The End Is Now

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Annie Bellet is the author of The Twenty-Sided Sorceress and the Gryphonpike Chronicles series. She holds a BA in English and a BA in Medieval Studies and thus can speak a smattering of useful languages such as Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Welsh. Her short fiction is available in multiple collections and anthologies. Her interests besides writing include rock climbing, reading, horseback riding, video games, comic books, table-top RPGs, and many other nerdy pursuits. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and a very demanding Bengal cat. Find her on her website at anniebellet.com.

ROCK MANNING CAN’T HEAR YOU Charlie Jane Anders

This guy came into the half-stocked convenience store where I was working, and he wanted me to empty out the safe. He had a waxy mustache and soul patch, and he wore a poncho over a bulky football sweatshirt and knee-high socks. He was waving a shotgun that looked like someone had shot a grouse with it back in 2009, and then it had sat in a closet ever since. I thought about angles of escape, up over his head or around behind the Juicy Yoo cooler—because I’m Rock Manning, the internet’s favorite hyperfiend, and that’s what I do.

Then I shrugged and put up my hands.

The trouble was, he couldn’t get at the safe because it was keyed to my vital signs, so if my heart or breathing sped up then the safe went into total lockdown, and if my heart stopped then every alarm went dog-crazy. My boss Ramon couldn’t even get cash for legitimate purposes half the time because I’d be doing jumping jacks and thinking about whether we should stage a trolley accident or a scooter joust when we were making our slapstick movies this weekend. I had to practice no-mind deep breathing just so my boss could take out petty cash.

With this guy waving his gun at me, my heart juddered so damn hard the tumblers in the safe hugged each other for dear life. He almost gave up and left, but then he found some extra drowsy cough syrup and made me drink some of it along with a ton of Grand Marnier, with that shotgun in my face the whole time I was chugging. My heart stayed pigeon-like, and I told the guy he’d have to be patient and wait for the stuff to take effect. He wanted to keep force-feeding me downers but I reminded him that if I died the safe locked up tight.

He and I ended up sitting around the store a couple hours, talking about old movies and video games and stuff. Reginald loved all the cop buddy comedies of the eighties and nineties, and he could recite long sections of Lethal Weapon from memory. Before I even knew what I was doing, I was telling Reginald that a bunch of us made our own amateur web movies in Boston Common and he should swing by this Saturday and join in. I guess it was the cough syrup, or just the fact that we’d been talking for ages and he’d put down the gun by then. Five minutes after he thanked me and wandered off down the street, I took a deep breath and heard the safe un-jam itself.

I meant to tell some of my friends about Reginald, but then I got sidetracked into thinking about my character. Not my real-life character, which I didn’t really know much about, but my movie character.

Think about it! Harold Lloyd is the same guy in every one of his movies—a small-town innocent, maybe a little egg-headed but not street smart, with his heart on his sleeve but also full of crazy ambitions. I could be like that, except maybe more cunning and just a little loopy. Or okay, a lot loopy. Coming off the super-cold-relief formula and cognac buzz, I felt a swelling urgency that people should root for me, not just laugh at my hijinks.

Janelle, the cute film student with the rainbow dreads, agreed with me. The comic hero has to be loveable or relatable, or at least there has to be a moment of connection with the audience in between all the falling gargoyles, she said. The two of us cornered Sally Hamster, our director, who kept trying to get us to talk to her hands. Sally was like, “I make art during the week. This weekend shit is just for fun.” Sally had been making serious strides at film school until I came back into her life, fully recovered from my nervous breakdown and eager to make more weird movies on the internet. But Janelle and I both said it wasn’t about art, just making the fun as fun as possible.