{quote file}

[outofclothes]

☨ Sandman Slim

✞

"Nice jacket," he says.
"Thanks."
"Too bad the rest of you looks like it just dropped out of the devil's asshole."
Suddenly I'm wondering if this is some Hellion setup, and if I can reach Brad Pitt's stun gun or my knife in time. He must see it on my face because he gives me this big deer-in-the-headlights grin and I know that he was kidding.

✞

I count to eleven as I walk deeper into Hollywood.
Eleven parking meters. Eleven hookers looking for their first post-Christmas trick. Eleven actors I've never heard of on eleven stars in the sidewalk.
Eleven years. Eleven goddamn years and I'm home with a key and a pocketknife and a coin that won't buy me a cup of coffee.

✞

Her name is Alice. She's the only bright thing I ever loved, the only person I ever met worth giving a damn about. If Heaven ever meant anything, she should be married, probably now to some skinny leather-pants guitarist she has to support with temp jobs in those fluorescent-tube high-rise dungeons along Wilshire. Or she'd have gone straight, married a dentist, squeezed out a minivan full of crib lizards, and gotten fat. That would be okay, too. But none of those things are going to happen for her. Nothing nice happens to murdered women, except that maybe someone cares about how they got that way.

✞

When I was Downtown, I learned a lot about making threats. Make them big. Make them outrageous. You're never going to kick someone's ass. You're going to pull out their tongue and pour liquid nitrogen down their throat, chip out their guts with an ice pick, slide in a pain of glass, and turn them into an aquarium. But you have to be careful with threats. Some Hellions and humans don't know when to back down, and you might actually have to follow through. It didn't happen often, but it was always a possibility.

✞

"I can do magic, too," she said.
"Let's see."
The magic box was about the size of two matchboxes. She lifted the top off. Her middle finger lay inside the box, wrapped in bloody cotton around the bottom. The finger wiggled. Stiffened. She held up her hand so the severed finger flipped me the bird, the cheapest of cheap gag.s Of course, she hadn't chopped her finger off. She'd slid it up through a hole in the bottom of the box that had already had cotton and fake blood inside. It was about the stupidest thing I'd ever seen.
I kissed her and took her inside. We never talked about her moving in. She just came in and never left, because she knew this was where she should be.

✞

I can tell this is going to be a Real Talk. I light a cigarette as Vidocq pours more wine.
"I did something much like what you're doing, many years ago. Long before you or your grandparents were born. Revenge is never what you think it's going to be. There's no pleasure and glory, and when it's done your grief remains. Once a man does the things you're talking about, he will never be the same, and he can never go back to who he was before. Worst of all, no matter how many enemies you kill, you are never satisfied. There is always one more who deserves it. When ti becomes too easy to kill, it never ends."
"You stopped."
"The desire is still there, even though all the men are dead, the ones I killed myself and the ones who passed away during the many years I restrained myself. Worse, when it was over I had to leave Paris, get on a ship, and come here to the land of cheeseburgers and cowboys. You are starting down a bad road, my friend."
"I appreciate the advice. Don't worry. I'm not here to ask for help."
"Don't be stupid. Of course I'll help you. We must always look after our friends, even when they are foolish. Especially when they are foolish."
"Thank you, old man."
"Salut," he says, and holds out his glass. I clink mine into his.

✞

What's that old Sunday school warning about how if you fight dragons too long, you can become one? That's been spinning around in my head for years, long enough that I know I'd rather be a dragon than a sheep to the slaughter. Maybe, in some kinder, gentler version of the world, I could walk away from the Circle, get Zen, and forgive them for what they did to me. But I can't forgive them for Alice. Never for that. Maybe I'm not worth killing for, but she is.

✞

Carlos leans on the bar. "So, what are you? Special Forces? Some kind of ninja?"
"Yeah, I'm the ghost of Bruce Lee. You have a cigarette?"

✞

"You're Eugène's friend? The traveler? How is it to be back in one place?"
"Unsettling."
"A rambling man. How romantic. Did you get what you wanted out of your trip?"
"If by 'get what you wanted' you mean a bunch of bullets, then, yeah, I hit the jackpot."
"Were they big bullets?"
"Big enough that I noticed."
"If it's an emergency, I might the doc to look at you today."
"Tomorrow'll be fine."
"Love a man who'll bleed just to make a point."
"What's your name?"
"Candy. What's yours?"
"Stark."
"You sound like a Stark."
"Is that a good thing?"
"It's not a bad thing."

✞

I say, "I used to kill your kind."
She grins.
"I used to kill yours. See? We already have something in common."
"Is the doc a Jade or something?"
"Doc? Wow. In the history of wrong guesses, that was about the wrongest wrong guess since ever."
"You're not like the other Jades I've met."
"What? I'm not all slinky and seductive?"
"No, you're cut enough. You're just not much of a monster."
"That's okay. I think you're monster enough for the both of us."

✞

"It's dreamy weather we're on
You waved your crooked wand
Along an icy pond with a frozen moon
A murder of silhouette crows I saw
And the tears on my face
And the skates on the pond
They spell Alice.

Set me adrift and I'm lost over there
And I must be insane, to go skating on your name
And by tracing it twice, I fell through the ice
Of Alice..."

✞

"Where as God when I was stuck in Hell?" I ask her. "If you knew about Sandman Slim, then you knew I'd been dragged down there alive and was being tortured. But you hosanna-singing sons of bitches couldn't spare one lousy angel to help me out?"
"Maybe God thought you were where you belonged."

