by Nathan Allen
Eric glanced up from the viewfinder and briefly locked eyes with their captor. It was only fleeting, and he immediately looked away, but it was enough to communicate a desperate pleading. Faulkner had been so doped up during their earlier attempt that he probably didn’t have the slightest idea of where he was or what was happening. Now he was slowly figuring out who these guys were and what they planned on doing with him.
“Maybe we should give him another dose of pills,” Eric said.
Cameron looked across. “Why?”
“Look at him. He’s almost fully conscious.”
“Good. That’s what we want.” A smile formed around the edges of Cameron’s mouth. “He should feel this.”
A shiver crawled down Eric’s spine. “Don’t you think that’s a little cold-blooded?”
“The characters in our script won’t be high on painkillers when they get butchered, will they? It’ll be the most terrifying moment of their lives. And it should be no different with him. We want this experience to be as authentic as possible.”
Eric went to protest further, but the words never came. He could only stand by and watch as Cameron stepped forward with the Bowie knife in his hand and a look of steely determination flickering in his eye.
The bottle of vodka, partially consumed during their previous attempt to help steady their nerves, remained untouched on a shelf in the corner. They were to be one hundred percent sober this time, to ensure the full sensory impact of the experience.
Cameron took a deep breath.
“Hold up a minute,” Eric said.
“Now what?”
“I ...” Eric was silent for a long time as he tried to make sense of this all. “I don’t know if we should do this.”
“Oh, come on,” Cameron groaned. “We’ve been through this already. We have to do this. If we want our writing to have the highest possible level of authenticity, and if we want to create cinema’s ultimate monster, this is something we simply need to do.”
“I ... I don’t think ... it’s not too late to back out. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Of course it’s too late. What, do you think we can just let him go and hope he won’t tell anyone about everything that’s happened here?”
“What if we just gave him some more Oxys and dumped him somewhere?” Eric knew he was grasping at straws, but he soldiered on. “He doesn’t know where he is. His memory will be hazy, so I doubt he’ll be able to properly identify us. And it’s not like the police are going to care too much. We haven’t done anything that bad. Not yet, anyway. Nothing that can’t be undone.”
Cameron considered this for a moment. “That’s a good point.”
Eric exhaled out his relief. “Thank you. Now I think we should put a stop to this before–”
Without warning, Cameron jabbed the tip of the blade half an inch into Faulkner’s chest and sliced in a downward motion. A thin diagonal line of blood formed from his left shoulder to his right hip. A high-pitched, swine-like squeal seeped out from behind the duct tape. The skin on his chest and abdomen split open as if a zipper had been yanked down.
Eric’s jaw hit the floor as the trickle of blood grew to a steady stream. “What the hell was that, Cameron?” he screamed.
“I guess there’s no turning back from here,” Cameron said with a shrug. “We may as well finish what we started.” He pointed the knife at the deep wound bisecting Faulkner’s torso. “Unless you know how to fix that.”
Eric’s vision turned to static as the room shifted around him. He steadied himself by holding onto one of the benches. He zoned out, and time moved in random fits and starts. One second he was watching the blood drip from Faulkner’s exposed chest onto the clear plastic sheets covering the floor. The next he was standing before the victim with the knife in his hand. He had no idea how it got there. There was no logic or reason to any of this. He had zero control over his movements. He was fast losing his grip on reality, and there was little he could do to hold on to it.
He looked up at Faulkner. His eyes were as large as golf balls. His breathing was heavy, his crimson-soaked chest rising and falling in rapid motion.
“You’re up,” he heard Cameron say. “Do what you need to do. Rise up to that next level.”
Faulkner shook his head back and forth, silently begging him not to.
Eric lifted up the knife, then lowered it again. “I ... I can’t do this,” he said.
“Of course you can,” Cameron said. “There’s nothing to it. Human beings are inherently violent creatures. We’ve been doing this sort of thing to one another since the dawn of time. It’s in our nature.”
“No. No. This isn’t right.”
“You know what this man is guilty of. He deserves everything that’s coming to him.”
“I ... I can’t ...”
“I’m not asking you to chop his goddamn head off. Just a tiny cut. Stick it in his thigh if you want.”
Eric’s throat filled with something that choked him. His hands began to shake. There wasn’t a single muscle in his body that wanted to do what Cameron demanded of him.
“This is too much,” he said. “I can’t do it.”
“Then maybe you don’t have what it takes to be a great writer.” A touch of anger had come into Cameron’s voice. “Maybe you don’t want it enough.”
“No ... I do ...”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes!”
“Then show me.”
Eric tried forcing himself to move, but every joint in his arms and legs had locked up.
“You know what I think?” Cameron said. “I think you’re satisfied with being average. You don’t want to be extraordinary, because the thought of it intimidates you. It frightens you. I think you’re comfortable being good enough.”
Eric squeezed his eyes closed. He could see what was happening here, and he hated it. Cameron knew which of his buttons to press. He knew exactly what to say to get under his skin.
