Blood Lite

There was a pause. Then in the scum and dust on the bathroom mirror, two words formed: "Beast frend."

"Yes." Sam nodded. "Best friend. Please

The knife pressed into his neck, forcing him to stand. It led him to the love seat, back in its original position. Street Fighter idled on the character select screen, cursors highlighting Ken and Ryu. And in Jess's ass-kicking zone, with both controllers floating in front of it, Gold Bond's fishbowl waited; a fish's skeleton, swabbed in cobwebs, floated in kegerator beer.

"Holy shit," Sam said. "You're . . . you're not Casper. You never were."

The bowl stared at him. It gestured for him to sit down.

"I need to call—I... my friend needs help." The bowl just stared at him. The knife pressed into his throat and forced him to sit. He smashed himself against the arm of the love seat, trying to get as far away from the fishbowl as possible, but he still felt a chill, like a cold leg brushing against his—or like when something swims past you as you're wading up to your neck.

Working both controllers, the ghost began the match, Ken versus Ryu, the classic fight. The second-player con­troller floated over to Sam. He frowned at it, glanced at the phone sitting on the milk crate.

The eggbeaters growled and the house thrummed; the timer on the match counted down.

"Fucking carpet stretcher," Sam said. He took the controller and prayed Dave would bring back the cops, or the Ghostbusters, or John Edward, or that short lady from Poltergeist—anyone who could deal with a ghost.

The spirit held out its controller the way Jess used to do. Sam glowered. He tapped his against it, toasting. "I'm going to eat you for di

I Know Who You Ate Last Summer

Nancy Holder

"That should be 'whom,'" Carla M. said, "and that's part of the problem. It's too convoluted and it puts the emotional throughline on the victim. And frankly, who gives a shit about her?"

"Whom. 'I Know Whom You Killed Last Summer'," Angelo read off the screen of Carla M.'s state-of-the-art flat-screen monitor in her cool North Hollywood bunga­low; bitch thought she was all that. Which she was.

"Wow, you're right. It sucks," Angelo said happily.

"It's all about the Big Picture," Carla M. rambled on. "How all your artistic choices flesh it out."

Flesh.

"It's so obvious," Angelo cooed.

On the couch, away from the action, Dwight rolled his eyes. All Angelo had talked about on the drive from their Spanish Revival mansion in the Hollywood Hills was how great his title was. How much he loved it. Now he was betraying it because Carla M. had dropped it back into the Bottomless Well of Artistic Choices.

"Big picture. You're a genius. You're better than Robert McKee." Angelo gazed at her like she had invented the space-time continuum and tossed back his black shoulder-length curls.

Dwight stared at Angelo's hair and ground his teeth. Last night, Dwight got told by Tawni, the hairdresser who came to their mansion to style them and give them blow jobs, that shoulder-length curls were just too eighties rock star. It was almost too late to even go for the bald look, but luckily....

So once Dwight was shaved like a fucking cue ball, in walked Angelo from somewhere he went alone and had not told Dwight. And then he proceeded to laugh at Dwight's head and get a curly perm like he was going to tape an infomercial for A Tribute to Dan Fogelberg.

And when it was all done, Tawni oohed and aahed and spouted some bullshit about Angelo's sharp profile and rugged chin line; and wondered aloud if maybe she had been hasty about the death of curly and long. And by the way, Dwight should lay off the Botox injections and hire a personal trainer to correct his body mass index. She lec­tured him about colonies, which were enemas.

So after she left, Dwight made an ultimatum: his ego, her life.

"We can't eat her. She's the best haircutter in Holly­wood," Angelo argued. "Plus, we gotta stay off the radar." Dwight pouted and stared at his reflection in the mir­ror. He looked like a young Uncle Fester from The Addams Family. He was going to have to buy a wig.

Plus, he was starving. Angelo was so caught up in his movie thing that they hadn't devoured a chick in forever.

Sweating in his black leather pants, Dwight crossed his legs, put his dusty boots on Carla M.'s Danish modern "find" (as opposed to a "couch"), and text-messaged with the president of their fan club. God, he was so hostile. It would be nice to go to a therapist, but shrinks were clever bastards: When did you stop eating your wife? Rule Number One of the Ca

Besides, wives were for wimps. Dwight had never been married. It was just him and Angelo, not in a gay way, not even vaguely metro. When you were busy and famous, you had relationships with nobodies. And ate them, too.

Except now they were busy at the home of Ms. Some­body, who they had met in AA. Despite nearly losing her liver to booze, she was still a player. So Angelo played her. One minute they were listening to her war stories about Demon Tequila and the next, Angelo was informing her that he and Dwight wanted to be the next Rob Zombie, which was total news to Dwight.

And now they spent every single Saturday night at her trendy NoHo bungalow, working on Angelo's cre­ative genius piece-of-shit serial killer movie while she groped Mr. Curly Top. Which was the most insane, self-destructive thing they could possibly do, because, hello? Ca

"Also, since the Echo Park Killer is still at large, it looks like you're rifling off the murders. It comes off cheesy," Professor M. continued.

"Carly-car," Angelo moped. "Then we've got nothing." He sighed and glanced over at Dwight with his patented "Maybe you're right, maybe we should just eat her" look.

He shifted around on the find/couch, squishy with sweat. He wished she had air-conditioning. Summers in LA could be brutal. All the chrome and glass; sometimes the freeways started to melt, no lie.

Rock stars like them couldn't be caught dead in shorts.

"Don't panic. This is the most exciting part of the creative process," Carla M. told the guy who was in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. "The artistic choices. There are so many."

"So little time," Angelo joshed. They put their heads together and chuckled. What goes hahaha—thud? A can­nibal cat laughing his head, off.

"You break it down, you build it up," Carla M. went on. And on.

You knock her out, you chew her up, Dwight thought.

Ca

2 JACKIE ON HER BDAY! CCatsPrezie2Ca

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! U remembered!

Then a new text message came in. Not from CCatsPrezie but from someone named Unregistered. What the heck; they had to be cool if they had his number. Dwight read it.

I NO WHO U 8 LAST SUMMER

Dwight nearly fell off the couch. Instead, he gasped as his phone clattered onto Carla M.'s state-of-the-now retro turquoise linoleum floor.

"Dwight?" Angelo asked, swiveling around on Carla M.'s desk chair. "Zup?"

The people with hair were both staring at him. Dwight bent down—his black leather pants needed to be let out a tad—grabbed up his phone, and very carefully did not look at the faceplate again.

"Wow. Sorry, dozed off, it's so fucking unbearably hot in here," he said.

Angelo gave him a look. Dwight wanted to return it. Dwight wanted to tell him to meet him in Carla M.'s bathroom, with her vintage Serenity Prayer plaque on the wall and a pair of Praying Hands from some little town in Tuscany called Nostromo or something like that. He wanted to tell Angelo they were either in big trouble or Angelo was a douche bag for sending him a tasteless prac­tical joke.