Let’s get something cleared up: I am not a pussy. (Although I do enjoy it when available.) I did try to help the bums before they got eaten, and I did try to help the dude in the car before he ripped his face off and tried to mandibilize me. Those are both very non-pussylike behaviors. I understand that with my pink hair and “petite” rockstar frame you might be inclined to be drawing an unfavorable conclusion concerning my bravery as a result of my tales up to this point.

Let me and my aluminum baseball bat assure you that that would be a very poor conclusion to jump to.

Its been almost a month since the mouth-thing ate the bums (or dragged them off.) I still have no idea what was happening to me those two days I was seemingly unconscious. They’re a total blank. They did, however, serve to raise me to new heights of paranoia that heretofore I had thought unattainable.

For instance: right now my arm itches.

Specifically, my right forearm itches exactly where one of the blue circles of my tattoos reside. I don’t remember when this itching started and so I wonder… is this the result of something that happened to me while I was unconscious? Or is it just dry skin?

And how can I know?

Couple this with the fact that Klay is in Peru and I’m working sixteen hour days at the studio all by myself, surrounded by snow-covered trees straight out of “The Mothman Prophecies” and you’ll understand that I’m a little jumpy. As a rule I dislike nature, and so having the already shitty Detroit covered in a thick blanket of “hides-tracks-and-bodies-conveniently” is pretty unfavorable to me. (As is: having to dig my car out; constantly losing traction on the roads; avoiding the wildlife that has been induced to suicide-by-my-bumper by this lousy city; fucking cold in general.)

So yes, I’m in an unpleasant mood.

Which is why when the manager calls to tell me I just landed four tracks in various forms in a new Luc Beeson picture, I decide to celebrate with a little “La Femme Nikita” rental from the mom and pop video shop I hit up here. The Stahlimobile practically roars to life in anticipation. (That is to say my base-model Honda Civic finally starts after six tries.)

I used to think urban abandonment was cool. You’d get these awesome photographers that would do pieces on things like “The Abandoned Amusement Park of Chernobyl” or “Ghost Town Movie Theaters” and the shots were incredible. But here, having to drive through a constantly eroding landscape of failed factories and empty neighborhoods, its just depressing. (And tempting to my directorial urges. But you don’t go out exploring said places unless you’re wearing multiple high-caliber firearms and special forces body armor. Neither of which I own. So I keep my principal cinematographer urges to myself and drive as straight as the ice allows to the rental place.)

In the rental place (cleverly named “Family Video”) browsing row upon row of movies brings up good memories of weekends with friends growing up. There were countless times we’d pass out at 4 AM to Twilight Zone reruns after an evening of gratuitous violence. (An experience I think is healthy for every eleven-year-old.) I pass over Hackers and Event Horizon, (the old stand-bys,) and go straight for some French assassin goodliness.

Which is where my evening takes a turn for the worse.

Standing in the “Foreign” section reading the back of “La Femme” is a dude who looks like a bad “young Bill Paxton” clone. His hair is greasy and slicked back, shaved on the sides. He’s got the three-quarters black leather trench, the tweed pants, and the silk yellow shirt tucked into them. The thick horned-rimmed glasses are the only thing that throw off the illusion; if it wasn’t for them I would have thought I was suddenly in Predator 2.

“La Femme Nikita. Such a great movie” he says, casting a sidelong glance at me. “One of my favorites. You know why I like it?” He places the box back on the shelf and picks up the one next to it, continuing his description perusal. “Nikita is never really a hero. She’s just a girl who gets caught in a bad situation and has to deal with it. There’s no moral lesson or destiny. Just a poor lost girl and a fantastic experience.”

I nod, hoping my lack of movement and enthusiasm indicates he might be in my way. He doesn’t get the message.

