A Night at the Movies

Back in college, I thought of myself as a “cinephile”. If you’re not familiar with that term, it basically means I thought I was better than everybody else because I didn’t watch mainstream movies. The walls of my room were plastered with posters for so-called “highbrow” films like Pulp Fiction, Rashomon, and The Godfather. I bought Criterion Collection DVDs. Whatever the conversation was at hand, no matter how off-topic it was, I tried to steer the focus towards films…or rather, my opinions on them.

Back then I at least had enough sense to know that I couldn’t make a career out of watching movies, but I still tried to minor in Film Studies anyway. Thank god I went with Accounting for my major. I wrote dozens of essays on the French New Wave. Threw around terms like “mise-en-se” and “diegesis” daily in class. Considered Tarintino and Kurosawa my idols. Got angry when my fellow classmates looked at their phones during the screenings and didn’t pay attention to the art that was going on in front of them.

Looking back on it now, I cringe. Hard. It took me an embarrassingly long time, almost halfway through my junior year to realize just how pretentious and sad the whole thing was. Did I honestly think that just because I watched classic cinema every weekend that I was better than everyone else? Was I actually paying twenty-five thousand dollars a year to sound like a lame wannabe critic? It was too late to change my minor by the time I realized it. I was more than halfway completing it and stopping now would make all the money I had thrown at the classes pointless. I continued, but begrudgingly.

The “friends” I made during this time period became so not because we especially liked each other, more that we liked the same kinds of movies. We’d all go together as group over to one of our dorms’ lounges and watch anything “auteur”, from Chunking Express to Vertigo to Dr. Strangelove. There was no talking allowed during the actual screening, just after the movie was over and the questions had been asked. We’d discuss the film for hours, although these were less “discussions” and more of “echo chambers where we could throw around terms without rhyme or reason and feel important for doing so”. I don’t even remember most of these guys’ names, mainly because they didn’t seem to have any personality outside a list of their favorite films.

The only one that I remained friends with after my epiphany struck was a guy named Travis. He happened to be minoring in the field as well and sat next to me in class. Travis certainly still had a small streak of pretention in him –he’d never admit to thinking a certain popular film was good even if he thought so – but he cringed along with me when our peers tried desperately to be the next Ebert by pointing out microscopic details even the professor didn’t know or care about. He was also not afraid to admit to liking so-called “mainstream” fare like Happy Gilmore and Clue. By and large, Travis was the only person I would hang around with outside of class. Consequently, it was him I was partnered up with for that mid-semester project junior year.

I don’t remember exactly which class this was for – honestly, most of them were so similar that they all blend together – but I do remember the teacher, a thin balding man named Dr. Andersson. His voice rang out over the room as we sat down.

“Now, class, as I’m sure all of you know, we’re approaching Halloween, which means we’re nearing the halfway point.”

Travis leaned over and snickered, “I could have told you that.”

“In order to prepare you for your final in December, I would like to offer an optional assignment for those students that may be struggling. Our university lies outside one of the richest cities in America for art and culture. As can be expected, the underground film scene is a booming business. Taking into consideration the unit we just completed, I felt it wise to move this optional assignment outside the classroom. If you attend a screening of an independent film before Thanksgiving, show me your ticket stub, write a two-page essay summarizing and analyzing whatever it is you saw, and I will add twenty-five points to your final exam.”

Half the class answered with cheers, the other half with groans. Travis was part of the latter category.

“Man, I knew skipping half that week was a bad idea. Now I’ll have to do this just to make up those lost points.”

I thought back to the time the previous month I had missed a few days because of a fever. “Hey, if you want to find a movie, I’ll go with you to see it. I need those points just as much as you do.”

Travis grinned. “Hey, that’d be great. It won’t be too hard to find one. Maybe we can do it this weekend just to get it out of the way.”

After an hour of Dr. Andersson talking about nothing, Travis and I left together to go get lunch. While we ate bowls of tomato soup, he scrolled through local event calendars on his phone looking for one that caught his eye.

Nearly an hour ticked by. We had already shot down a few for being too long, too boring, too weird, or a combination of the three. I was about to suggest that maybe we pick another weekend when Travis spoke excitedly.

“Hey, this one sounds neat!” He cried, turning the phone around so I could see the screen.

He had apparently found the poster on a little-used local calendar site that looked like it hadn’t been updated since 1996. A single image of the poster stood against a bright blue background with ClipArt lightning bolt animations flashing alongside.

