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Contains spoilersOverview
Emmy disappears with Fast Forward, pushing June into a relentless search. Demon and Dori’s addiction deepens as they chase pills and consider heroin; at the clinic, Dr. Watts offers to waive fees for sex. Withdrawal, poverty, and squalor escalate. Demon finds a tenuous lifeline helping Tommy design ads at the local paper.
Summary
Emmy announces she’s skipping her UT scholarship and runs off with Fast Forward. June, distrusting Maggot and desperate, calls the police and leans on Demon for leads, while Maggot camps on Dori’s couch and reports Emmy got a head start under false cover with Martha Coldiron.
Demon, Dori, and Maggot burn through an Oxy 80, and Demon frets over the cost as savings vanish. Dori argues for cheaper, now-prevalent heroin, but Demon prefers pills for the perceived legal safety of prescriptions. With procurement exhausting, they tap Thelma for morphine patches and decide to seek their own scripts at Dr. Watts’s pain clinic.
Demon waits in the car while Dori faces Watts’s paywall: $250 plus $150 in “staff fees.” When they can’t pay, Dr. Watts offers to waive fees if he can “examine” Dori—sex for scripts. Demon drives home in fury. As money and dope run out, Dori offers to go back and comply to stop his sickness; Demon rejects this and vows to find work.
Detox attempts collapse into hallucinations, insomnia, and pain, binding them tighter to the drug. Their house decays—trash, broken plumbing, and hunger—after the power is cut. Demon fails to land jobs and escapes to Turp or to Maggot and grieving Mrs. Peggot, who drift through loss with no news of Emmy. Maggot mentions his mother’s possible release.
Searching for hope, Demon visits Tommy, now renting a garage and holding multiple duties at the Lee Courier. Demon starts helping with paste-up and, when clip art fails, hand-draws a Chevy for an ad. His drawings transform the paper’s ads, giving Demon a small creative foothold amid deepening addiction.
Who Appears
- Demon Copperhead
Narrator; scrambles for pills, refuses Watts’s coercion, suffers withdrawal, and begins drawing ads at the local paper.
- Dori
Girlfriend; deepens in addiction, considers sex-for-scripts to help Demon, relies on patches, fears being left alone.
- Tommy
Friend thriving at the Lee Courier; offers Demon workspace and sparks his ad-illustration breakthrough.
- Dr. Watts
Predatory pill-mill doctor; demands fees or sex for prescriptions, emblem of systemic exploitation.
- June
Emmy’s mother; tirelessly searches, calls police and Demon, desperate for any lead.
- Maggot
Friend; crashes on their couch, reports on Emmy, increasingly strung out, back living with Mrs. Peggot.
- Emmy
June’s daughter; abandons scholarship and runs off with Fast Forward, triggering the search.
- Fast Forward
Shady older boyfriend; leaves his job and disappears with Emmy, unreachable by phone.
- Thelma
Home-care nurse; provides morphine patches and warns Dori about overdose risks.
- Mrs. Peggot
Grieving widow; frail, disoriented, and haunted by her husband’s absence.
- Turp
Friend from football; offers company and tips while Demon avoids stealing-prone cashier work.
- Pinkie Mayhew
Tommy’s boss at the Lee Courier; hard-drinking veteran running a thinly staffed paper.
- Jip
Dori’s small dog; accompanies her everywhere, including the clinic, and growls protectively.