It Only Happens in the Movies

by Holly Bourne

  “Oh no. I’ve been up for ages. I just got back from a run.”

  “Riiight,” Ma said, unconvinced.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “Yes, actually. Not a big one though. I was just wondering if you minded doing a double shift today? I know you’re new and you’re not supposed to start until five. But they need a manager at our sister branch and I need someone to cover the load at Flicker. Could you come in at midday instead?”

  Today…

  I was supposed to be having a massively awkward and emotionally-damaging conversation with Dad today.

  “Yep. I can do it. Was it twelve you said?”

  “Oh…” Ma sounded like she didn’t know what to do with my compliance. “That’s very helpful, thank you, Audrey. Harry and LouLou will be there to look after you, so don’t worry. And I’ll write you up some instructions before I leave. You’ll like LouLou, she’s an old-timer.”

  Oh God, so probably just like you.

  “Sounds great.”

  Ma hung up without saying goodbye.

  I grabbed my uniform, which was still crumpled on the floor where I’d left it the other night. I looked at myself in the mirror and scowled. My hair fell long and dank around my face. I just about had time to wash and dry it – which always took for ever because it was so long. I hung my work top on the back of the bathroom door so the steam from the shower would iron out the worst of the creases. Then I shoved some toast and Marmite down myself and dabbed some make-up on. I tried to tell myself that I wasn’t putting make-up on in case Milo turned up – but I knew that was a lie.

  Just before I set off, I checked in on Mum. She’d migrated from sofa to bed at some point during the night, and she was all huddled up in her duvet, still only sleeping on her side of the bed.

  “Mum?”

  She rolled over. “Audrey? What is it?” Her eyes fluttered open.

  “I’m going to work, they want me to come in early. I won’t be home until late, is that okay?”

  “What…” She yawned, and her stale breath floated into my face. “What time is it?”

  “Almost eleven.”

  “Oh.” And she didn’t remark on how late it was at all. She just turned over. “Well, have fun, Audrey.” Her head went back under the duvet.

  It was raining out – undoing all the hard work I’d put into de-minging my hair. The wind was proper howling, the rain lashing against my hood as I stomped through puddles, soaking my jeans up to the knees, letting the elements blow away all my guilty feelings about leaving Mum for the day. I sent a message to Dougie, not sure what good it would do.

  Audrey: Mum’s having a bad day. Again. I’m working. Can you call her?

  The high street was mostly empty, the bad weather putting everyone off venturing out. I steered my way past the odd determined buggy-pusher, feeling jealous of all the toddlers who get to be pushed around under those snug plastic covers, and dodged down an alleyway to Flicker.

  There was a sign on the staff door in scrawled handwriting. Enter at your own peril.

  “What the hell?” I pulled it off the Blu-Tack holding it up.

  All the lights were off inside. The quietness jarred with the howling winds outside.

  “Hello?” I called.

  Silence.

  “Harry? LouLou?” Even though I had no idea who LouLou was.

  There was a clattering by the bar. I looked around for signs of life, but all I could hear was the wind hissing at the windows.

  “I know you’re here. You left a note on the door,” I called.

  I spotted a foot poking out from behind the bar. A blue Converse. I walked towards it and found Harry slumped on the ground, lifeless. Face down.

  “Harry?” He didn’t say anything. I bent down gingerly. Knowing it was a wind-up but still feeling freaked.

  I rolled him over and screamed.

  His face was covered in blood – what was left of it. Half of it seemed to be chewed off. His T-shirt was ripped and splattered with gore.

  A loud crash behind me and this…thing emerged from the kitchen. I screamed louder – pure real terror forcing its way out my vocal chords. It was wearing a ragged wedding dress, the skin behind the veil all grey and gruesome. It staggered towards me and I screamed again, falling backwards over Harry’s foot.

  That’s when the laughing started.

  “Got you!” Harry lurched upright like he had rigor mortis. “Shit, are you okay, Audrey?”

  I was crouched in a ball, panting for breath. “That. Wasn’t. Funny.”

