The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti by Stephen Graham Jones

Author:Stephen Graham Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: THE LONG TRIAL OF NOLAN DUGATTI
ISBN: 9781936873463
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 2011-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

7.

Trick is, if this is Camopede I’m in, and playing, then I should be more qualified than anybody else in the world to beat it.

Right?

I stand from my desk, almost smile a little.

“Mr. Nolan?” the homicide detective is saying, some nerves surfacing in his voice. Finally.

“I’ve done this before,” I tell him.

Not with Jenn, but with Simon, when we were kids. If his mom left the house, and left us in it for the afternoon, no supervision, then what we would always do would be to use all the couch cushions and blankets and anything else we could find, drag or steal, and we’d build a real-world version of whatever the game of the week was.

Things were pretty primitive then, so it was largely labyrinths, or sometimes different levels of labyrinths—I guess all RPG is some version of that, really, even Camopede—but still, the battles we waged against the zombie horde or the alien invaders or the mutant zoo animals, they were epic.

By the time Simon’s mom would get home, we’d be slathered in sweat and in trouble, but smiling too, our voices all creaky and broken from the moves we’d been doing, which only worked if we called them out to each other, so the other could adjust his own move.

The only difference between then and now, I guess, would be that the couch cushions are solid wall. And that the enemy is solid as well. Invisible, sure, but undoubtedly there.

Still, though, I can already tell that when I’m moving down the halls, I’m going to have a view through my own eyes, what I can see, but part of my brain’s going to be cued into the top view as well, mapping ahead of me.

Which isn’t to say that I don’t wish Simon were here. Or Jenn. Especially Jenn. With her hair shiny pink like it is now, it’d almost be like when I first met her at Ecco Location, where I wasn’t “Nolan Dugatti” or “Mr. Nolan,” but “2gati” to her “J’n,” which you just about have to pronounce “D’jinn”—a genie, able to grant wishes, able to make your sorry life complete.

I did scare her off, I think. It’s the only explanation. Because I didn’t do anything different, and she never changed. But still, what pushed her away, it had to be when I told her about my dad, that last time I saw him. It didn’t change me—I’d been that guy already since it happened—but it changed the way she looked at me. Like I was capable of things she wouldn’t have guessed. Or like the weight of what I’d done, it was reshaping me, making me into somebody different, when all she wanted was the same old Nolan.

That guy was dead, though.

Like I can call her up and ask her, anyway. My best bet, really, would be lurk at Ecco Location for a few days, until she signs on, then IM her just real casual. Except, for all I know, she’d be perched at her laptop, sitting on Simon’s bed, so he could be on his good deck.

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