Authors: Ryan Harding
“I didn’t know I did either,” Carrie replied smartly, rolling her eyes for Renee’s benefit. Renee giggled in that shrill fashion that always made her a distant 2nd to Carrie in his private list of Hottest Movie Heaven Trim. When his attempts at mirth with them inevitably failed, her refusal to laugh became a silver lining unto itself.
He smiled bitterly at Carrie’s predictably evasive response. Weren’t they a class act? Hiding things from him, sharing their meaningful looks, whispering to each other off in the corner (which always resulted in Renee’s ear splitting histrionics, like Carrie was Eddie Murphy or something, and of course Gabriel knew they were talking about him), playing their little games. How long had they been perpetuating the charade?
All along?
“But I’ve seen your work,” he announced when Renee’s laughter blissfully ceased.
“What’s he talking about?” Carrie asked Renee.
“I don’t know . . . but I bet it’s sexual harassment, whatever it is.”
“On
Taste of Death 9
,” Gabriel explained, with a calmness that really surprised him. He felt anything but, especially with Carrie talking about him like he wasn’t there. He was already tossing around the idea of taking one of Movie Heaven’s rental VCR’s home so he could get a copy of Carrie’s death, just for ha-ha’s.
“
Taste of Death 9
?” She couldn’t have looked more disgusted if a leper had tried to solicit her for oral sex.
“Yeah,” Gabriel grinned. “You know, the one after eight, but before ten?”
Renee didn’t laugh at that, he noticed.
“How can you watch that trash?” Carrie asked, her face all knotted up into almost a natural Renee Zellweger look. “That’s really sick, Gabe.”
“At least I didn’t star in it.” He turned to check out a customer, a beady-eyed man who had selected an interesting variety of videos:
Dumb & Dumber, The Ten Commandments,
and
Gaping Anus.
Gabriel felt compelled to comment on the last choice. “That one’s four hours long.”
The customer’s lips split apart to reveal teeth stained by nicotine and coffee as he smiled. “Yeah . . . I know. ”
By the time Gabriel had collected the man’s money and warned him about his snowballing late fees (he had a feeling that the customer, Greg Bracken, probably wouldn’t be getting these back on time either . . . four hours was quite a commitment), Carrie and Renee had deployed themselves to other parts of Movie Heaven, probably just trying to put some distance between him. He saw them huddled up over in comedy, inconspicuously standing in front of ‘80’s sex comedies like
The Last American Virgin
and
The Joy of Sex.
No hee-hawing this time, though. Worried. That was good. They had every reason to be.
VI.
At the stoplight at 37th and Garren, he had to crack the window—he felt like he was suffocating.
The shotgun fatality was back, and so were eight other people he had seen meet some very colorful ends on the latest Taste of Death. There was the blonde woman with the ponytail who got her throat torn out by a rabid dog (“Man’s best friend, but not such a success with the ladies”). The guy with the crewcut who’d gone through his windshield after hitting a telephone poll (“He should have dialed 1-800-COLLECT”). Two of the promised PCP addicts who’d gone out in a blaze when surrounded by police, one screaming that he was Jesus Christ (“Somehow I don’t think he’ll get up in three days”) and the other pleading for someone to “Get them off me!” And still others.
He punched the accelerator and drove through the red light, narrowly missing one of the angel dust addicts on the crosswalk and a car making a wild left onto Garren, not letting up on the gas until he was home.
He didn’t get out of his car immediately. He sat there, his hand shaking, sweating bullets which had nothing to do with the August heat.
What in the hell was going on? He could accept that the shotgun man didn’t really die; pack a prosthetic head with blood-filled condoms and blast it, the effect would be very similar to the real deal. But what about the others? The woman with the ponytail, for instance. The camera
never
left her as the dog burrowed into her throat. There had been no chance to cut away for a special effect. He’d watched the life vanish from her eyes, and he’d seen the torn remnants of her throat and shards of neck bone when someone finally got a lariat around the dog and hauled it away (someone unceremoniously shot it in the head, again with no cutaway).
She’d died, he had no doubts about it. Same with the PCP addicts, because wherever they’d had their last rush, it hadn’t been anywhere in Bartok. If he lived anywhere else but here, he could rationalize this all as extremely realistic special effects.
Was he losing his mind? It would be the natural conclusion if he told anyone what he’d seen, and more importantly what he thought about it. His parents would have him committed to the Sunshine Elkins Institute over in Hasbrouck. There had been a guy from his high school who wound up at Elkins. A chronic masturbator. It may not have been such a problem, but any place became a good place for him to jack. The bus stop, the cafeteria, the bleachers at a pep rally, driver’s ed (once as a backseat passenger when it wasn’t turn), and the straw that broke the camel’s back, career day. A lot of parents and important visitors on hand that day . . . and he was on hand, too, right there during a presentation from a cop with a K-9 German shepherd who looked very puzzled by the whole display. An apoplectic PTA mom demanded the cop drag him off to the electric chair on the spot. The jokes about him had lasted until graduation, wondering what kind of business he could get up to with a whole graduation gown to hide the ol’ slapstick. It didn’t seem very funny to Gabriel now, though. He’d go insane if they locked him up . . . if he wasn’t already.
