Squirrel Eyes

by Scott S. Phillips

  "Great so far," Butters said, munching popcorn.

  The second man plunged a wooden stake into the vampire's chest, missing his heart but delivering an agonizing wound. Shrieking, the stricken vampire ran off-camera (in the script, he jumped out a window, transforming into a bat in mid-leap – but we made do with what we had).

  And so the credits began. Everybody dutifully applauded when my name popped up – Mia took the opportunity to grip my leg – but I knew it would all be downhill from there.

  With life in his European village becoming too hairy, our vampire moves on, ultimately settling down in an establishing shot of a small town lifted from yet another movie. Moving into a boarding house portrayed by Mort Berg's Hollywood bungalow, he meets a pair of aspiring models and the little old lady who runs the place. The movie then settles into what I like to call "the living room sequence," which is exactly what it sounds like, and it goes on for fucking ever, my haggard attempts at witty dialogue neatly trampled by the strippers Berg hired to portray the models.

  "Was this all shot in one house?" Mia asked, catching on fast.

  During one particularly dull stretch – an endless montage of the vampire wandering around at night, all shot in Berg's front and back yards – the steady wheeze of Butters's breathing seemed to assume deafening volume, crushing me into the sofa.

  There was some excitement when the aspiring models engaged in a lesbian interlude in the bathtub, but that died away fairly quickly when the shapeless, nameless horror that haunted the town reared its head, interrupting the amorous gals.

  "What are these guys supposed to be?" Taylor asked.

  "Shapeless, nameless horror," I said.

  "They look like uncooked pie crust," Mia pointed out.

  "I only wrote it," I said. "And ... not even so much that." I felt myself creating a deep nest of my own in Butters's enormous sofa.

  Finally, after the longest seventy-seven minutes ever experienced by humans, the closing credits began to roll.

  "Yay," Mia cheered, no doubt speaking for all of us.

  "I promise The Blue Man won't suck this hard," I said. "But right now I have to go kill myself."

  I started to rise, but Mia held me back with a hand on my belly.

  "It wasn't that bad," she purred reassuringly. "Besides, it wasn't your fault," she added, pretty much canceling out the part about it not being that bad.

  "Yeah," Butters chimed in. "At least you can go to the video store and say 'Look at that – I wrote that.'"

  "But why would I?"

  "Oh yeah – I wangled a couple guys from work into being in the movie," Taylor said, changing the subject only slightly, but still enough that I wanted to hug him. "I figured they could play the food raiders, then we can smear 'em with latex and re-use them as mutants."

  "You mean you guys still wanna do it after watching this abomination?" I said.

  "What else are we gonna do?" Taylor shrugged.

  "Well, I can think of plenty," Mia said. "But I wanna make The Blue Man."

  Surprisingly enough, the rest of the night was even better – particularly the part that involved seeing Mia naked.

  37

  How much should I say about this? I went down on her. At great length. And I don't even know how it happened.

  Not entirely true, of course; I have some recollection of the events surrounding the oral portion of the show. It's just that I'm not quite sure how I made the leap from frantically trying to explain why The Blue Man would be better than Terror Town to burying my face in Mia's nether regions, as if I'd been hit on the head somewhere between "Cooler monsters!" and – well, you know.

  I suspected there would at least be a smooch or two when, as we were leaving Butters's house, Mia suggested that I join her at her apartment to further discuss the plans for shooting the movie – I'm not that stupid, for Pete's sake – but I didn't expect things to get too greasy, simply because Mia was due at Jiggy's later on.

  I followed her to her place – a fourplex near UNM. The small one-bedroom was decorated in Goth-meets-Art-Girl; lots of blacks and deep reds, candles dripping over chromium vampire skulls, a couple of bizarre thrift-store paintings. It smelled great, all honey and butter, like a warm flaky pastry filled with cute Tiki waitress, but that décor was the sort of thing that hoisted all my red flags to the top of the pole. To make matters worse, after Mia kicked off her thick, clunky shoes, she spun up a CD – Tori friggin' Amos.

