What the Hell Did I Just Read (John Dies at the End, #3)

by David Wong

It rained like we were a splatter of bird shit God was trying to hose off his deck.

The “man” with the Toblerone gun had screamed, “WHERE IS IT?” in a voice like a spider that had learned to imitate human speech via some online courses it had taken.

John’s house is my favorite place in the world, but there’s nothing else in there you couldn’t replace with a trip to Target or a garage sale held at a meth dealer’s house.

inflicting hot brown splash damage on everyone in the room.

Contrary to what TV and movies have told you, it’s nearly impossible to have a hallucination that you can both see and hear—the mentally ill either just hear voices, or just see things, due to how the brain is wired. If you can both hear and see it, you’re either just having a dream, or you have an actual demon in your home.

So why should the monster be the one that gives you nightmares, aside from the miniscule chance that one day your grandad’s chewed-up eyeballs might get shit onto your windshield on your way to work?

I said, “You know how the earth is mostly run by assholes, who got their jobs either by accident, or by being the kids of other assholes, or via some other backroom assholery? Well, it turns out if you keep going up the ladder, past humans and into spirits and demigods and such, it’s just more assholes for several more levels.”

“Past experience has only taught us not to rely on past experience.”

I walked among the shelves in the bookstore’s basement, smelling that old-book scent that would probably mean nothing to future generations. Amy is all about that smell, of old paper and ink and time, pages touched by long-dead hands. I think she just likes that sense of being among ancient knowledge, feeling like the past is something sacred rather than the actions of a bunch of bucket shitters who were even more stupid and superstitious than we are now.

I won’t win, you’re a trained soldier and I’m a sack of guts designed to convert beer into piss and depression. But I’ll say this—nobody who’s ever fought me has ever come back for seconds.”

“Sometimes the best ‘help’ you can offer is to get your own self to safety and not add to the pile of victims somebody else has got to clean up. Problem isn’t that there’s not enough heroes in the world, problem is too many dumb people assume they are one.”