I Hate a Nobody Like You

The scenic route, dead of night — one lit thing for miles: POLY'S COFFEE, one location, a cave with a boulder for a door. The crew stumbles in road-loopy, dying for caffeine. Filling the whole counter: POLY. Apron, name tag, and one enormous eye dead center, the far side of his face smooth as a rock. He does not get customers out here. He does not intend to let these ones leave.

EURY (reading the chalkboard, going pale) — ...Oz. A small is nineteen dollars. And it's called a Venti.

ACHILLES — There's bones in the tip jar.

The boulder-door rolls CH-CHUNK shut behind them. POLY beams — the grin of a man who's just seated dinner.

POLY — Sit! Stay! Nobody leaves a Poly pour half-drunk — house rule. (the eye swivels, hunting the room) Now. Which of you's the ringleader.

OZZY catches Eury's arm — hold — and steps to the counter himself instead: meek as a mouse, hands open, playing the smallest man in the room. The whole Scene-1 trick, folded down into one soft word he's about to hand the giant like a gift.

Button. Taillights gone, the lot empty. POLY hauls himself up off the floor, the crushed cup — NOBODY — still fused in his fist, the eye a ruin, and bellows one more promise down the dark road: "I'll find you, Nobody. I swear on my brew." And here's what the shrugging street doesn't know — Poly's daddy runs the precinct. The Chief. So the one giant nobody would lift a finger for tonight is about to phone the one man who has to — and the nickname Ozzy's worn since the first whistle just quit being a joke. It's a curse now, and it's got a badge coming after it. Blackout.