scenes memorized. These were…new—different. The leprechaun on screen was the same from the Willow scene, not Warwick Davis in makeup. This leprechaun was real. Something about his leathery skin, his beady green eyes, even the way he cackled as he slaughtered his victims—a real-life fucking leprechaun. Which meant the men and women being torn apart on screen were real people, each of them ripped to shreds by the hands of an honest to god mythical creature. Blood and organs and tattered flesh splashed across the television, shrieks of torture and terror exploding from the speakers.

“Let me slip into something more comfortable,” Warwick said as he reached up, grabbed hold of his lips with both hands and stretched them in opposite directions. The flesh tore, splattering green blood over the couch and carpet. Warwick’s skin was peeled off like a wetsuit, tossed across the room. The leprechaun—the real leprechaun—clad in sparkling green suit and gold-buckled shoes, grinned at Marvin, took a bow and then did a small jig, cackling. He held out his hand, snapped his fingers. There was a shower of green sparks, and then his green top hat sat in his palm, the gold buckle glimmering in the television’s dancing light. He placed it on his head and his grin oozed into a snarl.

Marvin used the wall behind him to climb to his feet, searching the apartment for something he could use as a weapon.

“A musical, you say? Maybe that’s not such a bad idea, yes?” With another snap of his fingers, the leprechaun hopped off the couch.

Music began to play, though Marvin couldn’t tell from where. He wanted to run, get the fuck out of his apartment and away from the monster whose likeness he had been obsessing about since 1993. He needed to find Byron and Simon, everyone involved in the musical, warn them all. But he couldn’t run.

He felt like dancing.

The music played louder as Marvin pushed himself off the wall, and though the aches in his legs begged him not to, he began to dance. Tapping and shuffling his feet.

“Please don’t kill me. I didn’t steal your gold. I’ve loved your kind since Jennifer Aniston was twenty-four years old.” The words flowed from Marvin’s mouth in song-form, and he slapped his hands over his lips and widened his eyes, feet still dancing beneath him.

“Me copyright is as good as gold, and you took it just as well. And I won’t be a happy lep until your ass is raped in Hell. Dee diddle dee diddle diddle diddle dee.”

Marvin danced across the room, spinning and hopping. He tried to scream, but it came out in melody. The leprechaun clapped his hands once, and when he pulled them apart, he held a cane. He spun it, tapped it on the floor in rhythm with his feet as he danced sideways across the apartment toward Marvin.

“We’ll stop the musical, I swear. It will never be released. I’ll make sure the production is immediately ceased!”

“I wish it were so simple. I wish I wish, but still. It has been far too long since this leprechaun did kill.” The leprechaun flung the cane across the room, missing Marvin by a hair. It stabbed into the wall just beside Marvin’s head, wobbling as sheet rock dusted down. “I’ll pull your lungs out of your arse, blow them up until they float. Then tear your balls off one by one and stuff them down your throat.”

The leprechaun sprang forward, cackling all the while. The music picked up speed, grew louder in volume until the walls shook. Marvin tried to run, but tripped over his own dancing feet and smacked his chin on the floor.

Strong hands seized his ankles and yanked him backward. The leprechaun leapt onto Marvin’s chest, put his hands on his hips as he danced a rib-crushing jig.

Marvin grimaced, tried to breathe but couldn’t find any oxygen as the shiny, buckled shoes trampled him.

Something hissed, yowled from Marvin’s left. Brian Trenchard-Smith sat on top of the couch, ears pinned back, teeth bared as he hissed again, and then launched himself into the leprechaun’s face, scratching and spitting.

When the leprechaun lost his footing, crashed to the floor, Marvin kicked away from him, turned onto his stomach and tried to crawl. He could breathe now, but each breath was like inhaling razor blades.

From behind him, Brian screeched, yowled.

Just as Marvin had reached his coffee table, the leprechaun pounced on his back, bit into his neck. Its teeth were as hot as cigarette cherries, plunging into the soft flesh just below his ear. The music stopped and the scream that exploded from Marvin’s throat had no melody to it.

He threw an elbow and caught the leprechaun in the face, knocking the creature off his back. Marvin hauled himself back to his feet, knees shaking, a hand pressed to his neck wound. His eyes again darted around the apartment, desperate for something, anything to defend himself. With no other option, he grabbed his bong, held it with both hands like a bat.

The leprechaun stopped, sniffed the air. “Is that…is that what I think it is? Why didn’t you say so, laddie?” The leprechaun smiled and rubbed his palms together as he approached Marvin. The wee monster seemed almost friendly all of a sudden. “You’ll share with your friend the leprechaun, won’t you, Marvin? Been wanting to try the stuff myself since my character was in the hood.”

The weed, Marvin thought. Four-leaf clovers. It’s worth a shot.

“Oh…of course,” Marvin said, wincing as his neck pumped blood and pulsated with agony. He took a seat on the couch, packed a fresh, sticky bowl. “Be my guest. This is some good shit. The bomb.”

“The bomb,” the leprechaun said, taking the bong and nodding. “Yes, yes. The bomb.” He pressed his lips to the end of the glass cylinder.

Marvin lit the bowl, swirled the flame over the weed until every bit of green had burned black.

The leprechaun inhaled deep and giggled as he blew out smoke. Then his eyes widened and ignited into a bright, blinding shade of green. His hands went to his throat, clutched at his chest and stomach. He dropped the bong, spilling dirty water on the carpet.

“What…what is this? A tr-trick?” The leprechaun hit the floor, kicked his legs as he gagged and clawed at his throat.

“A new strain, asshole,” Marvin said, picking up the bong. “Four-Leaf Clover.” He swung the bong, smashed it against the back of the leprechaun’s head.

The leprechaun grunted, then was out cold, feet still kicking.

“F-fuck…” Marvin rushed to his kitchen, grabbed a towel and pressed it to his neck.

Brian limped his way toward Marvin, meowing. Marvin groaned as he bent down and scooped up his cat, then hurried out of the apartment.

He had to warn the others. Even though four-leaf clovers killed the leprechaun in the first film, the rules changed from movie to movie. Marvin wasn’t sure which of those rules applied in real life.

How the fuck do you kill a real leprechaun?

That was what they would have to figure out.

But first…he had to make a stop. Get something to eat. The hunger hit him out of nowhere, and he only craved one thing: potatoes.

By the time they’d buried Genevieve, the sun was going down. Autumn days in the Pacific Northwest were short. Too short for Simon’s taste. He liked dark bars and dark movies, but those were things you could walk away from, into the light. Now the dark was here and all around him.

He opened Byron’s trunk and tossed the shovels in. He was just about to complain about the pain in his lower back when he noticed the gold shimmering in the diminished light.

“Hey, Byron,” Simon called out. “This the gold from the set? Why’s it in your trunk?”

Byron wiped the sweat from his face with the bottom of his shirt. “I went back and grabbed that shit. Couldn’t just leave it on set. You remember what happened to the last pot of gold…and that was just plastic crap.”

“This is no better than plastic,” Simon said as he reached in and grabbed a handful of the heavy metal. “Probably scrap iron someone painted gold just to fuck with us.”

Byron shrugged. “Oh well. Whoever it was did us a favor. That plastic gold looked like shit, Simon. At least this looks real. And who the fuck would take the time to paint all that up and make the swap? Doesn’t really make any sense.” Byron shook his head. “Those plastic coins in Genevieve’s eyes…whoever swapped the gold has got to be our killer. Right? Maybe we can get fingerprints off them or something.”

Simon tossed the gold coins from hand to hand. “I wasn’t touching those fucking coins, man. They were in her eye sockets. That shit got bagged up with the rest of her head.”

“Fucking great,” Byron said.

Simon was about to slam the trunk closed when something caught his eye.

“Damn,” he said as he plucked the flute from the pile of gold. The instrument was gold-colored too. “Whoever our killer is, he had an eye for detail. This is just like the flute from Leprechaun in the Hood. Check it out.” Simon studied Byron’s response, but his friend barely responded, just sort of shrugged.

“Can we get the fuck out of here already? I don’t know if you remember but we just buried a dead body. We should have been gone by now.”

Simon pulled the flute out, slammed the trunk. “Yeah, you’re right. Um…Byron.” Simon paused. “I’m sorry, man. I swear I didn’t mean to get you involved in this shit. But I didn’t know what else to do. I was scared…still am. I know it’s fucked up, but you’re all I’ve got.”

Byron shook his head, massaging his temples. “Just get it in the car and let’s go.”

“Yeah, all right.” Simon slid into the passenger seat, turning the flute over in his hands. The car’s headlights burst on as Byron turned the ignition, illuminating the loose dirt where they had just buried Genevieve’s remains.

I’m sorry, Genevieve. I didn’t really know you, and you were annoying as shit, but I won’t forget you.

He didn’t know why—he was overcome by a strange, uncontrollable urge—but he pressed the flute to his lips, placed his fingers over the holes, and blew. The sound was faint, hardly audible at all. Simon pulled it away from his mouth, then started spitting and wiping his lips as the flavor of death painted his tongue.

“Ah, fuck! What the hell is—”

Byron had turned in his seat so he could stare at Simon. His eyes were wide and unblinking, his jaw hanging loose. Just like from the film. Simon thought Byron was fucking with him, and he was actually relieved to see his friend display some shred of humor again.

“All right, asshole. Let’s get going,” Simon said with a smile, then swirled his tongue around his mouth and spat the pungent taste out the window. When he turned back toward Byron, the guy still hadn’t budged. He stared at Simon as if hypnotized. A string of drool hung from his bottom lip.

“Byron, quit fucking around. Drive, man. Let’s move.”

Nothing. No response. Then Simon noticed the slight, dim green glow in Byron’s eyes.

Simon turned the flute over in his hands, not sure what to think, what to do. This can’t be happening. This isn’t…

Something moved in the dirt just in front of the car. At first, Simon thought it was a trick of the headlights, but as he stared at the loose soil where they had just buried Genevieve, it moved again, bulging up as if something were digging its way out.

“Byron.” Simon nudged his friend in the shoulder. “Byron, man…”

Byron didn’t respond, didn’t even blink.

The dirt parted and something long and pale wiggled its way out of the ground. It wasn’t until Simon saw the toes—the nails painted black and wiggling—that he realized it was Genevieve’s leg. It moved like a giant inchworm, bending at the knee as it scooted across the earth. Coagulated blood oozed out of the ragged stump, but it was a dark green color, leaving a trail of gory mud behind as it moved.

“Fuck my life.” Simon grabbed Byron by the shoulders, shook him. “Snap out of it, man. Wake up!”

Byron’s head rocked back and forth as if his neck was a spring, and he still had that dumb look on his face, his eyes like glow-in-the-dark orbs.

More forms worked their way out of the dirt, bits of shredded trash bag clinging to the moist flesh. Genevieve’s limbless, headless, titless torso wiggled its way out, fell over onto its back and flopped around like a halibut. Right behind that came two pale breasts, rolling through the dirt like spilled grapefruits. They crept up the torso’s belly toward the chest, two green, tattered circles indicating where they had been torn from. Once the breasts were in place, they spun as if screwing themselves back in, splattering the grass with more green, swampy blood.

Chunks of unidentifiable flesh poked out of the dirt like gophers, scurried toward the torso and pressed themselves into the bloody, ragged spots they used to inhabit.

The leg inched its way over and began to screw itself back onto the torso.

Simon needed someone else to witness this, to prove he wasn’t crazy. He cocked his fist back and punched Byron in the face, nailing him square in the chin.

Byron’s head rocked back, smacked the driver’s side window. His eyes focused and he blinked rapidly, extinguishing the glow, finally snapping out of his trance. He wiped the drool from his lip, cupped his chin and moaned.

“Oh you’re so fucking dead.” Byron lunged at Simon, teeth bared, but Simon caught him by the wrists, jerked his head toward the living body parts.

“Just fucking look!”

Byron ripped his hands free, landed a punch before turning in his seat. Simon grunted, cupped his bleeding nose.

“Fuck, Byron!”

“What…what the hell is… What the fuck is that?”

The body stood on both legs now, its left arm spinning in place at the shoulder as it screwed itself in. Simon was positive they had buried the corpse nude, didn’t remember any clothing at all. Yet the body was clad in a gold leotard, hugging it tight, shoving the newly-attached breasts together to form deep, green-tinted cleavage.

“Byron, just drive. Run that motherfucker over and get us out of here.”

“Is that Genevieve?”

“Just go! Hurry!” Blood ran from Simon’s nostrils, staining his teeth and coating his tongue as he spoke. “Drive! Fucking drive!”

Genevieve’s other arm unearthed itself next, dragging her head by the hair. The face was smiling, black sunglasses covering her eyes. She reached down with her attached arm, pressed the second arm to her shoulder where it spun and fused itself to the whole. Then with both hands, she placed her head atop her neck stump, twisted it.

Byron still just stared, shaking his head and mumbling as he watched Genevieve’s resurrected body start to sway its hips, hands running up and down its sides seductively.

Simon leapt across the middle console, threw the car into drive, then pressed down on Byron’s knee. The car lurched forward, throwing dirt and gravel behind them. Just before they reached Genevieve, she tilted her head down to reveal her eyes behind the glasses. They glowed bright green, shimmering like jade.

Then the front bumper slammed into her, threw her under the car. The car bounced as they ran her over, Simon’s head rocking forward, crushing his nose on the dashboard. He grunted and cupped his face again, fresh blood running through his fingers.

Byron slammed on the brakes, still mumbling, Simon unable to decipher a word of it. They turned and looked out the back window together.

Genevieve stood unharmed in the same spot. Her golden leotard sparkled, eyes grew brighter. Her grin stretched across her face, and she wiggled her fingers at them. “Ooohhh, y’all are in trouble. It’s not nice to steal gold from a leprechaun.”

Byron didn’t have to be told this time. He mashed his foot against the gas pedal under his own power and peeled out, rocketing through the woods.

Genevieve cackled from behind them, pointing in their direction as they sped off, her eyes flooding the woods with lime-colored light.

“Simon, what the fuck was that? What did we just see back there?”

Simon held up the flute, hands shaking. “I…I played this. I don’t know why, but I just did. You were in some kind of trance or something. You just stared at me like you were brain dead...your fucking eyes were green too.”

“My…my eyes…?” Byron’s brow furrowed as he stared into the rearview. “Just like in the movie. Just like in the fucking movie,” he said, and then slammed his palms against the steering wheel.

“Holy fuck.” Simon wiped another handful of blood away from his nose, rolled the flute in his hands. “Genevieve…she was…she was a—”

“A zombie fly girl,” Byron said. “She was a fucking zombie fly girl, wasn’t she?”

Even though it sounded insane, Simon nodded. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the green note that had been left behind at Genevieve’s apartment. “Ye fuckers ripped off my intellectual property. That was not a great move for your physical longevity. So consider this my cease and desist letter. To fuck with me you should have known better. Prepare to now pay for your larceny.”

They burst out of the woods and onto the road, Byron swinging the car into a sharp left turn, nearly slamming into a white van going the opposite direction.

“What’s going on, Simon?”

“The leprechaun.”

“What?”

“The fucking leprechaun. It’s real and it’s pissed that we’re using its character in our musical. He killed Genevieve and brought her back as a zombie fly girl…which was the stupidest fucking part about that movie—”

“Fuck the movie! What the hell are we gonna do now?”

Simon ran his fingers across the golden flute’s surface. “We need to get the cast and crew together.”

And we’re going to put on the best fucking show ever, he thought. Just like in the movie…they’ll love me. They’ll worship me.

“So what do you think happened?” Trinie said, walking hand in hand with Mark down the street.

They had been trying to decide on a place to go for dinner, but hadn’t found anything yet. Mark was thinking about suggesting pizza again so they could hurry up and eat, get back to her place where they could jump back into bed.

“Happened with what?”

“The show. Why do you think they canceled practice?”

“Who knows? Maybe Byron and Marvin came to their senses, kicked Simon out. With him gone, things would go a lot smoother at the very least. Maybe we can get this thing on track, put on a decent show.”

“God, I hope so. I don’t know how much more of that dickwad I can take.”

Mark stopped, grabbed her other hand, looked into her eyes. “How about we don’t talk about the musical tonight, huh? I’m kind of sick of it, to be honest. I want to concentrate on you.” He started to lean in, started to kiss her. But she moved her face to the left at the last second. Mark’s puckered lips landed on her ear.

“Is that…is that Marvin?” Trinie pointed over Mark’s shoulder.

Mark rolled his eyes, spun to face the direction Trinie was pointing. The restaurant had a glass front, and sitting right by the window was Marvin, stuffing his face.

“What’s wrong with him?” Mark said. “He looks sick. Doesn’t he?”

Trinie clapped once, chuckled. “It’s a publicity stunt. Look at him…he’s dressed as the leprechaun.”

Mark squinted, took a few steps toward the restaurant. “Maybe after the leprechaun was hit by a fucking semi-truck.”

“I think it looks great. All that green blood. At least they stepped it up in the special effects department, right?”

“I guess.”

Marvin definitely looked like a leprechaun, just not the leprechaun. He didn’t have the right clothes, didn’t have the right features. He basically looked like a Marvin version of the leprechaun. But Trinie was right. It looked a hell of a lot better than before.

And it was working. Every pair of eyes in the restaurant was aimed at Marvin. A cat leapt onto the table, started eating the food there, but Marvin shooed it away, pulled the plate closer to him and covered it with his arm as he continued to gorge himself. The cat hissed, and when a man who looked like the restaurant’s manager came by, pointed at the cat and then pointed outside, Marvin slammed his hands on the table, bared his teeth at the manager, and the man backed off.

Looks like
Marvin is stepping up his acting game too.

“Let’s go say hi,” Trinie said, then grabbed Mark’s hand and dragged him toward the diner.

“Trinie, hold on. We’re gonna ruin his whole act. Let’s just—”

“Look, the musical might be stupid to you, but I’ve really been excited about it, okay? I’m into it. I know it’s no Troma movie, but it’s something.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Just come on.”

