Peter Page turner goes shopping.

The more thing's change, the more they stay the same. If you had asked most american women a while back what their favorite shows on television were, the list though not a generalization but rather an abbreviation of the past, would have included Ricky Lake, The young and the restless, Days of our lives, and to a lesser extent Married with children if only because of Peggy Bundy. Now that list may include the like of Swamp Murders, Evil Twins, I almost got away with it, and Deadly Women. A lifetime ago, the downtown district of Canterlot City was home to little corner stores and mom and pop dives to pick up whatever you needed. Now a ton of outlet shops for mega stores sat in the shells of those shops. Angsty, rotten college kids trained specifically to get people in and out of store, the interiors cold not just from the air conditioners, but because big business itself can be as cold as ice.

There are some exceptions to these rules however, even if the ravages of time have ways of sneaking in a sinking their razor sharp steel claws into them as much as all the other places. One such place was called The Pulp...It was a comic and hobby shop that had been nestled in the alley way that a generation or two ago would have been the urban equivalent of the midway at an amusement park. A video arcade, a pizzarea more greasy than a lube job in July, a video store called Sal's back before the days of instant video streaming, and of course The Pulp itself. Once lined the alleyway with neon lights, the smells of musty paper and cheap VHS cardboard, and offered a choice Friday afternoon to blow your allowance before getting home in time for the Friday night cartoons or the late night (heavily edited) movie of the week.

All those stores save for The Pulp had gone under ages ago, their store fronts long shuttered or the windows only granting a vista into empty rooms with rotting moldy carpets and left over tape boxes or sale signs. The Pulp had survived, but just barley. It still carried that distinctive, nostalgic smell of old paper, plastic covers, ancient blue carpeting, and time itself, if you could capture time as a smell. Peter Page Turner walked into the store, as he often did when he had a few bucks to spare and took in what the place had to offer, there was a rack by the front door with all the books on the shelf half off their cover prices, or marked down from them sale price, There were a few glass tanks that held the most popular artists and writers with a little card over the tops held heir names. Peter Looked through the racks on the discount rack and felt...disheartened at the selection. Many of the books on the racks had been titles going back to the age of over-sized guns, muscles the size of parade balloons, and more pouches than a kangaroo. 90's marvel, image and DC comics from that age so many would pretend never happened.

"Hey Mac, know why these are on the discount rack?" He asked the boy behind the counter, Applejack's cousin Big Mac. Mac looked up from the western novel he'd been reading.

"Nope." Mac said with a shake of his head. It was then that another thing caught Peter's eye, On the back was where four long drawn out rips in the ancient wallpaper. The cuts where like a long scratch marks in the wall, four of them that ran in single gashes along the wall, with ragged edges.

"Hey Mac, what happened to the wall here?" He asked reaching out to touch the scratches only to retract his hand back with a grimace, the wall's cuts were emoting an intense heat from the gashes. Why? Somewhere in the back of the few cubic feet inside his skull, and old memory played. It was blurry, like an old track on a video tape all messed up it over scan-lines before cutting to black. 'I'm here with my friends...on..odeon....al my friends...on odeon.' Those voices so tinny, so distant, like shadows and echoes of a long

"Don't know, Ink spot came in this morning and the walls where like that...I thought it had something to do with today's shipment." He said as Peter took note of the new arrivals he was talking about. On the back shelf behind Big Mac were several pieces of Nightmare on Elm Street memorabilia. A few sheets of Topps company trading cards, a replica of Freddy's sweater in a glass display case, the ragged hat on his head, and of course his wicked sharp glove. Not a cheap plastic toy but real steel and sharp as piranha teeth.

"Whoa mamma, that real 80's merchandise?" Peter asked Mac in excitement. As he noticed the silver shiny claws and the gilded bronze of the metal hinges that held that signature stalker, the Springwood slasher's weapon of choice in the glass.

"Eeeyup!" Was all Big Macintosh could say as he nonchalantly read the the book in his hands with the slip cover over it to try and fool anyone who he wouldn't want to see the title. Sultry Stories of Seduction: Farm girl edition. A cheap pulp rag collection of stories of redheaded and Blondie farm girls getting the in and out on in the haylofts and muddy fields, with handsome new farm hands or traveling city slickers testing they're mettle with the hard working lasses of iron Big Mac was all to familiar with. The dreamy look in his eyes, more than an indication he was longing to be in those grainy pages, and the muscular study wudy taking the delicate sunflower of the farmer's daughter for her first wild ride in the hay, but I digress.

"Hey Mac, could you get your nose outta that cheap farm porn for a few to tell me how much for the Freddy glove?" He asked lauging as he turned redder than one of his families apples.

"I'll give it to ya for only forty if ya promise to flip the out to lunch sign around for me." He knew damn well why he wanted him to, he practically could see his hand reaching for the coconut oil under the desk. Peter chuckled and handed Mac two twenties and took off with the out to lunch sign in plain sight for all to see.

Like many cities, Canterlot didn't have a major layout or planning to it. The main downtown section had been built on the shores of a large bay, a bay that every season crab cages could be thrown into to haul up some big blue plump ones, they always tasted so damn good steamed with plenty of old bay seasoning. The houses and most other places where built into the surrounding hills of the valley leading into the low levels. In some places the hills gently curved into the valley, in others they where limestone cliffs that dropped down surrounding the bay. A river ran through the lower sections and while it had been mostly contained over the years by a canal and the system of pipes and aqueducts under ground, the city planning did allow for it to run it's course along the lower sections of a street called canal street that split the downtown lower sections in half with the canal creating two shores on either side with scenic walkways on either bank.

