Bloody Mask

by Alan Spencer

  Andy asked them to pose in front of the Bloody Mask van together and snapped a shot. Andy said the picture was for the movie release, and for himself.

  Brian offered to take a drive in the van, but Andy said all of his recording equipment for the commentaries and special features on the release was in his van, so they took Andy's ride to Trisha Cooper's house.

  Brian high-fived Dan. "Man, I can't wait to talk to One-Tit Trish again."

  Andy, at the wheel, was confused. "One-Tit Trish? You're talking about Trisha Cooper, right?"

  "Yeah, it's a l-oong story," Dan laughed. "It started with..."

  Andy politely cut him off. "Save it for the commentary track. I can't wait to hear about this. This is going to be so awesome."

  Trisha's Cooper house was in a residential neighborhood of Prudence called Black Hills. This was the best of Prudence, as far as economics were concerned. This section was the whitest slices of bread in the bag. Nice cars and nice houses and purebred dogs barking in backyards.

  Brian kept whistling. "I always whistle when I pass through this part of town. You're talking about high end, baby. It's better than the cardboard shanty I live in. Me and you will do better when we move in together one of these days, Dan."

  Dan cringed on the inside. How would he tell Brian what they talked about with a ton of liquor in their systems wasn't going to happen?

  Wait until the week's over. You don't want to ruin the fun, do you?

  "Have you talked to Trisha? I haven't seen her since we made the movie."

  Brian made a sour face. "She comes into the Kroger to buy groceries. She acts like she doesn't know me. She's married to that minister at that dumb Mormon church, like I told you before. She's all, you know, religious now. Trisha wouldn't be in our sequel in a million years."

  Andy parked in front of a two-story ranch style house. There was barking golden doodle in the back yard. At the edge of the driveway, Dan noticed three different sets of baby hands stamped into the concrete.

  Dan wondered what Trisha's husband would think of them, the two bozos who made a movie and their fan boy henchmen?

  Trisha was in the front yard watering her gardenias, tulips, and geraniums. She wore a housedress with flowers on it. Pretty, but not too sexy. Her hair was bombshell blonde and held together in a sort of beehive fashion. She had too much make-up on. Trisha was the perfect example of a wife of a minister. Primped and perfect. She didn't look a day over thirty, even though she was old as Dan and Brian.

  Dan heard under Brian's breath, "...slam that shit like a Bible."

  Trisha said hello and turned off the garden hose. She waved them over into the backyard porch. The wooden deck had a long table with an umbrella for shade. Lemonade and tea was in a set of matching pitchers, as well as a bucket of ice with metal tongs. A pile of cookies were on a plate. Trisha kindly invited them all to sit and relax.

  Andy was setting up his camera and recording equipment.

  Brian was giving her the eyes, and Trisha ignored him like she ignored him twenty years ago on the set. Dan had to act as the in-between to counter off the awkwardness Brian brought to the table.

  Dan said, "So where's that husband of yours? Let's meet him."

  Trisha's smile didn't waver. "Oh, he doesn't like me talking to you guys. Don't let that make you feel uncomfortable. He's a good man. I met him at Iowa University. Me and Glen fell in love, we moved back here, and Glen built his church, and I had his babies. That about sums up my life since the last time I saw you."

  Brian had no filter. He said, "It's not like you were in porno."

  Dan noticed a scowling face from the kitchen window over the porch. That must've been Glen. When Dan waved at him, the face disappeared back into the house. Dan decided not to say anything. They were lucky enough Trisha volunteered to be interviewed.

  "The partial nudity thing bothers him," Trisha said. "He made me burn the movie. No offense. And when he found out you guys were coming, he told me I couldn't talk to you guys. But I told Glen you can't hide from your past. And I always wanted to be in a movie. It's a part of my life. I'm not ashamed, though I'm not necessarily proud of it either. It's a, um..."

  "A bad movie," Dan laughed. "You can say it, Trisha. We're proud of our little film, but it's only for a certain niche audience."

  Brian didn't like Dan saying that. "Hey, I thought we did a really good job."

  "We're not James Cameron. We're not even James Cameron's pinkie finger. Let's not lie to ourselves."

