Midnight crash, Tara zlick [best ereader for manga txt] 📗
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- Author: Tara zlick
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The
wrong disc was inside. It was a plain TDK disc with the words: “NIGHT FALLS:
MASTER COPY” scribbled in jerky, green marker pen.
‘Crass, look at this.’ I showed him the disc. ‘It’s a copy. The original disc is
missing. I reckon Robert has burnt the DVD and returned the copy by mistake.’
‘Jeez, he’s an idiot.’
‘You reckon he’s been burning all the movies?’
Crass shrugged, picked up the disc and twirled it around his finger. ‘I’ll give him a
call and ask him to return the original. God, what a total friggin’ loser.’
‘I bet he copies all those horror movies so he can watch them a hundred times
each,’ I said. ‘He probably memorises the lines.’
Crass took the disc and put it in the top pocket of his shirt. ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be the
worst if you were trapped in some old house with Robert?’
The thought made my skin crawl. ‘I’d totally freak.’
I placed the empty Night Falls cover to one side and gathered up the rest of the
returned videos and DVDs. There weren’t as many as there used to be on a Saturday
morning. The new Blockbuster store just out of town was slowly taking all our business
since it opened last Christmas. Nobody wants to go to a crummy old movie store when
you have a brand new Blockbuster. The Video Saloon had been opened in town for
fifteen years or more, but I wondered how much longer it would last. The December
summer holidays were coming up and school finished soon. I hoped I still had my part-
time job by then. At least the weekends continued to be busy – mainly because of the
half-price overnight offers we had. We were pretty busy Saturday afternoons and
evenings, which was good. Otherwise I’d have been outta here.
I returned the DVD discs to the shelf in the back of the store. In Blockbuster all the
DVDs were kept in their covers on the shelf. Not at the Video Saloon. We didn’t have any security gates so we had to walk out to the back office and get every disc or video
game off the shelf. It took ages.
Crass walked out with me to pick up his large green gym bag from the office. Every
Saturday afternoon he spent his lunch hour or two at the local gym. I didn’t mind. It was
peaceful without him, even when he got back so late I didn’t get a proper lunch. At least I
didn’t have to put up with him playing his hip-hop music over the stereo system and I
could even watch the odd romantic comedy when the store was really slow.
‘Catch you later, dude. Hey, maybe Robert will come back to keep you company,’
laughed Crass as he walked out of the store.
I cleaned some shelves and stood watching a preview disc of a kid’s film about
superheroes training robots to fight in a gladiator’s ring. I couldn’t really make much
sense out of it. Topps arrived soon after. He often dropped in on a Saturday afternoon
when he knew the coast was clear. With Crass gone we could talk in peace.
Before Topps could even give me a wave a customer walked in wearing plaster-
splattered overalls and smelling of sawdust. I put on my best friendly, welcoming smile.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Yeah, hi. Colin, the young guy who works here, said he a package for me. I’m a
bit early, I think, to pick it up…’
I looked at him blankly. Crass (Colin Sass was his real name, though nobody called
him that) said nothing to me at all about having a package waiting for this guy.
‘Don’t worry, I can come back,’ he said when he realised I didn’t know what he
was talking about. ‘While I’m here, though,’ he added, ‘my son reserved the cardboard
cut-out of Jim Carrey you had in the window a while back. Can I collect it? I have my
ute, so I’ll grab it now. It’ll be easier to carry.’
‘Did Colin say where he put it?’ I couldn’t remember seeing a Jim Carrey cut-out
anywhere.
‘Dunno. Maybe in the back somewhere?’
Jim wasn’t out the back. Perhaps down in the basement? That’s where most of the
cut-outs were kept. I’d been working in The Video Saloon for three months and had only been down to the basement once. Steps at the back of the office lead down to it. The
basement was full of old and broken video covers, shelving, tables, posters and broken
recorders. It was dark, dusty and cold. No way would I have volunteered to go down
there on a Saturday night by myself.
I looked for Jim, making it extra quick and snappy. It was scary down there. I
glanced under the stairs, behind some shelving and tossed a few movie posters around.
You’d think with a rubber face like his, Jim would be easy to spot. But he didn’t want to
be found. ‘C’mon Jim, it’s your pal Stacey. Where are you?’ I whispered.
I made it to the far end of the basement. Nothing. Crass could have put it anywhere.
Towards the corner of the basement sat a forlorn old shelf, empty apart from a
couple of dusty video covers. I moved it out the way, trying to avoid the dust heaped on
the top shelf, peaked over it, and gasped.