✞

"I should have seen something like this coming, Hell's a circus run by mental patients. Heaven's a gated community where we're the bastard stepkids the real kids hate. Daddy's little mistake. Where does that leave us on this rock? I believe Aelita's story about the broken glass starting life. Trash falls from the sky and no one cleans it up because the trash starts talking. Why should anyone expect anything from anyone? How can trash trust trash?

✞

"Do you think that if the doc can get you off drinking people juice, you'll feel like a regular person someday?"
"Project much, Sandman Slim? What you mean is that if doc can make me less of a monster, he can do it for you, too?"
"I didn't say you were a monster."
"But I am. By any human definition, I am a monster. And I always will be, so, no, I don't think I'll ever feel like a regular person. I'll just be a monster who chooses to be a little less monstrous. Who knows? I might fall off the wagon and start drinking people like milk shakes again. But I'm going to try not to. Are you asking because you want to see if doc can turn you into a librarian when all this is over?"
I'm walking circles around the table, trying to get my sea legs back. Candy cranes her neck around to watch me. It's weird being along with her.
"I don't know exactly what I want. I know that no one outside of Hell can stand what I am. I'm not wild about it most of the time myself. But I can't picture being something else."
"Try. Just imagine it for a few days. See how it feels."
"Why not? But I'm lazy. When it's time, I'll probably go for a simpler fix."
"Going back to Hell isn't the worst thing I can imagine. I know the place. I have a rep. I can probably get my old job back, fighting in the arena."
"Are you talking about killing yourself?"
"Nah, I'm not the suicide type. I just mean that if I get to pick my moment, it might not be so bad. That was the problem last time. I wasn't ready. I didn't get to pick the moment. I could this time."
"I hate to break it to you, but planning your own violent death, whether it's murdering yourself or letting someone else do it, is still suicide."

✞

"Don't play that martyr shit with me. I've seen how you are."
"You don't get it. You think I'm saying this because I'm still mad. I'm not. I just understand things better now. A friend laid it out for me. I'm not one of you. The only thing I live for now is to kill as many people and break as many things as I need to, to get what I want. By the standards of most sane people, that makes me a monster. I'm fine with that. And, if I'm alive when this is over, I'm going back to where the monsters live."
"Hell?"
"It's where I belong. It's where I want to be."

✞

"You need to show off to them more than you need to be with me. They're dangerous and they're going to suck you into something dangerous and stupid, like summoning the devil or something. And when they get killed or thrown in jail, you're going with them."
I grabbed my jacket and went to the door.
"I need to go. I'm late."
"You know, trying to still be the precocious one isn't that cute after you're old enough to buy beer. Grow up. Stop being such a fucking child."
Walking out, I said, "You know, sometimes you sound just like those regular jack-offs out there. You say you don't care about the magic. You say you're not jealous, but you are. You want what I have or you don't want me to have it at all. Fuck that."
Later that night, Mason played his little trick on me and I never saw Alice again.

✞

This is one of the reasons I'll never own a car. I'm hard on things. Everything ends up broken, ripped apart, modified, stuck together, or shot to shit. I'd be naked as Adam and cold as a polar bear if it weren't for duct tape.

✞

"Thanks for treating me like, you know, a person through all this shit. I know that isn't always easy."
"You do have a habit of pissing on other people's welcome mats. But, when a gentleman gives you a booty call to a massacre, it's easy to forgive him."

✞

This isn't what I was expecting. I don't know what I thought would be waiting for me here in Never Never Land, but it wasn't this. I came ready to fight Genghis Khan and I walk in on a shut-in playing the biggest Dungeons and Dragons game in history.

✞

"Hello you shit-sucking sulfur monkeys. In case you hadn't guessed, I'm Sandman Slim and I crawled back down to perdition's ball sac for just a moment of your time. And if you don't believe I'm Sandman Slim, step up closer and I'll take a lot more than a moment from you."

✞

"You always had magic, but you came into your real power in Hell. You were running wild, not holding yourself back like the nephilim that grew up around humans. You found yourself and accepted what you could do without all the angst and bullshit that they went through."
"And what is it that I can do?"
"Warrior is the nice word, the traditional word, but that's just a polite way of saying you're a natural-born killer. You're Sandman Slim, the monster who kills monsters. I'm not going to drug you up to change that."

✞

"I'm leaning toward I don't give a goddamn. I'm sick of Heave and Hell and angels and nephilim and all the rest of it. I knew what I was doign there. And no one told me that I'm not who I am. Be a fallen archangel if you want, but leave me out of it. I don't want to be part of your soap opera. I don't want to be mythological."

✞

See? Even dead she makes me a better whatever-the-hell it is I am. A less stupid person. A more considerate monster.

✞

"Unlike my brethren, I'd seen more than my fair share of humans. Then days passed and you refused to die. That's when you got interesting. I moved you from household to household. Put you in direct conflict with powerful Hellions. Decided who you would fight in the arena."
"I was your science project."
"You still are."

✞

"Seven stones. Seven stones to chase away the devil. Are you trying to prove you're not afraid of me, Jimmy? That's adorable. And how very Old Testament. Don't tell me that you've gone and read a book?"
"I saw it in an old monster movie."
"Phew."
Lucifer picks up a stone between his thumb and forefinger, takes my hand, and drops the stone into it.
"Keep it. You just might need it someday, Sandman Slim."

✞

"I felt so guilty about everything that's happened. Then I remembered that half of this shit is just because humans are jokes to Heaven and Hell. We're the punching bags in their family psychodrama. I know I can't change that, but I can make it more fun. A mosquito can't kill an elephant, but it can drive it crazy. Maybe that's enough. Fucking with Lucifer's bullyboys and God's Pinkertons. Maybe that's a good enough reason not to be dead."