  Then she trailed her fingers down my forearm and shot me a smile, instantly causing me to forget I was surrounded by items from the clearance rack at Bed, Bath & Beelzebub. There was no helping that Tori Amos business, however. As Mia disappeared into the kitchen, I eyeballed the big neon-ringed clock on the wall. It was 10 PM. She'd have to leave no later than 10:45, surely. That ambiguous guilt was beginning to chew at the lining of my stomach.

  Returning to the living room, Mia handed me a bottle of hard lemonade.

  "Your drink, right?"

  Sighing, I accepted the bottle. "Pathetic, isn't it?"

  "It's cute," she said, plopping down on the velvet-draped love seat. Looking up at me, she patted the cushion next to her.

  I sat down very close to the girl, and she whittled away any remaining distance by shifting her lovely bottom so that her hip pressed against my own.

  "I think it's so cool that you've actually written a movie," she said.

  I stared at her for a second, thinking she was joking. "Boy, you are so sweet," I finally said. "Terror Town isn't exactly Mean Streets."

  "I've never seen that."

  My mouth fell open. "You've never seen – it's Martin Scorsese's coolest movie," I enthused. "You have to see it or you're banished from earth."

  "Hey now," she said, her back up. "I've seen a bunch of his other movies, so just cool your jets."

  "After Hours?"

  Mia nodded. "That one's secretly my favorite."

  "Favorite movie, or favorite Scorsese flick?"

  "Scorsese flick – I could give you a list of fifteen or twenty, but I could never pick one favorite movie."

  She was a girl after my own heart. Except for that goddamn Tori Amos album.

  "Well, you'd better get ready to have your favorite Scorsese flick toppled, because when you see Mean Streets it's gonna be all over for After Hours."

  We went on like that for a long time (at least I think we did; like I said, I can't remember all the details), rattling off the titles of various movies and pinpointing important ones Mia had yet to see (the girl hadn't seen Halloween, for God's sake!), my appreciation for her skyrocketing all the while.

  When the subject turned to The Blue Man I tried to say something about the crushing obstacles Terror Town had in its way and how we wouldn't face any of that with our little movie, but beyond that I couldn't tell you, because the next thing I remember is Mia's tongue worming its way into my mouth in a blitzkrieg of slippery flesh.

  Look, I realize this sounds like a letter to Penthouse Forum, but for whatever reason, this shit has been known to happen to me. It's like a UFO abduction – I'm going along, just doing my thing, then there's some kind of missing time experience and the next thing I know I'm doing the underpants polka, and all I can think about during the sinful shenanigans is how in hell I found myself there and how badly I'm gonna drop the ball.

  But judging from Mia's squirmy reaction to my ministrations, I had things well under control. Peering along the length of her contracting belly, through the gently quaking valley of her breasts, I watched her face as it contorted in delightful agony. She lifted her head to watch me, opulent lips parted.

  And the sudden shock of the Alison flashback nearly caused me to bite down.

  Fortunately, I overcame the instinct, closing my eyes. The last time I'd seen this landscape, Alison's face had been at the other end of it. All at once my mind was aflame with the image of Chetchmire or whatever the fuck his name was and how he was now seeing Alison from this very same vantage point. Accompanyin
g the pain, that fucking bizarre feeling of guilt slammed against the inside of my chest.

  Overwhelmed by the twisted scenario, I bore down on Mia, trying to force one more flurry of satisfied thrashing and yelping from her before I ran back home. Achieving success, I quickly withdrew my noggin from its position of honor, staggering to my feet. The lemonade was in there futzing with the wiring.

  Mia, splayed back on the love seat and groaning contentedly, fumbled for the button on my jeans. I shot a cartoony double take at the clock, silently thanking the Lord for small favors: it was 10:52.

  "Jesus Christ – you'd better get to work, it's almost eleven!"

  "Fuck it, I'll be late," she slurred, tugging at my fly. "C'mere, you."

  Not wanting her to discover that my erection had fled before I could, I stepped away, wrestling my pants from her grip.

  "No, seriously – I'd better get going," I said, desperately sorting through excuses. "I've gotta do some last-minute rewrites on the script, anyway."

  Yeah, that didn't sound too lame when there was an incredibly sexy naked girl sprawled in front of me trying to get my pants off.

