"Shall I park this for you?" asked the man. He proved to be Steve Martin, who was currently serving as parking attendant.
"Run him over," said Claim. "He sees us. He can tell people we were here."
Shelf swerved the van and turned the hapless actor into roadkill.
Well excuuuuse me... Martin thought as he expired.
"Wisht I hadn't had to a' done that," Shelf muttered. "Always liked his movies..."
"No witnesses, no exceptions!" Claim told him. "You know what happened to Hands and Commander!"
"Yeah, yeah, but surely it's safe entering Backstage through a fuckin' dream composed of their memories..."
"You never know. C'mon, let's park behind this pillar and get with it!"
They parked the van, selected a few of the more concealable weapons, and made for the express elevator up to the Author Suites. There was a contract out on Raoul Duke's Avatar, and they meant to get their man...
Leaving the dream, they piled into the elevator and pressed the "up" button. Despite their efforts to conceal it, they felt confident no one would discover the van. After all, who would look for it in a dream? Soon they were on Duke's floor...
"Which suite's his?" Claim demanded.
"426," replied Shelf, consulting the shorthand notes he'd written on the palm of his hand.
"Shit, that's a quarter of the length of the Backstage from here!"
"Aw shuddup, be glad it's not 500," Shelf shot back. "That would be all the way to the Bar and Grill end! So we gotta hoof it a little, so what?"
"Someone might see us," Claim muttered.
"So? Anyone does we blow 'em away!"
Claim nodded. "Okay, sure, I can get into that..."
To his disappointment, no one spotted them on their way down the long, misty corridor to Suite 426.
They flattened against the wall on either side of the door. "Ready?" Shelf hissed. "Ready!" Claim whispered back.
Leaping away from the wall they blasted through the door flew into the suite, guns blazing.
Only to find Raoul Duke's office a shambles, and empty except for a few stray packing boxes. The large view window was broken where he had jumped out to plummet to his certain death. The words, "DIE POSTMODERN SCUM" were scrawled across the walls in spray paint.
"Damn!" groaned Claim. "This means we've gotta wallow in shitty postmodernism next episode, I suppose!"
Shelf regarded him quizically. "You mean we weren't in this one?"
Wed Apr 25 09:00:41 2001
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