He thought of Carrie and smashed his hand against the dashboard. She knew what was going on . . . she was in on this. It was some kind of game. Why else would she have such a flippant attitude when he confronted her?
He didn’t get out of the car for quite some time.
VII.
Two things of interest happened the next day. Someone rented
Taste of Death 6: To the Gory End
. He wanted to open up to the guy about what he’d been seeing around town, but the girls had been right there, sharing a disapproving look when they noticed the title of the video.
Why don’t you dumb twats go lez out in the tanning room?
he wanted to say, but the idea caught his fancy and he found himself embellishing the concept in his mind periodically for the next three hours. He never entirely forgot about the customer, though, and when he showed up later in the afternoon, Gabriel felt a rush of excitement.
He knows . . . he’s seeing all the victims around town now, too. He has to see the ninth one now, with Carrie’s big scene.
Renee was on her lunch break and Carrie was back in the bathroom. He couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity. But it was nothing like that.
The customer struggled to find the adequate words. “Uh, yeah, I rented this, like … earlier today?”
“I remember,” Gabriel said. The lack of urgency (and articulation) immediately diminished his expectations. It couldn’t possibly be what he had hoped. The guy would have practically walked through plate glass and barely noticed it if he’d really
seen
.
“Right, okay . . . uh, yeah, the tape is, like, blank and stuff.”
“Blank?” Gabriel echoed.
“Yeah . . . and stuff? It’s all, like, static.”
And stuff. Yeah, I know.
He’d been switching them out for the weeks leading up to the release of part 9. They had all played just fine. Some had more tracking issues than others, but they all worked.
“Sorry about that . . . we’ll see if we can fix it. Or do you want to exchange it for something else?”
The guy looked over his shoulder, and Gabriel briefly wondered if he thought he was being watched. Maybe this was all a charade to deflect suspicion.
Satisfied by what he saw, the customer turned around and quietly asked, “Is, uh,
Gaping Anus
back in stock?”
Gabriel sighed. “The new one, the 24th? No. Not yet.”
“Twenty-three, then?” he asked hopefully.
Descending order of availability finally made it all right with volume number nineteen, if a bit begrudgingly (the 4-hour “butt banging bonanzas” didn’t start until volume twenty, so “2-1/2 hours of butt stuffing madness” would have to suffice . . . and as obsessed as the customer seemed with the concept of “stuff,” he couldn’t have been too awfully disappointed). He also put himself on the reserve list for a Lolita Ream movie after confirming Gabriel’s work schedule.
Much later, the idea of the blanked video cassette seemed ominous to Gabriel. Yeah, maybe the guy wanted
Gaping Anus
all along and just didn’t want to bring it to the counter with Carrie and Renee standing around, although why not get something a little less off-putting if you’re worried what some hot girls might think of your choice? Gabriel obviously wasn’t going to test the movie out here at work, though. He took it home, unsurprised in the least to discover it played just fine, arguably with even less tracking interference than the volumes before and after it.
The other significant thing was that he went back to the Chosen Few Pictures webpage, and found a significant change.
Taste of Death 9
had been pushed back to August 27th. This update was made today, the 21st.
“But it already came out,” Gabriel said, dumbfounded.
VIII.
It being Thursday, Gabriel, Renee, and Carrie were at Movie Heaven until 9:30 as the closing shift. Renee’s mother picked her up just as the trio exited (she had not-so-politely declined a ride with him in the beginning, and he’d never offered again).
And then there were two,
he thought.
He locked the doors to Movie Heaven, trying to hurry. He heard Carrie’s rushed footsteps, her sandals thwacking on the asphalt as she hurried to her car.
Must be my winning personality.
The lock and keys fought him, and Carrie’s car door was slamming shut even as he turned around. It enraged him, even though he knew she wouldn’t be going very far. When her car flooded, she slammed a fist across her steering wheel.
He thrust his hands in his pockets and began shuffling over to his car, singing an old Doors song, “Strange Days,” to himself. He threw a cursory glance around the lot. The other stores in the shopping center closed up at 9:00. There was just one other car in the lot besides Carrie’s, and unfortunately for her it was his.
Her hood popped up, and Carrie reluctantly slid out of her car, looking at Gabriel out of the corner of her eye. He knew what was going to happen now; what
had
to happen.
“Don’t start with me,” she warned as he closed in. “Just please tell me you know something about cars.”
“Naturally,” he said. He couldn’t so much as replenish windshield wiper fluid; that’s what his dad was for. He smiled at Carrie disarmingly, idly wondering if the patron from yesterday really planned to watch
The Ten Commandments
.
Carrie adjusted the stand to keep the hood propped, thus eclipsing the extent of Gabriel’s automotive know-how.
“Any idea what’s wrong?” he asked, trying not to laugh.
“I wouldn’t ask for your help if I did,” she answered in singsong.