“The Orph’s got a great double feature. There’s Chainsaw Surgeon Part Three and Gore on the Golf Course. That’s the one they say gives a new meaning to the word slice. My friend Mary saw them, said they were great.”
Horror pictures? Oh, no! Tommy remembered the last time he had watched one of those. He’d had nightmares for a week.
Lisa popped another bubble. The odor of bubblegum was overpowering in the small car, making Tommy’s stomach heave.
“I wanted to double with Mary and her boyfriend, Artie, but he insisted on going to watch some sports picture. Said his coach told him to see it. That was the last straw for Mary, I think she may dump him! Like, I mean, who’s more important, your girlfriend or the coach?”
Tommy was now sure he was going to the Orpheum. “Oh, you’re right, Lisa, your girlfriend. Definitely. For certain!”
Tommy, he told himself silently, this is Lisa Anderson you’re dating. It’s worth it. He was beginning to have a feeling he was wrong about that, but it was difficult arguing with himself, especially with the miasma of bubble gum filling the car. He consoled himself with the thought that they were almost to the theater, and the smell wouldn’t be so bad after they were out of the car.
The drive to the Orpheum hadn’t taken long, and Tommy found a good parking space, but the theater was close to full when they entered.
“How come so many people are here this early?” he asked.
“Oh, this isn’t early. They start the show at seven thirty here, instead of at eight. That’s ’cause of all the kids that come here. They have to get home to bed.”
Kids? Coming to see Chainsaw Surgeon? Tommy looked around and saw that there were indeed a lot of families in the audience. He spotted a pair of empty seats and led Lisa to them. They had barely gotten seated when the lights dimmed. Tommy put his arm around Lisa, who didn’t object.
Lisa didn’t object, but the man behind them did. “Hey, twerp. Get your arm down where it belongs before I call the usher. I don’t want you giving my kids bad ideas.”
Tommy looked around. Between the man and his wife were four children, the youngest about five. A boy of seven was pointing at Tommy’s arm and giggling, and the man was glaring. Tommy removed his arm.
Lisa whispered, “That happens here a lot. But we can hold hands.” She moved her hand over and he took it.
The movie had started, and Tommy looked up at the screen. He immediately decided that was a mistake. Several people were trying to dismember each other, and there was blood all over. Tommy’s stomach, already upset by the aroma of bubblegum, felt very queasy. He attempted to look at Lisa in order to avoid the movie, but every time she caught him, she would point at the screen and whisper, “Oh, look!” After a while, Tommy noticed that her bubblegum was popping every time there was a particularly nasty incident on screen.
He managed to maintain control until the girl was cut in half by a malfunctioning food processor, then he knew he was going to be sick. He muttered, “Excuse me,” to Lisa and ran up the aisle. He made it to the Men’s Room just in time.
As he emerged from the Men’s Room, he decided a soda would quiet his now-empty stomach. The refreshment stand was closed until intermission, but there was a row of vending machines. He dropped in some coins and pushed the button for ginger ale, his mother’s sure cure for an upset stomach. He picked up the cup without looking at it and took a sip, then pulled back in astonishment. Instead of the cold sweetness of ginger ale, the liquid was warm and salty. He looked at it—it was red—then he looked back at the soda machine. Now instead of “Soda” the sign said “Blood” and he had apparently pushed the button for “A positive.” He dashed back into the Men’s Room and rid his stomach of anything left in it.
He thought of leaving early, just getting out of a place that was creeping him out. He could use his upset stomach as an excuse, but he knew if he did that he’d never get another date with Lisa. He made his way back into the theater proper and sat down next to her.
“You okay, Tommy?”
“Yeah, I think so. Just a little upset stomach.”
“Gosh, you aren’t getting sick over the movie, are you? I don’t know if I could respect somebody who got sick from a horror movie.”
“Oh, no, it wasn’t the movie.” Tommy thought frantically. “It was the, uh, the, the tuna casserole we had for dinner. It does this to me sometimes. I keep asking Mom not to serve it when I have a date, but she forgets.”