Peter stood looking up higher sections of Nancy street, only a thin wooden fence keeping him from a forty foot drop into a strip of land called "the Pits" The Pits where basically a strip of land where the trees grew wild and the weeds choked the life out of anything but the worst plants to grow in any place. Weeds, poison ivy and oak, all that plus the stony soil and swampy mud holes that dotted all over the place and it made you wonder why no one paved over the place and built something useful here. The land was three miles long by just a mile across and surrounded by high cliffs on all sides, at the tops of which were the Chestnut flats housing block at one end, the municipal authorities offices at another, and a distant member of the Pie family ran a scrapyard and truck depot at the far end. The Pits also housed a few pump houses for the dept of public works to pump sewage to the water treatment plants the city had built to clean up the river and bay. It took forty something years but the water in the bay and river was finally deemed clean enough to swim in, but not as pure it had been centuries ago to be a source of drinking water without treating it.

If that day had been a Hayao Miyazaki film, then this would have been one his signature "quiet moments." Take his work like Howl's moving castle, or his magnum opus Spirited Away. There are moments when the characters often stop and look into the detailed and beautiful backgrounds that the animators spent hours drawing and painting. Peter did the same, looking at the skyscrapers and tops of the houses as he stood behind the fence over looking the high grounds, The Pits just a good thirty feet down a steep muddy gully. Had the slope been muddier, like after a good long rain, then some daredevils would be risking their necks sliding down the sides of the slopes. No such scene was currently interrupting the Miyazaki moment but there was something that would break up the serenity.

Hoops, Scoreboard, Fido, (so named because of his dog like face and the fact that like that old Jim Croce song, Bad bad Fido brown, meaner than a junkyard or a diamond dog, and a new kid known only as Belch Bloats, in his ratty old letterman his dad had worn in his school days, because a dim wit like him would never make varsity. Made their way up the slope to Peter, like wild African jackals about to pounce on a wounded gazelle. Belch let out a good long wet one and Peter turned his head to the three of them. Hoops chuckled and smirked as Score giggled like goofy or that stupid vulture that loved to say "Yup Yup."

"Hey fellas what brings you guys here?" Peter asked as he got his legs ready to mount his schwin bike Miyazaki, so aptly named for that pun he could make whenever he took of, his mind making him the one and only Lone Ranger, with his trusty Native sidekick and brave horse, his peacemaker the only problem solver he ever needed. Belch belched a few inches from his nose, the smell sour milk of some BK vanillia shake and onions...hot dog onions.

"What you got there Petey?" Hoops said reaching a filthy hand out for Freddy's glove. Peter retracted it and hiked himself up higher on the seat of his ride.

"Nothing Hoops, just a little something I picked up to add to my collection." He said contemplating taking it from the case and slipping it on, just to see if the blades are real steel. He swipes the claws at hoops and draws blood then he takes him by the throat and leads him to a wiggly maggoty, festering and rotting can of acid green slimy garbage, then he force feeds the bastard off the blades cracking a trademark Freddy one liner, "You are...what you eat hoops." Hoops looks down to see his stomach sliced open as the maggots craw out the garbage being force fed into him until his cheeks bugle out like a bubble faced goldfish, as Freddy/Peter force feeds him the garbage now stewing in his stomach acid again and again.

"What kinda collection do you run with old junk like this?" The cherry red Belch said as his dragon breath reeked with every word. Peter contemplated again the possibility of taking the hallmark glove of The Springwood Slasher and showing these meat heads just what kinda collection he was into. What was he thinking? He was better than that, it was as some slimy voice was leaning on his shoulder whispering these thoughts into his head.

'Go ahead Pete...try it on for size!' that voice whispered in his ear as he wanted only to get back to Rainbow's apartment and maybe kick back with some episodes of Bordertown or king Star King downloaded off her PS3. Nice and snug watching PSN shows and maybe sipping some soda, not hearing voices telling him to use Nightmare on Elm Street memorabilia to hurt people. Even if they are a pack of immature high school bullies, the ones who often turn out worse than the middle school ones, or not. Peter hopped up on the seat of the bike and kicked off down the hill, his lungs exploding with a single, victorious cry.

"HI HO MIYAZAKI!..AWAY!" He shouted in triumph as the wind blew in his hair, the bike tires spinning like crazy as the Schwin speed down the sttp hill, the houses flying by and the concern of the other boys up the hill leaving him behind as he sped up faster and faster. He was the Lone Ranger, with a noble ride that carried him on the winds, and a noble heart, Who was that masked man? He was. He finally found himself back at the cloudsdale apartments in no time at all. Rainbow waiting for him on the front steps, she ran up to him and hugged him before smirking sly, as she janggled the bag in her hands. The familliar pink and white stripes of Victoria's secret shopping bags, "Seems like I'm not the one who did some shoppping today." He said blushing hard.

At least I bought something more...romantic." Rainbow said taking the class case holding the Freddy glove in her hand and scoffing at it in a bit of disgust." She only half meant it.

"Aww Come on Dashie, I'll make it up too you." He said as they made their way to the lift.

They never noticed the lighting flashes in the sky, another storm on the way, another attack on the way. Unlike the slashing of Button Mash this attack wouldn't be a terrible act of violence that left someone injured. A crab catcher on the bay of Canterlot City, would find something unusually large in one of his crab cages that evening, he hauled in a red sneaker of a little girl maybe four. With her severed foot chewed up by sand crabs still in it. Her body would be dredged up by a screaming rookie on the force a few hours later, four long cuts across her face, and a look of fear eternally frozen in her cold, glassy dead eye...yes, I said eye, one had been eaten away by an eel that made a home in her skull, a hearty meal out of her little brain.