Bad Idea

by Damon Suede

  “Fox Family Comics?” Trip hushed his voice. Are these rooms bugged?

  “They’re pretty edgy, dude.”

  “Fox Family is gonna be edgy?”

  “With Hero High on their relaunch lineup…. Yeah?” Cliff gulped air and smirked. “We got ’em but good.”

  Trip hissed and glanced at the door. “Cliff, are you insane? I mean, I’m not exactly marching in my underwear, but I like to think I have a shred of integrity.” A pellet of doubt plopped into Trip’s stomach and fizzed viciously. “So what about the movie?”

  “Well, it’s a TV movie for prime time, but that’s major. Even bigger. I mean, millions of—”

  “Cliff? You sold them the option to produce Hero High as a TV movie for…?”

  Cliff stroked the air with his hands carefully, petting an imaginary sabertooth. “Millions of dollars in advertising. Exposure. And they launch the book as cross-promo.”

  “You don’t even listen. You say these words like ‘prime time’ and ‘millions’ and you think it means something.” Trip blanched. Silas had predicted exactly this, and he’d been too weak and stupid to see it. “You’re telling me I should be excited because they’re gonna make Hero High for twenty bucks with Kirk Cameron playing Alphalad in a tinfoil suit?”

  “A package deal. Fox Family has a whole new lineup in process. They publish it and then they do the movie.” Cliff regarded the king-of-the-world view beyond the sheet glass: Manhattan as a toy. Assembly required. “First they relaunch the comic, then they’d have an option—”

  “Option.” Trip held up a finger. Thanks to Silas he knew what that word meant to movie people. “Not an actual movie deal, just the possibility of producing a movie if they choose, for which they paid us….”

  Silence. Trip’s stomach growled, and not from hunger.

  Cliff swiveled and spoke in undertone. “Trip, I promise the Fox guys are not trying to shaft us.”

  “Wait.” Trip gripped the chair arm. “You promise or you believe?”

  Cliff eyed the door. “What the fuck difference does it make? I’ve got a contract, a guarantee. We are standing outside the castle.” His face looked greasy and anxious.

  “No.” Trip studied the bones under the skin: handsome, certain, and cunning. Just shapes and angles humans were hardwired to trust and lust after. “You’re just singing words because maybe I won’t notice. Fucking lollipops and rainbows.”

  “They set up the Hero High movie, and all we gotta do is give them twelve issues of the All-New Mighty Mites.”

  “We?” Trip crossed his arms. “Wait-wait-wait. We redraw twelve issues of twenty-four pages each. How much are we getting paid to do that complete reboot?”

  Cliff’s mouth opened and closed. Obviously his sexy fratboy programming didn’t allow for people to question his version of reality. “As a… favor to them.”

  “A 288-page favor?” Trip’s voice rang sharp and clear. Now he prayed the suits were eavesdropping. “Dude, if I’m gonna be a whore, I’d like to make a couple bucks.”

  Pause. Maybe the Unboyfriend was sobering up. “You’d be a consultant….”

  “On a theoretical TV movie. For a Fox division that went belly-up a while back. After I redo a year’s work for no pay on a book I hate.”

  Cliff started the pep rally. “We have a huge devoted fanbase. Your fans will flip.”

  Trip flashed on Undercover Lovers affiliates party, all those “stars” jockeying to keep their jobs. “Do you know how many titles get optioned and killed? Hell, these days channels don’t last a year.”

  “Hero High has sold a hundred thousand copies. Fox is superhot for us. As a transmedia package.” He hooked quote-y fingers in the air and nodded. Captain of the bullshit team.

  “They’re paid to be excited, Cliff. That’s their job.” Trip crossed his arms warily. “See… a suit always thinks he needs to keep his idea and guard it from other people because someone might take it. Then he holds the idea down and lets everyone come fuck it until it’s dead. Because suits don’t have ideas; they only have gists and impressions.”

  Cliff froze in place as if trying to catch an invisible rat and glanced at the open conference room door. Then he stood and went to it and pushed it closed. Thwick.

  Trip scowled. “I’m not a fucking soft serve, Cliff. You can’t just pull a handle so high-fructose mush squirts out.”

  “That’s not—I’m not pulling your handle.” He eased back into the chair; his winter-gin breath made Trip want to gag.

