But I ain’t one of ’em. Not anymore. We change depending on the slant of the weather, if you get my drift, and the weather in Monterrey was such that nobody gave a crap what flavor of evil you were as long as you weren’t a corporate, anti-environmentalist asshole. Which doesn’t eliminate as many candidates as you’d think.
Watching all those Westerns and samurai and kung fu movies as I did … well, I didn’t know exactly what flavor I was no more. But I didn’t belong in no ninth circle of hell, I knew that much.
Which is why I stayed here, in an ordinary theater in an ordinary beachside coastal town where nothing more exciting than electing a movie star as mayor ever happened. Nobody would look for a retired gremlin here.
So when I spotted the kid standing in line at the concession stand, saw the way she was thumb-tapping on her phone like she was tap-dancing with her fingers, felt the way I was drawn to her like a mosquito to sweat-stank skin, I knew trouble had finally found me.
For one thing, the kid was some flavor of Asian, with straight black hair that fell down to her waist like a dark velvet curtain. Old enough to be a first-time bride, young enough to not be widowed of her naiveté.
She wore a puffy parka that covered her down to her knees, even though it was only 50 degrees outside, about average for this time of the year. It made her look fat and thick around her middle. Some kids behind her were snickering none too quiet-like. One of them made a joke about Eskimos that had the kid flushing like she had the fever, but she ignored them.
Even if this kid weren’t the right kind of Asian, I knew that I looked different enough that she’d notice me, just like others had noticed her. I, too, was dark-haired and darker skinned than most folks ’round these parts. I could’ve changed to a lighter-colored mask that would’ve helped me blend in better, but it also would’ve helped me forget why I was there in the first place.
And if there was one thing I couldn’t do, it was to forget myself. Nobody needs that kind of trouble, not even a critter like me. So the mask I wore was the one closest to my true self. I can pretend that I’ll be able to ride off into the sunset when my time’s up, but I can’t pretend I’m someone else, no matter how badly I want to. It would negate me.
So I knew how the kid felt, looking different, pretending she wasn’t. She couldn’t change masks like I could, and it’s hard being the black sheep in a white herd. Predators can spot you a mile away.
I grabbed a broom and a dustpan in one hand and a rolling trash can in the other, and headed toward the nearest theater, the one that I was supposed to clean after the last showing. Best way to avoid trouble was to run like hell at the first sign of it.
Sure enough, she glanced up when the line shuffled forward, and saw me hustling off. Her stare made the spot between my shoulder blades itch somethin’ fierce. Her little bow lips parted and she almost put her phone down.
But then she saw the kids snickering as they whispered and stared at her, and she stuck her nose back into her phone.
Dammit, she was the right kind of Asian. And she knew who I was, all right. I hadn’t been fast enough on the draw to slip on a mask she wouldn’t recognize and disappear into the shadows.
I made a show of brushing a non-existent gum wrapper into my dust pan, then dumping it into the trash can while the kid paid for her soda and oversized tub of popcorn. I sized her up out of the corner of my eye. She wasn’t much, just a little ol’ slip of a thing, but better slingers than me have been felled by less, so I didn’t dare underestimate her. Not one bit.
Especially not after catching the way she sprinkled salt onto her popcorn at the condiment stand, her lips barely moving. Whispers gathered around her, the protection of her ancestors, and I kept my mask on tighter than a sticky jelly jar.
In this day and age, it wasn’t often I ran across someone who’d been taught how to protect themselves. But this kid had. It showed in the strength of the protection that hovered over her, fed by regular prayer and offerings at an ancestral altar. Whoever her ancestors were, they’d been kept close.
“Hey,” the kid said. She looked directly at me, making sure I knew that she knew exactly who she was talking to. She shoved her popcorn tub toward me. “You look hungry. Eat.” Her English was fluent, like she’d grown up here.
“I’m working,” I retorted, and shuffled into the empty theater as much to work as to get away from her and her ancestors.