“Oh, yeah, I know what that’s like. My mom serves asparagus and just the smell makes me want to throw up.”
Tommy clamped his jaw and tried not to think of throwing up. He succeeded, but just barely.
Lisa took his hand again, and they settled back and watched the movie until the first feature was over and the lights went up for intermission. Tommy escorted Lisa out to the lobby for refreshments. The blood machine was still there, and the refreshment stand also seemed to be selling blood. He bought Lisa a cup, and paid an excessive amount for ice water, the only other choice, for himself.
Lisa drank the blood without seeming to notice anything unusual about it. But she did notice Tommy’s water.
“What are you drinking?”
“Just ice water. I guess my stomach’s still upset. From the tuna casserole, you know.”
“Oh, yeah. You take it easy. But you wouldn’t mind if I had something to eat, would you?”
Tommy took the hint and led Lisa back to the refreshment stand. “What would you like?”
She scanned the counter and finally pointed to a package marked “Lady Fingers.” Tommy paid for it and handed it to Lisa. She opened the package and took out a lady finger and began to nibble on it. Tommy almost gagged when he saw that it was indeed a finger. Bone, fingernail, a real human finger, but Lisa acted like it was a perfectly normal snack and continued to eat until the package was empty.
As they stood there, Tommy saw a movement over by the vending machines out of the corner of his eye. One of the machines grew an arm from somewhere, reached out, and pulled a small child into its opening. Tommy said, “Oh, my God, look at that!” to Lisa, who was facing away from it. By the time she turned to look, there was nothing to see except a child’s shoe on the floor.
“What is it? I don’t see anything.”
“I—I—I’m not sure, I thought—” Tommy stuttered, then as the lights blinked, finished, “I’m not sure. C’mon, let’s go back in.”
The second movie was worse than the first. In addition to the caddy who was decapitated with a five iron, several people were hit with hard-driven golf balls and had large holes punched right through heads, chests, and various other areas. After a while, Tommy noticed that the camera angle made it look like the golfers were hitting their balls into the audience. Successive shots seemed to come further and further out.
Tommy leaned over to Lisa and asked, “Is this movie in 3D?”
“Of course not. How could it be? We don’t have those silly glasses.”
The next shot seemed to come right at Tommy, and he instinctively ducked. There was a loud squishy thud behind him, and when he turned around, the man who had been hassling him earlier had a golf ball embedded in one eye socket. He didn’t seem aware of anything unusual and continued to watch the movie with his remaining eye. Tommy turned back around to look at the screen.
The entire movie action was now flowing out into the audience, the grass of the fairway washing over the front rows of patrons at neck level. One of the golfers walked up to a woman whose head appeared to be resting on the ground, swung, and knocked her head off her neck and into the balcony. The man next to her didn’t even notice. Several other golfers tried the same thing, but only a few of the heads got all the way to the balcony.
The golfers were getting closer. Tommy turned to Lisa and said, “Come on, Lisa, we’ve got to get out of here!”
“Why, Tommy? I want to wait and see if they’ll let me play. After all, I am Captain of the Girl’s Golf Team at school.” The edg
e of the fairway approached them, and Lisa climbed up on it.
Tommy was going to yell at her to come back, when he realized that the grass was about to cut right through his neck, making him a prime target. He ducked below the fairway level, scuttled out to the aisle, and ran crouched over toward the back of the theater until he was in the clear. When he looked around again, Lisa was talking to one of the movie golfers, who was handing her a club and pointing to someone’s head. No one in the audience seemed aware of anything unusual going on.
Tommy couldn’t see the exit sign any more, but he managed to get to the end of the aisle and discover by feel that there was still a door there. He pushed through it and found himself in a strangely transformed room. The lobby was now the lounge of a golf club, and the refreshment stand had become a bar. The vending machines were still in place, and Tommy noticed that the machine he had seen eat a child now had two shoes and a small pile of clothes in front of it.
