Multiplex Fandango

by Weston Ochse

  Before he could turn, Andy felt himself buffeted by half-a-dozen blows on his back. He fell hard to the ground, his breath gone. Then something bit his leg. He kicked out and managed to free himself.

  He rolled to his back and brought his pistol to bear. But what he saw froze him in place. Even his scream locked in his throat, blocking his breath.

  Covered entirely in black and brown bristly hair, the tarantula stood ten feet tall. Its legs arched from the ground to a body with sections the size of VW Bugs. Its front two legs were poised directly above him. Andy drew his attention from the multifaceted eyes to the tips of the spiders fangs, poised to pierce his chest.

  Finally his scream tore loose.

  He fired the remaining bullets from his gun into the giant spider, but it had no effect.

  Andy scrambled backwards.

  The tarantula followed.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Andy saw that the girl was stock-still. Good— if she moved it might draw the monster’s attention.

  He scrambled backwards again and threw his gun into the face of the creature.

  The spider stopped. It shuddered once, then twice, then shuddered for a long time.

  Andy scrambled to his feet just in time to get out from beneath the giant spider as it fell. He stood shakily. The girl ran towards him and threw her arms around him.

  They both watched as the tarantula shuddered once more and then died. Who would have thought that he could have killed it so easily?

  But then they heard buzzing coming from the spider’s back. Andy and the girl backed away. Horror dawned in Andy’s mind. Was it going to...?

  A hand reached out and grabbed his ankle, pulling him off his feet. Batista! As he fell, the back of the tarantula exploded open and three wasps, each the length of a broom, clawed their way free. They appeared hungry and eager and mean.

  The girl was transfixed.

  Andy tried to scream, but a hand clamped around his throat.

  “Fucking Tarzan puta!” Batista growled as he climbed on top of Andy. He clamped his other hand around Andy’s throat and began to throttle him. “Who the hell do you think you are to try and stop me?” Blood foamed at the corners of Batista’s mouth.

  Andy struggled to break free, but no matter his newfound Tarzan desires, he couldn’t remove the other man’s iron grip from around his neck. He felt his vision dimming as the other cursed him.

  The hand suddenly relaxed. Light went out of Batista’s eyes. Abruptly his chest blossomed a long thin stinger. Andy watched unable to move as a golf ball-sized egg pushed down the length of the stinger and squirted free of the end. It landed on his chest, then rolled to the ground.

  Andy screamed and heaved Batista backwards until they both fell, crushing the baby wasp to the ground with their combined weights.

  Looking toward the girl, Andy felt his universe implode. Something bestial came over him.

  He barely remembered breaking off the stinger from Batista’s chest and rushing over to the other baby wasp that had its own stinger deep inside Jane.

  He barely remembered stabbing the giant insect with its brother’s stinger until it fell dead beside the girl.

  He barely remembered taking her into his arms and heading away from the Rift, what was left of his battalion, and the miserable mess that Batista had left.

  All he knew was that when he came to, he was carrying her, it was daylight, and he was past exhaustion.

  ***

  The desert was nothing like he imagined. There were no sand dunes. No camels. No pyramids. Nothing to show the timeless mythic quality of the deserts he’d seen on television and the movies growing up. Nothing at all like he’d imagined from reading The Lion Man.

  Just as Tarzan had been bringing a jungle cure for malaria to Jane in the famous desert Tarzan book, so was Andy taking his Jane to find a cure for the thing gestating inside of her. Somewhere in the distance over the border was a hospital. He hoped it was close, because her stomach had already begun to extend. He only prayed that he wouldn’t be too late.

  She whimpered as he stumbled, then caught himself.

  He grunted and thumped his chest with his free hand. “Me Tarzan. You Jane,” he said.

  Then he adjusted her weight against his back. He felt something move in her stomach. She whimpered. He had Batista’s knife. If need be, he’d use it. He thought about giving a Tarzan yell, but he hadn’t the strength. He just trudged on.