Cameron took another step closer. “Maybe you don’t have the necessary bad qualities required to succeed,” he whispered into Eric’s ear.
Eric felt the growing resentment simmering inside him as the words burrowed deep into his psyche. They were both a challenge and a taunt; the same words he had said to himself when he was alone at night, wondering if he’d ever make anything of his life. The pressure continued to build and build until he could no longer contain it.
And with that Eric snapped, pouncing forward like a coiled spring. He aimed for the chest, intending to slash the knife across Faulkner’s torso the way Cameron had, except in an upwards rather than downwards motion. But his eyes remained closed, and so his aim was slightly off.
He sensed contact of some sort. But this time there were no muffled screams of pain. Just a couple of seconds of gurgling, and then silence.
The first thing he saw when he pried his eyelids open was Cameron’s face. It was frozen in shock, and entirely devoid of color. He didn’t know what he had done, exactly. He only knew it must have been horrendous.
He slowly turned to face his victim.
The knife had somehow missed Faulkner’s chest and struck at the underside of his jaw. The blade had entered beneath his chin and gone all the way through. He had skewered his head like a shish kebab, straight down the middle. Three inches of blade stuck out the top of his skull. It only stopped when the knife’s crossguard reached the jaw line.
Eric’s heart stopped beating. For a near-eternity, neither one said a word.
A river of warm blood flowed from the entry point, trickling down onto his hand, still wrapped around the handle in a tight death grip, unable to let go.
“That was over a little faster than I had anticipated,” Cameron finally said.
The enormity of what he had done hit Eric like a sucker punch to the nose. He let go of the knife and stumbled backwards. His legs turned gelatinous, and his internal organs flipped inside out. This was too much for him to handle. Up until now he had l
ived his life by the book. He was a model citizen who had never knowingly broken the law. A vegetarian pacifist who deplored violence, had never been in a physical fight, and went out of his way to avoid confrontation.
And now, with this one swift action, he had committed an act of vengeance that could never be undone. He had crossed the line separating normal human beings from cold-blooded murderers.
His victim stared back at him, his face petrified in terror. Alive twenty seconds ago, now deceased by Eric’s hand. His wide eyes followed his killer around the room like some sort of macabre optical illusion.
A tidal wave of distress crashed down on top of Eric. He felt himself leave his body, disassociating from the brutal act he had just performed. He floated up towards the ceiling, observing the scene from above as his earthbound avatar backed away from the warm corpse, then turned and stumbled up the stairs. He watched himself trip on the top step, landing face-first on the polished floorboards, before scrambling to his feet and hurrying for the bathroom.
He burst through the door and rushed to the sink, but stopped as soon as he reached it.
That same intense feeling remained, but it wasn’t nausea or panic. It was something else. Some otherworldly sensation he had never experienced. An indescribable electric haze swirled inside his head and filtered down to the rest of his body, shimmering in the tips of his fingers.
His spirit drifted back down to earth and reentered his body.
Eric slowly retreated from the bathroom. His breathing had calmed, and his pulse had returned to normal. The crippling tremor that had hijacked his body a minute ago had disappeared. A whole new feeling of serenity had taken over. Something incredible was happening, something he could neither explain nor control. An otherworldly force was being channeled through him of which he was just the vessel. There was only one thing he could do.
He pulled up a seat in front of his laptop. He peeled off the top half of his orange protective suit and began to type.
Angus Donahue’s feet rested on the counter at the Second Amendment Hunting and Fishing store as he flicked through the decades-old issue of Penthouse he’d discovered at the back of a cupboard. An open can of room temperature beer was by his side, just out of view from potential customers. He came to the final page of the magazine, then dropped it into the wastepaper basket next to him. He drained the rest of his beer and crushed the can in his hand.
He stretched his arms above his head and let out a gaping yawn, then glanced at the clock. It was 4:38 p.m. Not quite five o’clock, but near enough to. Business had been slow all day, and if it wasn’t for those two city boys who came in earlier – the ones who, for some reason, were wearing those ridiculous disguises – there would have been little point in opening at all today.
He stepped out from behind the counter and flipped the sign on the door over to closed.
He was midway through packing away the display merchandise when he heard the door open and the bell ring. He stopped what he was doing. He was sure he had locked the door immediately after turning the sign around. Obviously he hadn’t.
“We’re closed,” he said.
“The sign says you’re open,” a voice croaked.
He grimaced when he saw who had entered his store. Whoever this man was, he was not a customer. He looked like a escapee from an old folk’s home, or, more probable, an insane asylum. There was an unhinged look in his eye, like the wiring in his brain had short-circuited many moons ago. His clothes were filthy rags held together with pieces of string and safety pins, while his decomposing, mismatched shoes were more rubber bands and electrical tape than leather and rubber. The odor emanating from his body was so severe it almost produced cartoon stink lines.
“Well I say we’re closed,” Angus said. “And I outrank the sign.”