A bell jingled as they entered the diner, but nobody looked up at them. Every customer, every employee, every person walking by the windows outside had their attention on Marvin.

The green-clad dwarf had about six plates of food in front of him: French fries, a baked potato, hash browns, mashed potatoes, potato wedges, and a stack of what looked like potato pancakes.

“He’s laying it on kind of thick, don’t you think?” Mark whispered to Trinie.

“No, it’s genius. Just like from the third movie.” Trinie left Mark at the door and approached the table.

“You’ve seen the third movie?” Mark asked as he followed her.

Marvin didn’t even acknowledge them, just kept stuffing potatoes into his mouth, his lips and chin shining with grease. His neck was covered in some kind of green liquid that oozed out of one hell of a convincing wound. The exposed meat even pulsated.

Trinie knocked her knuckles against the table. “Those potatoes look magically delicious,” she said in an awful attempt at an Irish accent. Marvin’s cat padded over, limping, licked Trinie’s hand.

“Ma’am,” the manager said, placing a gentle hand on Trinie’s shoulder. “I think it’s best you don’t mess with him. I don’t need things to escalate any. Police are on their way.”

“Police?” Mark said, shaking his head and smiling. “That won’t be necessary. This is a friend of ours. Right, Marvin?”

Marvin licked his lips, slowly turned to face them. “There once were two cats of Kilkenny, each thought there was one cat too many. So they fought and they fit, and they scratched and they bit, till excepting their nails, and the tips of their tails, instead of two cats there weren’t any.”

“What?” Mark said, then flinched and pulled Trinie away from the table as Marvin lunged forward, grabbed his cat by the tail and pulled it toward him.

The cat spat, clawed at Marvin, raking fresh green wounds across his skin. But Marvin didn’t seem to care or notice. He stuffed the cat’s head into his mouth, his jaw seeming to unhinge to make it fit, and before Mark or anyone could stop him, he bit down.

The cat’s body went into convulsions for a moment before going limp and hanging from between Marvin’s teeth. Marvin ground his jaw back and forth, pulling the carcass with both hands away from his face. Tissue stretched like taffy from the cat’s neck, spurting blood across Marvin’s face and chest. When he chewed, the crunching sound was so loud, everyone in the restaurant cringed, flinched. Some ran out, leaving their plates behind.

“What the fuck, man?” Trinie said.

“Something’s wrong,” Mark said, holding Trinie back. She tried to push away from him as if she wanted to attack Marvin. “We need to call someone…like right now.”

“If he’s your friend,” the manager said, covering his mouth, cheeks bulging as if ready to puke. “Get him the hell out of here, would you?”

“Marvin, what’s the matter with you?” Mark said, tentatively approaching the table. “Are you sick? What happened to your neck?”

Why the fuck is his blood green like that?

Marvin pushed his finger into the cat’s neck stump as he continued to chew the head. Fur was pasted to his lips and chin. He moved his finger in and out, giggling.

Then suddenly his expression changed. His eyes darted toward Mark, then Trinie, then the dead cat in his hands.

“B-Brian? Brian!” Marvin stood, hyperventilating. He studied the cat, ran his hands over the fur and shook his head. Meat and fur fell out of his mouth in clumps, and he wiped at his face, staring at the mess in his hand, then leaned over and puked onto the floor, the hot vomit splashing onto the manager’s shoes, a mixture of masticated potatoes, cat flesh, fur, and skull fragments.

“Marvin, we need to get the hell out of here.” Mark grabbed Marvin by his arms, lifted the weeping dwarf out of the booth.

“The leprechaun,” Marvin muttered. “The fucking leprechaun, the real fucking leprechaun, did this to me. He…he came to my house. He was Warwick Davis at first. He made me dance, but then we smoked Four-Leaf Clover and…and I think maybe I killed him. But now…now… Oh God, Brian!”

Mark and Trinie shared a look, and they moved toward the front door, Marvin between them, as quickly as possible, leaving the dead cat and the feast of potatoes behind.

Just as they were about to step outside, Marvin slipped free from their grasp, waddled back toward the manager. He had that wide grin on his face again, pointed at the manager’s shoes.

“Ah,” he said, pulling a rag out of the pocket of the horrified busboy who stood beside him. “Looks like those shoes could use a shine, me laddie.”

“You stay the hell away from me,” the manager said. He picked up a ketchup bottle, broke it on the counter, and then waved the jagged, ketchup-coated glass at Marvin as he approached.

Marvin spat into the rag. “I’ll have them brogs shining like glass when I’m done with them.”

Mark ran forward, scooped Marvin into his arms. “Really sorry about this!” Mark shouted to the manager, to everyone in the restaurant, as he rushed through the doors and into the hot night.

Trinie stood outside, her cell phone in her hand, glaring at the screen.

“You call the cops?” Mark said. “I’m thinking we may need a mental health officer or something. Marvin’s fucking whacked.”

“Text from Simon,” she said, then held the phone up for Mark to see.

Simon: Meet at the theater. Emergency!

The leprechaun sat up in the apartment, giggling maniacally as he smoothed out his green coat, placed his hat back on his head. He licked his pimpled green lips as he thought of his wee little friend, probably boasting about how he’d tricked the leprechaun, maybe bragging about slaying him. That Marvin Brinks hadn’t tricked shit. Long ago, the four-leaf clovers might have proven fatal, but through so many centuries of exposure, the leprechaun had finally grown immune to their power.

“Dammit, Marvin me lad,” the leprechaun said as he rose to his feet. “I was starting to like you.” He was still too stoned to speak in rhymes—this weed, the bomb as they call it, was delightful. The leprechaun couldn’t help but wonder what other delicious treats he had been missing.

He licked his lips again, tasted Marvin’s blood. He’d bitten the wee little bastard, and that meant Marvin would be changing. Which filled the leprechaun’s black little heart with joy. It had been far too long since he was in the company of another leprechaun.

But he could worry about that later. For now, only one thing was certain: until he secured his stolen property rights, his flute and his pot of gold would elude him. So he’d kill every last crew member of that musical.

He left the shitty apartment, eager to explore this strange new city, taste its delicacies. There’d be plenty of time for killing. For now, he had something else in mind.

By the time Simon and Byron screeched to a halt in the theater’s parking lot, half the cast and crew had already converged. Simon guessed the others weren’t showing. His broken phone had powered down after he’d texted everyone on the road back from the forest, most likely never to turn on again, and he didn’t have a clear idea of the time. The chaos in his skull seemed to swell beyond him, crowding out any recognition of darkness or light.

Some of the crew drank tall boys of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Others passed flasks and joints. Nearly all of them smoked cigarettes, even some who Simon had never identified as smokers.

Bloodshot eyes and sallow faces stared him down as the car pulled up, and Simon realized what he’d done. He’d ruined everyone’s fun, made their lives miserable in recent weeks. If ever presented with the opportunity to be part of a similar project again, they’d all more than likely respond with a resounding Hell no, regardless who was involved, because Simon had transformed a good thing into an experiment in group suffering. He was sole proprietor of several dozen worst life experiences. For a moment he sat in the seat of Byron’s car, gazing out at his crew, feeling shame and sympathy. He rolled the flute through his fingers, contemplating playing it so he could gain control of the whole group, force them to do his bidding.

Not yet.

“You know what you’re gonna tell them?” Byron asked.

Simon shifted uncomfortably in his seat, almost startled by the words. They’d remained silent on the long drive back from the woods. “We start with the truth. We tell them what we know. From there, who knows?”

“In case you forgot again, we just buried a dead girl in the woods. That’s not exactly the move of innocent people. I know you’re innocent, but I’m your best friend. These people view you through a different lens. To them, you’re hardly better than a murderer as it stands.”

“That dead girl we buried, someone dismembered her in X-rated fashion, and then she returned to life as a zombie fly girl. So unless we took the same bad acid, my number one concern is protecting these people, because for all we know Genevieve’s death was only the beginning.”

Protecting these people? Simon thought. More like protecting my show.

“One more thing.”

Simon looked at Byron quizzically.

“I never had trouble memorizing ‘Bitches Be Spooky.’ I just think it’s a stupid song.”

Simon raised the flute. “Bet you if I blow on this I can get you to sing it.”

They were both too battered to laugh, but their silence felt enough like laughter. They stepped out of the car.

If I blow the flute, I can get anybody to do anything. The musical will be a sensation!

Simon parted the exhausted crowd and unlocked the theater door. He jogged down the center aisle to the stage, onto which he performed a leap-hop that told him just how much of a beating his body had taken during the night. He called out, “Hey everybody, find a seat wherever you like.” He locked eyes with Byron, who did not join him onstage, and took a deep breath before continuing. “This is not a rehearsal. In fact, I don’t know if there will be any more rehearsals.”

Because the play will be a hit even if it sucks.

Simon held the flute at his side, rubbing his thumb across the golden surface.

Murmurs erupted, passed around like the joints they’d shared outside.

“Just calm down for a second and I’ll explain everything,” Simon said, surprised at how calm his voice sounded. Most surprisingly, everybody listened. He realized that they’d grown so used to him shouting all the time, acting like a belligerent asshole, that they were unnerved by his more natural, soft-spoken voice. Either that or they were just drunk and tired.

“One of the cast members was murdered last night.”

Now the worried shouts erupted as people craned their heads in every direction, trying to account for the missing. Simon carried on regardless.

“The murderer left a note warning us from putting on the musical, but that’s not all they left.” He raised the magical flute. “Does anyone recognize this?”

“Yeah, it’s a load of fucking bullshit!” shouted a dude with too many facial piercings who Simon recognized as one of Jesus Freak’s posse.

Byron hung his head. If he’d known Simon planned on mishandling the disclosure of Genevieve’s death so badly, he never would’ve helped him get rid of her body. They should’ve gone to the police, or run out and never said a word. To load someone up in trash bags and bury them in the woods…. Man, what had they been thinking? They’d been thinking about nothing, that’s what. They’d gone into crisis mode, most likely into shock, and responded in a manner at odds not only with rational human behavior, but also with their own asses. It’d be like a couple of gazelle trotting straight into a lion’s den. Now the lions were the cast and crew who’d actually shown up for this meeting. Several held cellphones to their ears, chatting away in uncertain, panicked voices as they spoke to emergency dispatchers. Byron estimated five, maybe ten minutes before the cops had the theater surrounded.

Simon put the flute to his lips then, and Byron didn’t like the look on his friend’s face. Byron was just about to rush toward him, tackle him before he could play it. Things were bad enough without Simon trying to control any minds.

That was when Mark and Trinie burst through the theater doors, followed by Marvin—it must have been Marvin—in startlingly realistic leprechaun makeup. Trinie and Mark each held one of Marvin’s arms, the tips of his shoes inches above the ground.

Marvin looked injured, part of his neck ripped open.

Is that…is that green blood?

Byron thought back to Genevieve and how her limbs had bled the same way before she had put herself back together.

Marvin was weeping. His head hung low as he was carried across the theater toward the stage. Trinie and Mark set him down and the little man bawled even harder, staring at his bloody hands with tufts of fur stuck to them.

“Something’s wrong with Marvin,” Trinie said.

“The psycho bit off a cat’s head,” Mark said.

“Oh, Brian!” Marvin wailed.

“Oh shit,” Byron muttered under his breath. When Simon accused Marvin of murdering Genevieve, Byron had defended Marvin. Now Byron doubted himself. Marvin was a good guy, someone Byron had considered a true friend, but maybe Marvin was under the leprechaun’s influence or something. Or maybe he really is the leprechaun.

Simon, still onstage, stared at Marvin with wide eyes, the flute pressed up against his lips, though he wasn’t blowing into it.

Marvin, crumpled on the floor between Mark and Trinie, looked up at Simon, and the woeful countenance that had been pinching his face loosened. His mouth curled into a grin, the teeth tinted green, and he hopped to his feet, licked his lips.

“Ah,” Marvin said, pointing at the flute, his eyes now sparkling with green light. “What’s that you’ve got there, me lad? You wouldn’t keep gold from a cute little leprechaun, now would you?”

Holy fuck, he really is the leprechaun.

Trinie grabbed Mark’s arm and squealed. Both of them backed away from Marvin as he started to climb the stage, giggling all the while.

The rest of the cast exchanged glances, some smirking as if they thought this was all some kind of joke, something Simon had come up with to get their morale back up about the musical.

Simon backed away, shaking his head.

“Now give me the gold. As quick as you can. Or I’ll tear out your heart with my wee little hand.” Marvin wiggled his fingers, which had started sprouting claws right before their eyes.

“What the fuck?” Simon’s eyes landed on Byron. “Fucking help me!”

Byron bolted upright and pointed an accusatory finger at Marvin. “That little motherfucker’s the one who killed Genevieve.”

“Genevieve?”

“What happened to Genevieve?”

“Genevieve’s dead?”

Her death instilled her name with the senseless power of a chart-topping pop song. People repeated her name, Genevieve, as if sifting through the syllables for a meaning that could never be found.

Simon, picking up on Byron’s plan, stood taller and faced the crowd again, his confidence restored. “Y-yeah, Genevieve’s dead! And, and Marvin killed her.” He pointed at Marvin with his flute hand, and in that same instant, Marvin growled and ripped the golden instrument away, his claws digging furrows into Simon’s forearm and palm. Blood poured from the wounds and Simon yelped, dropped to his knees and pressed his arm to his chest.

“Fuck me,” Byron said, wanting to run to his friend’s aid, but hesitant to get anywhere near the leprechaun formerly known as Marvin. Byron could hardly look, expecting Marvin to rip out Simon’s throat or disembowel him at any moment.

Instead, Marvin cackled as he hopped off the stage and danced toward the cast, who all gasped and backed away simultaneously like a spooked school of fish.

One guy, who was part of the chorus, had his back to the stage, speaking insistently into his cellphone.

“That’s right!” the guy screamed into the phone. “A fucking leprechaun murdered her!”

Marvin climbed onto the chair closest to the guy, still clutching the flute and licking his lips, then sprung onto his back. The guy screamed in surprise, spun in place like a dog chasing its tail.

Then surprise turned to pain as Marvin bit off the guy’s left ear. For some reason, he continued holding his cell phone even after Marvin turned and spit the ear at the now-panicked crowd. Through the chaos, Byron only caught glimpses of what happened next. Marvin pried the cell phone from his victim’s hand and stabbed it into the tattered, bleeding hole where the ear had been ripped away.

Marvin waved his hand, and in the next instant, the phone began ringing, spouting a fountain of blood past the earpiece with each ring.

“Let’s see who’s calling, laddie. Who might it be?” Marvin said, reaching into the man’s screaming mouth and ripping out his tongue.

The hysterical cast and crew ran past Byron. He was determined to help Simon now that Marvin was distracted.

Marvin placed the tongue in his green, warty mouth and spoke in a lower, garbled voice into the blood-spewing phone, “Hello?” He paused to listen for a moment before continuing. “Why, of course. We’ll see you soon. Tea with you, who could resist?” He removed the severed tongue from his mouth and spoke again to the bleeding, screaming man. “That was Death, and if you know what’s wise, you’ll suck his scythe.”

Somehow the man was still alive, still standing even. But he was a goner, so far lost in shock he was immobile, knees locked. And in the next instant, Marvin balled his clawed hand into a fist and punched through the man’s chest.

Police sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder by the second.

Simon still sat in the same spot onstage, nursing his wounds and glaring at Marvin. Byron rolled onto the stage, grabbed Simon by the arm, hauled him to his feet.

“Come on!”

“The flute,” Simon said. “He’s got…he’s got the fucking flute, man!”

“Fuck that flute!” Byron pulled Simon across the stage and down the steps. They broke into a sprint, Byron having to yank Simon along as his friend kept looking over his shoulder at Marvin, who had pulled out a length of intestine and was jump-roping with it.

“Jesus fuck!”

They exploded out of the theater doors, both of them losing their footing and crashing to the pavement. Simon grimaced, clutched his injured arm and hand, then started running back toward the theater.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Byron said, grabbing hold of Simon with his arm around his neck.

“I need it…I need that flute, Byron. Without it we’re—”

“Get your ass in the car, whiteboy, before I kill you myself.” Byron dragged him backward until they reached his car, then tossed him into the passenger seat and slammed the door.

Simon stared out the window toward the theater, lips pursed and eyes watery.

As Byron rounded the car and threw the driver’s door open, someone nearby shouted, “Where are you going?” Byron didn’t respond, didn’t even look up to see who it was. He hopped into the car and peeled out of the parking lot, driving over the lawn outside the theater.

There was no fucking way they were hanging around, not with Marvin, a fucking real-life leprechaun, on the rampage. Not to mention, the police would surely want to ask them questions. They’d get to that eventually, tell them everything they knew, lead them to Genevieve’s remains (or at least where they’d buried her remains). For now, they needed to stop the insanity. At least for a couple hours. That’s why Byron didn’t even have to ask Simon where they should go. They both knew it already: the Lovecraft.

They hit a back alley street just as the cops tore in from all directions, surrounding the theater.

“Want some music?” Byron asked.

Simon didn’t respond, just kept staring out the window, holding his injured arm to his chest.

Byron turned the stereo on anyway, and Gravediggaz accompanied them the rest of the way to the bar.

After sojourns into several bars where bartenders treated him to Goldschläger shots on the house, the leprechaun decided he liked this town. Portland. Portland fucking Oregon. After each film came out, he had traveled to each of the locations where they were set—except for outer space of course, though he did try, falling from the top of an airplane from a thousand feet up (immortal or not, that fall hurt like a motherfucker). Though the films were abominations, they did succeed in piquing his interest. Vegas had been a bust. The hood ate him alive. Twice. And the American countryside was full of dimwitted rednecks and Jennifer Aniston lookalikes. All of it made him homesick for his heartland, a place he could never return. “Perhaps in Portland I’ve found me a home,” he pondered aloud. “Now all me needs is a wife to bone.”

He squinted through his drunken stupor, hungry for pleasures of the flesh. Right then, the city spread its legs and answered his prayer in the form of a neon sign. A joint on the block ahead promised to be the Devil’s Point. The leprechaun could think of no place he’d rather be.

