Camera cuts to a very skinny man running down a dark alleyway. He is wearing yellow jeans two sizes too small, a Goonies t-shirt, bright red shoes, a pink scarf, and oversized grandmother sunglasses. He is fleeing in terror from something unknown. His outfit is not designed for a quick getaway and he runs with obvious difficulty.
He stumbles over his own feet and falls into a pile of cardboard boxes filled with trash. The camera zooms in on his terrified face as he turns around. We can now see that he has an asymmetrical haircut streaked blonde down the side.
Image changes to the wall of the alleyway and a large shadow falling across it. We can’t tell much but we can make out the silhouette of a man with a shotgun.
Close-up of hipster.
Hipster: Who are you? What did I ever do to you?
View from the perspective of the hipster looking up at a man in a black leather jacket and white t-shirt. His hair is slicked back fifties-style. He bears more than a passing resemblance to the Fonz. Unlike the Fonz, this guy has a shotgun pointed straight at the camera.
Johnny: I’m Johnny. And why you? Because Pabst Blue Ribbon. Fuck that shit.
Hipster POV: The shotgun is bearing down on him and we can see the deep black abyss of the barrels. Then there’s a flash and blast as the shotgun goes off.
Cut to the interior of a church. A couple in their forties stands, proudly, behind the bride. The father is wearing too-tight jeans and flannel. He’s got a long, bushy beard. The mother sports denim short-shorts that are pulled up three inches past her belly-button. She wears a baggy Pac-Man t-shirt and thick-rimmed glasses that take up half her face. Her shoulder-length hair is dyed black.
The bride, Jenny, is wearing a vintage 1930s pearl white dress. She is a stunningly beautiful woman with a green mohawk and numerous facial piercings.
The camera pans to the groom walking down the aisle. He is tall and hairy, with a long beard. He wears only glasses and an American flag Speedo. His beer gut stretches faded tattoos from his punk past. He is pushing a fixed-gear bike as we walks. He gets to the stage and smiles at Jenny. She frowns.
The camera cuts to the church doors bursting open. Johnny walks in firing indiscriminately into the crowd. We catch glimpses of heads exploding, blood everywhere. Both of the bride’s parents fall to the ground, dead. The groom turns to run but he is shot in the back. Jenny presses her hands to her chest and beams a wicked grin at Johnny.
Johnny grabs her by the hand and she leaps off the stage. They run past the dead groom, her dead parents, down the aisle in reverse. Johnny shoots everyone who crosses their path.
Outside the church, a cherry-red convertible waits for them. They hop in and drive off.
Cut to Johnny and Jenny driving, the convertible top down, the wind in their hair.
Jenny: So where are we going?
Johnny: Down this road. Then Portland, Oregon. Then, who knows.
The camera pans back and the car speeds away from us, off into the sunset.
Fade to black.
Title Card: Hipster Hunter
The convertible pulls up in front of a warehouse. White paint is peeling off the exterior. Muffled dance beats emanate from within.
Cut to Johnny and Jenny, still in her wedding dress, standing at the bar inside the music venue. Their faces register disbelief. Every person dancing around them is a hipster. All the men sport curly mustaches and all the girls wear oversized glasses. The camera pans to the band on stage that is playing a synth-heavy, dance-beat version of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”
Cut to Johnny and Jenny staring blankly. Johnny turns, without emotion, and walks off-screen. Jenny continues to stare while the band plays. Johnny re-enters with a gas can. He douses the bar top with gasoline.
Cut to Johnny and Jenny leaning against their car. The building is in flames and people are running out, some of them on fire.
A midget in a red petticoat walks backwards down the street, ignoring the flaming building. He waves his hands above his head in some crude form of dancing.
Midget: Tihsllub lla si siht. Rophatem a lla si siht.
Cut to the interior of a smoky dive bar with a jukebox blaring Buddy Holly in the background. Johnny is playing pinball. He is no longer wearing the leather jacket. We can now see he has a pack of cigarettes rolled up in his t-shirt’s sleeve.
Jenny is next to him. She’s wearing black leather pants and a Leftover Crack tank-top. She is sobbing, pleading with Johnny.
Jenny: But Johnny, don’t you know I love you? You could leave all this behind and start a new life with me.
Johnny: I have to.
Jenny: But why, Johnny, why?
Johnny: I . . . I just hate them so much.
Cut to Johnny and Jenny window shopping in a posh district of the city. They walk past expensive furniture shops and expensive art galleries. They come upon three street punks sitting at the corner pan-handling. Their white dog snarls and snaps at passersby.
Street Punk 1: Yo, you got a dollar to spare?
Johnny: No.
Street Punk 1: Any food?
Johnny: No.
Street Punk 1: Oh, OK.
The dog snarls at Johnny and Jenny. The punks are too high to notice.
Jenny: That dog seems angry.
Johnny: The angriest dog in the world.