There wasn’t much to tidy up after the last showing of an overrated sci-fi flick that’d flopped in its opening weekend. I flicked trash into my dust pan and dumped it. Swish, dump, swish, dump.
The kid set her soda in a cupholder and her popcorn tub on an empty seat, then marched up and down the rows, collecting the few discarded tubs, half-filled paper bags of popcorn, candy wrappers, abandoned drinks. She emptied her arms into my trash can.
“You don’t have to do this,” I growled. Her presence set my nerves on edge, and I just wanted her to get the hell out already. “Go enjoy your movie.”
“It hasn’t started yet,” she said, calmly and patiently and perfectly reasonably. Her irrefutable logic made me want to strangle her even more. “And you look hungry.” Again, she held out the tub. “Eat.”
It wasn’t a prayer at an ancestral altar, but I couldn’t keep resisting her, not with the power of her ancestors compelling me to obey. I took a kernel of popcorn and chewed. Salt and oil threaded through me like fish hooks to keep me anchored to the kid.
“Done,” I snapped, and headed out of the theater. I’d forgotten the trash can, but I didn’t want to go back. My will was slipping from me, tied to the food offering and anchored by my reluctant acceptance. But I could still fight. I wouldn’t go down without my guns blazin’, that’s for damn sure.
The kid called, softly, “Mo gui.”
I stopped. Turned.
Not because I wanted to. Because I had to.
Because I’d accepted and ate her damn offering.
She’d picked up her popcorn tub, hefting it with the crook of one arm as if she were carrying a squalling babe. My hands itched to draw my guns from their hip holster, but of course I carried none. I was in a goddamned theater, not the wild west.
“What do you want?” I snarled.
“I want you to do your job,” she said. She picked a popcorn kernel off the top without disturbing the other kernels and crunched it. “Your real job.”
The dread sharpened into a stomach ache that reminded me of that one time I was so desperate, I ate some cow that’d gone off ages ago. I looked hard at the kid.
“I am doing my real job,” I said.
The kid ate another piece of popcorn. Chewed it slowly. Thoughtfully. Swallowed.
“No, demon,” she said. “You’re not.”
I squinted at her, putting the pieces together and wondering what kind of asshole she had to be for Boss to have set her on my tail and finally tracked me down like the low-down, good-for-nothing that I’d turned into.
“Took Boss long enough to find me,” I said.
The kid scrunched up her nose, all cute-like, and asked smartly, “Huh?”
So. Not one of Boss’s underlings then. That opened up all sorts of interesting possibilities.
“Who’re you working for?” I asked, genuinely curious now.
The kid turned into the brightest shade of guilty I’d seen in a long time. I could feel the thrum of her ancestors pulling close, lassoing her tight like a rodeo calf, snarling me off louder than a cornered dog.
Whatever the kid was up to, her ancestors had come armed for bear, ready to protect her. They powered up, spinning ’round and ’round her like a silkworm hunkerin’ down for the long sleep. And the kid had anchored me to her will with the popcorn, so I couldn’t run.
I gripped my broom as if it were a bo staff, wishing I had bigger guns. I’d been fightin’ the good fight for a lot longer than she’d been alive. Still, for the first time in a very long time, I felt outmatched. Like I could be in danger of coming u
ndone. Torn into oblivion.
I’d forgotten what that felt like, that uncertainty about yourself. The feeling that everything is spiraling out of your control too quickly for you to, well, control. That you were caught at a high noon showdown without a gun at your hip.
I didn’t like it, not one bit. But my favorite actor, Ben Grady, wouldn’t have backed down, not in any of his million cowboy Westerns, so neither would I.
“I’m not working for anyone,” the kid said. She pulled her phone out of one of her puffy jacket’s pockets and held it up, its bright screen facing me. Some sort of social media feed was displayed, but I didn’t know two hoots about that stuff so I couldn’t tell which one was loaded. “I’m here for myself.”
I nodded toward her phone. “Sure, kid,” I said. “You and a hundred thousand followers. Who you puttin’ on the show for?”