It had been so long since he was able to stretch his legs. He longed for a new tale of adventure, feared that his life’s work would be trivialized, remade for a new, young, callous audience. But the only thing that mattered right now was the jiggling asses of lascivious lasses.

“Hold it right there, lil’ homie.” The man at the door, as big as an oak tree, leaned down and locked eyes with the leprechaun. Though the noise thumping out of the club indicated a party, there was nobody else around, not outside by the door anyway. “You some kinda actor or sump’n? That costume is dope. ’Specially them shoes.”

“Dope?” the leprechaun said, raising an eyebrow, glancing down at his gold buckles.

“You know. Fly. Swag, son.” The man popped his own collar and ran his tongue across the front of his teeth.

“It’s not nice to insult a leprechaun’s clothes, me massive laddie. Not nice at all.”

“Yo. You in that musical, ain’t you? Yeah, yeah you is. Them posters are all over town. Me and my girl was gonna come through, check that shit out. Them movies are a trip.” He smiled, placed his giant mitt on the leprechaun’s shoulder. “Cover charge is on me, lil’ homie. Just make sure you hook it up at the show, you know what I’m sayin’?”

The leprechaun scratched the orange hair on his chin, unable to decipher the words coming out of the giant’s mouth. All except musical. And the sound of it got his green blood boiling, dissolved whatever buzz he had managed to build. He stepped past the large man and into the dark club, the music thumping, the lights flashing. He stopped, turned back toward the man at the door.

“A hookup, you say?”

“No doubt, homie.”

“No doubt at all.”

The leprechaun snickered as he hooked two of his fingers and yanked them upward into the air.

A splash of blood erupted from the man’s back as he was lifted off his feet, screaming and reaching behind him. His legs kicked as more blood rained down, soaked the back of his shirt and dripped down into his jeans.

The leprechaun bounced his hand, cackling, tapping his feet.

With each bounce, the wound in the bouncer’s back tore wider, his spinal cord now ripped free from his back and bent at an odd angle. There was a wet snapping sound, and the man grimaced for a moment, opened his mouth as if to scream, though only a mist of blood sprayed out, then he hung limp, suspended in the air.

“There’ll be no musical, there’ll be no show. But for now, I only want my shillelagh to grow.”

He giggled once when he waved his hands and the man’s body plummeted to the hard concrete in a bloody heap.

The leprechaun turned back toward the club, could smell the lust in the air like a boiling stew. With a hop and a click of his heels, he strutted toward the flashing lights and thumping music.

It was a small room, packed with sweating, undulating bodies. Women of all shapes and sizes bounced and swung their hips, shook their breasts. Some smiling, some with blank, emotionless expressions.

Men and women, young and old, alone and in groups, grinned and threw back shots and let their money fly all over the place. The scent of sweat and alcohol was almost as pungent as the odor of desire and greed swirling through the air like incense smoke.

A girl, hardly more than a teenager, swung her body around a golden pole that stood in the middle of the stage. The ghastly music blasting from the speakers began to fade, and the girl gathered the loose bills from the stage floor around her, the men applauding and whistling.

A hand pressed down on the leprechaun’s shoulder, and he turned to find himself face to face with a bare cunt, as smooth and wet as a squid.

“You lookin’ for some company, baby?”

The leprechaun’s eyes traveled up and along the woman’s body, past her navel—which was surrounded by a tattoo of a snake eating itself—past her breasts—tattooed with intricate tribal patterns—and finally arrived at her face.

The leprechaun flinched and backed away from her. “Your face could melt gold, me lass.”

She rolled her eyes and trotted across the room.

The leprechaun had only meant it as a compliment. He’d have to learn the ways of these Portland women.

The leprechaun waddled to a free seat right beside the stage and sat down, his legs dangling. Three glasses sat on the small circular table beside him, only bits of melting ice at the bottoms. He waved his hand over the sweating glasses and refilled them with Goldschläger, emptied two of them right away and hissed, licking the gold flakes from his lips.

Red lights flashed and waved over the crowd and stage, and the girl—named Tigress—strutted out wearing high heels and a tiger-striped dress.

On her second song, she stripped out of the high heels and dress, leaving only a tiger-striped thong.

On her third and final song, the thong went flying into the audience—and landed on the leprechaun’s head. He removed the thong, taking a deep whiff of its sweetness before palming it, as Tigress wrapped her legs around the pole and shimmied her way to the top. Then she slid slowly down, a slug trail of glitter left behind along the metal. Dollar bills rained onto the stage like butterflies.

These women, the leprechaun thought. They leave nothing to the imagination.

He pressed the thong to his nostrils.

Nothing.

Though it had been years since he had tasted the flesh of a woman, he needed the thrill of the chase, perhaps a little teasing, to get the juices flowing. These women appeared to leave everything there for the taking.

“Hey,” came a voice from behind him.

Before the leprechaun could turn to face who was speaking to him, a bony rump slid into his lap and a pair of moist lips were pressed up against his ear.

“There’s a creepy asshole over there that won’t leave me alone. Drunk as a skunk,” she said, her voice as squeaky as a dog’s toy.

The girl, young and cute, eyes the color of emeralds, hair as yellow as leaves in the fall, leaned back and smiled at him nervously, motioned with her pupils toward the other side of the room. The leprechaun turned and glanced, unable to keep his own grin from blossoming on his face.

The man, along with his buddies, all stared toward the girl who now clung to the leprechaun, her arm draped over his neck, fingernails running through his sideburn. She plucked his hat off his head and placed it onto hers, and though normally that would have caused the leprechaun to spill her entrails onto the floor, he only smiled. The girl with the emerald eyes was already starting to grow on him, and he wondered if he had found his bride.

The drunken man bared his teeth, slammed his beer glass on the table and shattered it. He leaned back, eyes on the leprechaun now, and he massaged the bulge in his jeans, sucked on his teeth.

“Thanks, my sweet little man,” the girl said, and started untying the straps to her top.

The leprechaun stopped her, pulled her hands into her lap. “Not so fast, my pretty lass. No reason to be in a hurry. We’ll have forever.”

She smiled, bit her lip, lowered her face so she could get a better look at him, squinted slightly. “Hey…you’re from that musical, aren’t you? Holy shit, I was just talking about that.”

“What?” His grin withered like a dying flower.

“I’m sitting on the star of the show’s lap. Fuck me, man. The leprechaun.” She said the last part in a deep voice, waving her hands for effect. “What a trip. Really, man.”

The leprechaun could only scowl as the shrill words spilled from the girl’s pretty pink lips.

She kissed his neck just below the ear and whispered, “This dance is free, me evil little leprechaun.”

Another song began to play, Tigress’s ass now up in the air toward the crowd. She humped the air, making her ass cheeks clap, sweat misting into the faces of her admirers. Some men sitting stage-side were climbing each other to get a closer look, mouths open as if trying to catch the sweat droplets on their tongues.

Emerald Eyes straddled the leprechaun, swinging her hair behind her, then leaning back, pressing her groin into the leprechaun’s chest. She smelled like ripe fruit, and for a moment, the leprechaun was able to calm his murderous rage which had cropped up again over mention of the musical.

Her top fell away from her chest, revealing smooth, creamy skin the color of eggshell. Her nipples were pink and slightly inverted. Sweat beads rolled down her torso, pooled in her belly button. She gripped the back of the leprechaun’s head and pulled herself to him, pressing her breasts to his face and sliding the soft flesh across his nose and lips.

The leprechaun found it hard to move, hard to even think of anything more than this perfect specimen in his lap. The beauty with the emerald eyes.

It’s perfect, he thought. I’ve found my bride.

The music played on, thumping and beating. The men roared as Tigress spread her legs, mashed her breasts together, unrolled her tongue so that it could flick across the tips of her erect nipples. Other women danced for people around the club, swirling and thrusting and humping.

The leprechaun chuckled as he felt his shillelagh harden, press up against the girl’s ass, which continued to rock and sway to the music.

As the song ended, the girl slid down the leprechaun’s wee body like a glob of melting butter. They locked eyes and she ran her tongue across her teeth and lips.

And one of her eyes was brown. She seemed to notice at the exact same time as the leprechaun, and she suddenly stopped dancing and searched the floor, ran her fingers across the leprechaun’s green coat and pants.

“My contact fell out. Fucking hell. Those things are expensive, man.”

It was at that very same moment that the leprechaun saw the poster taped to the pillar beside the stage. And as he looked around, the flyers were tacked up on the walls, taped to every pillar and pole in the whole fucking place.

Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical.

The leprechaun reached out to his minion, the one they used to call Genevieve. She had been waiting for his calling, and she was ready.

Come to me.

“Come on, man. Help me out. I can’t fucking see without my contacts.”

“Can’t see?” He grabbed her by the hair, pulled hard so that she was facing him, her hands immediately clawing at her scalp. Her eyes pinched shut, and the leprechaun pressed the nails of his two fingers through her lids and into her eyes, kept pushing until he was knuckle deep in jelly and blood. “How about now?”

The leprechaun ripped his fingers free and wiggled them at this girl who had come so close to becoming his wife. The optic nerves at the end of the eyes which were now impaled onto the leprechaun’s nails flung blood into the girl’s face. “Pity, my dear. You’ll miss the show.”

Her scream was cut off by the music as the speakers exploded back into life.

A strong hand slammed down on the leprechaun’s shoulder, swung him around so he was facing the opposite direction.

“She’s mine, you…you little motherfucker!” The drunk man already had his fist cocked back, and when his knuckles slammed against the leprechaun’s face, the bones in his hand snapped as if he’d just punched a cement wall.

The leprechaun only grinned, plucked his hat from the floor and placed it back on his head.

The girl kicked her legs, spun in place on the floor as gouts of blood poured from her eye sockets.

The drunk scrambled backward, knocking over tables and chairs, running into other men as he grunted and held his broken hand with the other.

“Help!” he screamed as the leprechaun pursued him with tapping feet. “Fucking help me!”

But all eyes were directed at the stage as Genevieve slowly strolled into view, her gold leotard hugging her body. She tossed her sunglasses away first, her eyes a lurid green, hypnotizing the crowd as they began to sway back and forth.

“I understand, me laddie. You’ve only got eyes for her,” the leprechaun said, then pounced onto the drunk’s chest, knocking him off his feet and slamming him to the ground. “It just so happens she could use a pair.”

The leprechaun pressed his lips to the man’s eye socket, sucked as he grabbed hold of the loose skin at the back of the man’s head, digging his claws in. The eye popped into the leprechaun’s mouth, and he quickly moved to the other socket and sucked.

“Fuuuuck! Oh fuck me!” The drunk sprayed blood into the leprechaun’s face as he screamed.

The leprechaun hopped off the man, spat the eyes into his hand and cackled. Not a single person in the club noticed or cared, and the leprechaun weaved his way through the crowd until he reached the girl, who was now on her hands and knees and attempting to crawl away, leaving a trail of blood in her wake.

Genevieve pulled her leotard off and twirled it above her head before launching it into the crowd. Her skin was a pale blue color, almost gray. Coagulated green blood oozed from the wounds on her body. She smiled at the leprechaun, then stood up straight, locked eyes with each and every stripper in the club. Her pupils sparkled as if filled with verdant lightning.

The strippers stood up straight all at once, and they each smiled, their eyes shimmering as green as Genevieve’s.

All but one.

The leprechaun pounced onto the girl’s back, slamming her face-first into the floor. She shrieked and thrashed, and the leprechaun cackled in response.

“I thought you were special, not like all these old hookers. But still I brought you some shiny new lookers.”

He flipped her onto her back and twisted the eyes into her bleeding sockets.

She choked as she screamed, fresh blood pouring from her face and down the sides of her head, soaking into her hair.

With a wave of the leprechaun’s hand, her wails were cut off. Her eyelids had been slit down the middle, and the skin flaps lay motionless on her new eyes which were slightly too big for her sockets and bulged from her face.

“Pay attention, dearie. See how it’s done. Though you won’t be my bride, we can still have some fun.”

The leprechaun pulled her to her feet and faced her toward the stage. A green flash ignited in her new eyes, and slowly, her mouth pulled into a bloody grin.

Genevieve tore her arm off, ribbons of thick green gore stretching as she pulled it away. She ran the hand across her torso, between her breasts, then down to her green cunt. Chunks of sloppy, gelatinous flesh fell away from her body and slapped against the stage floor, wiggled like mounds of Jell-O.

The men surrounding the stage seemed to snap out of their trance then, glancing around the room as if waking from a long sleep, disoriented and lost.

“What the fuck?”

“Jesus Christ!”

Genevieve dropped onto her ass, lifted her legs over her head by the ankles. With a sickening ripping sound, she tore the legs free and twirled them like oversized batons. Green blood oozed from the stumps and puddled over the stage.

The legs crawled toward the gold pole, wrapped themselves around it like pythons on a tree branch. They climbed, the rotting flesh making a squeaking sound as it rubbed against the metal, leaving a milky residue.

Genevieve screamed with laughter as the men started to scramble away from her, running in all directions, knocking each other over and fighting to get to the exit first.

Genevieve did a handstand with her remaining hand, and her breasts fell off as she spun in place, colliding with her chin before rolling onto the stage. Green blood was flung from her wounds and splattered all over the club, some hitting the backs of the retreating, shrieking men.

“Lovelier than flowers, sweeter than peaches. Me beautiful minions will love you to pieces!”

The strippers, all of their eyes still wide open, unblinking and green, bared their teeth and attacked the crowd that had piled up at the door and emergency exits. People yanked on the handles, pounded on the doors, but couldn’t budge them.

The women’s fingers sprouted hooked claws at the ends, and they slashed and swiped and tore open flesh. The men tried to fight back, but their efforts were useless as blood and organs and tattered strips of flesh slapped against the floor.

The leprechaun ripped a flier off the wall, waddled toward the stage where Genevieve was putting herself back together. She rubbed the back of the leprechaun’s head as he growled and read the words again.

Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical.

“Are you ready for some more fun, me dear?”

“Always.”

“I want me copyright! I want me gold!”

Marvin couldn’t understand what the soft, chewy thing that filled his mouth could be. Even after he spit it out, his mind refused to register that it was a human ear. At least until he noticed the corpse beside him, its head bloodied where an ear had apparently been bitten off. A fist-sized hole in the corpse’s chest leaked blood onto the floor, and Marvin realized he was standing in the puddle at the same time he noticed the blood coating his arm and hand, the strings of gore intertwined in his fingers. And then several policemen burst into the theater, guns drawn, and shouted, “Freeze, motherfucker!”

Marvin thought police were supposed to be kinder than that, but their presence gave him a sense of relief. Surely they were here to rescue him from this nightmare. Marvin stood and took a step toward them. They leveled their aim at him. “We’re warning you,” one of them said. “Get on the floor now.”

Marvin looked around. Besides the dead guy and the cops, he was the only one in the theater. So they were talking to him. “Please, officers, there must be some mistake.”

“Get down!”

Marvin dropped to his stomach on the floor and the cops rushed over and handcuffed him. They said some things about his rights, then lifted him by his arms and made him walk between them. The handcuffs dug into his wrists. The closest he’d ever come to being arrested was watching Cops on television.

“What am I being arrested for?” he asked.

They ignored his question and led him out of the theater, through a crowd of people who he recognized as the cast and crew of Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical.

He scanned the mob, but didn’t see Byron or Simon anywhere.

“Help!” Marvin said. “Help! I did nothing wrong. Somebody help me! The police are fucking me up!”

One of the cops tied a black hood over Marvin’s head and he fell silent.

He heard a car door open and was pushed into the back of what he knew was a police car. He hit his head on the doorframe and tumbled into the back of the squad car, blind and immobile. Who’s going to feed Brian? he wondered, only for shards of recent memory to surface. The leprechaun, Willow, potatoes, a cat head, people screaming. By the time the cops finished asking questions of the cast and crew, Marvin was no longer himself.

Mark and Trinie watched as the police cars sped away, one of them holding Marvin in the back seat. The man had gone insane, but Mark still felt bad for him. He couldn’t help but think that none of this was Marvin’s fault.

The few people who hadn’t fled the scene entirely milled about, lost in shock.

“Maybe he was using bath salts,” Mark said.

“Yeah, maybe.” Trinie didn’t sound too certain.

The cops had asked them a few generic questions and locked the theater doors, officially declaring it a crime scene, before driving away. It seemed to Mark like the police should’ve done more, but he failed to think of anything in their power, other than maybe recommending a good therapist. Everyone who’d witnessed the attack inside was going to need it.

“I don’t think that Marvin just went insane,” Trinie said.

“Maybe the stress of the musical got to be too much for him.”

Trinie shook her head. “No, I’m not buying it.” She pulled away from him, following in the direction that Simon and Byron had gone.

Well, this sucked. Mark had looked forward to an evening of intimacy, not running around with Veronica Mars all night. Wasn’t it like scientifically proven that death made people horny? Mark bit his lip, then jogged after her.

Trinie smiled when he caught her hand. “Where do you think they’ll be?”

Even though he wasn’t a regular himself, Mark spent enough time at the Lovecraft Bar to know Simon and Byron were Lovecraftian bar flies. It was through hanging out there that Mark had heard about Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical in the first place. Byron even worked as the DJ for the monthly horrorcore night, spinning Gravediggaz and other horror-themed hip hop groups.

“Probably the Lovecraft.”

“The what?” Trinie asked.

“Nevermind,” he said. “It’s not too far.”

“Well then let’s go. I want to find out what the fuck is going on.” Trinie tossed him her keys and turned toward the parking lot across from the theatre.

Mark could feel blood rushing into his face and he grimaced. “I…don’t drive.” Shit. Why couldn’t he ever just play it cool? He probably would have had to tell her eventually, but now?

“What? Did you never learn?”

“My license was suspended.”

“Oh. DUI?”

“More like.... road rage.”

“They suspended your license for road rage? Jesus, Mark. What’d you do?”

