by Chris Sapp
The nephew’s exploded head suddenly flashed through my mind.
“What about the right-brainers? What happens to them?”
“Enslavement for all … eternity.”
I didn’t know what to say. That was the most horrible thing I had ever heard. Gina was a lefty like me. Did that mean that she was safe? What about my sister and Willie? They were both right handed. Were they both screwed? What about Erika and the crew missing from the trailers? What about every other non-creative soul on the planet? They were all going to be enslaved by a superior alien race. How many times had I read that on a script page? Only this time it wasn’t some cheesedick plot, it was my fucking life.
“What about me? What are the lefties suppose to do?”
Still smiling that awful grin, Vic handed me a small key and said, “Resistance.”
The key was warm. He’d apparently been holding it for a while … a long while. I didn’t have to ask. I knew what the key was for. It unlocked Vic’s chest and in that chest I would find a working Excalibur 3000.
When I looked back at Vic to ask where he kept the chest, he was already gone. He’d died with his eyes open and his finger pointing towards the chest, which was inside the cabinet that had killed him (not counting the infiltrator Alien in his noggin, that is). I opened the cabinet door, stuck the key in the lock and opened the chest. Taped to the inside of the lid was a brief note from Vic that read:
D.B.A.P.
DON’T BE A PUSSY: John Stone’s personal creed. Sitting on top of what looked like folded-clothes was the Excalibur 3000. Vic was right. It was an exact duplicate of the prop I’d used less than four hours ago. I picked up the gun and was immediately surprised at how good the weight felt in my hands. Now, that I could see the neatly folded clothes more clearly I realized that they didn’t belong to the prop master.
They were Stone’s.
Without really thinking about what I was doing, I set the gun aside, lit a cigarette, and pulled out the first article of clothing. It was a pair of black fatigues like the one’s I’d worn in AH3. No, they were the pants I wore in AH3. There was a small tare on the left knee where I had scuffed my knee jumping out of an exploding alien pod. That was back before CGI had really taken off and actors performed their own stunts. I put my legs in and pulled the pants up to my waist. They were tight. Really tight. When I tried to zip them up the zipper got caught on my boxers and I suddenly remembered why the pants were so tight. Stone didn’t own a pair of underwear. He always went commando. The director of AH1 had wanted to pay tribute to some pioneer filmmaker who had once joked that there was no underwear in space. I removed my boxers and tried the pants again. They fit much better but I still had to suck my gut in a little to get them snapped. Thank God they weren’t from AH1. My waist had been two sizes smaller back then. Inside the pocket on the right leg was Stone’s eye patch. I knew it was in there because that’s always where he kept the spares. I slipped one on and feeling the elastic band around my head made the severe loss of vision tolerable. I can’t explain how or even why.
The next item in the chest was Stone’s gray sleeveless shirt from AH1. I slipped it over my head and it was almost a perfect fit. My upper body wasn’t as muscled as it once was, but I’d done a fair job of keeping them toned. Then came Stone’s leather utility belt from AH5. Stone didn’t have as many toys as James Bond of Batman but more were added with every film, so naturally the utility belts changed too. But I’d always liked this version best because it had a place for Stone’s cigarettes. I’d be willing to bet that the reason it took the writers five films to give Stone a place for his smokes was because they’ve never smoked a day in their life.
I smiled when I saw the last thing in the bottom of the chest. It was my black leather boots from AH2. Costume designer Lindsay Wagner and I had designed them one weekend between sex and cigarettes. She wore a c-cup bra and had a king-sized waterbed. I guess, it’s not easy to figure out who did most of the designing. I strapped the boots on and it was like being reunited with an old friend. I grabbed my Excalibur 3000, with the last word Vic had ever said, (R-E-S-I-S-T-A-N-C-E) imprinting itself on my brain and beating rhythmically in my heart.
I had one leg out the window when I heard a loud juicy explosion behind me. I knew with every bone in my body, that the infiltrator alien had just vacated Vic’s noggin.
