A/N: For the ever-encouraging Katie, I give you "The Unforgiven III," which, due to her feedback and suggestions, has been largely rewritten into what I think is a superior chapter. Much love, lycanthrope!

Please R&R. (Oh yeah, no time lapse between chapters II and III.)

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"The Unforgiven"

a mighty ducks fanfic by SchizoAuthoress

"Stillwater is a sinkhole," Jason declared, shaking the sodden red bangs out of his haggard, freckled face. For some reason, probably the cannabis molecules pinballing through her lungs, Haley found this statement to be incredibly profound. Her eyes opened and she stared in heavy-lidded wonder at the lanky eighth-grader, giving a slight cough as she exhaled.

"Whoa, man..." Haley murmured, cocking her head to the left, as if this new angle would better help her understand the Zen-like importance of Jason's words.

It was a rainy autumn Saturday in Stillwater, Minnesota, and the old stoner's shed behind the junior high was being put to good use by the three fledgling drug-users. There was Jason Mierrs, the oldest of the group at age fourteen and a half, a tall redhead with an unfortunate collection of freckles all over his thin, muscular body. Haley Shale was thirteen, an extremely pale and frightfully skinny seventh-grader with an obsession for hair dye--a natural blonde, she was currently sporting long black locks with a hot-pink-and-purple splotch where the roots at the top of her head were. At ten, Fulton Reed was the youngest, although his size and bulkiness made him appear older than that. They were waiting for a promised 'present' courtesy of Andy Harris, Jason's older friend in high school, and killing the time--not to mention a few braincells--with some weed.

Fulton sighed and let his body fall sideways, resting his head on his extended arm as he watched his companions. He was drawn, inexplicably, to Haley's eyes and Jason's hands. Haley's eyes were translucently blue, vacant and chilling as ice, with the aged yellow look of jaundice to them. Her eyes looked sick, and she was sick. The sickness clung to her like a cobweb, an unknown something eating away at her so inexorably that she had decided to destroy herself before it could. Thwart its purpose, in a way.

Haley was sick, but no one who could have helped her cared. She was a child of poverty; her parents couldn't afford twice-yearly dental exams, much less the huge medical bills that would follow a diagnosis. The Shales went without insurance of any kind and had to let their daughter slowly die. Fulton wondered briefly if she was ever in pain, and then his thoughts raced on to Jason.

Jason's hands told the world that /he/ was in pain. Thin, pinkish razor marks paraded down his forearms to hands with safety-pin scars and cigarette burns decorating his square palms and long, sharp-nailed fingers. The round little burns had come from his mother, the scars from his own hand. Jason had been a kind of 'whipping boy' in his old house; everything that had gone wrong was blamed on "The Boy," and his mother took a sort of psychotic delight in inventing torturous punishments for his imagined transgressions. Jason had run away from home and now lived out of the various homeless shelters around Minneapolis. It was this past, a past mirrored in some aspects by Fulton's own, that had made him extend a hand in friendship toward the silent, sullen little boy.

The door rattled slightly with a gentle tapping on its surface. Jason looked toward it and smiled, saying slowly, "Andy's here." He lurched to his feet and peeked through the gap between the door and the wall, just to confirm, and drew back the bolt.

Andy came in stomping, cursing the weather and cursing the world, his loud and sudden appearance jolting Fulton and Haley--who had been slumping forward for about half a minute--fully upright again. The teen stripped off his soaking-wet brown jacket, flinging it in the corner.

Andy Harris was a short seventeen-year-old with a mop of wild-looking, unwashed light brown curls, green sunglasses hiding hazel eyes, and piercings all over. He sat down, crossing his ankles and resting his palms on his knees. He mumbled, "Howya doin'?"

"Okay," Jason answered, sitting beside his friend.

Haley rolled her eyes and didn't respond. Fulton shrugged.

"Oh," Jason said, "That's Fulton. He's new."

Andy nodded distractedly, reaching into his shirt and pulling out a plastic baggie. Colorful little half-inch squares filled it. Fulton leaned forward, recognizing the Pink Elephants from that stupid Disney movie that the Wilson kids had seemed to like so much. [1]

"The hell is it?" He demanded, watching with interest as Andy dried his hands on the black tee under his plaid flannel shirt and extracted one of the tiny pictures.

"Acid," the teen answered, carefully seperating the picture into the four hits it contained. Passing them out, he instructed, "Put it on your tongue. It'll take about an hour."

Haley grinned. "Awesome. You rule, Andy."

*-*-*-*

Fulton retreated into a corner, watching with confusion the reactions of the others. Jason was babbling about seeing people dancing in the wood-grain of the walls. Haley had her eyes closed, lying on her back and rubbing her eyes, giggling about something she could see there. Andy was waving his hands in time to the music he'd brought along, transfixed by the motions and the sounds.

The pounding bass was mutating into footsteps, loud and heavy and angry. Fulton whimpered, overwhelmed by the sudden paranoid feeling that his father was coming. The feeling that he needed to vomit was strong. It felt like forever until the footsteps retreated and the fear went away with them.

The room started to spin crazily, as though it were set on multiple axes. Fulton collapsed to the floor, holding the rug in a death-grip. Haley crawled over to him, face haloed in orange, grinning like some insane specter. He looked into her eyes and felt like he was drowning in sadness. She was going to die, the only time she wasn't in pain was when she was tripping, and she didn't even know what was hurting her so badly.

"Do you see all the shapes?" She asked intently.

"What do you see?" Fulton whispered back.

Haley giggled again. "They're not real, but you can see these floating shapes everywhere...donuts and fireworks and these funny 3D crystal things, too."

"I just see these really bright flashes," Fulton replied. He was still staring into those ice-blue eyes when they suddenly intensified like lasers in a face that was whiter than pure white. Haley began to cry.

"Why do I feel so sad?" she sobbed, and Fulton wondered too.

To be continued...

[1] This is an actual blotter-design, a picture of which can be found here:

http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_images3.shtml

under the title of "Pink Elephants." It's gorgeous.