“Adversarial Manifestation!” someone in the audience shouts. Billy and Lucifer turn toward the source. A bearded dude, somebody Billy’s never seen before, a few tables away. “Adversarial Manifestation!” dude shouts again, rising from his chair, pointing.
Billy’s a little dismayed to be interrupted by what appears to be a crazy person, but at least some of the room’s attention is off of him. There’s a commotion back at the bar, and someone—a heavyset guy in a tight black T-shirt, probably the bouncer—begins parting the crowd and moving toward the front. Billy assumes the plan is to eject the crazy guy, who is now shouting “Adversarial Manifestation” a third time, practically frothing, but the bouncer moves past that guy and instead stands across from Lucifer, staring him down.
“What?” Lucifer says. He raises his stout. “I’m just here to have a drink and to catch some contemporary fiction and poetry.”
The bouncer raises something, aims it at Lucifer, and fires. Lucifer jolts, loses his drink, flails wildly out of his seat, hits the floor. The audience rears back from this. Billy suddenly fears that he’s about to witness a stampede. That people could be killed. It would, he realizes, be his fault.
“Lock it down,” bellows someone nearby. “We have a Category Six situation here. Repeat: Category Six.”
Category Six? Billy doesn’t know what that is, but the words have no immediate effect on the crowd, which is surging away from Lucifer’s convulsing form. He peers out, tries to catch sight of Denver, but she’s lost in the tumult. He looks down at the microphone, still in his hand. He still has the potential to speak to the crowd, to calm them, to direct them usefully. All he needs is to apply his kick-ass rhetorical skills. Does he actually have those?
He holds the mic close to his mouth.
“Audience,” he says. “Listen, audience.”
And then there’s a twinge in his back, and suddenly everything in his body goes rigid as something horrible rips through his nervous system. Like some barbed white demon coming alive within him. He would think Oh my God I’m dying except he can’t think anything at all; his mind is like a jagged pattern of flashing triangles. It lasts only for a second. A very, very long second. And then he’s on the floor.
He blurts out a syllable that is not kick-ass rhetoric. It is not even recognizable language. It is the kind of sound you might make if you were shitting your pants, which Billy is thankfully not doing. He doesn’t have the mic anymore. Someone is screaming. He hopes it isn’t anyone he loves. Before he has time to figure anything out someone clamps something foul-smelling over his mouth and nose and the world blurs. It’s all going away, Billy thinks as everything swims into darkness, someone please help. But no one does.
CHAPTER SEVEN
DOUCHEBAGS
SUICIDE IS AN OPTION • CHEMICALS AND SEWAGE • EXCELLENT VERISIMILITUDE • SICK OF WARLOCKS • WHAT HAPPENS TO PEOPLE WITH FACE TATTOOS • PROBED BY THE INTERNET • LITERARY FLAIR • WHAT ABOUT GOD (REPRISE)
Some little part of Billy’s consciousness wakes up, probes around tentatively, and learns that it hurts. Head, face, arms, legs, hands, feet: every part reports in with the same message: This sucks.
Some higher-order function comes back on board and tries to figure out why he hurts.
Someone Tased me, he thinks.
All at once he’s not certain he’s safe. He yanks himself the rest of the way awake and lifts his head to get a look around. Inflamed muscles seize in protest and Billy lets out a low moan.
He’s in a jail cell.
Well, Billy thinks, this can’t be good, although actually? He can think of ways in which it could be worse.
He lets his head drop back to the plastic pillow. The crinkling vinyl sounds incredibly loud, painful. He stares up into the dull fluorescent disk set in the ceiling for a long time, letting his body throb. Maybe if he waits long enough somebody will come along to give him some instruction, let him know exactly what he’s supposed to do next. Isn’t that supposed to be the silver lining to being in prison? You don’t have to make your own decisions?
He pulls himself to a sitting position and he resists the impulse to just drop his head into his hands and leave it there for maybe the rest of his life. Instead he does a quick survey of the cell. Not really much to see. The bunk that he’s sitting on. At the opposite end of the cell is an apparatus consisting of two metal bowls attached to a single central column; he guesses that one bowl is a sink and the other a toilet. He has to take a piss but right now getting up and walking three feet exceeds the range of his ambition. There’s also a lightweight chair stamped out of one contiguous piece of plastic and a slab extruding from the wall which could maybe be used as a desk.