  Mia sat up, confused.

  At least she doesn't look hurt, I thought. I could deal with her thinking I was nuts, but I didn't want to hurt her. My eyes trailed along the curvature of her breasts and the way her rib cage sloped into her belly. Her nipples were still hard, like fat gumdrops. What was wrong with me? Buttoning my pants, I awaited her withering verbal assault on my pathetic manhood.

  "What about you?" she softly asked, shooting a questioning glance at my crotch.

  I just stared at her for a second, a smile slowly taking over my face. Suddenly euphoric, I leaned in and kissed her on the forehead.

  "Later."

  Gazing down at herself, she surveyed the aftermath. "Look at me – I'm a sloppy mess."

  "Then my work here is done."

  "Yeah, well, you'll get yours, mister." Grinning, she took a playful swing at me. I escaped unscathed.

  As I drove home, I broke a small chunk of plastic off of Mom's steering wheel by repeatedly pounding my forehead against it. I was quite the man, all right: I'd lost Alison, hurt Kelli, freaked out on Mia – when things were going great, no less – and was foolish enough to tackle The Blue Man a second time. Not to mention breaking my mom's steering wheel. If I weren't in her car I would've been inclined to drive off a bridge, but it was that whole borrowed shotgun thing at work again; just didn't seem polite.

  At Mom's, I went to my bedroom and sat down, hoping I'd be able to suppress this most recent failure enough to get some work done on the rewrite of The Blue Man. Now that we were shooting on video, we'd be needing some dialogue, although I intended to keep it to a minimum – this thing was gonna be hard enough to pull off as it was.

  As I nibbled the end of the pen in thought, I realized that my face and hands were perfumed with Mia's funk. Then it struck me: that freakish guilt had risen up because being with Mia had distracted me from the pain of losing Alison – as if I were somehow cheating on her by not feeling shitty.

  Well, fuck a bunch of that. I practically snorted the delicious smell that clung to my fingers, luxuriating in the idea that, for the first time since Alison left me, I had forgotten to be crippled and useless. Mia and I had enjoyed ourselves, had a nice evening – there had been that flare-up of guilt and self-loathing, sure, but the fact remained that Mia wasn't drunk, or retarded, or just feeling sorry for the broken-hearted loser; she liked me.

  Even after watching Terror Town.

  38

  Only one of the two guys Taylor recruited was drunk when we got together in the morning; considering The Blue Man's history, I felt like we were off to a decent start.

  It was just before nine AM, and we were all standing around outside my mom's house. Mia hadn't arrived, but neither was she late. The morning was already hot and sticky.

  I took Taylor aside while Aaron and Noel stood in the street at the back of Boone's car. Aaron was shoving donuts and coffee down Noel's throat, with encouragement from Boone.

  "What's the story with this guy?" I whispered.

  "Aw, we were hitting the sauce some last night," Taylor explained. The boys worked the graveyard shift with him, and stocking shelves can be a dull pursuit. "Me and Aaron, we're pretty solid guys – we can absorb a lot more liquor than Noel."

  I watched the spindly, bristly-haired Noel chomp down either his second or third donut – I may have missed one, so I wasn't sure. Aaron was definitely of sturdier build; he was also sporting the most simian-like skull I've ever seen on a human being, topped off with a pruned shrub of bright red hair.

  "I guess while me and Aaron were sleeping it off – not together, mind you – Noel went home and kept pounding them down until Aaron got there to pick him up," Taylor continued. He glanced back at his co-workers conspiratorially. "Don't tell him I said so, but he's really nervous about being in the movie."

  Taylor nodded in response to my stunned expression.

  "Jesus," I added.

  "No shit," Taylor agreed. "You need me to do anything? Otherwise, me and Boone are gonna read through our dialogue."

  Taylor was unshaven, his hair snarled from sleep; he was after that look of post-nuke hygiene. I was grateful to see him show so much interest in the movie.

  I sent him on his way, script in hand. He and Butters sat on the curb and began reading lines. I didn't realize what garbage I had written until I heard them saying it out loud.