  The zombie bride pulled up her veil. “Hi, I’m LouLou. Sorry, we’re just testing out Harry’s new stage make-up.”

  “Stage make-up?”

  Harry clambered to his feet, looking very dead but also very pleased with himself. He held out his hand to help pull me up but I shook my head.

  “Sorry, it’s my fault,” LouLou said. She did look sorry now that she’d lifted her veil. “I’m the assistant manager. I get a bit, well, overexcited when Ma’s not here.”

  And I warmed to her the moment she mentioned Ma in a negative way.

  Harry shrugged at my hand reject and ruffled his already-mussed hair. I stood up, not quite looking at him.

  “No, it’s my fault,” he said. “Sorry, Audrey. I make zombie movies and I wanted to try out this new kit.”

  “Isn’t the cinema about to open?”

  LouLou shrugged. “Probably. Who cares? What’s important is that we scared you shitless!”

  “I did not lose my shit,” I protested. “I was just confused.”

  “Oh come on, Audrey,” Harry said. “We got you.”

  “I still can’t believe you did that to me when I’m new.”

  LouLou completely removed her veil, revealing pink hair. “You’re right, sorry. As I said, we got…”

  “Overexcited, I get it.” I was trying to stay grumpy but it was hard. Harry had managed to win my eye contact and was grinning that gravitational-pull smile.

  “Let me wash this off.” LouLou made her way to the staff bathroom. “Thanks for covering today, Audrey. Harry, can you make the guacamole?”

  “Ahh, Ma said she left me instructions?” I called after her and I heard sniggering behind me.

  “Ha, yes she has. They’re upstairs in the staffroom.” LouLou laughed too.

  “What? What is it?”

  “Just go see for yourself.”

  She vanished into the loos and I was left with Harry, who was using some of the kitchen paper to mop his face.

  “How are your stress levels?” he asked, still grinning.

  “I’ll recover. So, you make zombie movies, huh?”

  “Yep. I’m making one right now. Well, I’m trying to. It’s taking for ever because I’m not sure what sort of film it’s supposed to be yet and I can’t find a good enough zombie bride.”

  “Why zombies?” I asked.

  He was smearing blood further across his face, rather than washing it off. I grabbed a paper towel, wet it under the tap and handed it to him.

  “Thank you. And, the real question is, why not zombies, Audrey? If you’re going to do anything, you need to ask yourself – would this situation benefit from adding zombies? The answer is almost always ‘yes’.”

  His napkin was already smothered in red syrup, so I wet another one and handed it over. “I asked Dougie about you.”

  He grinned, focusing on getting a big smear off his eyebrow. “And…”

  “He warned me off you. Said you were trouble.”

  Harry’s face didn’t show even a hint of surprise and I knew Dougie was onto something. “That’s not very friendly of him.”

  Harry was too busy cleaning himself to make the guacamole, so I shoved my rucksack on the floor and got out the avocados.

  “So what sort of trouble are you?” I asked, washing my hands before I started. “The I’m-still-in-love-with-my-ex kind? The I-have-mummy-issues kind? The I-secretly-have-low-self-esteem kind? Or, my personal favouri
te, the Just-because-I-can kind?”

  Harry looked totally unoffended. “I just don’t know why Dougie would say that about me.” He grinned so wide his teeth almost blinded me.

  “Ahh, come on, Harry. You even charmed Ma. God, you’re not going to get that stuff off with napkins. Go have a wash in the bathroom.”

  Another huge grin. “Thanks, Mum.”

  I mashed avocado while the two of them cleaned themselves up. LouLou emerged first, looking totally different. She now had a full face of eyeliner and a lip-piercing I hadn’t spotted behind the veil. I guessed she was around twenty-five.

  “Sorry about that,” she said. “Harry convinced me it would be hilarious. He’s very good at convincing people about things.” She saw me squeezing limes. “Isn’t Harry supposed to be doing that?”

  “He had to go wash.”

  “You see?” LouLou perched on the bar, swinging her legs under it. “He’s convinced you to do a job he was supposed to be doing, without you even realizing it. That’s Harry all over.”

