DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.
The Story
Arlen sifted through the spines of fat plastic Betamax cases in the recesses of Roxy Video. Alphabetized, upright, orderly, the labels were easy to read, without a haze of scratches to dull the artwork beneath. He admired the hand-painted cover of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre set in the negative space of bold black letters that read “Who Will Survive and What Will be Left of Them?”
“No one ever cared about quality,” he said. “Not that you really needed it with this one. Shot in 16mm. Made it creepier. Don’t you think?”
Milo frolicked in the pile of VHS tapes that composed the Comedy section, whose shelf lay in splinters over the checkout counter. The small boy tossed something with John Candy’s face into the hole in the side of the popcorn machine.
“You’re right,” Arlen said. “What a shit dad I am showing you this stuff. But you know it’s fiction. You know it’s not real.” He picked up Cannibal Holocaust. “Wow. I thought this was banned in the US.” Arlen saw the signs of UK distribution on the back. “Man, I wish we had power. Probably for the best. I don’t think you’re ready for this one.”
Milo, at Arlen’s side now, mirrored him as his perused other titles.
Arlen knelt down as Milo disloged a tape. “Now that’s a classic.”
Milo cracked open the case of Lucio Fulci’s Zombi. “Cool.”
“Hey, hey, hey,” Arlen said. “Careful. That one deserves special care. Wish you would have seen it. That was before zombies were played out. Yeah, I know. I’m a sucker for a zombie movie.”
Arlen took it from him and put it back. “So, what’s your favorite?”
Milo clomped over the comedy pile and took a hard right behind the check-out counter.
Arlen chased after him, leaping over the tapes and landing on the intestines of one Milo must have gutted. He caught air but grabbed the counter’s edge just in time to save him from falling on his head. The speckled ceiling tiles blackened to a starry sky before inverting back to normal. He flopped onto his stomach, fighting the stars that lingered in his vision, trying to call out for his son, but his wind was lost. He croaked, getting to his feet with the help of the tape-return slot.
He rounded the counter, holding its lip for support, searching the shadows for Milo. Outside the windows at the front of the video store, the street revealed its asphalt mulch and potholes caused from the mayhem that had raged for weeks. The streets were quiet now, except for the wet air that had a language of its own. He would have liked to listen to from his bed after a good horror flick to set the stage for his dreams, where Milo would have been passed out, hardly making it to the part where things were just getting good.
In another time, maybe.
“Milo?” Arlen growled, his voice mostly back. “Buddy?”
A clatter sounded in the darkest part of Roxy. Arlen grabbed the shovel on the counter, his only weapon, rusted and passed down from his father for anything but this. He gripped it in both hands as he trudged toward the sound.
All manner of imagery flashed through his mind, manifesting in the darkness ahead. Milo torn in two, lying in his own pulp, those things feeding off him, whatever they were, and the boy looking up at Arlen with a painless expression. His throat clenched and the abstracted horror before him abstracted further in a blur as he felt his eyes wet.
A door creaked, wafting the smell of old carpet. As if Arlen had stepped back into the old west, a saloon door drifted on its hinges before juddering to a stop. Arlen pushed through, weapon at the ready.
Shadows tangled with his thoughts making all kinds of shapes. Writhing arms, gnashing teeth, eyes filled with an unholy light that–
“Dad.” It was Milo, grinning with an armful of naked ladies trapped on the covers of VHS cases.
Arlen sputtered a laugh and caught himself with the shovel across both knees. He wiped his eyes. “Some of my favorites, too.” He laughed again.
Milo scrambled through another door at the back of the Adult section.
“Milo! What the hell–” Arlen pushed through the figments of his imagination after his son until one of those figments pushed back. The smell of rot and the heat of decomposition suffocated him, but he swung that shovel with the last of the oxygen in his lungs. The creature creaked back upright, spine popping, breath fuming, and Arlen swung again, turning the shovel ninety degrees to cut through the spine, the head thunking to the ground, jaw searching for flesh it couldn’t reach.
Arlen stepped over the body tapping the floor in front of him with the shovel, pulse punching his neck. “Milo?”
Shouldering through another door he hit a wall of fog and cold. At his feet lay a beanie, highlighted by a streetlight.
Arlen wiped away the dew in the knitted grooves, dreading the warmth he might find. “God, no, no, no.”
He did find warmth, where the crest of his son’s head must have been seconds before. But no blood. Thank God, no blood.
“That one,” Milo said from his dreams, from his fears, from a dark room way past his bedtime. Most importantly, though, he said it from just ahead, outside the alley, pointing down the street.
Arlen ran for him. His mind conjured the teeth and arms already reaching for the boy. But his hands found him first, and he held tight, smelling his damp hair.
Milo wriggled free and pointed again. “That one.”
A fog, alive with luminance, whorled at the end of the street, bordered by dead cars, as lurching figures cut through it.
Arlen slung the shovel over his shoulder. He recognized the Carpenter classic. There was no ocean, but it was close enough. “That is a good one.”
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