  ***

  Story Notes: Tarzan Doesn’t Live here was inspired by the monster movies of the 1950s. I remember movies with giant rabbits, giant ants, giant dragonflies, there were too many to count. Then when I went outside, safely ensconced within the tall trees of the Cherokee National Forest in Eastern Tennessee, I’d pretend I was being attacked by these creatures, running and ducking and somersaulting through the leaves like my life depended on it. It’s also a story about Tarzan. Not the idea of an actor playing Tarzan, but the ideals which Tarzan really represents, Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan who preferred to strip off the thin veneer of civilization and return to the simplicity of nature. What better synecdoche for how perilously close we are to being thrust back into a dark age, where holes are ripped in the earth and monsters surge forth?

  NOW SHOWING ON SCREEN 2

  22 Stains in

  the Jesus Pool

  Starring Suki as a lonely Party Girl

  and Bob as the rich Sugar Daddy

  “Stains is what happens when gravity meets opportunity meets religion meets the need to be redeemed for ones sins. This is smart and deadly.”

  –Mexican Reaper Daily

  In Quadraphonic Stereo

  Suki dropped her cigarette into the wineglass and walked to the railing. She stared down at the kidney-shaped pool, wondering why someone had painted a picture of the Last Supper upon the pool's bottom. Even from her thirteenth floor balcony, the countenance of Jesus resonated with such an invitation to join that she was almost transfixed, the wide blue eyes imploring her to dive into a downward heaven.

  "Come on, Suki. I was just kidding."

  She ignored Bob's sonorous whine and leaned farther over the rail enough to make out several amorphous blotches on the bottom of the pool that marred the painting. Judas' entire face had been masked by a particularly dark spot. A similar darkness obscured Peter's breast.

  "You should come back in," said Bob. "I'll order room service. Anything. Just come back in, Suki."

  She leaned farther out, fearless in her desire to understand, one toe her anchor to the material world. She saw the side of the pool and the dark brown stains along the near edge. She held the wineglass out from her body, tried to gauge the distance, and then let it go. It struck the edge of the pool center-mass in the brown stains and shattered.

  If she were to jump, she'd have to aim further out.

  "I know I was an ass, but part of it's your fault."

  "My fault?" she asked.

  "You're the one who wanted to come here and fuck with the Christians," he said.

  "I'm not fucking with the Christians. I just want to get away from them." She felt her anger rise as she cursed. They'd flown from Los Angeles to Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, Mexico this morning in a headlong rush to be free from the trappings of the most insane of holidays. They'd ended up, ironically, at the Hotel de la Cena Pasada — the Hotel of the Last Supper— a hotel venerating the last hours of the Christian God whose birth was currently being celebrated throughout the Western World. Even as they were ensconced in a hotel on the Pacific Coast of Mexico with Jesus as the main draw on Christmas Eve, she felt a freedom that she hadn't felt since she'd left Korea.

  "But to think that they—"

  "You know Bob," she said cutting him off. "Why the hell are you here?"

  "Because I love you, Suki."

  "Then leave me alone," she said, glaring down at Jesus.

  "I can't."

  "Then you don't love me."

  "But I do."

  "So tell me how loving me
when I don't want you to love me isn't stalking me?" she asked.

  "Then why did you tell me that you loved me?" he barked.

  She'd met Bob six months ago when he'd come to her rescue. She'd made the mistake of professing her adoration one wine-inspired evening before moving into his Sunset Boulevard condominium. She'd regretted it ever since.

  Suddenly a pool boy appeared beneath her. Noticing the glass near the pool's edge, he looked up. He saw her and shaded his eyes with his hand. The motion looked like a salute and made her smile. She saluted back, then watched him as he swept away the glass.

  "Suki? Did you hear me?"

  "Yes," she sighed.

  "Then why don't you answer me?"

  "There is no answer. It was a moment of weakness."

  "I don't believe you, Suki. You told me you loved me. Love isn't something that you can just stop feeling."

  "It is if you never meant it."

  "I don't understand."