3
..........................
Behind the broken shelf was a Laminex table. On the table were five large stacks of
DVDs. There must have been a hundred discs – perhaps more. Next to the DVDs
lay a pile of glossy colour-copied covers of movies, most of which had not even been
released on DVD yet. Some, including one with Tom Hanks and another with Charlize
Theron, weren’t even in the cinemas in Australia as far as I knew! A list of labels with
addresses lay on top of postal envelopes on the ground. Unopened plastic boxes of blank
DVD discs were stored neatly under the table.
On the other side of the table lay a handful of console game discs next to a pile of
clear plastic covers and photocopied covers. I recognised one as a favourite of Topps’.
It looked like a real sneaky little operation. The DVDs and console games were
obviously copies. I picked up one of the discs, a film about drag racing in the streets of
Los Angeles. It was definitely pirated. Whose were they? My boss Vince was the only
one who bothered with anything down here. Crass just threw down empty boxes and the
odd poster. And what was with the envelopes and labels?
Kids were always swapping copies of DVDs, music and games at school, but they
didn’t look like these. They were always downloaded off the Internet or in photocopied
covers, bought in Fiji or Bali by older brothers and sisters on holiday. I once saw a
Spiderman movie on a pirated disc and had to put up with a lady suffering a sneezing fit
and the guy holding the camera moving it down to his lap when he reached for popcorn.
Then I’d missed the entire ending when a guy stood up in front of the screen and
practised what looked like Tai-Chi.
The covers of the DVDs, however, looked like the real thing. I wouldn’t have been
able to tell the difference from a new overnighter at the Video Saloon and one of these.
Someone had put a lot of effort into them.
I took the drag racing DVD and walked back up the stairs. I didn’t want to be seen
down here.
....
The customer had left when I returned to the counter. Weird, I thought, I’d only
been gone a few minutes.
‘What took you so long?’ said Topps. ‘I’m running out of movies to
recommend…’ I reached out and grabbed his arm in an effort to shut him up. ‘Topps,
you’ll never guess what I’ve just found.’
‘A signed poster of Megan Fox?’
‘No! Just take a look at this.’
I held the pirated DVD cover up to his face.
I let Topps take a good look at it, which he did with a slight look of bewilderment,
as if he knew he should be surprised or shocked, but couldn’t figure out why. ‘Yeah, it’s
a rev-head movie, like Fast & Furious. So what?’ he said.
‘Take a look at the disc and cover itself, Topps. Doesn’t it look suspicious? Like,
it’s not really original. There is a mega load of the stuff down in the basement too.’
It was only then I noticed Overalls-Man staring at me from the small snack bar on
my right. I hadn’t seen him when I bounded up from the basement and I thought he must
have left. Instead he had grabbed a DVD and a Diet Coke from the fridge and was now
staring at me with more than just casual bemusement.
‘Sorry, I couldn’t find the cut-out,’ I told him shakily. ‘You’ll have to come back
when Colin is here.’ He shrugged his shoulders and paid for the movie and Diet Coke.
‘You could have told me he was still here,’ I hissed at Topps as the guy walked out. ‘He
probably heard everything.’
‘Where did you think he’d gone?’ said Topps. ‘He was hardly going to run out of
the store. Anyway, I don’t know what you’re talking about, so I’m sure he doesn’t
either.’
‘I’m talking about pirated DVDs,’ I said. ‘Topps, I think Vince may be involved in
it big time, cause right below our feet in the basement is a big pile of illegal DVDs. All
the latest movies as well as covers, blank discs and loads of envelopes. It’s like a small
business down there.’ I gave Topps the drag racing DVD as proof. ‘And there’s games
too.’
‘Wow,’ said Topps, examining the cover and then the disc inside. ‘Nice cover, pity
about the disc. They could have done better than this. Obviously used a simple design
program and printer to apply the disc title.’ He put the disc back in the cover. ‘Do you
think Vince is selling the copies? Or perhaps he’s renting them out to customers?’
‘I don’t know, but there’s a lot of movies down there. Man, Vince must be stupid.
If the police find out they’ll shut the Video Saloon down for sure. Then I’ll have to work
at The Chicken Shack for six dollars an hour.’ I pulled at my blonde split ends. ‘Do you
think we should tell?’
Before Topps could answer Vince Gurrieri, of all people, walked into the store.
Topps made himself scarce and investigated the latest release section. Not a good look to
be talking to friends when the boss walks in and it wasn’t the first time he’d caught
Topps and I gossiping.