Above a picture of a man putting his fingers to is temples with closed eyes were these words:

“OUT OF MY MIND”

THE EXITING, UNIQUE NEW FILM OF DIRECTOR AVERY ATKINSON

COME SEE DRAMA, HOPE, LOVE, AND LOSS UNFOLD IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES WITH A UNIQUE VIEWING EXPERIENCE

ONE NIGHT ONLY! FRIDAY, NOVEMEMBER 6

Below the picture of the man was the address to the theater.

I frowned. “I don’t know, man. That theater’s not in a very good part of town. Plus, there’s no information on what it’s about or who the actors are or anything.”

Travis looked back at the poster. “Do you really care?”

I thought about it for a moment. I guessed I didn’t.

“Look, we wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t have to, right?” He continued. “I figure let’s just pick the one that sounds the least painful and get it over with. Hell, if even if it turns out to be shit, we can just leave and make something up.”

I had to admit he had a point. I had come to find that not even the most die-hard film fans went to local productions on a regular basis.

“Fine. But you’re buying the sodas.”

He grinned. “Fair’s fair.”

That Friday, we made our way there the theater was a small venue, almost exceedingly so. It was wedged between a twenty-four-hour pizza place and a used bookstore. The marquee labeled it the “PARADISO”. The building looked old and in need of some construction.

As we stepped up, a tired-looking older woman with graying brown hair looked at us. “Here to see ‘Out of My Mind’, huh? You two are only the fifth and sixth people here.”

Travis grimaced. “Man, that doesn’t mean the movie’s terrible, is it?”

The seller shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not my job to decide what’s shown and what’s not. I just run the place and make sure it doesn’t cave in on itself.”

We bought our tickets – at $4 apiece it seemed almost suspiciously cheap – and made our way inside. The small lobby had a single counter with an ancient popcorn machine and a bar fridge full of bottled soda. There were a few benches, some dead-looking plants, two curtains that lead into the only screen, and that was it. Four other people, a couple and single man and woman, milled about.

Ten minutes passed. Travis and I chatted about while the other seemed to just stare off into space. The door that lead to the ticket booth opened and the seller stepped out, heading behind the counter. “Could I interest anyone in some concessions?” she asked aloud.

We didn’t trust the popcorn, so Travis and I bought Pepsis. While she rang us up, Travis asked her a question.

“Hey, do you anything about this movie? Like what it’s about or how long it is?”

The seller shrugged again. “It’s like I said earlier, I don’t decide what gets shown here. I haven’t seen this flick but I was here when the director came by to show the owners. Weird dude. He took ‘em up to the projection booth to show them his “masterpiece”, as he called it, and that was that. I had to leave early but when I came back the next morning there was a note saying that I should let him screen it.”

I sipped my soda. “So that’s it? I would have thought it was more difficult to get your movies shown.”

The seller laughed. “Me too, buddy. Me too.”

With that, we walked through the curtains followed after by our four fellow moviegoers. The seats were small and cramped, but not uncomfortable. We took a pair in the middle. The screen was pulled down over the stage, a large white rectangle.

Travis turned to me. He lifted his bottle. “Here’s to hoping this isn’t a waste of a Friday night.” We clinked them.

Suddenly, without warning, a man walked out from the wings. He was dressed in a large jacket, a wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses, and a scarf pulled nearly up to his nose. His wingtip shoes clacked against the stage as he made his way towards the chair.

“Someone needs a mirror.” I heard Travis whisper.

The man stopped and clasped his hands together, surveying his audience of six. After brief pause, he spoke, outstretching his arms.

“Welcome, my friends, to a viewing experience like none you have ever seen before. I am Avery Atkinson, your boatman on this journey of the mind.”

His voice was muffled slightly by the scarf, but his British accent was still audible. It was the tone of a man who wasn’t used to being ignored.

“Some films scare you. Some make you sad. Some make you laugh. But not the one you are about to see. No, this film will do more than make you feel more than that. In fact, I’m certain it will be the most emotionally challenging piece of cinema you will ever see in your life.”

I rolled my eyes. Some people could be so full of themselves.

He brought his hands down and clasped them again. “I understand why some of you might be…skeptical. After all, I don’t know you and you don’t know me. I’m just as uncertain as to how you’re going to react to my film as you are to my creative process. Let’s just say that after your viewing experience is over, we will understand each other better. Much better.”

The overhead light shown down on his sunglasses, giving them an almost blinding sheen. “This film is nearly ten years in the making. It’s an ever-changing process of editing and rearranging. Using your input tonight I hope to get one step closer to making the perfect movie. Then, and only then, can I be content. I thank you for your presence here tonight, and please, enjoy the show.”