  "You wouldn't," she said, returning to the suite's living room. She ignored Bob on the sofa, and walked straight to the bar. She pulled down another glass and filled it with an Australian Chardonnay. She drank half the glass, then made a decision.

  "I'm going for a swim," she said.

  "I'm coming too."

  "Don't Bob. I want to be alone. I want some time to think." She cupped his face in her left hand. "Okay Bob?"

  He stared at her with glistening eyes. Finally he nodded. Suki hurried to the bedroom and changed into a yellow string bikini. She grabbed a towel, her sunglasses and a magazine before hurrying out of the room and into the elevator.

  This trip had been a spur-of-the-moment thing. A reaction to the uninterrupted bombardment of Christmas advertisements, Santa Clauses begging for cash in front of stores, multi-colored lights on sacrificed trees, and carolers with no sense of propriety. Not that Suki didn't appreciate a little bit of the strange Western tradition that Christmas had become, but enough was enough.

  She'd been raised Buddhist, her village far from Western influences. Not until she'd gone to Seoul University, had she experienced the true strangeness of Western culture. Until then, she'd only seen it on television, or read about it in novels.

  When she'd been offered a job in Los Angeles, her parents had begged her not to take it. Instead of following their wishes, Suki had lashed out, ultimately severing her ties with her father who didn't understand why she wanted so badly to leave.

  Times like this, Suki wished she were back home, her father telling tales of the Japanese occupation, the raping of the trees, and the Americans who came to liberate them. Although he always spoke in reverential tones when he spoke of the war, she could tell that there was a chasm of guilt he'd never crossed. The fact that the proud people of Korea had needed the help of the Americans had been an anchor around the survivor's necks, holding them down like a ton of shame.

  The pool boy was nowhere to be found. She spied an inviting chaise lounge, adjusted it so the sun wasn't in her eyes, and then reclined. She thought about reading her magazine, but tossed it aside as she closed her eyes and attempted to relax.

  But her great secret, that terrible thing she'd done, played itself in her mind. Rage Against the Machine had played a private party that night last summer. She'd reveled in the excitement and the attention her exotic five-foot eight-inch Korean frame had commanded. At the afterhours party at the Viper Room she'd met the members of the band and several movie stars who were doing their own raging across the box office marquees. That special moment outside where she'd felt the still warm side-walk where River Phoenix had died of an overdose had been the perfect bookend to the evening, as she allowed herself to lament the loss of someone who could have been great. Then inside her Lexus, the old man crossing the street, trying to change the radio station, the car jumping as the tires rose and fell, and rose and fell, the old man behind her screaming and dying.

  The memory sent her off the chaise and pacing along the length of the pool. Closer now, the stains she saw were deep and indelible. Some red, some brown, they looked all the world like bloodstains. The realization made her look upwards towards her room. She spied Bob staring down at her, and turned away. A row of lavender and white bougainvilleas grew on one side of the pool, hiding the view of the ocean. Tamarinds trees, their re-curving fruit hanging like bats, rose above the flowers, the thick branches acting as a wind block. The hotel sat on the other side of the pool. The image of 22 stories of rooms rising towards the heavens stayed with her. Twenty-two balconies rose above her. Twenty-two stains beneath her. She leaned down and felt one, the sensation similar to when she'd felt the place River Phoenix had died in front of the Viper Room. For a moment she stared transfixed at the stain, captured by the possibilities it all represented. "Suki, there you are," Bob said, shattering the moment. "I made reservations at La Playa. They're supposed to have langoustines to die for."

  She stood, walked to the ladder and slipped silently into the water. She dove deep, drowning out his next words. She only rose when she ran out of breath. Daring to look around, she found that he'd gone.

  Sighing, she vowed to end their relationship once and for all. She'd never meant for it to last as long as it had. Fear had been the bond that held them together. She began sidestroking the length of the pool, the rays of the dying sun casting red and gold hues onto the surface of the water.

  Bob had followed her from the Viper Room that fateful night. He'd seen her deeds, and then found her in an alley, crying and retching into some trash cans. She'd been too distraught to drive, so he'd taken her home. So understanding at first, it wasn't until much later that she realized how insecure he was—how terribly clingy he was.

