But he knew it was too late. The Creature was too far along; too developed. He could no longer control anything about it. He was trapped. It would pull him out and murder him. A new executive producer would be put on the series and it would continue its cancerous popularity. The Creature would get stronger and stronger. Kill. Rape. It would become more and more monstrous as it became more real.
It wanted to be a complete man. Part of the human community. That’s why it wanted more detail. But he knew it would continue to ravage and destroy; it would never be in balance, once Alan was dead. He was the only thing that could provide emotional texture; conscience. Without him, it was doomed to be nothing more than a monster.
But it didn’t know that. He’d never created it to know anything, except violence and an obsessive need to win. Just like in the pilot when he’d had Barek kill the guy in the bar in Saigon who was hassling him.
The one who broke Barek’s jaw, thought Alan. A jaw that remained permanently vulnerable; fragile. It had all been rooted incontrovertibly in the pilot.
Alan instantly kicked backwards, hard as he could, forcing the Creature to stop his foot. He kicked again with the other foot, managing to kick the Creature’s forehead. Then, again and again, until he’d finally connected with the mouth and jaw and the Creature screamed, filling the drainage pipe with echoing pain. Alan kicked again and the jaw was damaged worse, dislocating, causing the Creature to let go, clutching the lower part of its face.
Alan shimmied upwards through the pipe, ignoring the extreme pain in his foot and palms, torn by the pipe’s surface. Rainwater plunged faster, as he neared the pipe’s source, and his gasping mouth opened wide for air. The grainy water raced to the curve of his throat and slithered in, filling his stomach with thick, cold mud. He choked and threw it up, looked back to see if the Creature was following. He was alone and could hear a mix of sirens and the Creature crying out, halfway down the dark pipe.
Alan was to the pipe’s opening and climbed out. He managed to stand on shaking legs and looked at his foot. It had soaked his cut shoe with blood, though the water had rinsed most out. He limped toward his production building and heard the fire company rumbling up to the soundstage. Heard faraway voices. Axes crashing. Pressurized water slaughtering flame.
His imagination being extinguished.
He moved to his building, entered the security code. The door unlocked and he limped through the lobby, past the reception desk with his steel logo behind it, on the wall. He fell as he moved past the desk, got back up, and staggered weakly down the long hall to his office.
In his office, he went to the fireplace, turned the gas key, pressed the auto-start button. He squinted at the blinding ignition and moved to the wall vault, trembling; and working the combination. The metal door opened soundlessly.
The master negatives were stacked neatly, twenty-two cans in all; the first season. He gathered an armful and walked to the fireplace, leaving a bloody path on the white Berber. He stood at the mantel, opened the cans, began to toss them into the blaze.
The Creature stood in the doorway, looking at him.
“… please … don’t …” Its jaw was wrong, distorting its features.
Alan threw two episodes in and the Creature howled, grabbing at its body as flames hissed and film smoked. It dove at Alan and fell to the carpet, looking up at him with pleading eyes. Its hands were starting to fade, fingers nearly gone. As Alan threw more film into the fire, the Creature’s limbs began to shudder, its mouth working helplessly.
It tried to speak but couldn’t and Alan scrabbled back to the vault, grabbing more cans. He opened them with shaking fingers and threw them into the flames.
The Creature was making inhuman sounds, its solid mass now opaque as Alan threw in more film and fire destroyed polished surface. The Creature yelled, in agony, as its flesh broke down, its unevolved innards going amorphous.
It was being destroyed, one piece at a time; an assassination of detail. Alan turned the fire up higher, relishing the liquidation of each bit and piece. He sat cross-legged, after tossing in the final episode and watched the Creature as it shook and cried, unable to fight the horrible ruination; the foreclosure of self.
It extended a hand to Alan.
“… please …” Its voice was unprotected; frightened.
Alan looked into its eyes. In its vanishing features, he saw a fear he could remember. The way he felt on playgrounds when bigger kids would walk up with tough expressions and humiliate him.