“You know what I’ve always thought would be a great plot for a movie?” He continues, returning the film and retrieving another, “You take this kid. Good kid. Nice kid. Works hard. But then something happens. He sees something he can’t explain. Like a monster or something. Flips him right the fuck out. What does he do? What CAN he do? Go to the cops? They’ll throw him in the looney bin. So he ignores it. Tries to move past it. Figures it was something maybe supernatural. A ghost or a demon or something. Maybe he’s seen some stuff before this that gives him a certain inclination. Whatever.”

“Thing is… and this is where the movie gets good… that thing he saw? Its REAL. Sure it wasn’t supposed to be where it was that night he saw it. But its real. See, what happens is,” he puts the movie back on the shelf and turns to me now, clearly getting excited, “there’s a lot of people out there. Smart people, dumb people, people with money, people who ain’t got shit. So what happens when the people with money hire the smart people to figure shit out? Like, not your normal run-of-the-mill shit. I’m talking craaaaaaazy shit. Like, ‘what happens when you sew two monkeys together,’ or ‘make me a two-hour movie of black people getting killed by electric eels,’ or ‘make me a real sphinx for a pet,’ or…” he pauses for effect, “what would the result be if you pumped a human subject full of heavily modified arachnid RNA. You know… just to see what would happen?”

He gets this queer little half smile on his face. “Anyways, the monster gets back to the scientists that made it. See, they’re holed up in some abandoned factory or warehouse or maybe some empty neighborhood. They started moving in when people started moving out. They’ve been doing it for decades; following wars and natural disasters and stuff. When societies start really crumbling, when they reach this state of civilized anarchy, where its bad but people are still trying to act like it isn’t, that’s where these scientists go. It lets them work in peace without having to worry about cops and governments and stuff. They can grab people right off the street. No one notices.”

He licks his lips. “But our boy, he doesn’t know any of that, right? All he knows is he saw a monster. But anyways,” he swipes his hands through the air like he’s throwing baggage at the airport, “the monster goes back to these guys, and its seriously fucked up. Like, to get away our boy pulled some serious shit on it.  So it goes back to these guys to get itself patched up. And its PISSED. It wants blood. But the scientist guys are like ‘no you’re too fucked up, you can’t go,’ so they send ANOTHER monster out to get the kid. But that doesn’t work either. So now our boy is twice as freaked, and the scientists are running out of subtle ways of doing things, you know? Running out of ideas. So they switch tactics. They try diplomacy. Send a dude out to talk to the kid, try to see if he’s cool. Dig?”

Oh, I’m digging alright. I’m dug right to fucking China. I nod.

“Tell you what, lets get some food. You like Chinese? Wait, you’ve got great taste in movies, of COURSE you like Chinese.”

He pulls his trench aside to flash the butt of a gun shoved in his waistband.

Yup.

Expected that.

“You’re paying.” I tell him.

He laughs. It sounds like one of those tiny dogs thats only good for kicking.

Snow has started falling outside again as we walk from the video store to the little Chinese joint thats in the same strip mall. I’d like to say my mind was racing with MacGyver-type solutions to my current predicament, but truth be told I’d been abandoned by all smarmy mojo.

The Chinese place is warm and generic. He orders pepper beef and chow-mein. I order lo mein chicken. And sure as shit the douchebag pays.

“I love places like this,” he tells me as we wait by the pickup counter. “Just tastes so much better. I don’t know if its the rat meat or what its just… better, you know?”

I shrug.

The perennially pregnant girl behind the counter smiles at me as we take our trays. I’ve been in a couple times before and I’m guessing I’m kind of hard not to recognize. What I cant figure out is how she’s ALWAYS pregnant when I come in, despite the fact I’ve been patronizing the place for two years now.

My buddy clears it up on his own.

We’d just sat down in a laminate booth when he takes a huge shovelfull of his beef and chow mein, points at her with his chopsticks, and through loud smacking says “She’s one of ours.”

I look back at the girl who’s now on the phone resting her hand on her belly, and then back to my new friend.

“Incubating,” he says. “I’m not really sure what.”

