Sandman Slim (Sandman Slim, #1)

by Richard Kadrey

They always had me fighting weird animals. I didn’t know for a long time that it was another Hellion insult. They made me a bestiari. It was a Roman thing—a fun way to use their dumbest, gimpiest, most cross-eyed fighters. Bestiari weren’t good enough to fight people, so they fought animals. Why waste a human gladiator on someone who had just as good a chance of cutting off his own leg as stabbing his opponent? Plus, it was fun watching bears eat retards. Still is, really.

I don’t know why I think of that, except that the only person I ever loved now fits into something about the same size as that dead hippie dealer’s shit box.