PArt 3:

Pepper screamed and jerked away. The woman jerked forward, suddenly limp. Her eyes fell out of her head and her nose fell off. The cat melted into her lap. Pepper shrieked and tried to pull away. Teeth suddenly appeared out of the concrete, at least 5 feet long.
“WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON!??!?!” This had only happened one other time. And that was in a movie. Pepper took her knife out of the sheath at her hip and sawed through the old lady’s arm, which had turned to some unidentified sticky substance. She broke free and ran as a horrid piranha like creature emerged, breaking a huge hole in the concrete. It roared and leaped after the sprinting girl.
“Help! Help! Somebody step on it!” she cried, running away as fast as she can. She didn’t even want to know what happened to the old lady.
Suddenly she saw a pickup pulling out of the driveway to a bar.
“Wait for me!” she yelled, seeing people in the back. The creature was gaining, and Pepper was tiring.
A dude with a cigarette and a mustache waved at her. She reached the pickup and scrambled up into the back.
“Gosh, thanks for saving me.” She gasped. The people just blinked at her. They looked like rednecks, so they could probably help her get to Texas.
The pickup roared to life and began driving at 2 miles per hour, the average speed of a Los Angeles vehicle.
“COME ON!” the driver yelled to the millions of cars surrounding him. “MOVE IT!”
Pepper looked back at the creature. It was gone, totally gone. Probably got bored of the sea of cars.
“You person.” The cigarette guy was apparently addressing her. “What is your name?”
“Pepper.” Pepper said simply.
“Nice. You can sit in the cab.”
“uhh….” How would she get INTO the cab? The car was moving if even so slow it would lose a race against molasses running uphill in January in Alaska. The mustachio opened the little window in the back and motioned for her to enter. Okkkkaaaayyyyyy. She scrambled ungracefully through the tiny window and landed in a heap on the leather seat.
“FAIL!” the driver said. Pepper realized it was the emo kid. WHAT THE HECK!?!? Oh well.

She looked around the cab. It was a 5-seater and rather nice. The emo kid was driving and a blonde girl was sitting shotgun. She had pink glasses, same as Pepper. Pepper sat in the middle of the back seat and buckled up quietly.
“Who are the guys in the back?” she asked finally.
“I have no clue.” Emo boy said. “They were all napping in the back when I came out of depresso-mart (my favorite place to shop) and said they needed a ride to Texas. So I said okay.”
“Why?”
“I was bored.”
“Um, wow… And why did you give me this knife?”
“It got apple juice on it.”
“APPLE JUICE?!” Pepper gaped. “I thought it was blood.”
“Nope.” Emo kid shook his head. “I just hate apple juice.”
“Um, thanks. It kind of saved my life.”
“Cool.”
“I’m Pepper.”
“I’m Payne.”
“Pain?”
“Spelled ‘P-a-y-n-e’”
“Wow. That’s weird. Can I just call you…. Joe?”
Emo kid/Payne/Joe looked a bit disappointed his emo name wasn’t as catchy as he had formerly thought, but he nodded.
The blonde girl turned around suddenly.
“Hi!” she said. “I’m Flitter!”
“Flitter?” Pepper echoed.
The blonde girl nodded.
“Um, okay. That’s nice, I guess.”
The blonde girl turned toward the front, and Joe appeared to be sulking emotistically again, so Pepper did what any normal American person who had just wandered the streets of L.A, been attacked by her mom, and then chased by an imaginary monster that she had formerly thought an old person would do. She brushed her hair and then went to sleep.