This guy was incredible. I mean, I’ve waded through more than my share of human refuse since third grade. But this guy was on a whole different astral plane of asshole.

“You pay her for that? Cause I could use some extra dough.”

He laughed his yippie dog laugh again.

“Not exactly.”

We eat in silence for a bit, him enjoying his food and me watching for an opportunity to sink one of my chopsticks into him lobotomy style.

“You know,” he pipes up, “I really think you’re dealing with this well.”

“Guy flashes me a pistol, how else am I supposed to deal? Now, toss the cannon out that door and we’ll revisit how well I’m dealing.”

His face gets a sort of “you shouldn’t had said that,” look. I was able to recognize it from mom making that face a million times growing up. He throws his chopsticks into his empty bowl

“Alright fine. Down to it then,” his voice gets real tight, “the people I represent are offering you a truce. This is a one time, walk-out-that-door-and-its-gone, offer. The terms are simple: you keep your dumb mouth shut about anything you’ve seen or might see henceforth. In exchange, we refrain from allowing a certain level of retribution to be meted out and we’ll endeavor to keep from involving you any further with our projects. Straight and clear. Do we have a deal?”

A deal.

That starts nagging at me something awful.

A deal.

Nag nag nag.

What!? Why is that so important brain? I’ll just say yes and they’ll leave me alone and life can go back to its hideous shade of normal.

A deal.

Why?

Why… a deal?

Why would they offer me a deal?

It starts to come into focus. Why would a group like this offer me a deal? Ok… think this through quick. The first time the spider-thing tried to eat me was evidentially an accident. The mouth thing was intentional. So what changed? From what this jerk says they make people disappear all the time. Its not like the world would really notice if another two-bit musician dropped a couple of tracks and then evaporated from the scene. It happens all the time. So what about me was so important that they COULDN’T  just off me now and this was their preferred option? A sudden streak of benevolence?

I look back at the pregnant girl.

Nope, not that.

So… what then? And how do I figure it out?

“I’ve got a different idea.”

His eyebrows go up and he smiles like a dog that just got caught eating its own shit.

“This ought to be good. Shoot.”

Oooooh fuck, Bret. Here it goes.

“I want to join up.”

He bursts out laugh-barking. Makes the pregnant girl jump.

“You?” he keeps laughing. At least someone is. “YOU want to join up?”

I nod.

“Call ‘em.”

He stops laughing.

“You’re serious?”

I point at his jacket where I hope he keeps his cell.

“Call ‘em.” I tell him again.

He stops laughing. And smiling for that matter.

“Outside,” he says, thumbing at the door.

I follow him toward a late eighties navy blue Ford Taurus in the parking lot. He pulls his cellphone out of his inner jacket pocket (way to go me,) and dials someone while we walk. I obviously eavesdrop.

“Yeah its me. Let me talk to Injin.”

He waits for a few minutes with his back turned to me. I check the ground several times for something to glance off his skull but the snow has conveniently hidden anything I might use as a weapon. Thanks again, Detroit. The one time your garbage-ridden streets could have helped me out…

“Injin. Its Ben. I’m with the Stahli kid. He says he wants to join up.”

He gets quiet. I’m guessing Injin is talking.

“Uh huh. Uh huh,” he pulls his keys out of his pocket and unlocks the door of the Taurus.

“Right. Ok,” he opens the car door.

“Alright. I’ll tell him. Yeah, bye.”

He slaps the clamshell shut on his phone turns to face me. He’s clearly irked.

“They want me, don’t they?” I ask with a smirk.

He frowns more deeply at that but nods an affirmative.

“He told me someone would contact you in a couple weeks.”

“So… that means you and I are on the same team then, huh?” I have to admit, I’m enjoying the turned tables.

“Yup, thats what it means.”

“Well then I guess I’ll be seeing YOU later, partner,” I cant resist giving him the two-finger guns.

Then I accidentally bump the open door of the Taurus, slamming his fingers in it.

I hope La Femme isn’t rented yet.