More like what he didn’t do. When he developed anger issues after his father’s death, Mark progressed from a law-abiding driver whose sole infraction was a speeding ticket for going ten over, into Grand Theft Auto: The Man. He’d run people off the road, instigated roadside fights, tailgated teenagers, honked at cars in front of him at red lights, driven over his neighbors’ lawns until they ran muddy with tire tracks, bought a louder stereo system just to agitate people, and more. His pain and confusion over his father’s sudden passing manifested itself in several unexpected ways, but the road rage was the worst. He’d never officially gotten arrested for anything he did, but the infractions quickly stacked up and the state suspended his license indefinitely.

For the last incident, in which he decided to play bumper cars during rush hour, he only avoided jail time because he agreed to take weekly anger management courses for a year. That was six months ago and he’d done great ever since, but regardless, it wasn’t material for an early date. Mark stood there, flabbergasted, with nothing to say.

“Forget I asked,” Trinie said. “We’ll talk later.”

“I’ll text Lucas and let him know to meet us at the Lovecraft. Might be nice to have a little backup.” Mark smiled in a weak effort to change the mood, but Trinie marched past him to her car.

“Come on,” she said. “And tell me where to go.”

On the drive over, Mark texted Lucas.

Excepting directions to the Lovecraft, he and Trinie didn’t speak a word.

Marvin lay on the cot in his jail cell, his normal self. He’d transformed in the back of the squad car and had attempted an attack on one of the officers when they escorted him out at the station. They had tased him for that.

And he remembered it this time. Not like before when he’d blacked out and woken up with an ear in his mouth. This time he had wanted to murder that officer, wanted to rip him open and dance in the gore. The urge came over him and there was nothing Marvin could do to stop it.

What the hell is wrong with me?

It was the leprechaun, he knew. The bastard had bitten him. And if the rules of the films applied in real life…

I’m turning into a leprechaun. Holy shit…

Marvin was alone in the cell, and he was grateful that there was nobody else to sink his teeth into. Although he did wish he had a friend there with him, to tell him everything would be all right. Or Brian, his best friend in the world. But Brian was dead.

I murdered my best friend…I’m a monster.

Marvin was a stranger to himself. For the last few hours alone in the cell, Marvin had mulled over the events of the night. He didn’t know how long it took to fully transform into a leprechaun after being bitten by one, but he could feel himself, his true self, dissolving inside of him. He began feeling less and less bad about the things he had done that night, and more and more excited about what he would do once he got out of this cage.

But for now, there was enough Marvin left that he still felt pity, still felt afraid of losing himself entirely to this new identity. He didn’t think he could handle that, couldn’t live with himself as a murderer—knowing that unexpectedly at any point this dark thing within him might take control and kill again.

I’ll kill myself first, he thought, but then wondered if that was even possible anymore.

Marvin always figured that even though he’d lived a lonely life—except for Brian—that someday he’d meet a girl who loved him for who he was, and he’d treat her like gold, and never be alone from that day forward.

Gold.

His eyes flashed around the cell at the thought.

Is there any gold in here?
Shiny, delicious gold?

The bastard police officers had taken his flute from him, and though Marvin couldn’t remember exactly where he’d gotten it or where it came from, he longed to have it back in his hands.

He recovered from the momentary, overwhelming desire for gold—gold—and realized he’d been crying.

“Pssst, Marvin.”

The whisper came from the barred window of the cell. Marvin rolled off the bottom bunk, wiping his eyes, and peered upward. It took him a second to recognize the face peering in at him, but once it registered, he nearly shrieked with joy.

“Byron!” he yelled in a whispery voice.

“Hey, buddy, how you holding up?” Byron smiled and arched his eyebrows, and Marvin couldn’t help but wonder where the hell his friend had been when all this happened, and why in the fuck he looked so cheery.

I’m a fucking murderous leprechaun who ate his best friend’s head and am now sitting in a fucking jail cell, asshole! How the fuck do you think I’m holding up?

But he didn’t say those words. If Byron was really here to help him, then he was the last friend Marvin had. He took a deep breath and returned whatever semblance of a smile he could muster.

Marvin glanced over his shoulder. No officers were around. He turned back to Byron. “I’m okay, I guess. Pretty confused.”

“I bet you are. Well listen, I’m gonna break you out, then you, me, and Simon are gonna end this Leprechaun shit once and for all. Can you reach the window?”

Break me out? You get super strength at some point during this fucked-up night?

Marvin could only hope his friend had some kind of plan. He estimated the window ledge to be about eight feet up, but if he scaled the end of the bunk, he might clear the gap and, if he was lucky, grab hold of the bars.

“How do I get past the bars?” Marvin asked.

Byron grinned mischievously and raised a handheld electric saw with a blade like a Cenobite dentist’s favorite tool. “I got this covered.” He revved the saw and cut through the bars near the top then at the bottom, leaving a wide enough gap for Marvin to crawl through. Byron had cut through the bars in record timing, the saw slicing through the metal as if they were made of clay. Marvin worried the noise might attract attention, but no policemen appeared and the holding cell across from his only held a handful of men passed out on drugs or alcohol.

“Hurry now,” Byron urged. Whispering seemed senseless after he’d used the saw, but he was whispering anyway.

Marvin climbed the side of the bunk, sliding around to the side closest to the window. He twisted his body so his back pressed up against the bunk, and on an internal count of three, he jumped.

For a second, he was weightless in midair, his short arms flailing, grasping desperately for the ledge. His blood pounded in his ears as he anticipated the painful crash against the concrete floor. A fall like that would mess him up real good. And just when he thought he wouldn’t make it, he felt himself float up—as if by magic—and his hands held a firm grip on the ledge.

“You did it, lad,” Byron said, but up close, there was something wrong about his smile. Was that spinach stuck to all his teeth?

Marvin’s grip began to slip. “Pull me through,” he said, “I’m slipping.”

“Why of course,” Byron said, now with a hint of Irish accent. He reached his hand, which still held the saw, through the window. The fingernails were sharp, green, and mossy. Byron revved the handsaw and lowered the blade to Marvin’s wrists before the little man could let go.

The saw chewed through meat and bone, and hot pain shot through Marvin’s arms. He fell away as his hands were severed from his wrists, and slammed backward against the hard concrete of his cell. Green blood squirted from his wrist stumps in rhythmic bursts, and a shriek erupted from Marvin’s throat.

“Look, ma,” Byron said, the skin of his face falling off like melting candle wax. The leprechaun grinned out from within the liquefied gore. “No hands.”

The leprechaun snatched Marvin’s hands off the ledge and fell away into the night, his cackles fading as he grew further away.

Marvin didn’t know how long he lay there bleeding, screaming for help, but by the time the police found him in his cell, the world had long ago ceased spinning, and blackness was the color of his mind.

The Lovecraft was crowded. Mark and Trinie walked in, pressing against the tattooed and pierced crowd. Mark caught a glimpse of Lucas’s broad shoulders and called his name.

“Hey, what the hell is going on?” Lucas asked.

“We’ve got to find Simon, have you seen him yet?”

“Yeah, he went upstairs, Byron too,” Lucas said, sipping on a drink that looked way too tropical for a bar that sometimes hosted “Skullfucking Metal” dance nights.

Trinie took Mark’s hand, but there was no romance in it now. She was merely dragging him up the stairs. Lucas followed them, sucking on his drink.

“Yikes,” Lucas said as they ascended the stairs.

“What?” Trinie and Mark said in unison.

“Nothin’. Just a brainfreeze. Jesus, you guys are really shaken up.”

Upstairs, Simon and Byron were huddled around a high-top table in the corner of the room. Simon was pulling on his greasy hair, each clump staying where he left it until he ran his hands through it again. Byron’s behavior was more stoic: listening to Simon’s apparent mental breakdown and nodding.

The three of them closed the distance and were able to hear what the two were talking about.

“He can die! We know that,” Simon was saying, then caught sight of their group, or at least caught sight of Trinie’s tits. “Oh good, some familiar faces.”

“What the hell is happening, Simon?” Trinie asked.

“Hell on earth. That’s what.”

“She asked you a serious question, dipshit,” Mark said. Adding dipshit may have been a bit too much, but he was tired of playing nice with this asshole.

“And I gave a serious answer. The leprechaun is real, and he’s after us. All of us.”

They were silent for a moment, the thud of VNV Nation sounding around them, then Lucas laughed. It was a big-bellied locker room laugh of incredulity.

“He’s telling the truth,” Byron said.

“That’s why Marvin was acting that way?” Mark asked. “Why he killed that guy? Because he’d been Leprechaun 3’d?”

“That’s the one with the Vegas magician, right?” Lucas asked, interrupting. He was a step behind them in current events and a few steps ahead in terms of drinks and wasn’t properly grasping the direness of the situation.

“That’s the one where if he bites you then you intermittently turn into a leprechaun yourself,” Mark explained. “It’s what appears to have happened to Marvin. He bit the head off his own cat and then killed a guy.”

“Oh shit,” Lucas said, appearing to sober a bit.

“And he did it in our theater!” Simon added, seemingly disturbed by this fact above all. “Now they’ve roped it off.”

“So why don’t you take all this to the police?” Trinie said.

Byron coughed into his hand, sharing a look with Simon.

Simon nodded at him. If they were trying to keep a secret, they were certainly not hiding the fact that they had one.

“The police wouldn’t understand,” Byron said. “They’d probably think we’re involved if we told them there’s a tiny green C-list pop culture icon behind it all.”

So they’re covering their own asses, Mark thought, then thought back to what Simon had been saying about Genevieve right before Marvin had attacked that guy.

“What were you talking about when we came into the conversation?” Trinie asked, the three of them bellying up to the counter, closing the circle.

“We have to kill it,” Simon said. Letting it hang there. In the echo, Mark filled Lucas in, telling them that if it bleeds, they could kill it.

“The magical creature that none of us have seen to even know it exists?” Lucas said, slipping back from the edge of seriousness again.

“It does,” Byron said. “We have more evidence than just what happened to Marvin. But we can’t tell you what it is without hurting ourselves.”

“Did you find leprechaun droppings?” Lucas asked, reaching the bottom of his drink, the straw gurgling as he sucked at the ice. Mark had liked Lucas mere hours ago, but now he was acting like an asshole. An asshole who didn’t believe in leprechauns, so it was still hard to fault him.

“And how do we do that? How do we kill it?” Trinie was ignoring Lucas, doing her best to keep the group on task.

“Well. That depends,” Simon said.

“On what?”

“On what movie we’re in. His weaknesses are a variable plot contrivance,” Simon said.

While he was talking, Byron was counting on his fingers, whispering to himself.

“Okay listen, up,” Byron said, then counted off the fingers he was holding up. “So it’s either we poison him with four-leaf clovers, beat him and then impale him with wrought iron, melt down his gold, or eject him into the vacuum of space.”

“I’m not sure we can manage that last one,” Mark said, the eyes of everyone at the table turning to him, their heads giving him a slight ‘that’s not funny’ shake.

“There’s something else,” Simon said, rubbing the back of his head, only glancing at each of them before averting his eyes. “The flute.”

“Come on, man,” Byron said. “Not the fucking flute again. Forget about that thing.”

“Wait. The flute…as in the Leprechaun in the Hood flute?” Trinie furrowed her brow.

“Guys,” Lucas started, but was quickly shut up by Trinie’s hard stare.

“Remember that pot of heavy-ass gold in the theater? It wasn’t fake. I think that was the leprechaun’s real gold. Maybe since we stole his copyright, somehow we got his pot of gold too. And that flute…it was there. I had it.”

“Simon—”

“Byron, will you just listen?” Simon ran his hands through his hair and sighed. “I played it once, only once, and Byron responded to it. Just like in the movie. It’s like he was hypnotized, right? So I got to thinking…”

“Let me guess,” Mark interrupted. “You wanted to play that thing during the musical. Right? So everyone would love it no matter how fucking terrible it was.”

Simon didn’t have to answer the question. The look on his face said it all.

“You what?” Byron said, sitting up straighter and glaring at the side of Simon’s head. “That’s why you want that fucking thing back so bad? So that piece of shit play can be a success? Please tell me you’re kidding, Simon.”

“Okay, okay. That was the first thing that popped into my head. I admit it.”

They all shook their heads. Mark had to hold himself back from hitting the guy.

“Marvin took it from me right before he gave me this,” Simon said and held up his arm, which had blood-soaked napkins wrapped around it.

“Good,” Byron said. “Because you’re the last motherfucker that should be in control of anyone’s mind.”

“Maybe so. But now Marvin, a fucking were-leprechaun, has it. What happens when a leprechaun blows the flute?”

“Marvin was arrested,” Mark said. “We saw it happen. He was thrown into the back of the squad car and hauled off.”

“Right, and all you have to do is throw a leprechaun into a jail cell, and he’s defeated, right? You really think they’ll be able to hold him? Once he goes full blown lep, they’re fucked, man.”

Mark tried to pull Trinie in close to him, as if trying to protect her, but she pulled away, took another step toward Simon.

“So now we’ve got two leprechauns to worry about?”

“Yeah. And one of them might have the whole fucking police force hypnotized and on his side. You see where I’m going?”

Lucas snickered and sucked up the rest of his drink, making a loud slurping sound.

“All right. Either way, we need to figure out how to kill the little green fuckers,” Byron said.

“Maybe my original plan isn’t such a bad idea,” Simon said, and when he was met with more fiery stares, he held up both hands, his injured palm leaking blood onto the table. “Hear me out. We need a way to trap the leprechaun, to fight him in a place of our choosing, right?”

This was met with silence.

Simon rolled his eyes. “That’s why we’re going to put on the show. The leprechaun is trying to kill us because we’re infringing on his intellectual property. He won’t let the show go on and that’s where we can trap him.”

“And what about Marvin?” Mark said.

“I don’t know. Let’s just focus on the main villain here. Hell, maybe if we kill the leprechaun, Marvin will go back to normal. Like head vampire shit.”

As crazy as it sounded, Mark couldn’t think of a better plan. The others seemed to agree because there wasn’t a word of protest, just blank stares as everyone let it all sink in.

Trinie looked at Byron and Simon, then over to Mark. Lucas didn’t rate for a glance.

“Well,” she said. “I mean. You’re infringing on the leprechaun’s intellectual property. We’re just members of the chorus. I think we’ll be fine.”

Lucas slammed his empty glass down on the table. “She’s right,” he said. “Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go piss and then get on with my life. Just another lesson to respect copyright holders.”

He stumbled off to the back of the bar and Mark, for one, was happy to watch him go. He hoped that he could get Lucas one on one, explain to him how serious this situation was, that they weren’t messing around.

When Mark looked back, Simon was crying. “We barely have any cast members left. Please. I know this is my mess. I know I’ve been an asshole. But you both know the choreography and can pull double and triple duty. We already sold the tickets. The leprechaun will show.”

“What do you think?” Trinie asked Mark.

Mark was just happy she was speaking to him again, even though her expression was all business.

“I think,” he started. He didn’t really know what was going to come next until it was out, like having two choices that sound good at a restaurant and surprising yourself with your own order when the waitress asks you what you want. “I think we should help if we can. It’s dangerous, but like you said: the leprechaun’s probably going to focus on Simon.”

Simon swallowed hard, his eyes red and puffy. Before the director could say anything, Byron spoke up on his behalf.

“That’s good, because we’re going to need your help hunting for four-leaf clovers and setting up the rest of the gags before tomorrow night. In the meantime we need to lay low and hope that the cops don’t keep the theater closed. I imagine they’ll have that dead guy wiped up by then.”

Simon went from red to pale, then reached both hands out and touched Trinie and Mark’s forearms. “Thank you for this.”

“We do have one problem I can’t figure out, though,” Byron said. “Who’s going to play our leprechaun with Marvin locked up and lepped out?”

Before any of them had a chance to answer this, there was a commotion down at the bar. It sounded like drunken frat boys pounding on the bar for service, unaware that they’d walked into the wrong place to pull that shit.

From the end of the bar closest to them, Mark watched as the bleach-blonde bartender—she was cute, Mark had seen her before—flipped off the far end, then moved to serve whoever was making the racket.

Then she started screaming.

“Kay!” Simon yelled, pushing away from the table and toward the bar.

Kay was up on the bar. Her hazel eyes were wide and scared and somehow not her own. The patrons at the bar all took an instinctive step back, even though nothing had happened yet beyond a scream.

Seeing her up on the bar, Simon was struck with the strangest thought. I’ve never actually seen her feet. She’s always behind the bar. She could have been a Muppet for all I knew.

Her heavy combat boots thudded up and back down again as she tried to pull her feet off the bar. There was a look of frustration on her face, as if her legs were being held in place by a force that she wasn’t able to resist.

Then she was joined on the bar by him and the patrons of the Lovecraft began murmuring to themselves.

The leprechaun didn’t just look different in person: he was different. There were subtle discrepancies between this flesh-and-blood version and the one in the films. His outfit was similar, but his face was different. He still had the high cheekbones and deep, filthy dimples, but the skull under his flesh was different. Because this wasn’t Warwick Davis in latex and makeup, this was the leprechaun.

“Whew,” said a guy next to Simon. “I thought something was actually wrong for a second. I didn’t know there was performance art scheduled for tonight.”

“There’s not,” Simon said, but the guy only gave him a ‘who-was-talking-to-you’ look.

“Hey, you there laddie,” the leprechaun said, pointing a clawed finger at Simon. The crowd parted like the Red Sea. “I heard you have a treat tomorrow for ol’ Paddy. Well what’s a big show without dancers? Take a look at this sweet little prancer and be sure to break a leg when you fight that rotten baddie.”

Kay began to dance an Irish jig, impressive in that nobody in the bar seemed to know she could dance. Even more impressive because she was doing it in boots.

The leprechaun clapped and grinned, glanced up at Kay’s face. Then his grin faded and he squinted, licked his lips almost nervously. He put both hands into his coat pockets, dumping the contents onto the bar before hopping off and disappearing into the crowd.