  But still she'd stayed, feeling a sense of obligation to the man who'd saved her from some jail. But as time passed, so did the vividness of the event, until she'd reached the point where she understood her father and his own bitterness at being saved.

  Definitely time to end the relationship. After this vacation, she'd make it official. She floated for a time, satisfied with her decision.

  As the sun set, she began to hear the sounds of whispers. At first she mistook them for the wind, whispering through the bougainvillea and the tamarind trees. The bat-like seedpods rattled in the breeze. But the sounds she heard were more than that. Here and there she could make out words.

  "God bless us all."

  "¿Por qué soy alambique aquí?"

  "Help...now."

  "Gott speichern mich."

  "Faça o batente ferindo."

  "Please God."

  "I don't want..."

  The words were like echoes of something past, barely discernable. Some of the words weren't English. She recognized Spanish. She thought she recognized German. But the other language befuddled her.

  As she dove deep, the words grew louder. She felt cold currents in the heated pool that shouldn't be there. Twirling numbness cascaded across her thighs. She suddenly felt uncomfortable and surged towards the ladder. She climbed out and snatched her towel from the chaise.

  " Mi Señora. Don't do it. You are much too beautiful."

  She whirled around and found herself face to face with the handsome young pool boy. "Don't do what?" she asked, a smile lifting her lips.

  "Sacrificio," he said, drawing the word out in a reverent sigh.

  "Sacrifice? What are you talking about?" she asked, cinching the towel around her waist.

  "You are in the line," he said, lifting his chin towards the balconies. "You have bought the time."

  She followed his gaze towards the balconies until she found her own. She remembered dropping the glass and it shattering upon one of the brown stains on the edge of the pool. Took more than a glass to make a stain. Her eyes widened when she finally realized the sources of the stains, then cinched closed as she wondered why so many. She regarded the young Mexican, her question in her eyes.

  "You do not know?" he said. "How is this? You have the room. Much sought after, those rooms."
/>
  "There was a last minute change," she said, remembering the hassle she'd gone through just to find a room in the resort town. "Something about a storm over Dallas. All flights delayed."

  The pool boy nodded sagely. "I understand." He chuckled. "This is his way. Some people choose Jesus. Jesus sometimes choose people."

  "What the hell are you saying?" she asked.

  "Jesus choose you to be here. You not know of the Jesus Pool, but arrive in time." The manager yelled something in Spanish, causing the pool boy to turn hastily away. He made to leave, but spoke over his shoulder. "Be sure you jump far. It takes much courage to find his embrace." And then he was gone, trotting past the manager's desk and into a stairwell.

  She walked to the pool's edge and stared down at the face of Christianity. Dusk had fallen and the bottom of the pool had been lit by lights. She allowed her gaze to track the stains, then looked once again to the balconies. Most of them were now filled with people staring down at the pool. Several of them looked eager. Even more of them looked desperate.

  ***

  They'd finished the langoustines, which had been sautéed in a garlic tamarind sauce. Suki's tongue still tingled with the complex fusion of flavors. The cabernet had a velvety taste and she sipped it now, pausing every now and then to taste the chocolate mousse she'd ordered for dessert. The meal had been so delicious that she'd barely noticed Bob and his incessant commentary. Bob smoked a Cuban cigar, occasionally sipping from his fifth Cosmo of the evening. Both of them stared across Zihuatanejo Bay at the lights aboard the ships anchored in the harbor where people celebrated Christmas the more traditional way. She heard snatches of Silent Night.

  "I know you," said a black woman.

  "Maven," said a thin black man, placing his hand on her shoulder. "Leave the young couple alone."

  She shrugged free of the hand and stepped closer. "No Martin. I do know them. They're in our hotel." She pointed a wavering finger in Suki's direction. "Didn't I see you swimming, dearie?"

  Suki frowned, her moment of satisfaction gone. Still, she remembered the woman's face from the balconies— a few floors above her own, if she remembered right.