  Andy had his equipment ready. He handed Dan a Steno notebook of questions. "I would love it if you asked our actress these questions. Brian, feel free to add any set insights, as well as you, Dan. But I want the focus on this supplement of the movie release to be about Trisha. Keep this friendly."

  Dan read over the questions.

  Soon, Andy said, "Action."

  Dan started in with the interview.

  "This is Dan Daniels and Brian Loomis talking with Trisha Cooper who played Veronica in Bloody Mask. I wanted to thank Trisha for playing the part for twenty bucks a day and free sandwiches when we could provide them. She was a great sport through the whole ordeal, and I owe her a million thanks. Trisha's still as beautiful as I remember her."

  Trisha was loving the attention.

  "She's got great tits," Brian said. "Or should I say, a great tit."

  Dan knew Brian would have to be kept in check if this interview was going to go smoothly. Brian was going straight for the throat. You had to work up to those statements, feel the person out, before you talked about their private parts.

  Dan was happy when Trisha burst out into laughter.

  "Yeah, that's why you call me "One-Tit Trish." You poor guys. I remember reading the flyer you guys posted at the community college for actors to be in a movie. You guys were doing interviews in the back of that van with the hideous face on it. You said I could have the part if I bared my breasts. I agreed. I had an aunt who was a model for several years. She wasn't super famous, but she said she was proud of her body, and nudity was just part of the deal. If you wanted to be a model, you can't be shy. I figured the movie would be great practice.

  "But my friends were like, if you get famous one day with your modeling, you don't want this to come back and haunt you. Hah! Like I was going to be Cindy Crawford! I mean, sure, I did a shampoo commercial once, but modeling, or serious acting, I didn't make it, but my friends said I shouldn't show my breasts. Just in case I did become famous.

  "Then the day of the shoot where I was to stand in front of a window flashing my boobs at my horny boyfriend so he'd come up to my room and do me, I couldn't stop thinking about my career. So I told poor Dan I wouldn't do it, and Dan and Brian give them this horrified face. Before they can say anything else, I tell them I'll show one breast.

  "I remember Brian begged me to show the other breast, but Dan, you were so sweet, you said you weren't going to make anybody do anything they didn't want to do. I said I'd meet you guys half-way. One tit. And I'd only show the left one. Don't ask me why. I was a dumb eighteen year old.

  "The scenes called for both boobs, because I wasn't wearing a bra or a shirt. So when I took my bra off in the window scene, Dan had cut out the sleeve of his t-shirt and placed it over my right breast. There wasn't a way to place the shadows so nobody would see the sleeve, so you guys left the sleeve in plain sight anyway. I know the chat rooms have asked why am I wearing a shirt sleeve over one breast. Well, there's your answer. A dumb girl with Hollywood in her future didn't want to show both her girls off. There you go, folks. That's why they call me One-Tit Trisha."

  Dan read off the next question. "I already know the answer to this question, but the audience watching this may not be aware of our little trick. It's amateurish, but in the window scene, did you, or did you not, flash your bush?"

  "Hah! If I only showed off one of my girls, you think I'd show anything else off? No. It's not me who pulls down their panties."

  Brian jumped into the
conversation. "I have to take credit for this idea. Now we're not the first filmmakers to do this trick. There's tit stand-ins and butt stand-ins in Hollywood all the time. Dan and I, we really wanted to make an NC-17 rated movie. We didn't quite succeed, but you have to give us an "A" for effort. Dan and I drove down to the bad part of Missouri. There's a street of really low end strip clubs, and hookers, if you go out into the woods looking for them. We paid a woman forty dollars to pull down her panties and flash us her girl patch."

  Dan saw Trisha's face go slack.

  Trisha didn't know that story.

  "Wait, Brian," Dan said. "Yeah, we did that. But in the movie, you can totally tell the bush doesn't belong to Trisha. We oversaturated the hooker's crotch with bad lighting, and you can see trees in the background, even though the scene in the movie is at Trisha's window. And we used that same bush scene like ten times in the movie. I think every girl who appears in the movie takes down the same pair of panties and shows us the same bush."

