LITMIR.BIZ

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who wanted me as his personal assassin, stuck a key in my chest. I’m the only one in the universe who can get into the room because I have the only key. But while the Drifters were tearing through town like graveyard locusts I found out that Mason was trying to make his own key.

      “Is it the Room of Thirteen Doors? Has he found a way to get in?”

      “I don’t think so. If he did, he’d be up here already gnawing on your skull.”

      Kasabian is right. Mason isn’t shy or subtle. If he could escape from Downtown, even if it was just for a minute, he’d do it and try to kill me.

      “So, what’s he up to?”

      “You tell me. You talk to the guy every night. It used to be Alice, which was creepy enough, but now it’s Dr. Doom.”

      He shoots at the twelve. It bounces off the cushions and doesn’t drop. My shot.

      I set down the cigarette, lay the cue down on my thumb and index finger, and line up a shot.

      “What does that mean?”

      “Back at Max Overdrive you used to talk to Alice in your sleep. Since we got here, though, whenever you’re asleep you start spinning like a rotisserie chicken and talking to Mason.”

      “What do I say?”

      I bank the one off the rail and sink it in a corner pocket.

      “Aside from ‘Fuck you’ and ‘I’ll kill you,’ you mumble a lot in Hellion, so it’s hard to tell.”

      “Buy a dictionary.”

      He walks around the edge of the table, a fleshy spider circling a fly.

      “There’s something else. It doesn’t really change anything, but you might want to know.”

      “What?”

      “No one’s all that scared of you Downtown anymore. You used to be the bogeyman who kept them up at night. Now they talk about you like you were the high school bully.”

      “So they’ve forgotten about me.”

      “I didn’t say that. What I mean is, Mason is the new scary human in town, and you’ve been gone so long, he wins badass title by default.”

      I take a shot at the three, but hit it too hard and it rolls back into the center of the table.

      I pick up my cigarette and Kasabian crawls back onto the table.

      “First he sends me to Hell and then he won’t even let me keep my rep. The little prick wants everything.”

      Kasabian lines up a shot.

      “So go down there and kill something. Slit some generals’ throats. You’re the monster who kills monsters. Be creative.”

      I shake my head.

      “Everyone knows my face, and Mason’s put wards on all the entrances I use to get into Hell. He’d know the moment I stuck my big toe down there.”

      “Worrying about shit like that doesn’t sound too Sandman Slim to me, if you don’t mind my saying.”

      “I do mind, but you already said it.”

      “Just go down and kill him already! You’ve done lots crazier shit than that before.”

      “It’s not the right time. I need to shut down everything he’s doing. Battle plans. Backroom deals with generals. All of it. I need more chaos. You murder someone at the Ice Capades and the place goes apeshit. You blow someone’s head off in a war zone, people step over the body and have a snack.”

      “Maybe. A few months back you’d have John Wayne’d your way in there and started your own war. I think that angel in your head’s made you soft. You’ve been Glenda the Good Witch too long.”

      He’s right. Mason talked to me once. He possessed other people’s bodies and talked to me through them. He’s getting stronger and he’s working on a key. He’s rallying troops. I should be Downtown murdering him and giving fallen angels new nightmares. I wasted the last six, seven months skipping rope with Wells and the Vigil, drinking myself stupid and losing my edge.

      After all this time, I still don’t understand this world. It’s soft and stupid and full of soft and stupid people. Why aren’t they all crazy and ripping each other to bloody confetti? They want to. I can read their eyes. Hear their hearts beating. Smell the fear sweat. The anger sweat. The fury inside they can never let out. I’m turning into one of them. It’s the price of living in this world and trying to fit in.

      The angel in my head is part of it. On the other hand, is the angel even there? Maybe I’m going crazy and it’s my Tyler Durden. Maybe I’ve always been crazy, and coming back here let it loose. Hell was my Haldol and without it I’m slowly going schizo. Hearing voices. Taking orders from something that might not even exist.

      Alice isn’t here and this place will never be anything but a desert without her. But I’m connected to people now. Vidocq. Allegra. Candy. Carlos. Kasabian. Even Brigitte, who dumped me. They’re the cinder blocks dragging me to the bottom of the ocean. Knowing them, giving a damn about them, sucks the marrow out of my bones. Makes me weak. They want me sane and clean, but the monster in me wants to hear Hellion necks snap and pop like champagne bottles on New Year’s.

      Kasabian sinks one ball and lines up another. Am I playing stripes or solids? I can’t remember. I finish the last of my cigarette and drop the butt in an abandoned soda can under the plastic “No Smoking” sign.

      “Maybe you should start something here. Go beat up some more skinheads. Fight a dragon. Or a Kissi.”

      I look at him, trying to read him. He doesn’t breathe or sweat much, so it’s hard. He’s concentrating on his shot, so I can’t see his eyes.

      “What made you say that? The Kissi are gone.”

      I know it because I’d killed them, the whole race of deformed, half-finished angels. Well, almost the whole race. I saw one, he calls himself Josef, a few weeks back. He’s alive and he knows where there are other Kissi. We talked about that for a long time.

      Kasabian stops and looks at me. We’ve lived together long enough that he knows when I’m being … well, deadly serious.

      “Cool out,” Kasabian says. “It was a joke.”

      He gives the fifteen a solid kick and it slams into the hole. He moves around fast, trying to get things back to normal. Back to the game. He sinks another.

      I say, “Don’t joke about them. I don’t like it.”

      “Whatever you say, man. If I hurt your feelings we can watch Fried Green Tomatoes and eat a pint of Häagen-Dazs.”

      I can’t stand it anymore. I take out Vidocq’s pain potion and down the whole thing in one gulp.

      “No. Let’s watch The Wild Bunch and pay strangers to bring us Korean ribs.”

      “Well, fuck me with Lloyd Bridges’s dick. You’re still alive in there after all,” he says. Then, “Corner pocket.”

      He lays down a solid kick, bounces the eight ball off the far rail, and sinks it in the corner pocket at my end.

      “You pay,” he says.

      “I always do.”

      I PUT KASABIAN in his bowling bag so I can carry him to the room without the other hotel residents having a nervous breakdown. I close the bag all the way, but he always unzips it a few inches so he can see out.

      On the way across the parking lot I spot a Nahual beast man grab a little blonde’s arm. She sounds Scandinavian when she shouts at him. She has on the traditional surfer tank top and shorts all foreign exchange students seem to wear. The Nahual isn’t showing his beast face, so she has no idea that the guy she’s arguing with isn’t human.

      I

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