  “No, you’re not. But you’re trying to.” Trip’s breath wheezed and rattled in his lungs. “We took a shitty idea and tarted it up with other shitty ideas, and now you want me to celebrate because a whole group of talentless idiots who only rent shitty ideas are offering us the chance to come sit on their toilet.”

  Cliff stared at him like he’d grown another head.

  “Stop hustling me like you’re good at it. If you could pull your skull out of your rectum for ten minutes, you’d know better.” Trip was just talking to himself. He kept seeing Silas in Chicago dressed as his demon, wounded and wonderful. “But you won’t. You don’t. Fucking Christmas, Silas was right.” Trip’s eyes got hot, and then his cheeks were wet. He swabbed them ungently.

  “I understand cold feet, and I know you’re not comfortable with this kind of compromise—”

  “Comfortable!” Trip started to stand, but his legs felt squashy as pipe cleaners. “You lied.” He stayed put, unwilling to look away. “You killed my whole book for smoke. You stood there in Chicago and looked me in the fucking face and lied about what they offered.”

  “Bullshit! That’s bullshit.”

  “This isn’t a movie. There’s no deal here. You just pimped me out to a Fox gangbang. Fox Family! I ask you. So you can sit at lunch with some other spray-tan tapeworm who chews with his ass and lies when he breathes.” He fought his dry mouth to swallow, audibly. “Oh my God.”

  “Triple-cream, chill out.” Cliff laughed then, a loud wide-open jock laugh like they were just joshing around on the bus. No big. He used his MVP voice. “These guys have access to money. And no, they aren’t offering us the moon. What about it? Sure, sex sells. Barbecue sauce. Rock stars. The Doors had great music, but do you think anyone would have listened if Morrison hadn’t had the jumbo tube steak in leather pants and that face?”

  Trip pushed himself out of his chair with shaking hands and put air between them.

  “Dude—” Apparently, the greasy gears behind Cliff’s handsome skull had cranked forward. “Jim Morrison found out his band had licensed ‘Light My Fire’ to sell Buicks, and he flipped out. Threw this lame pussy tantrum about making a couple million dollars. Now, we’re supposed to feel like that’s awful and rock is great, but that princess choked on his own puke in his twenties. And Buick is still going strong.”

  Trip circled the conference table and paced on the opposite side. “Idiot.” He questioned which of them he meant. Idiots. “What have I done?”

  Cliff leaned in. “But you know what? Now Jim Morrison is a genius, even though he died a fat junkie. Every fucking memory we have of him is from one photo session because he had the decency to go to Paris to snuff it.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know, right?” A smug smile on Cliff’s chops.

  “Not ‘wow, you’re so smart.’ That was more of a ‘wow, you’re more pathetic than they said, Staplegun.’” Trip shuddered and spat. “Silas warned me, repeatedly, and I fucking ignored it because I thought he was jealous. Silas, jealous of anyone.”

  “We’ll be able to write our ticket.”

  Trip nodded. “I’m just the gas that gets you there.”

  “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and it’ll give you all the things you ever wanted.” Cliff’s wheedling charm felt like an insult. They both knew it was bullshit.

  Trip swiveled. “I want to write and draw my own book. Will it give me that?”

  “I promise.”

  “Grea
t. Then let’s give them Scratch instead and see what they say. Man up!”

  Cliff held up a stop-sign hand. “Not that. Well, not that right now, at least.”

  “Some promise.” Trip shook his head. “That lasted, what, like four seconds?”

  “But later, sure. Alan Moore wrote eco comics and philosophical comics and fucking porno comics too. Full-on jizz-books.”

  Trip watched while the lies fell out of that mouth like rotting teeth. “After he left DC.” Trip narrowed his eyes at Cliff. “Do you think I’m stupid? He ran for the hills and dug a tunnel when he got there. Moore hates DC so much that he’s given up credit on entire hundred-million-dollar movies just to get away from these putzes you envy.”

  “Maybe Moore’s a bad example. My point is that even if he hates ’em, they gave him market share. You get the gist—”

  “The fucking gist is what’s ruined the entire world.” Trip sniffled and shrugged. “You think like a suit. You have their fucking disease. Suit-itis.” Without thinking, he used Silas’s word. It just slipped from his mouth like he owned it. “You don’t have any ideas of your own, so you borrow one or steal one and sit on it like a stubborn chicken trying to hatch a grenade. Afraid to stand up and too namby-pamby to sit down.”