There was no music, only the frantic tapping of Kay’s boots against the polished oak of the bar. Toe-heel, heel-toe, accelerating as the crowd gasped at Kay’s fellow dancers.

There were two globs of flesh on either side of Kay, and Simon had to squint to make them out: two severed hands dancing on outstretched fingers. The disembodied hands were small enough, the fingers stubby enough, that they could have been a toddler’s hands, but Simon knew better.

They were Marvin’s hands.

The two hands kicked out a middle finger in unison with Kay, the three forming a Lord of the Dance chorus line that, once the initial shock had worn off, sent the crowd running for the exits.

With what looked like great effort to control her mouth, Kay fought to get words out. “Someone,” she yelled, strings of drool dropping out of her half-open mouth, “help me please.” About every third step she would miss a kick, the toe of her boot catching the skin of her calf and leaving a red abrasion.

Simon saw her future then, her steel-toed boots kicking at her legs until they were broken in half at the knee, her feet still dancing along with Marvin’s hands under their own magic power.

He looked over to the rest of the group—they were all in as much shock as he was. Though the recent events made it damn hard to deny the existence of the leprechaun, seeing the thing in the flesh made it a certainty. They were now all united in fear, bound together by the task of killing the monster, and though Simon was bubbling with terror, it felt good to have some camaraderie in his life.

“Byron, help me,” Simon said, vaulting onto a barstool and hoisting himself up the edge of the bar.

Byron ran over, standing under Kay. His eyes never left the dancing hands. He must have realized what Simon had already guessed, that those fingers once belonged to their friend.

Simon tried to sneak up behind Kay and lift her off the bar, but before he could get there she did an especially acrobatic twirl, moving to the edge of the bar and kicking back, bloodying Byron’s nose and knocking into him. As Byron stumbled backward, cupping his bleeding face, Simon backed off.

“I’m s-s-sorry,” Kay stuttered.

Trinie and Mark were on the move now, ducking under the bar and coming at Kay from the opposite direction.

There was blood dripping down Kay’s legs now—there seemed to be an equal amount of it from Byron’s busted face and Kay’s own wounds.

Simon tried to approach again, unsure of what he was attempting to do, or if it would work. He needed to sweep Kay off her feet, get her so that they could tie her legs together so she would stop hurting herself.

As if they’d read his mind, the hands stopped dancing, lining up in a defensive position between Simon and Kay. It seemed ludicrous to be afraid of something so small, but that didn’t stop the fear from freezing up Simon’s progress.

The two hands turned, palms toward each other, and seemed to confer. After a moment one bolted forward, the tips of its pointed fingernails tapping against the finished wood of the bar as it sprinted at Simon.

Simon tried to hop over it, ready to kick the second one away when he reached it, but the hand leapt up to meet him and grabbed hold of his ankle.

The sharp nails worked up Simon’s pant leg, but he was too close to Kay now to care—he needed to help her.

He took another jump and was behind her, the second hand sliding across the bar and stumbling to turn itself around.

Trinie jumped up from behind the bar and smashed a bottle of Jameson against the second hand, as if playing a violent game of Whack-A-Mole. The hand crumpled under the bottle, pressed flat, the tiny fingers breaking. Trinie brought the bottle down a second time and the glass gave way, sprinkling the bar in glass and Irish whiskey. Shards pierced the thin skin of the hand and it twitched, made pathetic by her attack.

Below them, Byron stirred, the kick not enough to knock him unconscious but clearly fucking him up in some way. He grabbed the nearest barstool and lifted himself to his knees.

Simon wrapped both arms around Kay from behind. This was not how he imagined their first hug going. She stomped down with both feet, still dancing, crushing Simon’s toes beneath her with what felt like supernatural strength.

The fingernails of the first hand were at the back of his neck now, the fingers too stubby to get any kind of hold around his throat, but instead continuing to scale his height, ending up on the top of his head and starting back down over his eyes.

Simon kept his grip on Kay, lifting her off her feet, but her feet still whirled and threw them both off balance.

There was a tiny finger in his left nostril now, the nail like a blade, stretching the flesh of his nose to its breaking point. Simon was allowed one second to think of Jack Nicholson in Chinatown before the midget hand Roman Polanski-ed his nostril. The pain was intense, the blood flooding his sinuses as he breathed in to scream.

Byron had finally recovered, and though his face was still contorted and bloody, he ran toward the bar. At the same moment, Kay’s feet hit the ground hard and sprung back up, tossing Simon backward, though he still held his grip around her waist. Her boots kicked out, hit the crushed leprechaun hand and flung it forward. It collided with Byron’s face, throwing him off his feet, the back of his head thudding against the floor.

Simon uncurled one of his arms from around Kay’s waist, just long enough to grab hold of the hand that had gripped a clump of his hair.

He pulled at the hand but there was no give. It felt like his scalp was peeling off his skull, and he screamed through clenched teeth, finally having no choice but to release Kay and tug on the hand with both of his. As he fought with it, strands of hair ripped loose, the pain so bad that he wouldn’t be surprised if he’d just given himself his first bald spot.

Just when he thought there was no hope, that they would never have a chance to act out their plan of action because their entire group would be defeated by a pair of possessed midget hands, everything stopped. The commotion in the bar ceased.

Kay lay on the floor, moaning and whimpering, rubbing her bruised shins as tears spilled down her cheeks.

The hand in Simon’s clutches wiggled out of his grip, hit the floor, and scurried away, rushing out the entrance like a frightened rat. The broken hand flopped around as if trying to escape, but couldn’t manage it with all of its broken bones.

Byron was sitting up now, stanching the blood from his face with his shirtsleeve, the blood hitting the hardwood with an audible drip. His eyes were half-lidded and he looked like he could fall asleep at any moment. He kicked the hand away from him.

Behind the bar, Trinie’s expression was pure warrior woman, clutching the neck of the broken bottle, her chest heaving as she stared at the still-swinging double doors. Behind her, Mark was hoisting a baseball bat up from behind the bar, Kay’s sharpie-embellished peacekeeper, the side of it reading “you better tip ur ’tender!”

Walking over from the direction of the bathroom, unfazed by the chaos that had erupted in the bar, came Lucas. Hands in his pockets, whistling like all was well in the world.

“What’s going on?” Lucas said. He zipped up his fly and then spotted the hand just in front of him. The hand thrashed like an injured bird, flinging green blood all over the floor. “Holy shit…I guess you guys weren’t kidding.” He stomped down on Marvin’s hand until it was a pile of blood-bone jelly.

Simon helped Kay to her feet, and couldn’t help but notice how she clung to him, pressing her face into his neck and crying.

“I’m sorry, Kay. I swear…I won’t let anything happen to you.”

She pulled away from him, wiped the tears from her face. “Simon...”

“Yeah?”

“I think I’ll skip going to your show after all.”

They watched as the thieves piled into a car and zoomed away into the distance. He could have killed them all, could have sent in his minions to shred them into a pulpy soup.

But he was having far too much fun to end it so quickly.

And he had found his bride.

He had entered the bar with the sole purpose of playing with the thieves, letting them know he was there for them and that no matter what they did, no matter how hard they tried, he would bathe in their innards. When his victims were afraid, the kill was always so much more satisfying. Orgasmic, really.

Once he had seen the bartender’s eyes, he knew she was the one. He could feel it in his bones, in his blood. When he saw the one who called himself Simon, fighting the crowd to save her, it only made it that much sweeter.

“You can’t run, you can’t hide. You stole me gold, so I’ll steal your bride.”

The leprechaun chuckled as he waved his hands, the tips of his fingers sparkling with green energy.

From inside of the bar came the sound of a sneeze. Then another.

When the third sneeze rang out, the leprechaun roared with laughter and danced his way back into the bar where his bride awaited.

Byron inspected his bruises in the bathroom mirror. They were bad and he’d be shooting red snakes of dried blood out his nose for the rest of the weekend, but he’d made off lightly compared to Simon. Good, all of this was his fault anyway.

Byron still couldn’t believe that through all the shit they had seen, all the shit they had been through, that Simon could even think about using the flute in the way he had intended. So the musical could become successful? Fuck that musical!

There was a knock on the bathroom door. “We got to get going,” Simon said from the next room, his voice nasally.

Byron wouldn’t normally be driving after a knock like that—he and Simon both should have been in the emergency room—but instead they’d invited the whole crew back to his apartment to rest and plan. Kay had declined their invitation, but had promised not to say anything about them to the police that would be showing up at the Lovecraft. Lucas had also declined, said he had to stop by his store first and that he would meet up with Mark and Trinie the next day.

Mark and Trinie had already left the apartment to go hunting for four-leaf clovers. It was Byron and Simon’s responsibility to find the wrought iron.

Portland was probably the only city in the continental United States besides Colonial Williamsburg where you could look up a blacksmith and not have anyone ask you what century you were in.

The first place on their list had only been two blocks from Byron’s place. If they found what they needed there, he wouldn’t have to endanger them both by driving around.

Simon did the talking, not something that historically worked out, but Byron was too sore to argue.

“I need spears made of wrought iron.”

“Yeah, I can do that,” said the young proprietor with the gauged ears. His arms were scrawny, but hairless and flecked with tiny scars, clearly the result of successful smithing.

“Cool. Can you have three of them made by tonight?”

“Rush jobs are expensive, but yeah.”

“Awesome,” Simon said, then turned to Byron. “You brought your checkbook, right?”

Byron sighed, wishing that Kay had just kicked his head straight off his shoulders.

“You guys ever do this as a kid? Me and my friends would spend whole recesses on this, even though we never found any,” Trinie said, though the nostalgia was hollow.

Mark could tell she was just saying something to fill the space as they both worked over the patches of clover on their hands and knees.

“Got one,” Mark said, then threw it over his shoulder and sighed. “Never mind.”

“This is useless, you guys. Those things are rare,” said Lucas, whose efforts to help were half-assed. He claimed that he’d had knee problems since high school, from the football team, and was trying to spot them from a standing position.

“Just shut up and look, all right?” Trinie said through clenched teeth.

“Are we going to talk about this?” Mark said, ignoring Lucas and continuing to comb the area under him.

“What?” Trinie asked.

“The fact that this plan is stupid and probably going to get us killed. At the very least arrested for tampering with a crime scene.”

“You saw that thing,” Trinie said, her fingers trembling as she ran them across the carpet of clover. “It’s got to be stopped or it’s going to kill us.” They were gathered under a tree in the park across from Byron’s place. A few minutes ago they watched as Byron and Simon stumbled out of the apartment, both of them bloodied and bruised, shielding their eyes from the sun.

“Well, unless it gets what it wants,” Lucas said, interjecting himself into a conversation that Mark would have preferred stay between Trinie and himself. “That’s what those people never seem to do in the movies. They never just give the leprechaun his shit back. It is his. Even his likeness, his IP. If he weren’t killing people, his case would hold up in court.”

“I guess you’re right, Trinie,” Mark said, openly ignoring Lucas. Though his friend had a point. Now was not the time for smartassery. “We’re implicated now. And helping Simon and Byron is the right thing to do.” He didn’t really believe that, but if he could get her to think that he did, he might still have a chance with her when this was all over.

“And what’s going to stop him from taking his stuff back and shutting down the show?” Lucas said. “Permanently.”

“Us,” Trinie said. “And this,” she added, holding up a perfect four-leaf clover, its stem pinched between two fingers.

“Holy shit,” Mark said, hopping to his feet and rushing toward her. He took the clover from her quivering fingers and inspected it. “It’s real. It’s a real four-leaf clover! Trinie, you fucking did it!”

“You just have to believe,” she said as she stood and wiped her hands off on her jeans.

Mark tried to hand it to Lucas, but he waved it away.

“All right,” Lucas said. “We got one. One. What do we do now?”

“Let’s get to the theater,” Mark said. “And let’s pray it’s enough.”

Marvin woke up in a bed as soft as iron. For a moment, he imagined he was on Byron’s floor after an all-nighter of beer and horror movies, that everything else had been some kind of fucked-up nightmare.

But then he saw the bars, saw the officer glaring at him from the other side. He held what looked like a golden flute in his hands.

“Awake, huh, shithead? Too bad. I was hoping you’d bleed out and fuckin’ die in there.”

Bleed out?

Then it all came crashing back in, the leprechaun disguised as Byron sawing the bars, then sawing his hands. Marvin shot a quick look toward the barred window, but the metal was intact, whole and unharmed.

His hands, however, weren’t so lucky. Bandaged stumps was all he was left with, the gauze soaked with green blood.

My blood. A leprechaun’s blood.

“I don’t know what the fuck you did to your hands, you murderin’ midget freak, but you ain’t gettin’ outta this cell. You hear me, fuckhead? I don’t care if you hang yourself with your tiny little dwarf pecker, you’re stayin’ your murderin’ ass in that cell.”

There was a shred of the old Marvin left, and as he stared at the golden flute in the officer’s hands, that shred fell away like the last dead leaf on a tree.

“What’s that you’ve got there, me lad?” Marvin hopped off his bed and waddled toward the bars.

The officer didn’t even flinch, squatted so he could look Marvin in the eye. “Took this off you when we tossed your ass in the car. Looks valuable. I’m thinkin’ me and the wife sure could use a vacation. What you think, Lucky Charms?”

“Give it back,” Marvin said through a wide grin. “Just toss it right in, and I won’t tear your face off through your arse hole.”

“That right?”

“It’s bad to steal, it’s bad to cheat, it’s bad to be so greedy. Now give me back me gold, me boy, or suffer profuse bleeding.”

The officer snickered, stood back up, and placed the flute to his lips.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Marvin said.

The officer blew into the flute, but only for a few seconds before quickly pulling it away and spitting on the floor.

“You been fuckin’ yourself in the ass with this thing? What the fuck is that?”

“Magic has an acquired taste.”

From down the hall, a horde of officers shambled toward the cell. The men in the cells opposite from Marvin’s pressed their bodies against the bars so hard that their skin began to split and blood trickled over the floor.

The officers drooled, their eyes blank and their mouths hanging open.

“What the hell are y’all doin’?” the flute-playing officer said. “I got this…I…”

The bandages fell away from Marvin’s arms, and where there were only stumps minutes before now wiggled two tiny hands. The size of squirrels’ paws, dark green and slimy, the fingers contorted and misshapen like broken twigs. Swampy liquid dripped from the hands like cooked spinach. He wiggled them at the officer, and the man squealed and backed away.

The men in the cells, their faces torn and bloody, reached out and seized the officer, pulled him closer and grabbed fistfuls of cloth, skin, and hair.

“Get the fuck off me, goddamnit! Help…help me, you fuckin’ cocksuckers!”

But the man’s fellow officers responded by surrounding him and gripping limbs or handfuls of fatty flesh and loose skin.

“No…no, you fuckin’…nooo!”

Blood splashed and intestines uncoiled onto the floor. Through the shower of gore, Marvin spotted the flute rolling away.

“Ah. Come to daddy.” Marvin waved his dripping hands and the flute twirled through the air and into his clutches.

The jail bars glowed a radioactive green, warping as they melted and plopped to the floor in molten chunks.

Marvin stepped out of his cell, played a small tune on the flute, and led his minions out of the station.

“I’ll find you, I will. Oh you will be found. There’s only room for one leprechaun in this fucking town.”

“These are heavy as shit,” Mark said, curling up the wrought iron spear like a barbell. “You should have had the guy just make spear tips, not the whole fucking thing.”

“Stop whining, these will work,” Simon said, shrugging on Marvin’s leprechaun jacket, his stringy muscles hulking out the sleeves. He was their new leprechaun. It was possible that Mark knew the part just as well. He was a few inches shorter than Simon and his singing voice wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t going to volunteer for the most dangerous part in the musical.

No, let Simon paint that target on himself.

The director was going to have to hobble through the whole performance on his knees, but they weren’t expecting the show to make it through intermission before having to fight the real leprechaun.

“Think fast,” Mark said, tossing the spear to Lucas, who caught it, only to drop it to the stage as if it had burned him.

“Oops. Sorry, I’ve got butterfingers,” Lucas said, his voice flat and defiant.

They’d snuck around the back of the theater, cutting through the police label with Byron’s keys and only turning on enough house lights to see by. There were no cops inside when they got there, but there were numbered evidence placards laid down in front of the stage.

There was one far enough away from the rest that Mark knew that was where the ear had been photographed, swabbed and then bagged. He’d seen enough cop shows to guess at the process.

They mashed up the clover and smeared its juice on the tips of the spears—adding a bit of water to help stretch it out—then hid one in the Impala, one under the crushed papier-mâché stump, and one behind the curtain. The stashes formed a rough triangle, the idea being whenever the leprechaun showed up, someone would be close enough to a weapon to get him.

Byron doused the stump with lighter fluid, then groaned, hoisting the pot of gold inside of it.

“This should be a last ditch effort,” he said. “I’ll keep the lighter on me, but I’m pretty sure that if we light this fucker, we’ll be taking the whole theater with us.”

“Will it even get hot enough to melt them?” Trinie asked, applying her character’s thick makeup. She was playing multiple parts now. All of them were going to have bright pink eye shadow, apparently.

“It will eventually,” Byron said and Mark got the implication. The iron pot would melt the coins as the theater became an oven.

Simon stood up from his knees, the tiny shoes that he’d sewn onto his pants coming up with him. “I’m going to go sneak a look and see if anyone’s lining up for the show. I hope we at least have some kind of turnout.”

“Why?” Mark asked. If Simon came back with something like “I want everyone to see my hard work” then Mark was going to stand up and walk out, but he didn’t.

“Because I worry that the bastard won’t show up if there’s no audience for the show. If we’re playing it to nobody, we’re not profiting off his likeness.”

“If a tree falls in the forest,” Mark started, but didn’t finish. Lucas was pushing past Simon, through the doors and out into the rainy late afternoon.

“Wait!” Trinie said, but Lucas was gone.

