Happy endings are a fairy tale contrived by a youthful mind. There is no such thing only the Brutal truth of reality. I hate this place called Kansas. It is so drab and stale but it is home now. There was no where else to flee to.

No one in all of Oz could stand against the power of the new wiard and his armies of undead flying monkies. I watched as they crucifed Lion. I saw the good witch burnt at the stake. The Emerld city looted and pillage. Even the old wicked witch was killed again by the evil wizard after she rose up against his rein. If it were not for Scarecrow's tinkering with science after he got his brian, we too would be dead. His dimension hopper contraption brought us here to rust and fade away peacefully, safe from the hordes of monkies and their master.

But are we really safe. We are oddities here. Freaks against this world's laws of nature and Dorthy is no longer a child. She is woman, depressed and alone but for us. Her husband ledt years ago, as he could not cope with our presence and she tunred to food for solace. One cannot walk through this aging house without finding TOOTISE POPS' wrappers everywhere on the floor and furtinure. Perhaps, if Dorthy did not use chocolate to assauge her feeling of grief, she would have kept her youthful figure.

Scarecrow swears one day the monkies will come through the same rift we used to get to this world. Let them come. I am ready for my end. No one ever bothered to tell me of heartbreak and hatred. There were things I had to find on my own, but now that I have I no longer desire the heart in my tin chest.

I sit in the darkness of the livingroom and reach down beside my chair for a fresh pack of smokes. My lips and face are stained with tar and nicotine but what do I care? Cancer cannot eat away metal.

I light up as Dorthy makes her way down the stairs from her bedroom in her PURPLE nightgown and scowl at her exposed too thick hips. The stair creak under her weight. "Tin man?" I hear her call and remember she cannot see in the dark like me. I take a drag of my cig. and its tip burns red in the darkness. "What?' I snap too harshly.

"I can't sleep," she whisper making her way slowly, clumisly to the couch across the room from my chair.

"The DREAMS again?" I ask.

"Yes," she whimpers as her blood shot eyes stare at me. "I saw my aunt and uncle clawing their way out of their graves as they yelled for me to run. Yelling just like they did all those years ago when the tornado came only this time the dark clouds brought death not a magical world of rainbows and the clouds weren't clouds."

"I know." I answer, picking up my rusted axe.

Scarecrow bursts into the house, nearly tearing the front door from its hinges in his haste. "They're here!!" he screams. I look outside to see the moon eclisped by swarms of putrid rotting creatures soaring upon skeletal wings.

"Are you ready?" I ask. He nodds silently.

He leads the way, running outside to the barn. I follow as best as my old rusted joint will permit. The first waves of creatures swoop down at us with razor sharp claws and the stench of decay and death about them.

I swimg my axe slicing off the closest's head and watch it's body fall to the ground spasming. I must make sure Scarecrow reaches the barn or Earth will fall like Oz. Scarecrow and his weapon are our only hope. If what he has planned works, Earth will be forever safe from the new wizard as the doorway between our lands will forever closed.

More and more monkies come, too many for one old warrior with a weary heart. They pile upon me beating me with their boney wings, ripping at my body. I tumble to the ground under their numbers as I hear the barn roof crumble away. I see it rising out of the barn like a giant inflated GRAPE. A balloon for Scarecrow's final ride into the heavens. I imagine the tears in his eyes as he reaches for the detonator and listen to Dorthy howls for mercy in the doorway behind me as the monkies eat her celluloid flesh and drench the front steps in her blood. Then the sky is lit up by an explosion as an atom spilts and spits out heat so intense I can see my own hands melting as I reach up towards the oh so beautiful light. The monkies shriek and preish in the nuclear flames as my eyes burn away. In the darkness of my own metal I pray this world will remember us. Scarecrow's final balloon ride into the heavens and our deaths so that this world, this Earth, may live untouched by the new wizard's stain.