Johnny pulls out a pistol and shoots the street punks so quick that their drug-addled minds and malnourished bodies have no time to react. The dog lifts its leg and pisses on the dead punks.
Cut to side shot of Johnny and Jenny in a diner. They’re eating cherry pie and drinking coffee.
Close-up of Johnny’s face staring intently.
Close-up of Jenny’s face, sad.
Close-up of Johnny as he takes a drink of coffee, slurping loudly.
Close-up of Jenny.
Jenny: I . . .
Close-up of Johnny as he chomps down on a forkful of pie. He chews loudly with his mouth open.
Close-up of Jenny.
Jenny: Can’t . . .
Close-up of Johnny as he attempts to drink coffee and eat pie at the same time. Coffee drips down his chin as the pie smears across his face in an increasingly wider circumference extending out from his mouth.
Close-up of Jenny.
Jenny: Keep . . . doing . . .
Cut to Johnny on his knees in the street in heavy rain. He’s sobbing, soaked.
Camera pans and we see Jenny standing with another man. The man is wearing extra tight yellow jeans and a purple wife-beater. Tattoos of obscure band logos coat his skinny arms. He’s got a brown paper bag over his head. The bag has glasses (but no eyes) and a mustache (but no mouth) drawn on in black magic marker.
Jenny and the Baghead Hipster turn and walk away.
Cut to an extreme close-up of static on a television. The white noise is deafening. The camera tilts and we see we’re in a cheap motel room. Johnny sits on the stained bed. A white rabbit is asleep in his lap. In one hand Johnny holds a snifter of scotch. In the other he holds a cigarette that has burned down without disintegrating. The cigarette is a three inch stick of ash.
The rabbit lifts its head and looks at Johnny.
Rabbit: Do the locomotion.
Cut to the same static we heard earlier. The camera tilts again, this time revealing a posh basement apartment. The walls are wood paneled and we see a Big Lebowski poster. Jenny and the Baghead Hipster sit on a bed, an oxygen tank beside them. Jenny stares blankly as the Baghead Hipster kisses her neck. The bag crinkles awkwardly loud in the otherwise soundless basement apartment as he pushes his bagged head into her neck.
The Baghead Hipster pulls back, grabs a gas mask connected to the oxygen tank, and inhales, deep and raspy. He unzips his jeans and turns to Jenny.
The Baghead Hipster: You stay alive, baby. Do it for Van Gogh.
Jenny robotically leans over, but the camera is positioned too high, and we can only assume that she is giving him head.
Cut to POV from ins
ide an unknown car, staring out the windshield at a dark road illuminated by the headlights. We can only see about six feet ahead. Suddenly a white cat appears in the road. The car turns abruptly, rolls end over end, the camera jolting to simulate the commotion, and finally there’s a fatal lurch of metal, then silence, then a meow.
Cut to Johnny’s car pulling up in front of a doughnut shop. The camera hovers over his shoulder as he steps out of the car and enters the shop.
Inside, the shop is empty but for the counter girl. She has short hair, arms covered in tattoos of birds and nautical stars, and a septum piercing. She looks up from the book she is reading.
Johnny: Don’t you fucking look at me!
Johnny raises the shotgun he’d been concealing. He shoots the woman point-blank in the chest. She goes flying back into the wall behind the counter.
Close-up of blood splatter on a pile of bacon maple bars.
Cut to a bike shop. There are various people shopping. In the back of the shop is a bar with six men ironically dressed in CARE BEARS shirts. They are vomiting into their pint glasses, drinking it, then vomiting again.
Cut to the door bursting open and Johnny storming in with the shotgun. He takes out a few of the shoppers and then turns his attention to the men at the bar.
Puker 2: It is not my custom to go where I am not wanted.
Puker 2 takes a sip of his vomit and Johnny shoots him in the face.
Cut to Johnny standing in front of a small art gallery, his shotgun slung across his shoulders. The sign in the window of the gallery is about a special exhibit composed of “found art” that promises to be an “eye-opening examination of gender.” Without warning, the building explodes. Johnny gives no indication that anything happened. An old man on a riding lawnmower drives past the burning rubble.
Cut to a packed outdoor street fair. Dotting the crowd are a variety of street performers, from carnival barkers on stilts to human statues. Food carts are selling strange ethnic fare.
Jenny and the Baghead Hipster are walking hand-in-hand down the street when suddenly gunfire breaks out. People scatter, screaming.
The camera cuts to a shot of Johnny’s steel-toed boots stepping across the asphalt, then we rise up to the smoking barrels of his shotgun, and then finally, Johnny’s face.
Johnny: Hey! That’s my girl!
Cut to the Baghead Hipster reaching behind his back and pulling out a handgun. Before he can shoot, his hand is blown clean off.
He collapses, helpless. Johnny approaches, cool and confident in his stride. Johnny rips the paper bag off the man’s head. The man beneath looks identical to Johnny.
Cut to the cool Johnny staring down.
Cut to the hipster Johnny staring up.
