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Twin wells: chapter five: the emerald mule.

Article Excerpt
The only thing more jacked up than the enormous emerald pendant in Joe Newby's right hand was the fact that he was completely naked from the waist down. Wherever Newby had come from, he had acquired a priceless gemstone and lost his pants and underwear in the transaction.

"Take a picture," he snarled. "It lasts longer." Baldwin averted his eyes, tried to look at the sky, at the ground, anywhere but at Newby's hairy whiteness. He finally settled on a dent in the truck, just over Newby's shoulder.

"Why you so quiet?" Newby kept fiddling with the emerald and then himself.

"You need to get some pants on," Baldwin said, keeping his eyes on the dent.

"Husband came home. Didn't exactly have time."

Baldwin nodded at the emerald. "Where'd you get that thing?"

"The devil hisself." Newby smiled and lost himself in the sparkle of the pendant as he worried the stone with his thick fingers.

Suddenly Baldwin realized something else wasn't right. The more he obsessed over the emerald, the more it became apparent to Baldwin that Joe Newby was cranked out of his mind.

Baldwin was all too familiar with the grinding teeth and wild empty eyes. He had been a tweaker himself back when he worked at the refinery in Port Arthur. He and his factory buddies had taken...

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