  “Sorry. I’ll go check Ma’s rota, see what I’m supposed to do.”

  LouLou grimaced and shook her head. “Screw the rota. It’s very simple. You do what you did last shift.”

  “She didn’t let me do anything other than make the food last shift. She said I shouldn’t run before I could walk.”

  LouLou let out a huge sigh then jumped off the counter. “For Christ’s sake, that woman! None of it is rocket science. Here, let me show you.”

  Harry eventually came out, only a hint of red left on his face. It frustrated me that his wet hair made my belly do a thing.

  “Only ten minutes till opening and you’re going to have to show people to their seats,” he said. “Do you think you can handle the pressure?”

  I stuck my tongue out. “Tell me again why they need showing to their seats? There’s literally one aisle that goes in a straight line. And they either sit on the left or right of it. I mean they’ve managed to drive themselves here and all – but they need someone to say ‘Walk down this only available path’?”

  “You know what?” LouLou said, from behind the cloud of popping corn. “I’ve never thought of it like that before. You should inform Ma. Tell her it would improve efficiency.”

  Harry shook his head. “She couldn’t handle it. Just think what it would mean for The Rota.”

  “You’re right,” LouLou said. “Her head would actually explode.”

  To prove their point, Harry and LouLou dragged me up to the staffroom – Harry unnecessarily taking my hand as he did so. There, on the table, was what looked like a twenty-page dossier.

  For Audrey Winters, the top page said. I picked it up, reading it under my breath.

  “Here are the five key stages of ticket selling. Number one, greet the customer. Initial friendly contact is integral to customer relations. Number two, ask the customer what they would like. This empowers the customer. Number three, always provide what the customer asks… Oh my God, guys? Is this a pisstake?”

  Harry jabbed at the page. “You’ve missed out number four. Remember to breathe. Breathing is integral to a human’s ability to maintain maximum living potential. I have booked in 0.25 of each second into your rota to allow you to inhale and exhale. If you die during your shift, I will dock your pay.”

  I giggled, the paper shaking.

  LouLou took the page off me and pretended to read it aloud. “You must check the rota every hour, in case your duties have changed. If they have, update the rota accordingly to ensure management knows exactly what you’re doing and when. Even if there is a huge queue of screaming customers, do not deal with them unless the rota tells you to.”

  Harry grabbed it off her, his eyes watering with laughter. “If you are unable to perform all your daily tasks because you’re too busy looking at the fucking rota, do not blame the rota. It is your fault you are not, literally, a human rota.”

  We were laughing so hard that we initially didn’t hear the door knock. Not until someone tried again.

  Harder. “What was that?” LouLou said.

  “More zombies?” I suggested.

  We descended the stairs to see a long line of harassed parents and kids outside the front door.

  “Excuse me,” a mum called through the glass. “Aren’t you supposed to be open?”

  “Ah, bollocks pissing bollocks,” LouLou said. “I forgot to open up.”

  And we scrambled for the doors.

  I felt more like I worked in a crèche than a cinema in the following hours. There were screams for chocolate ice creams, strops thrown when health-conscious parents tried to order dried fruit instead. One child even wet themselves and LouLou had to get on her hands and knees to scrub the carpet.

  “I will take this bullet for you,” she told me, when I offered to help. “It will be your time soon enough to clean up someone else’s piss.”

  Harry nodded. “People leave it for us in glasses a lot.”

  “What?” My mouth dropped in horror.

  “I blame the obsession with making all films three hours long. People don’t want to miss anything so they just piss in their Coke cup and leave it there for us, all warm and steamy.”

  “That. Is. Disgusting.”

  “Oh, Audrey,” LouLou said, tipping some bleach into her bucket. “Hell is other people and what they do in the anonymous dark of the cinema.”

  Ma rang three times, “Just to check how things are going”. But, other than that, it was pretty fun working with Harry and LouLou. So busy my brain had no time to think, which was just about brilliant by me. But after the kids left, I began to clam up.