Cut to the cool Johnny staring down.
Cut to the hipster Johnny staring up.
Cut to the cool Johnny pressing his shotgun to the hipster Johnny’s face.
Cut to a distance shot of the cool Johnny standing over the hipster Johnny. A shotgun blast.
Cut to a blood-splattered cool Johnny turning his attention to Jenny. She’s covered in blood, but smiling.
Johnny climbs on top of a nearby Mexican-Korean fusion food cart. Horns and rock guitars suddenly start blaring in the background and Johnny sings “Do You Love Me (Now That I Can Dance)” by The Contours. The crowd reforms and people dance the Mashed Potato. After the first verse and chorus, Johnny hops down and takes Jenny’s hands.
Johnny: Don’t you feel like this has all happened before?
Camera pans back and the crowd is still dancing and Johnny and Jenny hold hands, staring deeply into each other’s eyes. Another person who looks exactly like Johnny but dressed in a bright purple zoot suit walks up to Johnny. The stranger reaches inside his coat and pulls out a handgun. He shoots Johnny in the stomach. Johnny crumples to the ground, clutching his wound. He rolls in the street, moaning. The crowd stops doing the Mashed Potato. They stare at this stranger.
The new Johnny pulls Jenny out of the car, dips her back, and kisses her deeply. The crowd starts to do the Robot.
Fade to black.
MISERYHEAD
MICHAEL J SEIDLINGER
There’s a killer dominating every city, just like every film dominates at least one mind. There’s a killer that’s waiting to take away something from you, and the reason being, well, it isn’t personal. There’s a killer with no name giving each victim something to sing about.
There’s a killer around the corner and it waits for me.
It wants to take away everything I’ve never been able to appreciate.
It’s already taken my identity.
It wants to be real but I won’t let it.
Every day is worse than the last.
I tell myself that it’ll get better. I’m a good person. I was hiding behind something I’m not. It’s better this way, even if it means no one talks to me. No one even sees me. They only see what I used to be. But I guess it’s better than saying and doing something just to be accepted.
I tell myself—
Not knowing is better than finding out you’re not enough.
Mallory finds me in the cafeteria before lunch. “Hello Blake.” I recognize her, but I don’t say anything, looking around nervously, expecting that she’s talking to someone else rather than me.
“Blake?”
She’s looking right into my eyes.
“Yeah?”
“I haven’t seen you in class.”
“You can see me?”
“I’ve always seen you for what you really are.”
You can say I’m flattered, baffled even, “Oh, umm, thanks . . .”
“You don’t need to hide behind a mannequin to be accepted. I could tell right from the first day that you’d be popular.”
“You . . . can see the mannequin?”
“I can see you. Anything else I see as fake.”
This is an interesting turn of events.
She asks me, “Are you hungry?”
I shrug, “Sure.”
“I’m resourceful. I get things done.”
“Thanks . . .” I falter, and I’m surprised to remember her name, “Mallory.”
Her eyes sparkle. “I’ll get us some food.”
We share lunch together. Once or twice, I reach out and touch her hand, if only to make sure that she’s real. She takes the lead and tells me we should get out of here.
“Class is cancelled.”
“Which class?”
“Every class.”
“Really?”
She grins, “No . . . but I feel I’ll learn more being around you than sitting, bored in class.”
Reason enough for me.
Stewart High is teeming with a feverish atmosphere, like something needs to happen, but nothing ever does.
Mallory walks with me, letting me lead the way.
I don’t want to tell her that I don’t drive but as we hit the sidewalk and there’s only the one direction to go—bus stop—I realize I might as well. Not like I can change this fact.
“So, Mallory . . .”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Yeah.” She smiles, happy, enjoying my company.
“What do you know?”
“You take the bus.”
“Oh.”
“It’s okay. I take the bus too. I’m kind of shocked you take the city bus. Stewart High has its own busses.”
“Yeah but, you know they are for—”
“Freshmen. I know. I guess I just don’t really care what people think of me.”
“That’s refreshing to hear. I care too much.”
Nodding, “It’s natural.”
“I guess.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“Shall we go?”
“School or city bus?”
Mallory points, “Well the school bus is right there, waiting for us.”
Fine by me.
It happens so quickly.
<
br /> We’re holding hands and I thank her.
“Don’t thank me. You were always here.”
Everything I say, she finds interesting and funny, good-natured and poignant. She listens, and I mean she really listens, to what I have to say. I have nowhere else to take her, and she doesn’t find anything interesting if I’m not already interested, so I might as well take her home.
The school bus stops right up the street, making it an easy walk to the house.
At the door, I tell her, “It may be a little messy.”
“You should see my room.” Mallory.
We walk in; she takes two steps and stops.
“You live here alone?” her voice rises up a notch, more surprised than alarmed.
“Yup,” I say, not too confident.
In Heaven, Everything Is Fine: Fiction Inspired by David Lynch Page 16