There was a lump in his throat, a sick sense of dread that made it hard to breathe, like a whole pot of coffee was hitting him all at once. Volunteering for the musical had never been his idea. Despite being a small business owner, Lucas was a reclusive guy. He mostly kept to himself during non-business hours. Over the past year, his natural reclusiveness had been compounded by seasonal affective disorder. The gray, wet winters of the Pacific Northwest made depression a natural fit, like a favorite bad sweater you trotted out every Christmas. But the sweater of seasonal depression was a thing you packed away by February, March at the latest. This year, Lucas had worn the sweater all year long. Through spring and through summer. Back in July, when he woke up one day and realized he hadn’t opened the comic shop in a week, hadn’t even gotten out of bed except to use the bathroom in that time, he decided to call someone. He googled “therapist” and called the one that appeared to be closest to him in Google Maps. A week later—another bedridden week of bad thoughts and isolation—Lucas’s phone rang for the first time in how long? He let it ring until the caller gave up, but when they tried again a second, third, and fourth time, he answered. It was the therapist. Lucas was late for his appointment. Would he still be showing up? He dressed in some dirty clothes picked up off the floor and shuffled twelve blocks to the therapist’s office. “Luckily you’re my last appointment for the day,” she’d said. “Otherwise we’d have had to reschedule.”

Lucas had nodded at her. He sat on a brown loveseat that faced her white leather chair.

“Brown signifies reliability, white signifies purity,” Lucas said.

A stock photo of a forest was framed on the wall behind her.

The therapist glanced at her watch and then smiled at him. It was a smile he knew well, and he hated it more than he hated himself. Before she could utter any of her stupid fucking kernels of professional help—he’d been on the couch before, he knew they always tried to buddy up at first, get you to trust them, open up—Lucas stood and made for the door. She called something after him, but she couldn’t stop him. He cried the whole walk home as the dam of shithead feelings inside himself burst. He was free, and for the first time all year, he felt like himself again. He returned to his apartment and set about repairing his life. He gathered up the hundreds of Pabst Blue Ribbon cans that lay in crumpled heaps. He threw them away, filling the blue recycling bin out back of his apartment. Then he scrubbed the bowls half-filled with milk gone rancid. Warm, chunky, mold-festering milk. Finally, he tossed out every cereal box in the house, both the empties and the ones in the cupboard. He was done with the beer and cereal diet.

Late that night, after folding his last load of laundry, he’d walked to the comic shop and took the pile of mail by the door into the back of the room, where he sorted bills by the ones that needed to be paid immediately and the ones that could wait. He checked the business bank account online and discovered that miraculously enough money remained to pay most of the bills that needed to be paid. Shit maybe got a little fucked, but Lucas wasn’t out of the game. Not by a long shot. He wrote checks for the bills he could pay and walked home in the warm air under a bed of stars and in bed he thought of the years to come. He had to laugh a little because this version of himself—comic shop owner and perpetual bachelor—had seemed like the ultimate dream back when he was sixteen. At thirty-one, he was living it. Maybe it seemed like hell some days, but the heart wants what the heart wants. And Lucas’s heart wanted one more thing. He wanted to be an actor. As fate would have it, the very next day, a scummy-looking dude in a Misfits t-shirt entered the comic shop with a stack of flyers publicizing open auditions for a play called Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical.

Three months later, Lucas was marching past that scummy-looking dude—Simon—out of the theater where Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical was supposed to debut in a mere two hours. He hopped in his truck and sped away, hoping his hunch proved correct.

While they’d run all over town, scrambling to collect four-leaf clovers and commission wrought iron spears, a thought itched at the back of Lucas’s brain. Something they were forgetting about the leprechaun. A weakness, a strength, a secret. He didn’t know, and with time running out and the thought remaining just out of reach, as if taunting him, he’d sort of acted like a dick to everyone. He didn’t mean it. He was only trying to think. Finally, standing in the theater-turned-crime-scene, the thought shat itself into his conscious mind. Or at least he knew where to look.

As he sped through stop signs and whipped around corners like his name was Tokyo Drift, Lucas cursed himself for not thinking of it earlier. In 1993, coinciding with the release of Leprechaun, a small number of copies of a zero budget rip-off from a bunch of unknowns appeared on the VHS rental market. The film, LepreKhan, was a horror/sci-fi/softcore mash-up in which a crew of big-breasted bimbos aboard a shitty cardboard spaceship face off against an evil time-traveling leprechaun genetically engineered to provide the ultimate pleasure to big-breasted bimbos . . . death! The only reason Gene Roddenberry, Paramount, or Trimark never sued was because so few copies ever existed, and because LepreKhan fucking sucked.

Lucas had only seen LepreKhan once and he’d been too stoned to remember much of it now, but that’s not why he needed to get to the comic shop. Not exactly. Someone behind LepreKhan must’ve predicted the film would become a hit because, in anticipation of its release, they sent a bundle of a tie-in comic titled How to Kill a Leprechaun to every comic shop in America, which comic shop owners were supposed to give away for free. Clearly, giving away a comic to mostly children (this was still the early nineties, when comic books carried the cultural cache of jack and shit) was not the best way to promote a borderline pornographic film, so the few copies that weren’t trashed ended up in swap meet bins, neglected, passed over, hardly a bargain at the cost of a quarter, which is how Lucas came into possession of one. In fact, the comic was the only reason he knew of LepreKhan at all. He still kept that comic in the back room of the shop, in one of several large boxes reserved for comics with no collectibility, no artistic merit, and of no interest to the public, yet fascinated Lucas for inexplicable reasons. For the moment, How to Kill a Leprechaun felt like the most important comic on the planet, because it would show him just how to do it.

The light at the intersection turned red and he gunned it.

A bicyclist crossing the intersection passed in front of his truck and he slammed down on the brake pedal but the crunch of metal under his tires, the silence that came next, told him everything.

Gripping the steering wheel, he prayed for the best, braced for blood, and got out of the truck.

He crouched down on his hands and knees and peered under the truck. The mangled bike, though a ruined wreck, was not slick with the cyclist’s blood. No bike helmet, no messenger bag. No sign of the cyclist anywhere.

“What the fuck?” he said, wondering if the cyclist stumbled off, concussed and delirious.

A car door slammed shut and he stood, squinting against the headlights of his truck, ready to greet whoever was getting out of their car to help. But there were no other cars around. The streets were empty except for his truck. And the driver’s door was closed.

“Shit!” He’d left the keys in the ignition and the doors were self-locking. He reached into his pocket, planning to call Trinie to see if she could swing by and pick him up, help him find How to Kill a Leprechaun before high-tailing it back to the theater. If his truck got towed, so be it. But his phone wasn’t in his pocket. He’d set it on the bench seat beside him. “Fuck me.”

“Looking for this?”

Lucas squinted against the headlights and saw the last thing on earth he ever wanted to see. The leprechaun sat behind the wheel of his truck, the window rolled down, dangling Lucas’s cellphone out the window. With a flick of the Leprechaun’s clawed hand, the phone took flight and landed at Lucas’s feet. Automatically, he knelt to retrieve it, realizing his mistake only too late.

The leprechaun howled with laughter as the truck roared forward, the bumper smashing against the top of Lucas’s head. His head was thrown down instead of back, and his body folded in half, the front of his face slamming into the concrete, a knee on either side of his head. His mouth was filled with the taste of blood and oil and pavement, and from the explosion of pain, he knew his back was broken, snapped. He didn’t have much time to think about the agony as the front tire spun over the back of his head, shredding away skin and hair and spraying it over the undercarriage.

Lucas only screamed for a second before his head was pressed flat into the blacktop, his brains squeezing out through the cracks in his skull.

And on the news that night, there would be reports of a hit-and-run accident that left one cyclist dead in Southeast Portland.

Parked in the driver’s seat of the SWAT van, three phone books under his ass so he could see over the wheel, Marvin tried to remember why he had been so upset about losing his humanity.

All this power, it was totally worth the green blood and bad teeth. It had even been worth losing Brian. The cat had been kind of an asshole, anyway.

His hands were nearly full-sized now, regrown and better than ever. He snapped his fingers and the engine of the van revved. He snapped again and the sound was echoed behind him, a small fleet of squad cars and police motorcycles warming up their engines.

Unfamiliar with the layout of the van, Marvin’s leprechaun eyes searched the dashboard. Leaning over, coming perilously close to toppling his stack of Yellow Pages, he hooked a finger around the cord for the radio and pulled the receiver to himself.

“Adam-12, this is dispatch calling One Adam Twelve.” He giggled into the handset.

There was silence on the other end and he imagined his hypnotized police officers, their hands on the wheels and green spittle foaming at the corners of their slack jaws. They weren’t going to get the reference.

“Listen up, troops, we’re going to go in with a crash and catch some of the show with any luck,” Marvin said, “but anyone who tries to cap the lep before me will find their inner ear getting fucked.”

There was no response. Maybe lobotomizing the entire police force had been a bit much, maybe he had spread his newfound magical mojo a bit thin.

“If you’re not going to say nary a ‘ten four’, at least turn on your loud speakers so I can talk no more.” He no longer had to think about rhyming, it just happened. One of the perks.

Marvin dropped the radio receiver, letting it bounce against its spiral cord and then snapped his fingers one final time.

The music boomed, bouncing off the block in front of them, shaking the front windows of the businesses around them. N.W.A.’s “Fuck tha Police” streamed from the loudspeakers atop each cruiser.

Nothing like a little mood music to enhance their drive. Marvin pushed one small foot forward, the bottoms of his special orthopedic shoes not touching the pedal, but the ignition flaring anyway, by magic.

He checked the clock on the dashboard. The show should have started by now, but knowing the production, Marvin guessed that they still had some time to get downtown. He hoped there wasn’t much traffic, then bounced one small, slimy palm against his forehead.

“Duh. That’s no flaw, because I am the law.”

The extent of his magic execution still unknown, Marvin tried wiggling his nose instead of snapping his fingers.

The Portland streets were bathed in the red and blue of their lights as Marvin led his police force to the theater.

Simon was sweating. He would have been sweating anyway, squeezed into Marvin’s tiny leprechaun costume, but add the heat of the half-dim stagelights and the accumulated body heat of the opening night crowd and the moisture was pooling at the base of Simon’s spine, soaking through his underwear.

Simon was parked in the wings, stage right, where he had parted the curtain a sliver to stare out at the crowd. There were already people checking their watches and fidgeting in their seats and they were only ten-past start time.

“Are we almost ready?” Byron asked, tapping Simon on the shoulder and causing him to jump back from the curtain.

Simon turned. Byron, Mark and Trinie had all gathered behind him on the wings without him noticing.

“Yeah, I guess we should throw on the commercials. Once they start, though, we’re past the point of no return.”

“You want to do the honors?” Byron asked and motioned to the control panel on the wall behind them. If Byron was as nervous as Simon, he wasn’t showing it. At least he wasn’t sweating as much.

Simon approached the panel, pressed play on the remote for the DVD player and dialed up the volume as he dimmed the house lights.

There was tepid applause from the crowd. They sounded happy that something, anything was about to happen.

“Huddle up,” Simon said, his voice cracking as he did so. “We’ve got to assume that Lucas isn’t coming back. He bailed on us, and while I want to call him some terrible names, I guess we can’t really blame him, can we?”

“That means I’m pulling quadruple duty?”

There was laughter from the crowd. They liked the Cen-O-Bites gag, that was nice, but it didn’t make Simon feel much better.

“Yes, you are,” Simon said. “But we don’t have time to go over what stays and what goes. You’re talented, Mark, just go with your instincts, ad-lib if you have to, just get the rest of us to our cues and keep your eyes open.”

“Well, I think we should all keep our eyes open,” Trinie said, stomping on the only encouraging moments of direction that Simon had doled out since this project began.

“That’s true. The second you see that little motherfucker, give the rest of us the signal and get to the nearest weapon.”

The readout on the DVD player let Simon know that they had about three minutes to curtain.

“Alright. Places everyone.” Simon checked the shoes that he’d sewn onto his pants, then kneeled. He wasn’t a convincing midget, but at least the costume was staying on.

He looked up at his cast.

“Break a leg, guys.”

They all groaned, Byron rolling his eyes, then left the director alone, all moving to their opening marks.

Tucked high above them in the fly loft, the leprechaun watched the thieves.

They didn’t look scared enough, so he reached out a clawed hand and pushed a sandbag toward the main curtain, the fabric fluttered a bit, but the group of thieves gathered below were too ensnared in the director’s pep-talk to notice.

“I’m trying to be creepy here, my little lass, but they’re all too far up that balding fuck’s ass.”

The leprechaun tilted his head up and looked into Kay’s beautiful eyes. He held out a hand and she gripped it, he gave it a squeeze but she didn’t respond. In the low light, he couldn’t see the brilliance of the golden leash he’d slipped around her neck. Her expression was empty, vegetative, but she’d soon come around.

“You’re not going to be a cold fish forever, my dove. After I slaughter your friends I’ll show you the secrets of leprechaun tongue-love.”

He giggled, then realized he was being too loud and hushed himself. He looked down from the slender wooden footbridge at the group. They hadn’t heard him over the din of their stupid movie. Everything the leprechaun had seen of this production had only made his blood boil even further. Going into space had been cheesy, but this was positively amateur hour. Cardboard and papier-mâché.

These little fuckers would pay for ruining his IP.

Walking further down the deck, he looked out at the crowd. The assholes were all preparing to have a so-bad-it’s-good chuckle at his expense.

He sighed. It would be hard work, but he’d have to murder the entire audience to make sure his brand made it out of this theater intact.

Showtime.

It hadn’t been half bad. Aside from the burning in Simon’s knees, the bruises accruing with every step, and the sweat stinging his eyes, the musical worked. Maybe it wasn’t getting laughs in exactly the right places, but at least nobody looked bored.

Byron wasn’t a bad rapper, either. The opening number closed with more applause than Simon thought it deserved, but hey, he was too close to the material to be objective.

He’d almost forgotten all about the mortal danger they were in, had begun focusing solely on his vocal cords, when the zombie fly girls began dancing up the aisles.

His first thought, and it hadn’t been the correct thought, had been: Why didn’t I think of that? Using the aisles is a great way to engage the crowd.

His second thought, the sane one, was: Holy shit, we are outnumbered.

There was nothing to do about it. There was still no sign of the leprechaun himself and the fly girls were, for now, relegated to the audience.

The show would have to go on until the fight could begin.

Byron tried to ignore the possessed strippers dropping their asses in the aisles. It was coming up to his big number before the intermission. City-destroying supernatural event or not, he was going to decimate Simon in this rap battle. He only hoped that his friend could keep up, make the win look good.

The original “Bitches Be Spooky” number involved leprechaun strippers, but since every girl besides Trinie had quit—and because the actual leprechaun strippers dancing in the crowd were probably there to murder them all—Simon changed the script to a rap battle between Byron and the leprechaun. The lyrics would have to be changed, but with no time to write them, Byron would just have to freestyle onstage.

Byron took center stage and put the wireless microphone to his lips. He started spitting lyrics in Simon’s direction, getting so into his performance that it took a moment to notice the jade-green light beginning to glow from the trapdoor beneath Simon’s feet.

Before he could yell out, it was too late.

The door flew open, tossing Simon into the air. He flipped head over heels across the stage and landed hard on his back, grimacing, now out of view from the audience.

The leprechaun rose from the ground as if riding an elevator, though there was nothing underneath him except a bright green light that swirled from the opening like smoke. His hands were held out to his sides at shoulder height, almost a crucifixion pose, that familiar hideous grin on his face.

And the crowd went crazy. It was as if they were tolerating Simon’s shitty leprechaun costume, letting it slide just to be nice, but now that an actual wee person was onstage, decked out in a costume as good as the one in the movies, they actually got on their feet, cheered, hollered, whistled.

The beat for “Bitches Be Spooky” cut off, and the leprechaun chortled as he glared across the stage at Byron. Then he snapped his fingers, and a microphone flew from the trapdoor and landed in his clawed hand. The trapdoor slammed shut, and a new beat began to play. A deeper beat, low and bassy. Sinister somehow as it oozed from the speakers.

The crowd, still on their feet, began to dance, waving their hands as if they were at a concert.

The strippers, all wearing gold leotards, spread around the audience, probably positioning themselves for some kind of attack. But for now, they danced too, swaying their hips, running their hands across the people’s chests and backs.

The leprechaun put the mic to his green, warty lips and took a few steps toward Byron.

“Is that a pistol in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me? The leprechaun is here to give you the heebie jeebies.”

The crowd erupted again, some shouting, “Oohh!”

I have to keep him busy, Byron thought. Give everyone a chance to grab their weapons, end this shit once and for all.

He glanced over his shoulder. Mark and Trinie both nodded at him. Simon was still on the ground, rolling around and grabbing his back.

Byron turned to the crowd, nodded his head to the nefarious beat, then turned to the leprechaun and pointed at him.

“You don’t scare me, motherfucker, you ain’t nothin’ but a joke. Now open wide, lil’ man, and suck my nuts til you choke. A little green bitch, a motherfuckin’ disgrace. Get the fuck outta my hood and float yo’ ass back to space!”

Byron stepped back from the lep, smiling, arms out to his sides as if waiting for the wee creature’s response.

The crowd continued to bounce and holler. The zombie fly girls rubbed their asses on men and women, but something was different about them. From the stage, with the lights in his face, it was hard for Byron to see, but their hands looked bigger, darker in color.

The leprechaun snarled at Byron.

“It’s not nice to call names, it’s not nice to be mean. I only want me gold and for your shoes to be clean. I’m a nice leprechaun and I mean you no harm. Now give us me gold or I’ll gnaw off your arm.”

Byron felt his confidence building, and he knelt down so he was eye-level with the leprechaun, though still far enough away that the little fucker couldn’t reach him.

“Yo fuck your gold, fuck your copyright too—”

“Watch your mouth, laddie lad, let me give you a clue. You don’t have to die, not you or your friends. But if you keep fucking with me, you won’t like how this ends. All these innocent people, just here for a laugh. Me beautiful minions will cut their asses in half.”

