“Excellent answer.” Stormy reached for the tape, picked it up. The title on the label was Butchery.

“Good title,” Stormy observed.

“Good film. I know I’m just an intern, but I think it has potential. I watched it last night, and I was so blown away that I had to let you see it. I lied and told the guy who gave it to me that I hadn’t watched it yet and asked if I could hold on to it for another day so I could get it to you.”

Stormy looked over at Russ. He’d never really talked to the boy before, and he was impressed by what appeared to be his genuine love and enthusiasm for movies. Most of his other interns had been closer in temperament to his old L.A. cronies, film snobs who would probably end up in businesses entirely unrelated to the industry but who still looked down on the direct-to-video market and considered their time here to be a form of slumming. Russ seemed to be more like himself, and he thought that maybe he’d been a little too quick to rush to judgment.

“You do have a film of your own, though? Right?”

“Yeah,” the intern admitted.

“Something you think we’d be interested in here?”

“I think so. It’s an action flick and I made it on a shoestring budget, but the production values are pretty good, and the female lead’s a real find. I think the actors are really impressive.

“I’d like to see it sometime.”

“That’d be great! I’m in post now, but I’d love to let you look at it when I’m done. Any help or advice you could give me would be… I mean, I’d really appreciate it.”

“All right,” Stormy said, smiling. He held up the videocassette. “Thanks for dropping this off, and I’ll take a look at it today.”

Russ understood that the meeting was over, and he awkwardly excused himself and hurriedly left the office.

Butchery.

Stormy toyed with the tape in his hand. With all of the other things going on, it might be relaxing to view a little video carnage. It might take a little of the edge off what passed for reality these days. There was a lot of paperwork he had to do, some agreements he had to go over that would allow a few of his more explicit titles to be sold in Canada, but he was having a difficult time concentrating on work this morning, and he told Joan to hold all his calls, closed the door, popped the tape in his VCR, settling back in his chair to watch the movie.

The title was misleading. There was no butchery in the film. There was not even any blood. There was instead a gothic mansion and an ambiguously manipulative butler and a misunderstood young boy with a crazy grandmother and two emotionally distant parents.