“It’s not just show,” she snapped, and the voices of her ancestors screamed their defiance. She shook her phone-sized fist. “They made this happen. All of them, with their trolling and their stupid arguments on the internet that go nowhere. Everyone thinks that they’re on the side of good, but are they really? How can you tell who’s good and who’s evil?”
I gripped the broom between both hands, imagining it was a samurai sword. As the natives say—they don’t like being called Injuns no more—today was a good day to die.
“Look for the cowboy,” I said. “The outsider who rides into town and saves it from the gang harassing the townspeople before riding off into the sunset. He’s always the good guy. The bullies are the bad guys.”
The kid flinched, as if I’d slapped her.
I remembered how she’d looked, standing in that concessions line. Alone in a crowd. A crowd that stared and whispered. She hadn’t a friend with her. I wondered if she had friends.
Cautiously, I lowered the broom. “That’s you, isn’t it? The outsider?”
“And you. Whoever heard of a mo gui who didn’t cause trouble? Who didn’t harass and threaten and create chaos everywhere it went? Why are you here, if not for that purpose?”
I shrugged. “Maybe I want to be here.”
My answer seemed to amuse her. She raised an eyebrow, as if daring me to prove it.
I lowered my broom, and tipped the brim of my imaginary hat. “Welcome to mi casa, darlin’,” I drawled. “Come in and put your boots up a spell. We ain’t got nowhere else we need to be.”
Once I opened the door, the whole picture came spilling out from the kid faster than coins from a drunkard at the bar. I leaned against the plush wall of the theater, arms crossed, nodding and murmuring every so often to let the kid know I was listening. I’d encased the theater in an aura of forget-about-me so that no one would remember the sci-fi flick was supposed to have started 10 minutes ago.
Her story weren’t nothing unusual. I’d seen it before, in my line of work.
The job weren’t all that bad, at first. It weren’t all that hard to nudge here, give a little push there, guide folks in the right direction when you wanted to create a little mischief every now and then. Enough to separate some souls from their corporeal bodies and along their way to the next realm, where Boss can sort them out later.
Sure, maybe some of that mischief wound up in the morning paper or on the 5 o’clock news, but if it weren’t for me, the news folks wouldn’t have jobs.
Then I found the movies.
It struck me something solid, when I figured out how the good guy was always the one fighting for change, even if he were the quiet type or the loner type or the drifter type or—more likely than not—all three. It was okay if he didn’t have no friends either, ’cuz he’d usually have some by the end of the film—friends that he’d walk away from for the greater good. Or for his own good. Or for the good of the people he’d saved. Probably all three.
The bad guys were always the ones trying to keep things the same. They liked the way the world ran just fine the way it was, and they didn’t want no change. Why would they? The world took care of them, and that was just fine. I supposed if I were them, I wouldn’t want nothin’ to change, either.
By that logic, the kid was the good guy. She wanted something to change, and that something had everything to do with the reason she was bundled up in a parka in 50-degree weather and nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that she was no bigger than a hungry tick on a cattle dog.
“Look,” she said finally, unzipping her parka just enough so that I could see the black polymer grips of the handguns she’d shoved into the waistband of her jeans. “I know how this works. I know about Eventide, and how the perp almost got away with it. I came prepared.”
And even though I’d seen this play out before, countless times in countless realms by countless tortured spirits, I couldn’t help straightening from my slouch and pressing back against the wall as if I could disappear into it.
It was a bloody showdown, and I’d been caught in the open without my guns.
“Nobody,” said the kid, dark eyes gleaming, “can ignore me after today. Nobody can joke about slanty eyes or smelly food or broken English and expect me to laugh along with them because they think it’s just harmless fun.” She zipped the parka back up with a quick, decisive jerk. “Because they think it’s my patriotic duty,” she spat out, “to be a good girl and a good citizen and laugh along with them. I’ll even honor you with the chaos, mo gui—all the honor you could ever need. Just grant me the protection I need to do this.”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to believe what I was hearing.
But I’d already heard it before.
