“We’ll see. It’s not as fun when you want me to call.”
“Okay. Fuck you. If you wake up dead some night, don’t say I didn’t try to make nice first.”
“Good-bye.”
“Adios.”
I go downstairs and find Candy sitting with Kasabian on his bed, at least a dozen take-out menus spread about between them.
“Where’s Samael?”
“He kindly volunteered to go to the corner for beer. In the rain,” says Candy.
“Damn. He really doesn’t want to go home. Have you decided on dinner yet?”
“We’re down to Indian or Thai.”
“I vote Thai.”
“You might get outvoted this time.”
“This is why democracy is dying.”
I walk around the empty movie racks and restack some of the boxes of DVDs that Samael has been pawing through. A lot of memories in this place and on these pieces of plastic. If nothing else, I hate the idea of the Angra destroying us because it would wipe out all this work. All this demented horror, action, and beauty. A universe without Terrence Malick and Lucio Fulci isn’t worth living in. The Angra must be real bores. I hate them even more now. I pick up a copy of Badlands and go back to where Candy and Kasabian are still arguing about how hot they should order the food.
“Here’s the question of the night. If we lose, what movie do you want to watch at the end of the world? I call The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”
“Spirited Away,” says Candy.
“The Snake Charmer’s Daughter, Brigitte Bardo’s best porn flick.”
I look around Max Overdrive. The rolled-up posters. The new-releases rack. The empty cutout bins. Fuck the world. I’ll kill the Angra to save my movies.
I say, “We’re going to need more TVs.”
About the Author
New York Times bestselling author RICHARD KADREY has published eight novels, including Sandman Slim, Kill the Dead, Aloha from Hell, Devil Said Bang, Butcher Bird, and Metrophage, and more than fifty stories. He has been immortalized as an action figure, his short story “Goodbye Houston Street, Goodbye” was nominated for a British Science Fiction Association Award, and his novel Butcher Bird was nominated for the Prix Elkaban in France. The bestselling and acclaimed writer and photographer lives in San Francisco, California.
www.richardkadrey.com
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Devil Said Bang
Aloha from Hell
Kill the Dead
Sandman Slim