After the leprechaun’s verse, the strippers lifted their hands into the air, long, curved green claws on the ends of their fingers. The crowd was oblivious to anything going on besides the rap battle onstage, had no idea they were about to be torn into by the goddamn zombie fly girls.

“Y’all get the fuck outta here!” Byron shouted into the microphone, waving toward the audience. “Run!”

But they didn’t move. They only danced as the beat continued to thump from the speakers. The leprechaun howled with laughter.

“What the fuck’s wrong with you! You’re all gonna die! Run!”

The leprechaun did a jig to the roaring pleasure of the audience. He put the mic to his lips again. “You’re all gonna die. You’re all gonna die. Run, run, run, cuz you’re all gonna die.”

The men and women smiled, clapping, now repeating the chorus back, rapping along with the leprechaun. “You’re all gonna die. You’re all gonna die. Run, run, run, cuz you’re all gonna die.”

The strippers seemed to be waiting for the leprechaun’s instructions, still standing in their spots around the crowd, claws raised above their heads and ready to rip flesh.

“Run, run, run, as fast as you can. You see the buckles on me shoes? I’m the leprechaun man.”

“No! This isn’t a fucking joke…get the fuck outta here!”

“I might give your shoes a shine, I might grant you three wishes, but this leprechaun is not magically delicious. Now not only me gold, you stole me copyright as well. I’m done playing games, lad, you can all burn in hell!”

Simon finally caught his breath and sat up. Byron was in the middle of rap battling the leprechaun, which was completely absurd, but it was buying them time to grab their weapons, to get ready to attack.

The leprechaun had his full attention on Byron and the crowd and didn’t seem to know Simon, Mark, and Trinie were just off-stage watching, preparing to end this nightmare, to send him back under the rainbow or wherever the fuck he came from.

Mark and Trinie both already held their spears, whispering to each other, watching as the leprechaun spat his next verse, the crowd roaring in response, all on their feet dancing.

The beat that pounded from the speakers made Simon feel sick to his stomach, sent a chill down his spine and bile to the back of his throat. He rose to his feet, locked eyes with Mark, who nodded at him, then jerked his head toward the leprechaun as if to say, “Let’s get this motherfucker.”

Simon still ached from being launched across the stage, but he tried to ignore the pain as he turned to reach for the weapon they had strategically placed.

And then he was face to face with Kay, his hand gripping her breast.

“Oh, shit…sorry. I didn’t…Kay? What’s the matter with—”

Kay’s eyes were half-lidded, staring at the floor, and her expression was emotionless, hanging slack from her skull. A golden collar was locked around her neck, the metal tight against her skin making the flesh bulge out around it.

It only took Simon a few seconds to realize what he was seeing, what had happened to the girl he had had a crush on for so many years. Who was always nice to him, always had a smile when she served him his beers.

That little son of a bitch is trying to make her his bride. Just like in the goddamn movies.

“Oh Jesus, Kay. Here…just let me…” He reached up, worked his fingers under the collar. Her skin was hot, almost scalding, and no matter how hard he pulled on it, the collar wasn’t moving, seemed to grow even tighter. “Shit!”

Simon turned, faced the others. Mark and Trinie stared at him with wide eyes, shrugging as if he was wasting time, not focusing on the task at hand.

“Don’t worry,” Simon said, turning to face Kay again. “I won’t let that green little fuck hurt you. No fucking way.”

Simon reached for the spear they had placed behind the curtain, and just as his fingers touched the cold metal, Kay’s hand darted out from her side, wrapped around Simon’s forearm and squeezed so hard he thought the bone would snap clean in half.

“Ahhh…shit. Kay, come on…what are you doing?”

Her eyes ignited into a bright, blinding green as a grin stretched across her face so wide the corners of her mouth covered her ears. A thick, moss-like fungus covered her teeth, and as Simon watched, the teeth grew longer, wider, like jaundiced fingernails pressed into her gums. Red hairs sprouted from her face like thin worms wriggling out from her pores until she had a patchy, wiry beard. The hand gripping Simon’s arm constricted tighter and tighter, hooked claws now protruding from the tips of her fingers and digging into Simon’s skin.

“Where are you planning to go with that spear, Simon me lad?” she said, pulling Simon closer to her. The breath billowing from her mouth smelled like beef stew. “You could put an eye out with that thing.”

“Guys! Fucking help me!”

Simon hoped Mark and Trinie had heard him, though right as he yelled to them, the crowd erupted with noise. Singing along with the leprechaun.

Kay chuckled as she pressed a thumb to Simon’s eye and dug it deep into his socket.

Mark wanted to run out onstage and stab the little bastard through the chest, didn’t want to wait another second. But if the leprechaun saw him in time, he could probably just wave his hand, use his green magic to break every bone in his fucking body or liquefy his innards or something like that. The timing had to be just right, so he gripped his spear, bouncing on his toes, ready to attack.

Simon was finally sitting up after being launched from the stage and smacking the floor hard. He looked dazed, but in good enough condition to help. They would need every single one of them if they hoped to get out of this alive.

“Are we really gonna do this?” Trinie whispered, her voice shaky and squeaky. “Oh fuck, Mark, I don’t know if I can.”

Mark had to rest the butt of the spear on the floor—it was too heavy to carry one-handed—and he placed his free hand on Trinie’s wrist. “You can. We can. We have to.”

She looked deep into his eyes, the rims of her lids fattening with tears, and she nodded. She hadn’t looked at him that way since they went to bed together, since before they found Marvin at the diner, gorging himself on potatoes and feline. Before any of this shit happened.

And Mark couldn’t help himself. It was as if some other force was controlling his actions, and he leaned in and kissed her. Pressed his lips hard against hers and kissed her. She let her spear rest against the floor beside his as she gripped the back of his head and kissed him back.

Once their lips pulled apart, and after a moment of staring at each other and smiling, Mark picked his spear back up, squeezed it, and glanced back over to Simon, who was now on his feet. Mark nodded to him, then jerked his head toward the leprechaun who was rapping onstage, his full attention still on Byron.

Simon nodded back, and Mark knew the time was getting close. If the spears didn’t work, didn’t kill the leprechaun, he told himself that at least he got one more kiss before he died.

From behind Simon, a figure emerged from the darkness.

It’s Kay! The chick from the bar.

Mark was glad to see her, figured she could help out. He wasn’t sure where she came from or how she knew to find them backstage, but that didn’t matter. She was here and they needed all the allies they could get. Then he noticed the golden collar wrapped around her neck, the strange, slack expression on her face.

Simon turned toward her, was saying something Mark couldn’t make out.

Byron and the leprechaun continued to battle onstage, the crowd getting more and more into it, every one of them thinking this was all just part of the show, probably wondering how a group of nobodies like them could pull off such a convincing-looking leprechaun.

Simon turned his gaze toward Mark and Trinie again, and Mark widened his eyes, wanting Simon to get his head in the game. It was go time.

But Mark squinted as he stared past Simon and at Kay again. Something wasn’t right about her. Then she opened her eyes fully, and a burning green light exploded out of her sockets. She grinned, had Simon’s arm gripped in her hand.

She’s fucking possessed or something. She’s with the leprechaun.

Mark wanted to run to Simon’s aid, wanted to help, but at that moment the leprechaun’s voice rose in volume and intensity, roaring from the speakers.

“…you can all burn in hell!”

Byron turned his gaze toward Mark and Trinie, waved them over with two quick jerks of his hand.

“Now, Mark. Go now!” Trinie said, shoving him in the back.

The leprechaun strippers in the crowd looked ready to shred the audience with their talon-like claws.

Mark raised his spear above his head, clenched his teeth, and sprinted forward. He hadn’t made it three steps before the leprechaun spun on his heels, so fast it looked like the back of his head grew a face. The wee creature growled like a rabid dog, his hands glowing as if radioactive.

It was too late to stop now, and Mark just gripped the shaft of his spear harder and roared forward.

The leprechaun held one hand up, palm out, and in that instant, Mark couldn’t move. The only part of his body he seemed to have control over was his eyes, and he could only watch as Trinie darted past his petrified self, her spear out in front of her.

With his other hand, the leprechaun simply waved as if swatting at a mosquito. Trinie flew from the stage as if catapulted, spinning through the air above the audience. The men and women in the crowd oohed and ahhed as they watched her sail over their heads. Mark couldn’t see where she landed, but he heard it, and he tried to wince but couldn’t.

“You little motherfucker!” Mark tried to shout, but he couldn’t even work his vocal cords. A green cloud swirled around him, sparkling like a glittered tornado. A hideous rictus opened up on the leprechaun’s face.

Mark couldn’t turn his head to look for him, but expected Byron would have intervened by now, done something…anything. Mark could only look in the leprechaun’s direction, and from his viewpoint, Byron was nowhere to be found.

He fucking ran. He left us here, that chickenshit motherfucker!

Just as Mark was accepting his fate that any minute the leprechaun would kill him, rip his intestines out through his nostrils, the theater came alive with light. Red and blue, flashing in through the windows, splashing across the audience and the leprechaun’s green-tinted flesh.

Mark thought it was thunder he heard, but as the seconds ticked by and the volume grew louder, he realized it was a hip hop beat. He even recognized the song as “Fuck tha Police.”

The doors flew open, making the audience jump collectively, the strippers as still as statues, still waiting for their command to kill.

What looked like the entire Portland police force paraded into the theater, and for a second, just a brief second, Mark was relieved to see them, thought he was saved, that they were all going to be okay now.

Then he spotted Marvin, leading the cops. Or the leprechaun formerly known as Marvin.

The real leprechaun snarled, released his hold on Mark so he could turn and face Marvin, both creatures glaring at each other.

“You!” the leprechaun roared.

Mark landed on his backside, only gave himself half a second to groan and grimace before he dove toward his spear which lay just behind the leprechaun, who now had his back turned on Mark.

In one fluid motion, Mark gripped the shaft with both hands, and still on his knees, drove the tip of the spear into the leprechaun’s back.

Green blood as thick as pudding squirted from the creature’s back, splashed across Mark’s face and burned like hot oil. The leprechaun screeched and yowled, reaching behind him to pull the spear out.

Mark screamed as the blood sizzled over his face, and he used his shirt to try and wipe it away, frantically rubbing the cloth over his eyes and skin.

When he removed his shirt from his face, the leprechaun stood just in front of him, spear in hand, teeth bared and eyes pinched to razor-thin slits.

“Break a leg,” the leprechaun said, then slammed the spear head into Mark’s thigh, pinning him to the wooden stage beneath.

Mark shrieked as blood bubbled from his leg. He used both hands to try and pull the metal out, but he couldn’t even budge it.

The leprechaun spun back toward Marvin, giggled to himself, then hopped off the stage.

As soon as Mark and Trinie launched their attack, Byron ducked out of the way and crept toward the pot of gold. They had agreed burning the gold was a last resort, but Byron didn’t want to take any chances. Why wait to see if the clover-tipped spears did the trick when they could hit him with everything they had all at once?

When he saw Simon struggling with what looked like a monster, it took him a minute before realizing the monster was actually Kay.

The leprechaun’s fucking bride.

Having seen the films again and again, he only had to take one look at Kay to know it was true. From what Byron could tell from the events that had been happening since they started this fucking musical, a lot of the gags from the films were based on truth. He had to wonder how any of the filmmakers got away with it without this little son of a bitch coming after them.

Or maybe they’re all dead.

Byron had his back to the audience now, and braced himself to hear the wet, ripping sounds of the strippers slaughtering them, tearing them apart like fruit in a blender.

But instead he heard the squealing of what could only be the leprechaun. Byron chanced a quick glance over his shoulder, saw Mark with his spear jammed into the leprechaun’s back, thick, neon blood spraying from the wound. He didn’t see Trinie anywhere. Then Mark released the spear, kicked his legs and screamed as he wiped at his face.

Oh, fuck me. Hurry, Byron, quit fucking around.

Byron pulled the book of matches from his pocket, rushed across the stage toward the papier-mâché tree stump. The scent of lighter fluid stung his nostrils, and just as he was about to strike the match, blue and red lights flashed across the walls and stage, followed by a deep, thumping bass.

A few seconds later, Byron could have sworn he heard the lyrics to “Fuck tha Police” being blasted from a speaker or megaphone, but he knew there was no time to worry about it, no time to do anything but light this motherfucking pot o’ gold aflame and watch that little green cocksucker melt on the theater floor.

The match had gone out, and Byron quickly ripped a new one off and struck it. Before he could even start toward the tree stump, this match went out as well.

“Little boys shouldn’t play with fire.”

The voice came from Byron’s left, and before he could turn to face it, a hand was wrapped around his throat.

Kay, now resembling the leprechaun more than herself, lifted Byron off his feet and held him at arm’s length. Her grip was strong, and no matter how hard Byron pulled, he couldn’t loosen her fingers. The tips of her claws pierced the back of his neck and warm blood flowed down his back and into the crack of his ass. Byron kicked, the toes of his sneakers slamming against Kay’s stomach and chest, but she didn’t even flinch, just smiled up at him.

Simon lay motionless on the floor beside Kay’s feet, a puddle of blood surrounding his head.

She killed him. She killed Simon and now I’m next. We failed.

Byron heard a ruckus coming from his right, but he couldn’t turn his head to see what was going on. His vision began to blur, stars sparkling at the corners. His eyes felt ready to burst. He no longer had the strength to kick, couldn’t even lift his arms to claw at Kay’s hand.

Marvin hopped out of his vehicle and approached the theater’s entrance. He could feel the other leprechaun’s presence like electric spiders crawling over his skin, knew his maker was inside, just beyond these doors. His men were behind him, wielding their nightsticks and pistols and shotguns.

The leprechaun had others with him, his minions. Marvin could smell their green pussy stink, and with his mind, he told his men to take care of them. The others didn’t matter. Marvin wasn’t here to kill any innocents.

He only wanted the leprechaun. Only wanted to claim this town as his own.

And the pot of gold. Marvin only had his flute, and though he wore it around his neck, lovingly ran his fingertips across its surface again and again, he needed more. A leprechaun without gold was no leprechaun at all.

“Showtime,” Marvin said with a chuckle, and closed his now fully-formed fist like he was crushing a bug in his palm. The theater doors crumbled, folded in on themselves in a shower of green sparks, and Marvin stepped over the rubble and into the theater.

The leprechaun was onstage, his bitch minions spread across the audience with their claws held high. The audience didn’t seem concerned about this in the least. They were all on their feet and seemed to be dancing, having the time of their lives.

The two leprechauns locked eyes, and Marvin couldn’t help but smile.

“You!” the leprechaun growled, then screamed as an iron spear was driven into his back by the lad onstage with him. Marvin thought he recognized the boy, but couldn’t grasp the memory.

As the leprechaun yanked the spear from his back and faced his attacker, Marvin’s men marched through the aisles and ran toward the clawed strippers. Guns were cocked and the officers cackled like drunken frat boys as they began their attack.

The strippers saw them coming, but seemed reluctant to defend themselves. They kept glancing at the leprechaun onstage as if awaiting permission to fight.

One officer pressed the barrel of his shotgun to the back of a stripper’s head and pulled the trigger. Brains and hair and skull fragments showered the audience members around her, and the officer cackled as he used the butt of his gun to beat her still-kicking body.

The people, now dripping with green gore, didn’t seem to know how to react. They watched, some slack-jawed, some even smiling. They exchanged glances, and a few took steps back, but none retreated completely. Even as they wiped the stripper’s brains from their faces, they could only seem to watch.

Marvin switched his attention back to the stage just as the leprechaun hopped off of it and started walking down the aisle toward him. In that same moment, the female minions screeched and launched their own attack against the officers, using their claws to tear into their torsos, flinging innards and ribbons of tattered skin across the crowd.

One girl slashed upward, penetrating one of the younger officers at the soft flesh under his chin. Her talons stabbed into the roof of his mouth, blood spraying from his nose and throat. As she ripped his jaw from his head, he jammed his pistol past her teeth and emptied his magazine down her throat.

The chief of police, an older man with a gut that hung past his belt like he was hiding a whole turkey under his shirt, calmly walked down an aisle, a pistol in each hand. His eyes glowed green and he chewed on the butt of a cigar that was clamped between teeth like a chunk of soggy beef. He fired the pistols in turn, each bullet finding a stripper and spraying green blood across the walls and floor and stunned faces of the audience. When he laughed, he coughed, deep and phlegmy. He took out at least three of the leprechaun’s minions before another two jumped on him from behind and ripped away handfuls of flesh from his neck until his head rolled off backward, the cigar still clamped between his teeth.

Marvin ignored the violence around him, ignored the gawking faces of the audience.

He locked eyes with the leprechaun and slowly strode toward him, curling and uncurling his hands at his sides.

“That be my gold hanging ’round your neck,” the leprechaun said once they were face to face. “Once I’ve eaten your heart, I’ll be taking that back, my boy.”

Marvin licked his lips and bared his teeth. “You created a monster when you bit me. And after I take your gold, I’ll be taking those shiny shoes as well.”

“Shall we dance now, me wee friend?”

“That we shall.”

The leprechaun’s hands and eyes glowed bright as he grinned.

Marvin growled and leapt forward.

Simon thought he was dead. When consciousness faded back in, he was sure he was in the afterlife. And he was relieved. He didn’t have to worry about leprechauns or zombie fly girls or copyright laws.

Then his left eye socket ignited with fresh pain, and as he clutched his face and ground his teeth, he knew the nightmare wasn’t over yet.

When he pulled his hands away, his palms were slick with blood. Kay had punctured his eyeball with her thumbnail, dug it in deep until it ruptured. His vision in that eye went out like a television being turned off, and he remembered screaming, remembered wishing she would just hurry up and kill him already.

And now he was waking up. Alive.

What the fuck is going on?

The pain was intense, as if Kay had pulled his eyeball out and filled the socket with hot coals. Simon turned his head and vomited onto the stage, was about to shriek when his working eye landed on Kay. She had Byron by the throat, lifted off his feet, and as Simon watched, Byron’s struggles began to weaken, his grimacing face going slack.

