Free B-Movie Attack by Alan Spencer

return to the police academy. “ I’m not paying for your schooling if you’re giving up so easily ,” Wayne scolded him when he returned home before the first semester of police academy was over. “ You've put on thirty pounds since high school. Lose that, then the training won’t be so difficult. It’s not out of your reach. Hell, I’ll buy you a gym membership. I'll lose weight too.”
    Billy weighed himself in the bathroom before heading out the door: 276. I’m a whale. I’ve got a tire around my midsection. How did I pick up such a hot lawyer ex-cheerleader girl?
    He walked down the hall to Nelson’s door. He would still be awake. Tomorrow was his day off, and chances were, he’d be up until four a.m. He was between girlfriends. I pray he’s not masturbating or looking at porn right now.  
    He knocked on 4G and waited. The door immediately opened. Nelson was in a pair of green basketball shorts and the same Xbox T-shirt from earlier. He was watching the rest of Death Reject . The corpse-hued man was using veins that had snaked from his wrists to strangle an officer.  
    “You walked in at the right moment.” Nelson raised a can of grape soda as if in mid-cheers. “Have a seat, man. Did you and Jessica have a lover’s spat?”
    “No, she’s asleep. It’s not hard for her these days. Working thirty-two hours a week as a paralegal and studying her ass off, I’d be nodding off too.”
    Billy sat down on the couch. He couldn’t help looking over Nelson’s movie collection. Each movie Nelson had salvaged from the video store bargain bin. He was manager of the location two blocks south of the apartment building. Nelson’s father was CEO of the chain, and Nelson was working his way up the corporate ladder. He had built shelves into the wall surrounding his entertainment center. Many of the titles he received for free, the ones they couldn’t sell. Instant classics, Nelson called them, like Gigli , Basic Instinct 2 , Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles , The Associate , The Adventures of Pluto Nash , The Sixth Day , and many more. Nine hundred DVDs stared back at him in varying conditions of used and new. The Maltese Falcon was positioned by the Blade trilogy boxed set. Atonement and Sense and Sensibility sandwiched Meatballs . Action figures lined the top of the entertainment center that housed his plasma television. Sweet Chuck and Tackleberry from the Police Academy movies dueled with Quentin Tarantino in military garb from Planet Terror . The cenobites, the “Tortured Souls” figurines from the Hellraiser movies, surrounded his Xbox with David Bowie from Labyrinth and Bilbo from Lord of the Rings .  
    “Have a soda,” Nelson said, walking to the fridge to refuel. “Grape, lemon-lime or orange is all I got.”
    “Grape me.”
    “You want a nip of gin in that?”
    Billy couldn’t avert his eyes from Death Reject . The man exploded again, the pieces slicing through an elevator and piercing into a set of well-dressed people. Everyone was mashed and turned into pulp. “I…um, yeah go ahead. I could use the come down. It might help me sleep.”
    Nelson returned with a glass of purple alcohol goodness. He patted Billy’s shoulder. “I haven’t really given my sympathies to your dad. I only heard through Jessica, and you were both arguing earlier.”
    “Sorry about that.” Billy accepted the glass. “I was going to tell you.”
    “Don’t sweat it,” Nelson said. “It’s good to hear he’ll be okay.”
    Billy drank, noticing his friend had poured him a healthy dose of gin into the drink, and it was kicking in fast. “I called my mother. She lives in San Fran now. I won’t hear from her for three weeks or longer. It’s like I’m on a waiting list. Once she re-married, she figured I was eighteen, old enough to fend for myself. She'd see me once every three of four years or so—and that’s if I’m the one who comes down to visit.”
    Nelson wasn’t sure what to say. “That’s too