Vince looked stressed out. He had very little hair
wrong disc was inside. It was a plain TDK disc with the words: “NIGHT FALLS:
MASTER COPY” scribbled in jerky, green marker pen.
‘Crass, look at this.’ I showed him the disc. ‘It’s a copy. The original disc is
missing. I reckon Robert has burnt the DVD and returned the copy by mistake.’
‘Jeez, he’s an idiot.’
‘You reckon he’s been burning all the movies?’
Crass shrugged, picked up the disc and twirled it around his finger. ‘I’ll give him a
call and ask him to return the original. God, what a total friggin’ loser.’
‘I bet he copies all those horror movies so he can watch them a hundred times
each,’ I said. ‘He probably memorises the lines.’
Crass took the disc and put it in the top pocket of his shirt. ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be the
worst if you were trapped in some old house with Robert?’
The thought made my skin crawl. ‘I’d totally freak.’
I placed the empty Night Falls cover to one side and gathered up the rest of the
returned videos and DVDs. There weren’t as many as there used to be on a Saturday
morning. The new Blockbuster store just out of town was slowly taking all our business
since it opened last Christmas. Nobody wants to go to a crummy old movie store when
you have a brand new Blockbuster. The Video Saloon had been opened in town for
fifteen years or more, but I wondered how much longer it would last. The December
summer holidays were coming up and school finished soon. I hoped I still had my part-
time job by then. At least the weekends continued to be busy – mainly because of the
half-price overnight offers we had. We were pretty busy Saturday afternoons and
evenings, which was good. Otherwise I’d have been outta here.
I returned the DVD discs to the shelf in the back of the store. In Blockbuster all the
DVDs were kept in their covers on the shelf. Not at the Video Saloon. We didn’t have any security gates so we had to walk out to the back office and get every disc or video
game off the shelf. It took ages.
Crass walked out with me to pick up his large green gym bag from the office. Every
Saturday afternoon he spent his lunch hour or two at the local gym. I didn’t mind. It was
peaceful without him, even when he got back so late I didn’t get a proper lunch. At least I
didn’t have to put up with him playing his hip-hop music over the stereo system and I
could even watch the odd romantic comedy when the store was really slow.
‘Catch you later, dude. Hey, maybe Robert will come back to keep you company,’
laughed Crass as he walked out of the store.
I cleaned some shelves and stood watching a preview disc of a kid’s film about
superheroes training robots to fight in a gladiator’s ring. I couldn’t really make much
sense out of it. Topps arrived soon after. He often dropped in on a Saturday afternoon
when he knew the coast was clear. With Crass gone we could talk in peace.
Before Topps could even give me a wave a customer walked in wearing plaster-
splattered overalls and smelling of sawdust. I put on my best friendly, welcoming smile.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Yeah, hi. Colin, the young guy who works here, said he a package for me. I’m a
bit early, I think, to pick it up…’
I looked at him blankly. Crass (Colin Sass was his real name, though nobody called
him that) said nothing to me at all about having a package waiting for this guy.
‘Don’t worry, I can come back,’ he said when he realised I didn’t know what he
was talking about. ‘While I’m here, though,’ he added, ‘my son reserved the cardboard
cut-out of Jim Carrey you had in the window a while back. Can I collect it? I have my
ute, so I’ll grab it now. It’ll be easier to carry.’
‘Did Colin say where he put it?’ I couldn’t remember seeing a Jim Carrey cut-out
anywhere.
‘Dunno. Maybe in the back somewhere?’
Jim wasn’t out the back. Perhaps down in the basement? That’s where most of the
cut-outs were kept. I’d been working in The Video Saloon for three months and had only been down to the basement once. Steps at the back of the office lead down to it. The
basement was full of old and broken video covers, shelving, tables, posters and broken
recorders. It was dark, dusty and cold. No way would I have volunteered to go down
there on a Saturday night by myself.
I looked for Jim, making it extra quick and snappy. It was scary down there. I
glanced under the stairs, behind some shelving and tossed a few movie posters around.
You’d think with a rubber face like his, Jim would be easy to spot. But he didn’t want to
be found. ‘C’mon Jim, it’s your pal Stacey. Where are you?’ I whispered.
I made it to the far end of the basement. Nothing. Crass could have put it anywhere.
Towards the corner of the basement sat a forlorn old shelf, empty apart from a
couple of dusty video covers. I moved it out the way, trying to avoid the dust heaped on
the top shelf, peaked over it, and gasped.
3
..........................