  “Dude, I’m not afraid of anything.” Staplegun sounded like he’d pissed his panties.

  “But artists always have another idea. ’S’the thing that suits and whores don’t understand, because they find one dumb idea and hang on tight. You assholes think if we sing about lollipops and rainbows that kids are fooled because they get the gist.” He shrugged. “They know.”

  Cliff’s confusion filled the space between them.

  “Forget it.” Trip understood, and that was plenty. “You want this so bad, you’d stab yourself in the back to get it. Lollipops and rainbows. Lollipops and rainbows. Oh my God.”

  “What does that mean?” Cliff fumed.

  “Just a reminder. They all warned me and I wouldn’t see. You’re only a suit with better packaging.” He laughed at his own stupidity, without any pleasure. “Mighty Mites may be something you can whore out as heroes to someone, but not to me.”

  Cliff huffed and sneered. “They’re fictional!”

  Trip waved his arms, and his face heated as he roared, “Of course they’re fictional. Everyone is fictional! We all invent ourselves, shitwit. That’s what being alive is. Dad’s big pen squirts us into Mom’s open pages, and then we have to fill in the blanks, make our lives up, color things in so we’re worth reading.” He sounded like Silas, and for an irrational moment, he wished Silas could see him doing the right thing for once in his pathetic life.

  Chop-chop.

  Cliff stood unsteadily at the head of the table, arms swinging: Dad carves up bullshit for Unthanksgiving. “It’s a transmedia property. Manufacturing heroes is a fucking business.”

  “They aren’t heroes because you wave your big veiny wand. They’re heroes when they save the world from itself.”

  Outside the wall of windows, muddy dusk had fallen.

  Trip paused and rubbed his sore eyes. “Are these thieving schvuntzes ever coming back?”

  Cliff glanced at his watch and at the door again. “Maybe they got stuck in the conference call.”

  Dusk?

  “Ah.” The last pieces clicked into place. “I’m not supposed to meet anyone.” Trip pivoted to face the Unboyfriend in slow motion. “There was never a movie. Or a deal. A complete lie.”

  “Huh?” Cliff’s mouth worked. “We’re sitting in the Fox conference room.” At his collar, his pulse juddered visibly. Troubled waters there.

  “Alone. They let you come take a fake tour. They didn’t want to meet us.” Unblinking, Trip crept back around the table. “This was a buncha kabuki bullshit to convince me you’re a wheeler-dealer.” He smiled unhappily. “’Cause you only open your cock-holster to tell more whoppers.”

  The Joker unmasked. Green Goblin revealed. Magneto in a plastic prison.

  “That’s not true, bro.” Cliff’s gaze rested cobra-still on Trip. “I promise.” He shifted in his borrowed big-shot seat.

  “More promises. Gosh.” Trip sat back down in his chair slowly. “If I held my ear to your chest, I’d hear the ocean.”

  “Foot in the door, is all. We know these guys, and once Hero High fits their specs, we’re golden.” Cliff swallowed whatever was in his mouth. His face was pink.

  Trip frowned. “You believe that.”

  “Maybe. There’s no way to know the future. It might.” Cliff shrugged and tried to make his eyes sparkle.

  “Might! Might is right.” Trip sniffed. “Might is your whole problem. You might be gay. I might be lonely enough. Kids might like our bullshit. Fox might make a movie.” Trip slapped crap off the lacquered surface. “Might, right?” A pen hit the window. “Might, maybe.” A water bottle hit the wall. “Mite, bug.” He swept pages onto the floor. “And you”—he howled at his lamebrain editor—“are the mightiest mite of all. A big fucking maybe bug, who bullies everyone into shoveling your shit.”

  My fault. Trip rubbed at his mouth haphazardly. Cliff didn’t know any better, but Trip did, and he had still looked Silas Goolsby in the face and done the wrong thing. Eyes wide and pants around his ankles so these monsters could fuck him over, faster with less fuss. I’m a monster.

  Trip whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

  As soon as he did, he realized he was talking to Silas a couple of weeks too late. Those words belonged in Chicago. For one misplaced moment, they were at the con panel starting from Scratch. An alternate universe where Silas made miracles out of nothing and Trip had screwed up and apologized instantly and everything was a joke and he took his demon’s hand and walked into the future.