The way he felt all through his life, when he couldn’t please his father. The fear he felt when he stood by his mother’s dead body and watched her bloodless face, that he loved with all his heart, as she went away forever, abandoning him.
“… please …”
Be careful what you wish for.
Alan kept running the phrase through his head as he watched the Creature losing life; diluting into nothing. The only meager thread it clung to was Alan and it stared at him, terrified.
But he did nothing to help, despising it.
Feeling no sympathy or compassion; relishing the things he had, it didn’t. He felt no pity as it writhed, its life seeping away; its skin translucent. He could feel his mouth watering as its eyes filled with tears and its pleading voice grew thin; inaudible. It was a fucking piece of shit and it deserved to suffer and feel all the hideous pain it had brought.
But he knew he was lying to himself, again. Knew it would never die. Somehow it would achieve life, again. He would simply find new ways to create other creatures that could embody the menacing thoughts and poison conclusions he carried within himself. Creatures with other names, which did other things. But they would all be that side of himself trying to cut its way out; seek oxygen.
Find light, that it might be nourished and grow. And he would be returned to where he was now, trying to escape it; trying to save himself from himself. Feeling terrified of what was inside him.
The only way to kill the Creature was to kill himself. He knew he was no better than what it was. He just had another side. A better side. The Creature wasn’t the monster. But what he could never admit about himself might be. More than all the Jordans and Feiffers and Andy Singers put together. At least they were honest about their monstrous needs. At least they didn’t hide behind polite walls, as Alan always had.
As it curled into a fetal ball and wept softly, Alan moved closer to it and noticed it was bleeding. Bleeding …
Becoming real, just as it was dying.
He looked at it, as it struggled to keep its eyes open, and realized he needed it. Needed it to express the constant anger he felt. Megatons worth, festering at the bottom of Alan’s own silos, anxious for release.
Be careful what you wish for.
“You can be anything …” It’s what they’d all told him. Everyone.
He sat there, hearing the gunfire between the two sides of himself, and watched the film burn. Rain fell harder and he felt like he was being buried alive.
ten months later
epilogue
Palm Springs was an ice-machine.
It was Christmas and twinkly lights covered the houses; elf jewelry. Forty-degree winds blew golf courses and tennis courts and shook snowmen grinning everywhere; triple scoop, Styrofoam goons.
Streets were empty, shops quiet.
Bentley boys and their wrinkly babes hung in seven-figure igloos using ultraviolet, and weekenders nuzzled in front of roaring Mitsubishis warming their brains. The sky was cold blue skin, and gangs of sand chased you everywhere you went, trying to kick your ass.
Alan was alone making dinner.
He glanced at the clock, stomach in knots.
Last week, it had been days.
The blond daughter of some Supreme Court bass drum had been alone in a bar in Rancho Mirage. She liked the Creature’s tie-you-down eyes. His scarred hands and arms. The dominant awkwardness of his healing jaw. She told him her husband was in the Bahamas and bought him four Coronas.
Alan didn’t see him for two days.
It was getting a little better. But in some ways, the same. He didn’t go out much; saving strength. Healing. Muscle tone coming back. Sunken eyes improving.
The Creature did what it wanted and though Alan tried to be casual, inside it terrified him. To think of it out there, loose, never coming back. Doing whatever it wanted. But it always did come back. Hungry. Sleepy.
On edge; ready to argue.
He stirred the browning vegetables and decided not to call his shrink; they’d been talking every day for three months solid. It was exhausting sometimes to go through it again. Over and over. The sifting. The interpretive hunt as they walked Alan’s ocean floor.
Besides, he had to call his father, in France. Let him know how things were. That he was okay. That his condo was being well-taken care of. To say thanks for the millionth time. To see how Wanda was. If she looked fourteen yet. To wait for his dad to say he missed him and hoped he was feeling better.