  The girls were coming…

  Milo and Her might be coming…

  “You okay, newbie?” Harry asked, as we yet again hoovered Screen Two.

  I sighed from where I was scrambling under a seat to reach some stray popcorn kernels. I scraped them into the bin bag with my spare hands and righted myself. “Yeah, I guess. My friends might be coming in later. Is it okay to give them a discount?”

  “I don’t know, Audrey. The MOMENT Ma’s back is turned…”

  “It’s not my fault! They just kind of invited themselves.”

  He leaned against the wall. “Audrey, I’m joking. It’s fine. We all get fifty per cent off for friends and family. The cinema makes most of its money on the food and drink anyway.”

  I tied up the top of the full bin liner. “Seriously?”

  “Why else do you think we charge a fiver for some popped kernels sprinkled with cinnamon?”

  “So Ma won’t mind as long as my friends order enough black-cherry cordial and pulled pork?”

  He shook his head. “Nah, she loves it when my friends come in. They’re always stoned out of their skulls and spend about twenty-five quid on ice cream.”

  There was still a bleachy-smelling damp patch in the corner and I dodged it with my dustpan and brush. I didn’t say anything about the fact he’d mentioned drugs. I’d assumed he and his friends might be stoners. They seemed to be all the clichés I associated with weed – loud metal music, rust bucket cars, zombie films. I was quite sure Dougie smoked drugs. Me and the girls were a bit too, well, girlie for doing bongs, or whatever it is stoners do. Alice, Becky, Charlie and I spent our experimental years drinking cherry Lambrini, or anything else pink and fizzy. The most rock ’n’ roll thing I’d ever done was throw up pink vomit into Alice’s curtains.

  “There’s still something bothering you,” Harry said, as I went to make my way back up the aisle. “You’ve been flinching whenever the door opens.”

  I figured I needed to tell someone, in case I had a nervy fit at the counter.

  “My ex may be coming tonight too…” I started. “With his new girlfriend.”

  Harry put his legs out across the aisle, stopping me from going up. “Now, who would be stupid enough to make you an ex-anything?”

  “Harry!”

  “What?” His face was the very essence of innocence.
/>   I slowly and deliberately stepped over his leg.

  “You know whoever he is, he’s an idiot,” he called after me as I pushed through the double doors.

  “I need to warn you about Harry,” LouLou said, as we waited for the evening rush to come in. We were almost sold out which made me hopeful that Milo wouldn’t be able to get in.

  I tossed the pulled pork over with the tongs to stop it drying out. “You’re the third person to say bad things about him since I started working here.”

  “I saw him giving you the eye when you were cleaning up popcorn – thought I’d give you a heads-up. Seems like I’ve been beaten to it.”

  I laughed. “Multiple times. Is he really that awful?”

  “He’s a fun guy, don’t get me wrong. I’m always happy when we’re on the same shifts but he’s, well, I’m sure he’ll see you as some sort of conquest. You’re a pretty girl and all.” LouLou scratched her head. “Although he just about tries it on with anyone.”

  “Why?” I felt strangely unbothered by the whole thing – or just tired of it. Harry was obviously a flirt and he was obviously flirting with me but he may as well be flirting with an empty margarine tub.

  “I don’t know, he just always has, and, well, working together can be awkward if you go there. Harry’s flights of fancy don’t tend to last. We had another girl who quit.”

  I held out my hand to stop her. “You really don’t need to worry. I’ve made myself immune to boys like Harry.” By still being hung up on one.

  LouLou looked visibly relieved. “Good. Well, I’ve had the chat now. I have fulfilled my assistant-manager and woman-of-the-world duties.”

  The next batch of filmgoers trickled in and I stood up straighter behind the ticket counter, my fingers twitching nervously. Would Milo come? Surely he wouldn’t come?

  A lady wearing a giant fur coat pulled her husband over. “Two tickets, please,” she said, getting out her purse.

  “Yes, of course. Umm, for what?”

  She looked at me like I was dumb. “For the film.”

  I nodded very slowly, just as I saw Harry emerge from the cinema with his little torch. He stood behind the lady, laughing.