Santa Carla was like an annual flower; every year, in the spring, it shot its little green sprouts up into the world, so that, come tourist season, it was in full, garish bloom.  And then, as slowly the freaks, the camera-toters, the roving ruffians, the vacationers started to drift away, the town's extremes began to droop.  Come winter, seventy-five percent of Santa Carla was abandoned.  The for-rent bungalows, the motels of varying class, the vacation houses, and the rows upon rows of restaurants, bars, stalls, stands and shops of all sorts were empty, abandoned, hideously dark and mockingly sad things.  Above and behind all, at the very foot of the ocean itself towered the still amusement park, like a gaudy, glowering monument left by some ancient circus-druids to befuddle the minds of later years.

           What was left living was a living replica of the town as it had been in the 1950's; a cluster of residential streets arranged about a tiny commercial center, consisting of a single theatre, a public library, a post office, butcher, dairy, bakery, and a "convenience market", which was a sort of proto-supermarket that staunchly refused to sell meat, milk, bread, or fresh produce (obtainable at the Saturday farmer's market).  Stretching out across the green lands surrounding was the last wave of population, the farms, whose produce was happily sold solely in Santa Carla.  It was the sort of community where everyone knew everyone else's name, and could probably venture a rather accurate guess at what their neighbours were doing at any given time.  Disappearances, missing persons reports, tiny charred bits of human remains, the "murder capital of the world", these were all summer things, and the natives were quite content to let summer people worry about them. 

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            One native, in particular, took great pains to assure that grisly death was a summer problem in Santa Carla.  He stood now in the dark street, emptied for the dinner hour, holding his brown paper sack with an air of proprietary pride, and glancing occasionally at his watch.  After about ten minutes' waiting, he finally heard the distinct, even tapping of approaching heels.  "Late as usual," he sighed as the blacked swathed and booted blonde extended his hands for the bag, smiling slightly.

"Your rules, your problem."  The blonde's face wrinkled slightly as the bag was passed into his possession.  "'S'been chilled," he grunted, disdain oozing from him like some expensive and tasteless scent.

"I'm sorry, David, that I could not prevent the man from properly preserving his merchandise.  Perhaps next time you would prefer the actual cattle?"

"Perhaps we'd all be better off elsewhere."  The entire scene seemed well oiled, rehearsed, as if they had stood in that place and said those things a million times before.  And who is to say they had not.

"We've been over this, Santa Carla is our home."

"And if we go hungry at home, we should leave."

"Don't be dramatic, just because you *are* hungry doesn't mean you are *going* hungry.  Now take your animal parts, and your animal's urges and go back to your den."  David looked on the verge of throwing his parcel at the other and spitting in his face, but something about the man's set of face stopped the youth, and instead he turned on his spiked heel and stalked away.  Gazing with proprietary fondness at his retreating form, the man smiled and called out to him, "And behave yourselves!" 

He was rewarded with an excellent view of the backside of one of the boy's slender white fingers.