To wait for just the right moment of satellite lag where silence and emotion wordlessly passed each other, miles above the earth, and it was safe to tell his Dad he loved him. Sometimes the lag never came. But Alan always waited. At times, it was all he wanted from the calls.
The moment.
His Dad always asked if Alan was keeping in touch with his shrink and Alan would fill him in, just enough to reassure. Tell him how the two were continuing to discuss Alan’s breakdown; how he could realign his fragmented insides to avoid future ones. To avoid the tributaries of pain that washed out his world.
His dad always mentioned how impressed he was that Alan’s shrink, Delchamps, had accompanied the ambulance attendants when they took Alan from his office at the studio ten months ago. Burt always repeated positive aspects of any story rather than slip into emotion. It was his shield.
His anesthesia.
He would tell Alan how things were going on the film in France and what a beautiful country it was and how the injuries were healing for him and Wanda but that Wanda still had awful nightmares about the rape.
And Alan would always fall silent.
Not able to tell his father everything. Not able to tell anyone other than Delchamps everything. He could only remain soundless; trapped in a place of profound shame and guilt.
Waiting for the moment.
Telling his dad he loved him. It always helped a little.
And they would hang up and Alan would stare out the kitchen window at desert mountains, their soft crag coastline. He would start to feel himself crying with self-hatred.
Then, it would pass.
Delchamps told him to expect this to go on for a long time. Maybe forever. He told Alan he’d never seen or heard of such an absolute breakdown; this extreme a form of externalization. The actual outward creation of the id. He told Alan he wanted to study it for the remainder of Alan’s life. Tell no one. Keep meticulous records. Reveal what had happened at the proper time, when more was understood, when they wouldn’t be laughed at; disbelieved.
Despised by those Alan had hurt.
He told Alan what he’d gone through could help others. To realize that frustrations and feelings had lives; literal selves. And that when left unchecked long enough, they had the power to physically escape, not merely seep. Delchamps smiled when he asked Alan what the initials in A. E. Barek’s name stood for and Alan finally guessed “alter ego.”
Alan agreed to be studied, if it were in secret. To do it any other way, revealing the data and conclusions before he was dead, would legally place him in prison.
The guilt over what had happened was grotesque enough; total imprisonment. He could never transcend the horrid, endlessly consuming ownership for the lives he’d taken and destroyed. Not him; but a part of him. Still, he could see no separation. In his heart, he had done these things. They were his crimes. His inescapable sins. The deaths and tortures were debts he could never settle.
As he and Delchamps talked more and more, he began to understand that had the creature never materialized, Alan would’ve destroyed himself; eaten himself alive. Feelings and frustrations buried deep had to break free in a coherent form. Delchamps even told him ulcers were like creatures that grew in the stomach. And Alan had carried, within, a lifetime of visceral rage. Lunatic impulses. Without release, they would’ve eventually drowned his mind. Alan found no relief in the explanation.
Monsters …
Alan had asked him if we all create something that expressed censored inner rage and frustration. Delchamps said yes; sometimes we were the monster we created, sometimes we made others the monster.
Alan said conversion of self was the plague that had no beginning, had no end. Delchamps told him it was an interesting comment.
A divided self.
It had always been there, in his life. As a little kid, he remembered having an imaginary friend who was stronger and unafraid, and always took care of him. He could even blame the friend when he did bad stuff and turn to him when he needed help or strength.
He’d asked for a ventriloquist’s dummy when he was twelve and it became his mouthpiece; a way to lash out and make others laugh. A way to disguise the malignance. He’d even drawn a cartoon strip in high school with a cynical character who said outrageous things. And it grew, right along with the rest of him. He considered the likelihood these innocent hobbies had foretold the Creature. Even wondered if they were younger versions; its infancy. Its boyhood. Its own hobbies as it grew up inside him.
His insides had been its world. It told him that a few weeks back, not even realizing what it was saying. But Alan knew that world could never have been enough; too cramped. A dark cell beneath his skin. It had felt entombed.