Behind the broken shelf was a Laminex table. On the table were five large stacks of
DVDs. There must have been a hundred discs – perhaps more. Next to the DVDs
lay a pile of glossy colour-copied covers of movies, most of which had not even been
released on DVD yet. Some, including one with Tom Hanks and another with Charlize
Theron, weren’t even in the cinemas in Australia as far as I knew! A list of labels with
addresses lay on top of postal envelopes on the ground. Unopened plastic boxes of blank
DVD discs were stored neatly under the table.
On the other side of the table lay a handful of console game discs next to a pile of
clear plastic covers and photocopied covers. I recognised one as a favourite of Topps’.
It looked like a real sneaky little operation. The DVDs and console games were
obviously copies. I picked up one of the discs, a film about drag racing in the streets of
Los Angeles. It was definitely pirated. Whose were they? My boss Vince was the only
one who bothered with anything down here. Crass just threw down empty boxes and the
odd poster. And what was with the envelopes and labels?
Kids were always swapping copies of DVDs, music and games at school, but they
didn’t look like these. They were always downloaded off the Internet or in photocopied
covers, bought in Fiji or Bali by older brothers and sisters on holiday. I once saw a
Spiderman movie on a pirated disc and had to put up with a lady suffering a sneezing fit
and the guy holding the camera moving it down to his lap when he reached for popcorn.
Then I’d missed the entire ending when a guy stood up in front of the screen and
practised what looked like Tai-Chi.
The covers of the DVDs, however, looked like the real thing. I wouldn’t have been
able to tell the difference from a new overnighter at the Video Saloon and one of these.
Someone had put a lot of effort into them.
I took the drag racing DVD and walked back up the stairs. I didn’t want to be seen
down here.
....
The customer had left when I returned to the counter. Weird, I thought, I’d only
been gone a few minutes.
‘What took you so long?’ said Topps. ‘I’m running out of movies to
recommend…’ I reached out and grabbed his arm in an effort to shut him up. ‘Topps,
you’ll never guess what I’ve just found.’
‘A signed poster of Megan Fox?’
‘No! Just take a look at this.’
I held the pirated DVD cover up to his face.
I let Topps take a good look at it, which he did with a slight look of bewilderment,
as if he knew he should be surprised or shocked, but couldn’t figure out why. ‘Yeah, it’s
a rev-head movie, like Fast & Furious. So what?’ he said.
‘Take a look at the disc and cover itself, Topps. Doesn’t it look suspicious? Like,
it’s not really original. There is a mega load of the stuff down in the basement too.’
It was only then I noticed Overalls-Man staring at me from the small snack bar on
my right. I hadn’t seen him when I bounded up from the basement and I thought he must
have left. Instead he had grabbed a DVD and a Diet Coke from the fridge and was now
staring at me with more than just casual bemusement.
‘Sorry, I couldn’t find the cut-out,’ I told him shakily. ‘You’ll have to come back
when Colin is here.’ He shrugged his shoulders and paid for the movie and Diet Coke.
‘You could have told me he was still here,’ I hissed at Topps as the guy walked out. ‘He
probably heard everything.’
‘Where did you think he’d gone?’ said Topps. ‘He was hardly going to run out of
the store. Anyway, I don’t know what you’re talking about, so I’m sure he doesn’t
either.’
‘I’m talking about pirated DVDs,’ I said. ‘Topps, I think Vince may be involved in
it big time, cause right below our feet in the basement is a big pile of illegal DVDs. All
the latest movies as well as covers, blank discs and loads of envelopes. It’s like a small
business down there.’ I gave Topps the drag racing DVD as proof. ‘And there’s games
too.’
‘Wow,’ said Topps, examining the cover and then the disc inside. ‘Nice cover, pity
about the disc. They could have done better than this. Obviously used a simple design
program and printer to apply the disc title.’ He put the disc back in the cover. ‘Do you
think Vince is selling the copies? Or perhaps he’s renting them out to customers?’
‘I don’t know, but there’s a lot of movies down there. Man, Vince must be stupid.
If the police find out they’ll shut the Video Saloon down for sure. Then I’ll have to work
at The Chicken Shack for six dollars an hour.’ I pulled at my blonde split ends. ‘Do you
think we should tell?’
Before Topps could answer Vince Gurrieri, of all people, walked into the store.
Topps made himself scarce and investigated the latest release section. Not a good look to
be talking to friends when the boss walks in and it wasn’t the first time he’d caught
Topps and I gossiping.
Vince looked stressed out. He had very little hair
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