A book of matches lay on the stage beside them, and Simon figured Kay had stopped Byron before he could finish it. He knew it would be useless to try and fight Kay, so he crawled as quietly as he could across the stage, cringing when the wooden planks beneath him creaked. But there was too much commotion in the theater for Kay to notice, and she just grinned into Byron’s face as she choked the life out of him.

Simon’s shaking fingers reached for the matches. He was behind Kay, almost directly under her now. Simon feared that Byron was already dead, but when he looked up at his friend, Byron was looking back at him. Byron’s eyes said, “Do it. Hurry!”

This is all my fault, Simon thought as Byron’s eyes rolled to the back of his head.

Simon quickly snatched the book of matches and nearly dropped it as he fumbled for one. The tree stump was just in front of him, the lighter fluid’s scent strong, its fumes stinging his raw, open eye socket.

He lit a match, then used that match to light the rest of the book.

Kay turned then, dropping Byron to the stage, her eyes vivid and her teeth grinding together as she stared at the flame.

Simon tossed the matches into the tree stump, Kay’s deep roar echoing into the theater as she rushed forward. The matches landed on top of the gold where it ignited at once, shooting a fireball into the air, singeing Kay’s face and burning her red beard hairs away.

Simon crawled toward Byron, who was motionless on his back. A deep red handprint was tattooed to his throat, and at first Simon was sure he was dead.

Kay screamed and flailed her arms as if she were on fire herself, though there were no flames on her. She dropped to her knees, raked her nails across her face. Her golden collar bubbled and oozed off of her neck and slid across her skin like mercury. It puddled onto the stage floor, and with a final shriek, Kay slumped over, knocking the top of her head against the stage floor before falling to her side.

“Simon…fucking help me!”

Trinie never lost consciousness, but the way the back of her head and her back throbbed with sharp pain, she was scared to move. Though the pain was still alive and well, it was starting to dull to a light pulse, and she took a chance and sat up. Her vision swam, and no matter how many times she blinked, how hard she rubbed her eyes, she couldn’t fully focus. For a moment, she forgot where she was, was wondering who all these people were and why she was on the floor.

“Shall we dance now, me wee friend?”

“That we shall.”

The two small, green blurry objects in front of her focused some, and the moment she saw the leprechaun, her memory came screaming back. She gasped and tried to crawl quickly away, but the agony in her back caused her to yelp and grimace, and she had to slowly scoot herself backward.

Mark, she thought. Mark and I were going to kill it…but we failed. Oh god…Mark…

She could see figures up on the stage, but she couldn’t make them out. She could only hope Mark was one of them, that he was alive.

As she squinted at the leprechaun, she thought the second tiny figure beside him was just her double vision, and it took her groggy mind a moment to realize there were actually two leprechauns.

“M-Marvin?” she groaned.

Marvin glanced her way, just for a moment, and raised an eyebrow at her, as if he remembered her but couldn’t figure out why. In that second, the leprechaun snarled and leapt at Marvin, hopping into the air and slamming his buckled shoes into Marvin’s face.

Marvin stumbled backward, but just before he fell, pillars of green swirling light burst from his palms and launched him into the air. He flipped and spun, giggling as he soared.

The leprechaun had already been charging toward Marvin, and when Marvin flew into the air, the leprechaun staggered forward, lost his footing and smacked his chin on the floor. He slid a few feet toward Trinie, and when his green eyes landed on her, his lip curled into a sneer.

“You’d look gorgeous in gold, that’s this leprechaun’s opinion. Look into my eyes and become my minion.”

“Fuck you!”

Just as the leprechaun grinned and his eyes began to glow brighter, Marvin slammed down on the Lep’s back with his feet as if landing from a high jump. The leprechaun’s eyes pinched shut and his face twisted with pain.

Marvin reached down, plucked the Lep’s hat, and placed it on his own head. Then he put his hands on his hips and tap-danced, the heels of his shoes grinding into the leprechaun’s back and shoulders.

“Diddly diddly diddly dee, you’ll rue the day that you bit me.”

It was only then that Trinie noticed the violence thrashing all around them. Her vision was slowly clearing now, though it still felt like her brain had been dipped in molasses. And as she forced herself to her feet, using the wall behind her for support, she saw for the first time the police officers and what appeared to be strippers tearing each other apart. Cops fired their guns, miraculously not hitting any of the audience members as far as Trinie could tell. The strippers used their nails to tear into them, spilling entrails and splashing blood.

And why the fuck is the audience still here? Why aren’t they running away from all this shit?

She wondered if maybe the flute had something to do with it, that maybe they were all in some kind of trance and were powerless to move. But then she noticed the looks of amusement etched on their faces, most smiling and even clapping as they watched the mayhem.

Do they actually think this is all part of the show? Can they really be that stupid?

Then again, would it be any more stupid to believe there were actually two real-life leprechauns fighting to the death in front of them?

The leprechaun’s countenance began to darken, and the pained expression he had been wearing a moment before contorted into one of anger and hatred. He flexed his hands as a vaporous green mist ghosted from his fingertips and gusted out from between his teeth.

It happened so fast, it was little more than a blur.

Marvin went from standing to being slammed down on his back in an instant, the leprechaun now standing over him. No, not standing. Floating just above him, a verdant aura radiating off of his body like steam.

Marvin was no longer smiling. He stared up at the leprechaun like a frightened bunny rabbit underneath a snarling wolf.

“As amusing as this has all been,” the leprechaun said, the playfulness completely gone from his voice now. “I. Want. Me fucking. Gold!”

In the very same moment he shouted the last word, every stripper still standing exploded as if their bodies had been stuffed with dynamite. Sloppy chunks of flesh slapped the walls and splattered across the floor, spraying the audience with green and red gore. The audience gasped collectively, but still stood in place, still not sure if what they were seeing was real or not.

There were a few police officers left, but they all cowered on the floor, balled up and whimpering.

“Did you really think you could defeat me, Marvin me lad?” The leprechaun raised both hands into the air, palms up, and Marvin was lifted off the ground, his stubby legs kicking. “My magic is ancient, timeless! You…you can’t…”

There was a shriek that blasted from the stage, so loud and sudden that Trinie flinched. The leprechaun blinked rapidly, dropped his hands and seemed to have trouble breathing.

Marvin plummeted from midair, but just before colliding with the floor, he waved his hands and a green cloud appeared just beneath him, caught him gently and placed him on his feet.

The leprechaun faced the stage, started to walk toward it, but stumbled instead, almost as if he was drunk. Tendrils of smoke swirled off his body, and a scent like roasting pork filled the air.

“N-no…me…me gold!”

That’s when Trinie noticed the open flame onstage, noticed Simon standing there, tugging on something.

“Mark!” Trinie screamed when she realized it was a spear protruding from Mark’s leg that Simon was pulling on.

Clumps of gelatinous flesh dripped off the leprechaun’s body as he trudged forward, leaving a trail of green slime in his wake.

“I imagine you’ll be needing this, lass.” Marvin stood beside her, holding her spear out to her.

Without asking any questions, Trinie grabbed it with both hands and charged toward the leprechaun.

When Mark saw Trinie running toward the leprechaun with her spear out in front of her, he sat up, gripped the spear’s shaft with both hands, and helped Simon pull. The pain nearly made him pass out, but he held on, clenched his teeth, and roared.

It gave some, but still not enough.

“It’s fucking stuck, man,” Simon whimpered, then cried out and slammed his hand to his bleeding eye, or what used to be his eye. Blood ran from between his fingers and he stumbled back a few steps.

Byron appeared out of nowhere, nearly falling forward onto Mark. Simon caught him in the last second, cried out in pain, but kept himself and Byron steady.

“Holy shit, man, I thought you were dead,” Simon said, forcing the words past his clamped teeth.

The leprechaun bellowed as Trinie’s spear penetrated his back. He fell forward, his liquefying flesh splashing over the floor like split pea soup. Trinie rolled him over with her foot, raised the spear and slammed it down into his chest.

“Let’s…kill that little…motherfucker…” Byron grimaced as he gripped the spear with both hands, and the three of them pulled with everything they had.

The spear ripped free, taking strips of meat with it. Blood gushed from Mark’s leg, and he slapped the stage as fresh, hot pain pulsed through his thigh, but he did his best to ignore it, let Simon and Byron help him to his feet.

The fire, a dark green color, crackled as it danced over the pot of gold, melting the coins into a molten stew. The emerald flames licked the curtain beside them, but didn’t catch, as if the fire was only hungry for gold.

Simon dashed off for a moment and came back with a spear of his own. Mark rolled off the stage, held his weapon above his head, and limped as fast as he could toward the leprechaun who was climbing his way up the shaft of Trinie’s spear, letting it slide through his chest as he reached for her.

Trinie cried out, and just as the leprechaun’s melting claw was about to swipe at her face, Mark jammed the point of his spear through the wee creature’s open mouth and slammed him back down.

The leprechaun choked, clawing at the spear as it spat up gouts of slime.

Simon slid in beside Mark and thrust his spear down, again and again, stabbing the leprechaun through the chest.

The leprechaun’s flesh sloughed off its bones, and the three of them never stopped stabbing.

We’re doing it, Mark thought. We’re fucking winning!

The chokes and mutters oozing from the leprechaun’s mouth slowly became a chuckle. Its skeleton, a shimmering gold color, began climbing out of the puddle that used to be its body.

“No no no, fuck this. This is bullshit!” Mark shrieked, jabbing his spear head into the bones over and over. The blows glanced off harmlessly, throwing showers of sparks into the air on impact.

The golden skeleton guffawed, and with a quick jerking motion was back on its feet. The iron spears flew from Mark, Trinie, and Simon’s grasp, soared over the audience, and stabbed into the far wall.

“You stole me intellectual property. You stole me gold. I am the motherfucking leprechaun! And I—”

Marvin dove into the skeleton from over Simon and Trinie’s shoulders. He held the golden flute over his head with both of his green, clawed hands, and he jammed it into the front of the leprechaun’s skull.

The skeleton bellowed as a wave of green fire exploded from its mouth and mushroomed into the air. It fell backward, splashing in the liquid flesh, grasping the flute.

“The pot o’ gold,” Marvin said, now on his knees and clutching his stomach. “You…you gotta throw him in with…with the gold.”

Before Mark could make a move, Simon shoved him out of the way, grabbed the skeleton by the spinal cord.

“I’ve got this.”

Simon sprinted across the theater and dove onto the stage. Blood flowed from his eye and down his face, sucking into his nostrils as he gasped for breath. The skeleton writhed and thrashed, but whatever power it had was quickly fading.

“You want your gold, you son of a bitch?”

Byron stood by the burning pot, still trying to catch his breath, but when he saw Simon rushing toward him, he quickly ran over, grabbed hold of the leprechaun’s legs. Together they held the wriggling skeleton over the fire and boiling gold.

“Choke on it, motherfucker.”

They tossed the leprechaun in and backed away.

A gurgling scream erupted as the leprechaun splashed from within the pot. The flames brightened from green to gold, and Simon had to look away, to shield his eyes. A strong gust of wind hit him, threw him backward off his feet.
And then all was quiet.

Simon propped himself up on his elbows and stared across the stage at the pot. The theater was eerily silent, the only sound Simon’s thumping heart and pulse.

“Did we do it?” Byron said, lying just beside Simon, grimacing as he sat up. “Is this shit over…like for real over?”

“I…I don’t know.” Simon rose to his feet and slowly approached the pot. He couldn’t help but expect for the leprechaun, whole again and more terrible and pissed off than ever, to pop out and pounce on him. His eye socket throbbed, and he jammed his hand over it and did his best to ignore the pain.

The pot was empty. No gold. No leprechaun.

Mark and Trinie were climbing onto the stage when Simon turned around, carrying an unconscious Marvin between them. Simon couldn’t help but smile despite the torturous agony ripping a hole through his skull.

Marvin, who had been a full-fledged leprechaun only moments before, seemed to be transforming back to his self, slowly losing the green tint to his skin, his clawed hands shrinking to their normal size.

None of them spoke. They could only look at each other, each glancing at the other one at a time. Mark pulled Trinie in and kissed her. Simon couldn’t help but grab hold of Byron and pull him into a hug, squeezing him as hard as his weak body would allow.

And then it came. The sound of applause.

Simon had completely forgotten about the audience, had completely forgotten about the musical altogether. He, Byron, Mark, and Trinie all turned toward the crowd together as the men and women clapped and whooped and whistled.

Splattered across the floor were the bodies of police officers and strippers, body parts and innards. Yet the audience cheered, either oblivious of the death surrounding them or convinced the entire thing was some kind of elaborate gag.

Simon glanced at his friends, shrugged, and took a bow. They all did the same, shaking their heads and smiling.

“Guys?” Marvin was sitting up now, scratching his head. “Um…anyone want to tell me what in the actual fuck is going on?”

They all laughed then, each of them grimacing from their countless injuries, but still laughing.

“S-Simon?”

The voice came from behind them. Simon didn’t have to turn to know who it was. He had dreamed of that voice calling out his name hundreds of times before, and he turned to find Kay rising to her feet, her hands shaking as they wiped the sweat from her brow.

Simon ran to her, wrapped one arm around her waist, his other hand still covering his eye. Her lip quivered as she looked into his face.

“Is it dead? Did you kill it?”

Simon nodded. “It’s over.”

Kay pressed her face to Simon’s shoulder and wept, squeezing him tight. Nothing in the world could have possibly felt better.

The audience continued to cheer, clapping vigorously.

“Anyone else hungry?” Marvin said, now standing and looking up at them. “I could sure go for some French fries.”

“Wait…” Mark started.

“I’m just fucking with you.”

“Okay, okay. Calm down,” Simon said as he opened the latest issue of Fangoria and placed it on the coffee table.

Everyone crowded around, Marvin pushing his way past their legs to get a closer look.

“I can’t believe this shit,” Byron said. “I mean…just holy shit, man.”

Kay kissed Simon on the cheek, just under his eye patch, then wiped the red lipstick off his skin. “You did it.”

Mark and Trinie both smiled, shaking their heads as they stared down at the article. A photo of all five of them standing in front of the theater, in full color, took up most of the page. They had added a graphic of the Warwick Davis leprechaun, his face and hands above the theater like some giant specter.

The title of the article was “Leprecarnage! The story of the making of Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical.”

“Hey, that’s my line, man,” Marvin said.

Below the headline it read: How five horror fans put on the best show Portland has ever seen.

“At least this is better than the other story about us, right?” Byron said.

Simon kept the newspaper. The musical was mentioned, but mostly it was about how the Portland Police Department got locked into a deathmatch with a horde of local strippers in the theater while their musical was going on. How the bloody and brutal battle royale left the force decimated, killed all of the strippers, and seriously injured the actors. Though miraculously not a single member of the audience was hurt.

No mention of the leprechaun in either of the reports.

“I can’t believe all of those people actually thought all that shit was part of the show,” Trinie said.

“Well…I was thinking about that,” Simon said.

“No,” Byron said, crossing his arms and glaring at Simon. “Don’t even fucking say it.”

“What?”

“Come on, Simon,” Marvin said. “I turned into a fucking leprechaun, man.”

“Wait—”

“Nope. I already know what you’re gonna say,” Byron said. “Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical was a success. But that was a one-time thing. We’re not doing that shit again.”

“Hold on—”

“We don’t even know if the goddamn leprechaun is really dead,” Marvin said.

“They’re right,” Mark said. “We do that shit again, he might come back. And there’s no way in hell I’m going through that shit again.”

“Me too! Fuck all that noise,” Trinie chimed in.

“Will you all just shut the fuck up and listen to me for a second!” Simon took a deep breath, smiled at Kay, who had backed away from him when he raised his voice. “I’m not stupid, okay? You think after all that shit, I’d do it all over again? Shit, I’ll never even wear green again.”

“So what the fuck are you getting at?” Byron said.

“Jason X: The Musical.” Simon held his hands out as if picturing the marquee. “Holy shit, it would be perfect.”

“This motherfucker has lost his mind,” Byron said as he threw his arms in the air and shook his head.

A knock at the door.

“Oh come on, guys. Jason Voorhees isn’t a real person. The leprechaun was a mythical creature, it’s different. We can do this, use the publicity from the last—”

“I love you, Simon,” Marvin said, patting Simon on the knee. “But you can go fuck yourself.”

“Seriously,” Trinie said.

Mark just shook his head and snickered to himself.

Another knock at the door, harder.

“You gonna get that?” Kay said.

Simon started toward the door, put his hand on the knob, then turned back to his friends. “You guys can bitch all you want. But we’re doing it. I already wrote the script.”

He opened the door and a machete chopped down onto his face, splitting his head in two down to the neck. A geyser of blood sprayed, splashed over the ceiling.

The others screamed as the large figure stepped into the apartment.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

Adam Cesare’s books include The First One You Expect, Video Night, The Summer Job, Exponential, and Tribesmen. His nonfiction has appeared in Paracinema, Fangoria, The Los Angeles Review of Books and other publications. He lives in Philadelphia and can be found at AdamCesare.com.

Shane McKenzie is the author of Muerte Con Carne, Pus Junkies, The Bingo Hall, and many other books. He’s also the co-author of Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road (with Brian Keene, Edward Lee, Jack Ketchum, and others) and penned the short film “M is for Matador” which will be featured in ABCs of Death 1.5. He also writes comics for Zenescope. Shane lives in Austin, Texas.

Cameron Pierce is the Wonderland Book Award-winning author of over ten books, including the controversial cult hit Ass Goblins of Auschwitz and the disaster noir novella The Incoming Tide. He’s also the head editor of Lazy Fascist Press and editor of four anthologies, most recently In Heaven, Everything Is Fine: Fiction Inspired by David Lynch. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

Special thanks to Shawn Trucks and the Reddit Horror community, J. David Osborne, Matthew Revert, the bizarro family, Jim Agpalza, Sam McCanna, John Skipp, Jesse Lawrence, Gabino Iglesias, Tod Clark, Jennifer Aniston, Brian Trenchard-Smith, and most of all, our families.

Table of Contents

LEP