  Cliff peered at him anxiously and leaned forward. His large palm drew circles on Trip’s back, as if rubbing a tummy from the wrong side. “There’s no need to apologize.”

  Trip jerked away. “To you?” His voice came out louder than he’d intended. “Why would I apologize to you?”

  “You said—”

  “I’m a sorry motherfucker for wasting so much of my life carrying you up a wet shit hill.”

  Cliff clasped the arm of Trip’s chair. Something flickered behind his eyes. “Wait… wait…. Before you trip out. What if you used a pseudonym for the other book?”

  The rickety resignation Trip had cobbled together in the past few weeks crumpled inside him: a house of cards built of nothing but Jokers.

  “Stay in the closet, you mean.” Trip crossed his arms, and mimed patience he didn’t feel.

  “I don’t mean like that.”

  Trip lifted his brows slowly, his eyes tight. He could almost hear Cliff’s brain scrabbling inside his skull like a rat frantic for a way out.

  Cliff dabbed at his mouth. “I mean… maybe Scratch gets published under a different name.” He reached across the corner of the table toward Trip again.

  Trip swatted his hand away. “Hey, maybe Hero High should be under a pen name. That’s the dreck I’m ashamed of.” He cleared his throat and bit his tongue. “I don’t need a secret identity to live my life. I’m not a caped crusader. I’m just a guy with a pencil.”

  “Dude, I get that you’re nervous, and I get that you’re giving shit up. Do you think I’m not? I’ve seen you pour yourself into this. You’ve been there for me every step of the way, and I’m there for you.” Cliff scooted to the edge of his chair so their bent legs interlaced like cogs. “I’ve always liked you, man.”

  Chop-chop. Who’s there?

  His plump basket nudged Trip’s knee.

  Right then, Trip understood perfectly: the deal being offered and the devil in its details. Right then, any guttering attraction he’d ever felt for Cliff Stapleton the Third winked out like a candle flame. Without shifting a millimeter or saying a word, the Unboyfriend had taken off his mask, and what remained of his groomed, calculated fratboy studliness had all the appeal of a sticky linoleum bedspread.


  “I….” Trip kept the sarcasm out of his voice. “After all this time, you’d actually, finally fuck the faggot for real, to convince me. Go ahead, big guy! Drop your drawers.”

  Cliff’s hand hesitated and slowed.

  “Like radioactive jock itch. Unreal.” Head shake. “After flirting and stringing the dumb queer along for four years, to milk the pages out of me, you’d let me stick my big bone in you to close the sale.”

  The Unboyfriend appeared genuinely bewildered. “No!”

  “Oh!” Trip did the sexual arithmetic and realized his mistake. “Oh wait. Even better. You don’t even know me well enough to make the right offer. You think I’m a frail pussy-Jew, so I need you to put me down on all fours and do the honors.” He cackled in disgust. “Some honor.”

  Cliff’s mouth worked the air, stupidly. Apparently, he had to work to rewire his assfuck assumptions.

  “We’re not all imbeciles. Trouble is, you’re sexy, so we all pretend we don’t, but heads-up… we notice. Everyone.” Trip’s hands, of their own volition, gathered his crap: bag, hat, portfolio, phone, all the scattered pieces he needed to take with him when he made his escape. “For the record: you’re not bisexual, you’re a sociopath.”

  “Swear to God, bro. If you bail now, I will never look back and you will never get another opportunity like this.”

  “Promise?” Trip’s face felt hot and his smile manic, his teeth bared like a rabid dog as he spat, “Lucky fucking me.”

  “You’re making the worst mistake of your life.”

  “Which one, Staplegun? The part where I betrayed the person I care about most, or maybe torching the best work I’ve done in my life, or the part where I tell you to fuck yourself with a rusty grandfather clock. I’m up to my eyeballs in rotten ideas and god-awful decisions.” Trip realized he was shouting. “Chop-chop!”

  “Trip. Think!” A rim of sweat stained the edge of his collar. “You can only pull the trigger once.”

  Trip affected a Jimmy Olsen blankness as he stood up. “Golly, Captain Cocktease! Are you sure?”

  Cliff didn’t like that very much. “You are not gonna wreck a multimillion-dollar deal for some horned superdildo with a pointy tail.”