When he looked behind him, there was no longer a door into the theater. However, the TV set over the bar was showing the movie. He went over for a closer look, and could distinguish Lisa, now apparently a regular member of the cast, still popping bubblegum.
Suddenly the bartender yelled at Tommy, “Hey kid, can’t ya read? Nobody under twenty-one allowed in here. Beat it.”
“Yes, sir. But I’m lost, where’s the exit?”
The bartender gestured, and Tommy walked to a door that was about where the door to the outer lobby of the Orpheum should have been. He pulled at it, but it wouldn’t open. He pushed with no better result. The bartender glared at him.
A uniformed security guard entered and spoke briefly to the bartender, then started across the room toward Tommy. As he walked, he drew a nine iron from a holster on his belt and swung it menacingly in Tommy’s direction. Frantic to get out, Tommy placed a foot on the door jamb and pulled as hard as he could on the handle, but the door still didn’t move. Suddenly the nine iron swished by Tommy’s face, missing him by inches. His hand slipped off the door handle and he fell on the floor. The nine iron banged on the floor beside him.
Tommy scrambled to his feet and ran across the room. Now the guard had a gun out, and as Tommy reached the vending machines the guard fired. A steel tee sped by Tommy’s ear, sinking point first into one of the vending machines, and the machine started to spurt blood. Tommy tried to change direction, but his feet skidded on the blood and he fell down again, just in time for another of the deadly tees to fly over his head. Flailing frantically in the pools of blood, he slid across the floor into the guard’s legs and knocked him down. The guard’s nine iron flew from his hand and hit the door, which obliged by finally popping open a few inches. Not trusting his feet on the slippery blood, Tommy crawled to the door, yanked it open, and crawled through.
He was in the outer lobby, his clothes covered with blood. The door he had just come through was shut again, but he could hear a faint pounding on it. The outer lobby was deserted. There was no ticket-taker, nobody at the box office. He walked quickly to the outer doors and tried one. It was locked, as were most of the others as he moved down the row trying each in turn. Tommy was sure safety rules required exit doors to be open, but it was as if they didn’t expect anyone to be leaving tonight. Finally he found one that opened, but as it did, an alarm rang somewhere in the distance. Out on the street, he ran the half block to his car, got in, and drove quickly away. A few blocks down the street, several police cars screamed by him, heading for the theater, oblivious to Tommy’s presence. As soon as the police were well past him, he turned around and headed back.
There was a cop in front of the theater waving people by, but traffic was slow enough for Tommy to get a good look at the theater. It was normal enough, except all the lights were off as if it were three a.m. instead of ten p.m. There didn’t seem to be anyone around except the cops.
He didn’t understand what had happened, but the cops paid no attention to him. He had gotten away, he was in the clear, he was still alive! Except for the likelihood of a week or two of nightmares, the horror was over.
Then he remembered and his heart skipped a beat. The worst horror of the night was still in front of him. What was Lisa’s brother Pit Bull going to do when Tommy not only didn’t bring Lisa home on time, but didn’t bring her home at all? Tommy shivered.
Accident Prone
[Ever wonder what makes some people accident prone?]
WHEN SID LOOKED DOWN from the plane window, he saw angels skiing on the cloud banks below. Up until then the flight had been normal. Well, at least as normal as anything ever was in Sid’s accident-prone life, but this was unusual, even for Sid.
Sid’s taxi had gotten a flat tire on the way to the airport, and he had arrived at the terminal barely on time. The girl behind the counter had been most unpleasant about it, and Sid blamed that aggravation for the fainting spell at the security checkpoint. He had experienced a sudden sharp pain in his chest and blacked out.
When he came to, he was sitting on the floor looking up at several airport attendants. One of them was asking, “How are you feeling? Are you okay? Should we call for an ambulance?”
Several of them helped him to his feet, and the one who had been asking the questions took his ticket and inspected it. Handing it back to Sid, he said, “I’m certainly glad you’re feeling better, Mr. Herbert, but it’s a good thing I checked. You were heading for the wrong gate.”