The man either failed to hear, or he ignored him completely. He wandered through the store, casually browsing the merchandise like a prospective customer at a used car dealership. He was obviously heavily intoxicated, his body swaying back and forth like an inflatable air dancer.
“Did you hear what I said? You have to leave.”
The vagrant came closer. He hacked out a cough, and Angus caught an involuntary whiff of his rancid whiskey breath. The man lifted his right arm to aim a crooked finger at a display case.
“I’ll take it,” he said.
Angus didn’t move. He looked the old man up and down, sizing him up and wondering how much more of this he was going to tolerate. “Just get out of my store before I call the cops,” he said.
The old man kept his stare fixed on Angus and his finger directed at the cabinet. “I’ll take it,” he repeated, this time with slightly more menace.
Angus fought the urge to put this crusty old time-waster in a headlock and toss him out on the street. He decided to try humoring him first. “You are pointing at a Smith & Wesson model .500 Magnum. It’s a revolver that could take down an elephant from a distance of two hundred yards. And you see this here?” He tapped a knuckle against the handwritten sign directly beneath the weapon. “You see how it has a dollar sign, followed by a one, a six and two zeroes? That means it costs sixteen hundred dollars.”
The man nodded along as if he understood, but said nothing.
“So that’s what it’s gonna cost if you wanna purchase this particular firearm.”
“Uh huh,” the man grunted.
Then silence. Angus folded his arms as he waited for more.
“Do you happen to have a spare sixteen hundred dollars on you?” he said, speaking slowly and clearly in case the man was a little dense. “Because if you don’t, you can’t have it and you have to leave.”
The old man’s grime-encrusted hands disappeared into his trouser pockets. They came out clutching two fistfuls of crumpled hundreds and fifties. He held the bills in front of Angus’s face. “Will this be enough?” he said, flashing a black-toothed smile.
Angus took a half-step back. He stared at the wads of cash. He could only imagine how a derelict like this got his hands on that sort of money. It was probably best not to know. Money was like processed meat, as the old saying went. You should never ask where it came from.
He unlocked the cabinet and removed the pistol.
“Do me a favor, buddy,” the wino slurred as Angus rang up the purchase at the counter. “This is a gift. For a friend. I need it wrapped.”
Angus eyed the stranger for a moment. The notion that this was all some kind of practical joke had crossed his mind on more than one occasion. “Do we look like the kind of place that offers a gift wrapping service?” he said.
“Here. I’ll pay extra if that’ll help sweeten the deal.”
Two more scrunched-up hundreds were pulled from the vagrant’s pockets. He tossed them on the counter. Both bills were slightly damp. One was marked with spots that could very well be blood. Angus picked each one up by its least-soiled corner, careful to ensure minimal skin contact.
He looked around his immediate area. “I don’t have any wrapping paper on me.”
“That’s okay,” the stranger said, nodding towards the wastepaper basket at Angus’s feet. “Just wrap it up in that girlie magazine you have down there.”
Chapter 21
The two writers had turned out the script’s first fifteen pages before rigor mortis had even set in. There was no doubting that something incredible was happening here. After struggling to get words on the page for so long, they had entered a zone where it seemed nothing could halt this intense rush of creativity. It was an unstoppable force, gushing out of them like blood from a severed artery. All the pressure and frustration that had been building for the past three months was finally released in one endless stream of inspiration.
Cameron paced the room, tossing out new plot points and lines of cracking dialogue as they came to him, unable to remain still for more than a few seconds. Eric was perched in front of the laptop, his fingers dancing across the keyboard as he desperately tried to keep up, translating Cameron’
s words and ideas into cinematic brilliance. The screen and keys were smeared with blood, but they didn’t care. They were writing, at long last, and it was better than anything they had ever produced.
Neither one could possibly understand or explain what had come over them. They only knew that some higher power, some indefinable creative spirit had taken control of their minds and bodies. The slaying of Robert Maxwell Faulkner had awakened something inside them, tapping into a deep reservoir of artistry they had no idea they even possessed.
Ninety minutes after they began, Cameron paused to collect his thoughts. “Where does that bring us to?” he said.
“Carly has just stripped down to go skinny-dipping when she discovers the hitchhiker’s body,” Eric said. “That marks the first act turning point.”
Cameron nodded and took a breath. “I think we should go back from the start and read through what we’ve written so far.”
Eric scrolled back up to the top of the page.
FADE IN:
INT. WOODS -- NIGHT
The midnight hour. A Jupiter-sized FULL MOON is suspended in an ink-black sky, providing partial illumination for this dense thicket of inhospitable terrain.
The camera glides through the foliage like a marauding hawk, closing in on a TERRIFIED FIGURE running in the distance.
We draw nearer, and the figure comes into focus. It takes the form of a nubile YOUNG FEMALE. Barefoot, her legs and arms wreathed in raw abrasions, dressed only in underwear and a small t-shirt that clings to her lithe body, she scrambles through the relentless landscape from an unseen predator.