  I went to the three cardboard boxes containing our supplies and obsessively sorted through the stuff, worrying that Mia would be upset with me when she arrived. What if she'd decided sometime after I'd left that she really was mad at me after all? Or worse yet, that she was so disgusted with me that she wouldn't even bother to show up?

  I nearly squealed with relief when her car turned the corner, only to have the unstoppable tide of apprehension come crashing back in as she neared the house.

  As Mia's car pulled to a stop at the curb, Noel greeted our female lead with a geyser of vomit, launching donuts (looked like two to me), coffee and whiskey into the street, the splattering impact amplified by the tranquil morning air. I saw Mia's eyes widen behind the windshield.

  "Hey, those were perfectly good donuts," Taylor said.

  "Sorry," Noel spluttered, wiping chunks out of his sparse goatee. "I'm really sorry."

  It all seemed oddly familiar – but what would The Blue Man be without vomit? Anxiously, I hustled toward Mia's car as she stepped out.

  "Is that guy okay?" she said, nodding towards Noel.

  "He's drunk," I said. It was incredible; she didn't seem mad at all.

  "Already?"

  "I've been working on it for many hours," Noel said.

  I made the necessary introductions, then tried to probe a little deeper. "How are you?" I asked Mia.

  "Mmm ... sleepy," she said, surprising the hell out of me by giving me a big hug. "But I'm ready to make a movie."

  "That makes one of us," Taylor commented.

  Butters waved at Mia, a half-eaten jelly-filled clenched in his fist. "Did you know we have dialogue now?"

  "I'd heard rumors," she said.

  I must've mentioned it during that missing time I'd experienced the night before.

  I ran back to the boxes of supplies and rustled up a copy of the script. "You can go over it with Taylor and Boone while I load the car," I said, handing the script to Mia.

  Aaron moved to help me, leaving Noel bent over in the street, forearms resting on knees. He expelled a moist burp, causing Taylor and Butters to pause in their donut eating and stare on in suspense. After a few seconds, Noel straightened, smacking his lips. The danger past, my lead actors continued to chow down.

  As Aaron and I loaded boxes into the trunk of Butters's car, Mia began reciting some of my crappy dialogue. I turned to watch her.

  "A week ago, the mutants came out of the desert and attacked our settlements," she read, sounding cute
and sexy. She shot me a sly wink.

  I felt like I could've lifted Boone's car over my head.

  "I liked it better when it was silent," Taylor said.

  We hit the road soon afterwards, headed east towards the Sandia Mountains. Originally, I had planned to shoot in the same desert locations we'd used the first time around, but thought better of it when I saw the weather report. Albuquerque was going to be the surface of the sun for the next week, so the tree-shrouded, breeze-swept mountains seemed ideal – even if they didn't exactly sport the post-apocalyptic look we might've wanted. Comfort over production design, that's my motto. At least when nobody's getting paid.

  We took two cars – Butters, Taylor, Mia and I in the Boone-mobile, while Aaron and Noel rode in Aaron's Pacer. We were grateful for this arrangement when, driving along the winding mountain road that led to our first location, Taylor saw Noel spew more of his stomach's contents onto the dashboard of Aaron's car.

  There was only a minimum of hiking required to reach the location from the parking area, but Butters was wheezing like the Little Engine That Could by the time we reached the place. He insisted he was okay, and Mia sat with him while the rest of us scoped out the site.

  It was perfect. In fact, I was sure we could shoot the entire movie in that one place – a vast clearing at the base of a grassy hillside. Trees protected the entire area from sight of the highway, masking not only the view but the traffic noise.

  While Butters cooled it in the tall grass, I began setting up the opening scene: the food raiders chasing the Blue Man over the hillside. Taylor pulled on his dark goggles (have to protect those mutated eyeballs, after all) and other accoutrements of his costume, meanwhile guiding Aaron and Noel in the details of their own outfits (Noel wore a ski mask, since his head would be coming off later, and Aaron insisted on wearing a too-small Elvis Costello shirt that allowed his abundant belly to peek out. It was a terrifying sight, but I appreciate good showmanship). Mia jumped in with both feet, acting as my assistant.