“Wrong gate?” protested Sid. He looked down at the ticket, and then up at the sign on the wall, wondering what was wrong this time. The numbers seemed to match.
“No, look here. My ticket says Gate 84, flight 721 to Orlando. And the sign over there says Gates 81 to 90. This is my gate.” But inside he had the usual sinking feeling. Probably the girl had written one thing and said something different, or the computer printed the wrong thing. Or the sign painter had mislabeled the corridor. Sure, why not?
The attendant, who wore a badge bearing the name “Michael” surrounded by a pair of feathery wings, nodded his head. “Yes, sir, but there has been a change. If you would care to look for yourself?” He pointed at a bank of TV monitors listing departures. The line for flight 721 to Orlando said “Gate 84,” but as Sid watched, the “84” faded out and was replaced by “1000.”
“Gate 1000? Gate 1000? I’ve been in this airport hundreds of times, and I never heard of a Gate 1000.” Sid could count the number of times he had actually flown on the fingers of one hand, but he had been in the airport hundreds of times—waiting for flights canceled due to weather, waiting for flights canceled due to engine trouble, waiting for overbooked flights where he was always the one bumped, and somehow he never got any compensation. Sid had wandered the corridors of the airport from one end to the other, and he had never seen a gate number higher than 99. “Is Gate 1000 new?”
“No, sir, Gate 1000 is not new. It’s been around for a long time. A very long time.” The attendant firmly but gently took Sid’s arm and led him to a moving walkway. “Just go down this slidewalk, and when you come to a branch in the corridor, go right for Gate 1000. Be sure not to go left, that leads to Gate 666, and we wouldn’t want to go there, now would we, sir?” He chuckled as if sharing a joke with Sid, but Sid didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about.
The attendant applied gentle pressure to Sid’s arm, and Sid found himself moving down the slidewalk. A slidewalk, he noted mentally, that he had never seen, or at least never noticed, before this. Sure enough, there was a branch, and he followed instructions and went right, down another corridor to Gate 1000. At the end of this one was the usual waiting room full of chairs, but the girl at the desk waved him right through the door into the plane. He just had time to stow his bag and his jacket in the overhead compartment and take his seat before the pilot started to taxi out to the runway.
From that point on, the flight was ordinary enough. They ran out of Coke one seat before they got to him, and he had to drink ginger ale, but at least there were enough
meals. One time before he had gone hungry when they ran out. The flight remained ordinary until he looked down from the plane window and saw angels skiing on the cloud banks below.
Sid tried to tell the stewardess about the skiing angels, but just then the pilot announced that they were making their approach, and everyone was busy.
Sid checked his watch, as it seemed too early to have arrived at Orlando, but it had stopped, probably when he blacked out and fell. He looked out the window again, but now all he could see were clouds. Then, as the plane banked around for its approach, he saw the airport in the distance. It didn’t look much like Orlando. Sid gave a sigh of resignation at the thought of ending up in the wrong city, and wondered where he was. This airport looked bigger than Orlando, much, much bigger. And it was a funny color, sort of gold.
Sid watched out the window as they approached. They were only feet off the ground when suddenly the plane’s engines revved up to full speed and they started to climb. A go-round, something blocking the runway. It hardly ever happened, they said, but it had happened on every flight Sid had ever taken. They made a big circle around the airport, giving Sid a better look, and on the second attempt they managed to land. After they had taxied to a stop, Sid took his coat and bag from the overhead storage and walked to the exit.
As he came out of the boarding ramp into the gate area, Sid paused and looked around. This was definitely not Orlando. Everything was done in an iridescent white luster. Sid walked across the waiting area and was about to go looking for the baggage claim when he noticed two men arguing. With a start, he realized that one was the airport attendant named Michael he had left behind in the other airport, but Michael was now wearing a pilot’s uniform. The other man had a similar badge, with the name “Peter” flanked by the feathery wings, but his badge also had a narrow ellipse over the name. The two men made no attempt to conceal their argument, so Sid stopped to listen.
Worlds Away and Worlds Aweird Page 13