She couldn’t know, of course, that I’d been there. That Eventide Cinemas had been my first real success. One disgruntled kid, a backpack full of arms and ammo, and a theater packed even fuller with movie-goers. Boss had been so damn happy that I’d done so well, cloaking that red-headed loony in an aura of dismissal so strong that I had to just about physically trip the cops into the kid outside of the emergency exit to make them take a second look at him. Afterward, Boss promised to bring me home for an early retirement if I could pull off one more assignment.
“Doesn’t even have to be a theater,” Boss had said. “Try a shopping mall or dance club.”
I’d said the only thing that I could think of. “Some movie soundtracks cover up the sound of gunfire really well.”
“Fine,” Boss said, generous and expansive. “Stick with what works. You’re not far from hitting your quota. Then you can come home and get promoted to the big time.”
Here and now, confronted by someone who remembered Eventide, who wanted to re-create it, no matter her reasons … I felt like a mule had kicked me in the chest.
It’d been easy to do my job when I hadn’t been around to witness the aftermath. I’d work an assignment, see it through, then moved on. Each success increased my honor, each failure decreased it, a perpetual seesaw. It’s how Boss keeps everyone workin’, you see. You can’t beat the system. You can only survive.
Eventide was supposed to be my ticket out. Create one big success so massive that it would permanently tip the scales in my favor, and I could retire, away from the chaos that made me feel as if I would never gain one modicum of control over my life. Over my choices. Ma and her crew in Europe had made it to retirement, never mind the fact that the Other Side had won that war. We didn’t care about victory. We just wanted the collateral damage.
But it was that damage that’d shown me the cost of chaos.
The eyes of the survivors, of their families, of folks surrounding ’em with prayer and support … by then, I recognized that look.
I’d seen that look in the townsfolk when Ben Grady’s loner cowboy would stroll into the scene—that look of defeat, of resignation, of surrendering to the capricious fates because nothing more could beat you down further than life had. I’d seen that look when the damsel in distress grasped at the solo samurai because throwing yourself at the devil you didn’t know was better’n giving in to the devils you already
knew.
I saw that look now, in the kid standing before me, fists raised as if she could take on the world with a handful of magazines and her quiet, unending rage.
It was always the quiet ones who broke hardest.
I didn’t want to relive this scene. Not in this theater. Not on my watch.
Not again.
I grabbed the kid’s arm and ignored the pain shooting up mine from her ancestral guardians clawing at me, protesting my violation of her personal space.
“Trust me, kid,” I snapped, “you don’t want a repeat of Eventide. What the hell are you thinking?”
She jerked her arm away and glared. “Because they deserve it. Weren’t you listening?”
“All I heard was some bratty, no-grit kid complainin’ about how the world works,” I said coldly. “So bullies are picking on you for being different. Boo frickin’ hoo. Fight back with something besides bullets. Thinking you’re gonna change anything by shootin’ up all these innocent folks ain’t gonna change nothing for you, but it’ll change everything for them just ’cuz they were here, in the wrong place at the wrong time. They don’t deserve this.” I shook my head. “It ain’t right. Not for them, and not for you. There’s no call for this chaos you want. I ain’t gonna do it.”
The kid’s jaw dropped. She pointed an accusatory finger at my chest. “I thought that of all the monsters in the world, you’d understand.”
“Why? Because I’m a chaos demon?” I rolled my eyes. “That just because I look like a mo gui and was created to be a mo gui and was sent here to do mo gui things that I’m stuck acting like one?”
Her eyes narrowed. “But Ah Ma said you would. She said you were spirit-bound to do what we asked, if we fed you from our altar.”
“Sure, kid. That happens.” I leaned forward and jabbed a finger back at her, deliberately mimicking her. “But you didn’t offer enough to bind me. Because, let me tell you, kid, when I did my job, I was good.” I summoned the scorn I needed to shed the ties that bound me. “Good enough to build up the honor to resist your paltry offering.”
Monsters, Movies & Mayhem Page 7