It was dark inside the stadium doorway, and I thought of all the things that might be in that darkness: maybe a dritch had dug its way up from the sewers; or a hound (they would have a hard time hiding in the dark, unless they could turn off the horrible internal burning of their glowing bones); or some darker and nastier version of the Interlocutor, tentacled and hungry, a border creature who had chosen the dark side. But of all those monsters, worst of all was the Proprietor himself: a waxy, control-hungry prick who, so long as he got power and money and influence for himself and his buds, didn’t care what happened to the planet and the rest of us living here.
“Only in the movies do handguns solve problems,” Dad used to tell me. “In real life, they just make problems worse.” True as thi