He walked off the stage and up the aisle, disappearing behind the curtain that lead into the lobby. The lights began to dim, but nothing lit up the screen.

Travis whispered from beside me, “This is gonna be shitshow.”

From somewhere in the lobby I heard a sharp gasp followed by glass shattering, then quiet footsteps as someone ascended the stairs to the projection booth. I wondered if the woman at the concession stand had dropped a soda bottle.

A few more seconds passed. I was just beginning to wonder if they hadn’t even started the projector yet when a blinding shock of light suddenly appeared on the screen. From the booth above came the familiar static-filled clicking of an antique projector turning its rolls of film.

What first appeared on the screen wasn’t a title card, or credits, or even a definable scene of any kind. There wasn’t any music, either. Instead it was just a slowly spinning black-and-white spiral, twirling lazily in the center of the frame. At first, I was nonplussed, unsure of what to make of it, before I looked closer. The design was very intricate. In between each swirl was some kind of geometric design, endless in its loops and curves and fascinating in its construction. I continued to stare at it even as it shrunk in size and moved to the lower-righthand corner of the screen.

Then, as if a switch had been flipped, an image appeared. I wasn’t prepared for it and almost jumped as the white space was suddenly filled.

It looked like a surreal, off-kilter approximation of a sitting room. The ceiling had several large holes in it. A crooked fireplace with crumbling bricks and broken tiles was half-in and half-out of the wall. Couches and benches lined the space, some normal sofas, some weird amalgamations of different designs from different periods, and some covered in bits of broken glass and nails. There was a door on the far end of the room, closed, covered in a random assortment of numbers written in a shaky hand.

The floor was ripped up in some places and splintered in others. Bits of fabric from what I assumed to be the remnants of a rug clung to some of the pointed ends. There was a cat gym in front of one of the couches.

My eyes would sometimes flit from the surreal room in front of me to that spinning spiral in the corner. It was hypnotic, almost, how often I was drawn to it. Even as a knock came at the numbered door, the first sound that the movie had produced, it took me a moment to draw my eyes away and up towards the center of the shot.

“I’ll get it.” A thick, slurred voice echoed from somewhere offscreen. Appearing from the right came a man dressed in a suit. He ambled his way across the floor towards the numbered door. He walked with a limp, dragging his right foot like it was dead weight. The foot was missing a shoe, and it scraped and scratched against the torn-up floorboards, occasionally drawing blood. But he didn’t seem to notice.

He grasped his hand on the knob and put all his weight against it, nearly pushing too hard and falling to the floor, before managing to pull it open all the way.

The woman that stood in the doorway was a strange sight. She appeared to be dressed as a 50’s housewife, with a long white dress dotted with stylized cherries. Her blonde hair flowed down to her shoulders in a soft wave and her lips and nails were painted bright red.

If it wasn’t for the thread that wove through the upper corners of her mouth and through the piercings in her ears, giving her a large smile, she would have looked rather pretty.

Despite this obvious impediment a voice issued from the dark space between her pearly-white teeth. Her lips did not move. If it wasn’t for the inflections and breaths, I would have thought it was a recording playing somewhere offscreen.

“Hello. It is so nice to see you.” She droned in a monotone, blandly cheerful inflection. “It has been a while? I am doing just fine. Thank you for asking.”

The man in the suit asked no such question. Instead, he said, “Do come in. It is dark outside. Darkness hides many things.” The woman shuffled forward, her red heels clacking against the wood.

The man finally turned to face the camera. His expression didn’t match the normal tone of his voice. It was a mask of sorrow and pain, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes coupled with a hideous grimace. Every step he took looked like it caused him great discomfort. Despite his obvious distress, he kept his hands calmly at his sides and made his way towards the corner couch. If it wasn’t for his dragging foot, his movements were calm and normal. He sat down on the right side, barely missing a piece of broken glass jutting out from between the cushions.

The woman, instead of sitting on one of the available accommodations, picked a spot in the middle of the room and began to lower herself down. I thought she was going to fall to the floor but instead she stopped, leaning back and crossing her legs, as if in an invisible chair.

The man spoke first. “How long has it been?” He asked. I noticed with some revulsion that the movement of his lips did not match what he was saying. Though he said, “I haven’t seen them in years.”, he was very obviously trying to say something else. It looked like someone was dubbing his voice.

The woman’s mouth continued to not move. “I miss them sometimes. But after a while, you just have to get used to it. After all, it does not do to dwell on things you cannot change.”