  Trisha smiled at Dan. "Thank you for clearing up that legend. Let it be known, that is not my bush!"

  Andy was pleased the way the interview went down. Brian was happy too, and Dan was satisfied, though he remembered seeing Glen's face in the window. The man's face was distraught. Dan wanted to tell the guy, "Sorry we shot your wife's tit."

  "You okay, Dan? You're being quiet."

  Dan told Brian about Glen.

  "Self-righteous Mormon," Brian gritted his teeth, "guy. Believe whatever you want to believe, but mind your fucking business when it comes to making horror movies. Go blow the scriptures up your ass when it comes to horror movies."

  Dan liked how Brian got so worked up. When he talked about the horror movie making community, Dan always thought it was funny how Brian included them, as if they'd made their mark on horror cinema now and forever.

  Andy said they were on a tight schedule. They had three days before the reunion party at Debby's on Thursday. Then after, Andy was packing up his operation and finalizing the release details back in New Jersey.

  Dan checked the itinerary.

  The schedule said Clayton Jones.

  Taz.

  Stuntman extraordinaire.

  * * *

  Clayton Jones, aka Taz, lived in the trailer park about twenty minutes from Trisha's house. Dan watched the nice houses, the beautiful community, degrade back to cars propped on cinder blocks, houses with plastic replacing broken windows, and kids running around unattended by their parents. When they arrived to the trailer park, Andy led to them to Taz's trailer. Taz was waiting for them, the man sitting on a lawn chair. He was sucking down a tall boy of Pabst. Taz offered them each a can.

  The well-muscled man had turned into an overweight trucker, though Taz's arms remained thick with brute strength. He had long shaggy gray hair and wore a Dokken shirt with blue jeans. Taz must've started drinking early in the morning, because he was slurring his words. They called him Taz because he sounded like the cartoon character when he was drunk.

  Andy set up his equipment and began the interview.

  Dan asked the first question.

  "So do you remember how I roped you into being a stunt man for a no budget movie, Taz?"

  "Hey man, you two fuckers gave me twenty bucks to jump through a fake window and that's all I needed to know, man, and that's how it went down, you fuckers, I smacked my head on a wooden board, got knocked out cold, but you offered me beer when I woke up, and I said, okay, fuckers, okay, we're good 'n got so much pussy from calling myself a stuntman, I owe you boys a hundred beers..."

  Most of Taz's comments were incoherent, so Andy said he wouldn't use the interview. On the way to the next interview, Andy wanted Brian and Dan to comment about the famous window scene in the film.

  "The big stunt went wrong right from the beginning," Brian said. "I constructed that giant, and I mean giant, window, out of candy glass, but the boards holding it together were solid. Poor Taz, when he jumped through it, he smacked his head on the wood. It knocked the sense out of the son-of-a-bitch. I guess we didn't do any damage that wasn't already there. The guy's got meth teeth, if you didn't already notice."

  Andy chimed in. "That scene's great. The killer throws Taz through a tiny window, and you do a close up of a giant ass window, and Taz doesn't even go through it. The oaf hits his head, you see his eyes roll into the back of the head, then you do a quick cut of a guy landing on a lawn covered in pieces of broken glass. Genius."

  Dan realized why people liked their movie so much, and maybe he knew it long ago, but now, the facts were really setting in. They weren't serious filmmakers. Bloody Mask was a series of gaffes. But they took the film deadly serious, and that's what gave it that strange brand of humor. Dan was okay with it, but Brian couldn't stop pretending he was a real filmmaker.

  They arrived at the next interview. Andy focused his camera on Tony, of "Tony's Greasy Pizza." The guy was in his seventies. Tony was a retired pizza restaurant owner. Tony was also a caterer for Bloody Mask. He held up the old sign of his business, the very wooden sign that appeared thirteen times in the background of Bloody Mask. They didn't interview Tony. Andy only wanted the guy to say his only lines from the movie into the camera.

  Tony remained sitting in his living room chair beside his restaurant sign and delivered those legendary lines: "Remember the gold ol' days when cigarettes didn't kill you and chicks didn't make you wrap your shit up with a rubber?"

