The Rapture makes serving divorce papers difficult. “Consider yourself–” is all Shyler gets through before they disappear–pop!–leaving just their shoes behind. Does everyone in Heaven, she wonders, float around in sockfeet?
After a few weeks Shyler starts thinking that the number of deadbeats getting assumed into paradise is really high. Might she be God’s unwitting messenger? She prays lots of cuss words about that, on hold for hours with the Vatican. A raspy prelate tells her she needs witnesses.
So next time she takes Boston along but the Rapture gets him too, which sucks (he had the car keys).
“It’s not the defacement of my property I mind,” says Mackenzie, “it’s that she really has no talent.”
“She’s three,” says Zenya.
“She’s a hack,” sighs Mackenzie, surveying the blue-scrawled stucco. A gigantic figure stalks from a rickety charnel house; it grins in rictus, eyes empty holes.
“You could get her those markers that only color on the special paper.”
“I’m a critic, not a fucking fascist. I am also cheap.”
“Then time-out chair and scrubbing sponge must suffice.”
“Can’t I eviscerate her in print? Just a little?”
“Sure,” says Zenya, “but the public loves a martyr with tantrums.”
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Preston saunters up after yoga (not in a bar; never a bar) and coughs. She looks up. His mag grabs a few portraits, guesses at genetic background, combines that with what little else he knows and runs two hundred thousand approach simulations. The most successful queues up in his vision.
“So,” he says, with a [self-mocking smile] as indicated, “just how flexible are you?”
She straightens and socks him in the face. Preston sits down hard, nose gushing blood.
“Oh geez!” she says, hands to her mouth. “Sorry! My mag said you’d like that!”
Preston, to his surprise, really does.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Fall, winter, spring: Catkin runs rampant with his spiritual cousins, feral pets left behind when vacation’s over and they’re not kittens anymore. They’re always hungry. So is he, but squirrels and garbage spills don’t yield what he needs.
Things finally pick up toward the end of May. Catkin walks the resort in human form, then, rangy at first but growing sleeker by the hour. His eyes are strange. His grin is cruel and young.
June is coming. Soon he’ll feast on wine coolers and boredom, skinny joints and skinned knuckles; taut boys, and tan girls in white tennis dresses, eager to apoplex Dad.
CHUNG CHUNG!
“Hey, guys, g’morning,” says a sleepy Consuela. “Listen, that sound effect is really loud–”
“There have been some important murders in here,” says Fontana. Green is running caution tape back and forth across the shower.
“It’s just I have a friend coming to stay, and it would be really nice to have both bathrooms.”
“Where were you on the night of last night?” frowns Fontana, notebook out.
“Upstairs,” says Consuela weakly. “Like every night this month.”
“We’ll have to investigate.”
“We’re detectives,” Green chimes in.
“There has to be a better way to get my SAG card,” says Consuela.
“I liked it!” says Alex, as they push out the back exit.
“Everyone liked it, nobody’s saying they didn’t like it,” says Tyler.
“IT WAS A 112-MINUTE STROBE-LIT CINEMATIC ORGASM,” Daniel announces to the parking lot. Behind them, someone whoops.
“Are you getting orgasms confused with epilepsy?” says Phillip.
“Are you not?”
“It was really, really a lot of fun,” says Tyler. “Particularly considering that nothing was at stake and the girls didn’t get enough screen time.”
“I just can’t believe they gave Toe’s part to Michael Cera,” says Dylan.
“I’m not Michael Cera!” says Toe. “I’m Michael Cera?”
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED! PURPLE HEART! chirps Leggatt’s headset, audible only in the open-mouthed silence as they stand around his writhing body in chagrin.
“I’m not sure this is the best way to get a full unlock,” says Cormac, clutching his rifle.
“Everybody does achievement parties!” says Leigh, bravefaced if a little gray. “How do you think those 27th guys stay on top of the leaderboards? If we didn’t help each other out it would take, like, years to get a MoH!”
“I’m starting to wish I’d spawned in Kunar,” says Cormac.
“Ggghhhhhh,” says Leggatt, one hand fumbling around for his eye.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
“Everything that’s happened was my fault,” says Sara.
“No,” says Zach, “it’s mine,” and feels a dizzying tilt to the world with that admission. He leans over to steady himself on the bedfoot, which is why Hidebound’s bullet burns his ear in passing on its way to spiderweb the window. The zweep of his silencer is somehow inappropriate.
Zach, for once, doesn’t scream.
Sara spins with the nearest available weapon, a fruit bowl, which shatters on Hidebound’s head. He shakes off blood and throws her at Zach, who sort of catches her. They fall.
Hidebound resists mightily the urge to monologue.