The man leaned to the side, slicing his arm against the jagged glass. Trickles of blood ran from between the rip in the sleeve. “How is – “ he said, but in the middle of his sentence, a low, menacing growl interrupted whatever word he was saying, like there was a large dog just behind the camera. “ – she was just ten the last time I saw her, in – “ growl. “ – that’s where our house was. It was her idea to come to this place downtown, right across the street from –“ growl. “ – she had to go because I lost track of time and she needed to see her mother. I stayed for the rest, and…and…”

The woman reached her hand out, as if to pat the man’s shoulder, but her arm lengthened, spanning across the room and growing grotesquely thin, to lay a hand on his knee. “It is not your fault. Something similar happened to me. A night on the town. Just me and –“ but instead of a dog’s growl to mask the word, it was the sound of shattering glass. “ – It was supposed to be romantic. We had dinner at – “ crash. “ and then to the place. We saw someone we knew there, her name was – “ crash. crash. “ – he went to go get more drinks and that is the last thing I remember…”

The woman began say something else, but suddenly a sharp, metallic whine filled the room. I looked over from the spiral I had been staring at for the past few minutes to see the end of a drill coming from the wall, sticking out and spinning like someone on the other side was hanging something. The drill stopped and retracted.

“No matter…the cat is here.” The man said.

I watched, dumbstruck, as a black, vicious fluid began dripping from the newly-drilled hole. It ran down the wall in small rivers, staining the plaster in its wake. It undulated and bubbled as it slid, almost alive in its movements. Muted sounds could be heard coming from the mass, but I couldn’t quite make them out.

The woman turned and looked as the fluid ran over the bench covered in nails, picking up a few and absorbing them in its wake. “Oh, how nice.” It dripped from the stool and onto the floor before coming to a halt in the center of the floor.

All at once, it began piling on itself, growing larger and taking on a definitive shape. I knew what it was before it fully formed. Seconds later, it stood.

It looked like someone had given a three-year-old that had never seen a cat before a mound of black goop and asked them to make a sculpture. Its head was crooked and its body misshapen, the front legs shorter than the back ones. It blinked one green eye and one white one before making a sound I can only describe as a cross between a cat yowling and a scream.

That was the breaking point for me. I leaned over to Travis and took a hold of his sleeve. “Listen, man, let’s just go. This shit is crazy. I don’t know what this Atkinson guy is on but I don’t want to see any more of it.”

When he didn’t answer, I looked up. He was staring transfixed at the screen, his eyes glassy and mouth slightly open. The Pepsi bottle he was holding had tipped, sending most of it spilling to the floor. He answered in a distant voice, “Why? It’s…groundbreaking. It’s unique. It’s…amazing.”

I shook my head. “Well, keep watching if you want. I’m just gonna go hang out in the lobby until it’s over.” I couldn’t leave Travis there, he was my ride. When he didn’t answer, I groaned and stood up, walking down the aisle and through the curtains while the woman laughed hollowly on the screen.

To my confusion, the lobby appeared to be empty. The seller was nowhere to be seen. Maybe she went into the back office, I thought. I looked at the carpet in front of the popcorn machine and saw a broken soda bottle lying there. Why would she just leave the mess lie that?

The clicking of the old-school projector seemed louder than it did in the theater. I looked at the door behind the counter and saw that it was ajar. Dim light came from inside, illuminating the wooden staircase that lead up to the projection booth.

To this day I don’t know why I did it. I looked to make sure no one was coming before walking behind the counter and pulling it open. The clicking increased in volume as I stared up at the dark booth. Someone was standing in front of the glass, their back to me.

Where was the projector? I climbed the stairs slowly, stepping lightly so not to make them creak. As the room came into view and I reached the top, I saw that the person was Atkinson. His large hat, scarf, and sunglasses lay in a heap on the floor. I stepped silently to the side and stared at him.

Whatever it was he had been hiding under the head coverings didn’t look like remotely human. The neck that rose from the body was an ashen-gray color, thin like a bird’s. The head was slightly square-shaped, protruding in the back and drooping down slightly in the front. The eyes had no pupils or irises of any kind, just endless white taking up half the “face” like he was some kind of insect. Beams of light shot out of them, growing in size until they took up the screen in the theater and projected the film. The mouth was small and pinched, almost an afterthought placed at the very bottom of the visage. The tongue that came out it was black and studded with square designs, white rectangles on the side. It was rotating, rolling out of the mouth and looping back to enter at the bottom of the chin, making some kind of circuit. The clicking noise was emitting from deep in the throat.

I didn’t even have to time to react to what I had just seen before a sudden crash erupted from the theater. I turned to look, watching as onscreen a hole appeared in the room’s ceiling. Someone fell through it, landing roughly on the floor and impaling a shard of wood through their leg.

