Drooping mikes, bad acting and the rutting of rubber-suited monsters who want women, not for food, but to mate with, become a genuine pleasure. You can simultaneously hoot and cringe when a monster attacks a screaming female on the beach or in the woods and you see the zipper on the back of the monster’s suit winking at you like the quick, drunk smile of a Cheshire cat.
So there you have it. A sort of rundown of The All Night Horror Show at the Orbit. It drew me and the gang in there every Friday night like martyrs to the sacrifice; providing popcorn and Coke instead of wine and wafer.
Yes, sir, brethren, there was something special about the Orbit all right. It was romantic. It was outlaw. It was crazy.
And in the end, it was deadly.
PART ONE
THE ALL NIGHT HORROR SHOW WITH POPCORN AND COMET1
I suppose, ultimately, this will read like a diseased version of those stupid essays you’re asked to write in school each fall after summer break. You know, “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.”
Guess that can’t be helped.
This is where I think it begins.
It was Saturday morning, the morning after a night at the Orbit. We drove back to Mud Creek smelling of beer, popcorn and chocolate bars.
Our eyes were cl oudy, our minds more so. But we were too wired, or maybe just too stupid, to go home. So we did what we usually did. We drove over to the pool hall.
The pool hall, or Dan’s Place, as it’s called, is an ugly joint in an ugly section of an overall pretty nice-looking town. It’s the area where you hear about knifings and the lowlife congregating, twenty-dollar women, bootleg whisky and Mud Creek’s drug deals.
Dan’s was a beer drinker’s pool hall, had a bar along with the tables. Theoretically the place didn’t serve beer until after noon, but Dan and the guys who came there were real short on theory.