Alan had taken to reading about primitive man during the months in Palm Springs he and the Creature lived alone together in the condo. He’d read how Jung said people needed to maintain connection with primal roots; the ancestors who danced around fires and believed in magic.
Despite countless years, they were us and we were them. Nothing changed. They just remained inside now, as the Creature had. Hiding. Unwelcome outside. Dislocated immigrants, hoping one day to breathe fresh air.
The fierceness had been bred out. Instinctive apes put in clothes, houses. Spontaneity and need domesticated. But nothing ever went away. It just needed something to help it bend the bars and get out.
“Your childhood took care of that,” Delchamps had said and Alan didn’t disagree.
The pollen of madness was everywhere in his family. Physical and emotional illness. Fear. Avoidance. The list had no end. He could leaf through its history, stop anywhere. Throughout was dysfunction that broke his bones, set them the wrong way.
Alan turned off the vegetables and heard a motorcycle outside. The engine was killed, heavy boots walked toward the front door.
A key rattled.
Alan took his multiple vitamins, the third time that day, rebuilding his system; he had gained fifteen pounds. The Creature had lost ten.
It came in, wearing a biker jacket, carton of cigarettes under its arm. Tossed a video cassette on the couch near the VCR and belched. Parts of its neck and forehead were slightly caved in; the burning negatives had taken a toll. But when Alan decided to let it live, he’d quickly salvaged what footage he could. In strong light, you could still see right through the Creature.
“Got you a movie.”
“What?”
“… one you’ve been wanting, that’s always rented.”
It raised an ugly smile, jaw slightly misshapen. Told him it got a porno for itself. It went to the fireplace, balled up newspaper, started a fire, using wood from the stack. Tore open the carton, a pack, lit a cigarette.
“Thought you were gonna cool it on the smoking …”
The Creature glared.
Alan said nothing more about it.
For dinner, the Creature had a burger and beer and Alan had his usual vegetables and rice. They spoke little. As the video cassette was
loaded, the Creature flipped past the network and he and Alan sat in silence, watching some of a new “Mercenary” episode.
It was as bad as the one last week, and the ones for the last few months. Patrick Benson had been lured down from Portland, with a hundred grand a week, to take the reins of the series, and a new actor had been hired.
Viewers were told Barek had died in a raid on a Peruvian consulate, to free a congressman’s daughter, and that his ex-cop brother had taken over for him as series regular. But the new actor, Steve Perito, was a bag of rocks, siphoned off one of the soaps and utterly lacked what Corea had. What the Creature had. The scripts had become stupid and graphic in a mimicking way, throwing in naked girls and shredded bodies everywhere they could. Alan realized Patrick had always been your basic fucking hack and should’ve stayed in Portland, where he could remain in a thick fog.
The ratings were sinking and Andy Singer’s sitcom, “Roomie” was gaining on it. “Roomie” was followed by another Andy-launched project, “Dog Boy,” and the hour of comedy was perfect counter programming. Ever since Andy had come out of the emotional oxygen tent and gone to work on another network, he’d made it his goal to topple “The Mercenary.” He held it against Alan that he’d quit to go down to Palm Springs and “flake.” He just couldn’t understand. But that had never been Andy’s strong suit.
“… shit without us,” was all the Creature said, watching the new actor struggling, tied to a burning car, flesh searing. It looked unconvincing, screams of pain like a faked orgasm.
“Yeah …” said Alan, depressed. Somehow relieved.
There was no resolution. There couldn’t be; it got no better and never could. And now he just felt a hollow ache when he watched what he’d created. It was like visiting the scene of a murder after everything had been cleaned up. Something terrible had happened, yet on the surface little gave it away.
A lingering atmosphere.
Exactly like the one at the house in Malibu he’d quickly decided to sell, after the breakdown. The house that so perfectly paralleled and reflected his insides; a thing of meticulously cleansed savagery. A thing that hid its violent truths. Just as the show he’d created, its very state of inhumanity within entertainment reflected his insides. It all reflected his insides.
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