It was the ticket seller. She screamed in pain as she reached down to touch the wound, which was spreading blood quickly across the floor. The woman looked down at her. “We are so happy to see you. It has been a very long time since we have gotten anyone new.”

The seller screamed and sat up, releasing the shard of wood from her leg. The man was getting up from the couch and making his way towards her. Although his face continued to look pained and he appeared to be screaming now, his voice was calm as ever. “Right this way. We will get you ready.”

The spiral in the corner suddenly went into overdrive, spinning so fast it became a gray blur. The seller’s mouth was moving as if she was attempting to say something, but no sound came out. The woman and the man each grabbed one of her arms and began dragging her across the room. The half-formed cat-thing followed, making those strange noises it had made earlier.

That broke me. I turned around and bolted down the stairs, not caring how much noise I made. The clicking continued behind me. I ran through the lobby and in between the curtains, down the aisle and to the spot where Travis sat. The others in the audience had the same glazed, wonder-filled expressions on their faces as he did.

I shook his shoulder. “Travis? Travis, we need to get out of here. The dude up in the booth, he’s…he’s not right. We need to go.”

Travis mumbled something that I couldn’t hear. I looked up to see the spiral had filled the shot again. It grew larger, taking up the rest of the screen, then reaching up to the edges, then growing past the edges to the walls of the theater. Noises suddenly began to blare from the speakers, two hollow sets of laughter and someone screaming. The spiral continued to grow, pulsing forward like a shockwave.

I grabbed Travis’ arm and tried to pull him out his seat, but he was dead weight. He wouldn’t move a muscle. I looked at his face. His eyes had rolled back in his head. As the spiral grew closer, I saw his skin begin to bubble, like old celluloid burning. The others in the audience were dissolving, melting and dripping to floor. The gray frenzy was only a few feet away. I gave one last tug on his sleeve before falling to aisle. I looked up at the booth to see the thing that called itself Atkinson staring directly at me with now-dark eyes, the clicking noise still emitting from his throat.

I jumped to my feet and fled through the curtains, throwing one last look back at Travis as his form lost shape, sizzling and falling to floor. Just as I ran through the front doors, I heard footsteps walking down the stairs of the booth.

I spent most of the next few days locked up in my dorm room, not even leaving for class. There was lot of confusion and sadness, not only caused by Travis’…disappearance but also the sheer insanity of the whole affair. I thought for sure that the police would come, asking me for the whereabouts of my missing friend. But no one ever knocked on my door and I never heard anything about what had happened in the theater.

When I was finally able to drag myself to class later in the week, I found that Travis’ name was missing from the sign-in sheet and his chair had been removed from our table. I asked Dr. Andersson if there had been some kind of mistake.

He frowned. “There’s no one in this class by that name.”

That pretty much drove me to the breaking point. I checked the contact list in my phone. Travis’ name and number were missing. I Googled him, looking for his social media. Nothing. It was as if he had dropped off the face of the Earth…and in a way, I guess he had.

I never finished my minor in film studies. I couldn’t look at a projection screen without hearing that clicking noise playing in the back of my mind. I spent most of senior year in a daze, finishing my labs and term papers, before walking with a 3.4 GPA.

For years, I tried to forget that night. I avoided movie theaters like the plague. Even the thought of sitting down to watch one at home made me sick. I was usually okay with TV, but not anything more substantial than your average sitcom.

In a way, I never really left that night at the theater. My nights are filled with glowing squares in the dark and that clicking noise from somewhere off in the shadows, accompanied by laughter. Jobs are hard to keep down and relationships are hard to maintain.

Lately, it’s been different. Sometimes I’ll find myself walking down the city streets late at night, my eyes wandering from dark window to dark window, letting the headlights from passing cars wash over me. I go wherever my feet take me, block after block, mile after mile. I usually don’t stop until I see the sunrise cresting the tops of the buildings. I don’t know where I’m going or who I’m looking for.

Maybe one day I’ll turn down a corner and see a dilatated set of buildings, crumbling brick and rotting wood and broken glass. But in the center of all that decay will be a bright red marquee, lights flashing, announcing a new film. And the doors will be open and the lobby is full of the sound of popping corn and disembodied laughter coming from behind those two curtains. And a clicking noise will be emanating from that door behind the counter. And I’ll think. And I’ll wonder.

And I’ll decide it’s time to go to the movies.

Submitted August 13, 2019 at 04:21PM by Discord_and_Dine https://ift.tt/2ORNdlT