  Andy said he was going back to his hotel to take account of the interviews they'd shot, so Brian drove Dan in the van to Debby's for a late lunch and beers. While they were eating, Becky gave them their check. Written on the check was a phone number, and under it, was Janey's phone number.

  "She slipped you the digits," Brian said, finishing his mug of beer. "Do you like how Becky didn't say anything. On the sly. So sneaky."

  "So I'm confused, is Janey married?"

  "I'm not sure. Last time I checked, no."

  "I've heard a lot of stories about her meeting a plastic surgeon and marrying him. I wonder what happened with all of that."

  "You heard stories about me out in Hollywood, and most of them aren't true."

  "So what did happen out in Hollywood with you?"

  Brian peered out the window. He was either tipsy or trying to tell the story in an edited version he approved in his head.

  "It's stupid what people say about me. This town talks some shit. I wasn't shot by drug dealers, for one. That's a lie. I was a production assistant, making no money, working my fucking ass off, and I got tired of it. I didn't have a coke habit either. I came back home, took care of my folks, and I got a steady job, and so many years later, here we are. I just took all the drama out of that tale, didn't I?"

  "I knew something wasn't right with the story," Dan said, taking a big bite of a bacon cheeseburger. "But what about Janey?"

  "You still like her, or something?"

  "It's not like I'm out to rekindle anything. We were a lot younger back then. A lot of stuff has happened since then that changes people. I've got kids, and child support, and debt. Who wants to marry me?"

  "You'd be surprised. You're the director of Bloody Mask. You made a million dollars off of the movie."

  Dan could feel his stomach churn at the memory. Janey did say 'We'll never want for anything' after the movie was first released. The day after Dan showed her his bank debt, the unpaid bills, she realized every road would be paved with shit, not gold, and they'd want for everything.

  "You're crazy if you're wanting to talk to her about anything between the sheets. Janey's trouble. She's a black widow ready to suck you of money and blood. She probably did it to that plastic surgeon, and she's going to do it to you next. I'd say it's a high price for a piece of tail."

  Dan wasn't so sure about the story. "Who says she married a plastic surgeon? I mean, she winded up back here in Prudence. I highly doubt she sucked the life out of a rich guy just to come back here."

  "So you're going to talk to
her? But, why?"

  "She's still a friend. And we didn't part ways in the best of fashion. I'd be nice to make amends with the whole ordeal."

  "What ordeal? The relationship?"

  "Yes, our relationship, and the movie, and my stupid fucking debt."

  "Debt? I didn't know you had debt that bad."

  Brian's face was cast in dismay.

  Dan realized he let a piece of the truth slip. He wasn't ready to talk to Brian about his debt, and he was given a reprieve from that discussions. It was too bad the reprieve wasn't the kind Dan would appreciate.

  The door to Debby's shot open. Standing at the entrance was a tall, wide shouldered man who could've passed for a linebacker. His silver hair was put back in a ponytail. The man's face was cherry with rage and his knuckles were white fury.

  "Outside, Dan. You and me. We've got to sort things out man-to-man. Or are you a chicken shit?"

  Everybody in the restaurant fell into silence. Dan's stomach dropped. Brian stopped eating his sandwich mid-bite.

  The man was Mitch.

  Mitch the Bitch.

  Dan thought about how he didn't owe the bastard one red cent. It was time to tell off the asshole.

  "You motherfucker, I don't owe you a single penny. You stole my movie. You had no permission to make money off of my work. You're a thief! You back off, or I'm going to make you back off."

  They were out in the parking lot now. Dan was jabbing his finger into Mitch's chest. Mitch was up against the Bloody Mask van.

  "I never hired you to work on my movie, and I certainly didn't ask you to steal an unmastered, uncut copy, and sell it on the market."

  Mitch wasn't giving up. The guy had dollar signs in his eyes. Everybody did when they thought they had worked with somebody who had made it big, Dan thought.

  "But Dan," Mitch insisted. "I'm the one who kept your movie out there and going on the black market. Sure, it was illegal, but if I hadn't made copies of that copy I," he paused, "took from you, you wouldn't be getting this re-release deal with Cult Crushers. You owe me something, Dan."