Нэнси Кресс - The End Is Now

Reginald nearly bit her head off, trembling in his charging-bull helmet and muppet-fur cloak while she coached him on his lines. “No, come on Reggie, try it again and this time put everything you’ve got into the word ‘maul.’ You have to feel that word. Jesus, Rock, where did you find this guy?”

She tried to choreograph the big Viking-Samurai throwdown, even down to me throwing the big photographic backdrops in people’s faces and Zapp Stillman, the lead Samurai, hurling his katana at a Viking and hitting the sought-after hard drive instead.

The fifth time we stopped so Janelle could micro-manage, Reginald looked ready to light the set on fire, rip several people’s heads off, and then use his broadsword to make a head-kebab. I was having seismic levels of fidgetiness, to the point where I had to hug myself.

Sally pulled me aside. “Jesus, what the fuck are we going to do about Janelle?” Sally torqued her elbows and claws. “She’s driving me fucking bonkers, man.”

I didn’t have any answers, except that I was worried about Reginald’s inside-out fuse. Another hour went by, and you could have made a milkshake on my head. It was thirty seconds’ filming and then wait wait wait, ready, no hang on, wait, wait.

The tenth time we stopped, I jittered myself blind and stumbled into Zapp Stillman, and before he could finish saying he begged my pardon I fell over. On my way down, I kicked Zapp’s katana into Reginald’s crotch, and Reginald fell on top of three other Vikings, so their swords jabbed into his back. He howled and clutched at his own spine, then jumped up and announced that just because he’d failed to kill me the first time didn’t mean he couldn’t finish the job now.

Reginald grabbed a long razor-sharp hook from the studio corner and ran at me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sally gesture to Janelle to get this on tape for godssake. Zapp Stillman tried to get between Reginald and me, and Reginald whacked him in the face. I ducked under a big platform and kicked a cart of A/V stuff at Reginald, but he jumped over the cart without breaking his run. Several of the other Samurai thought this was part of the movie, and tried to attack Reginald with their balsa-wood swords, but he just cracked their heads together, so their fake helmets crumpled.

Meanwhile, I slid out the other end of the platform and climbed the curtain rope. The rope was on a pulley, so Reginald started pulling, and the rope went down as the curtain went up. I had to climb at top speed just to stay at the same altitude. Reginald kept pulling the rope with one hand and threw his spike-hook with the other, but I caught the hook and dug it into the curtain, then let go of the rope and swung on the hook across to the other side of the curtain, which tore as I went, so I landed on the ground across the room. A random Viking swung at my head and I barely ducked in time, then I saw a bucket of water (which was supposed to be photographic solution) and I dumped it on Reginald’s head. His helmet’s horns stabbed through the bucket so he couldn’t get it off, and he started grabbing anyone who got in his way, even other Vikings, and tossing them.

At first I screened the sirens out, because you heard sirens all the time, but I heard more and more, fire sirens as well as cop cars. Peal after peal, like church bells. I leaned out the window to see what was going on and then Reginald was at my ear, trying to push me out. He’d gotten the helmet and bucket off, and he had one hand under my armpit and the other on my belt. It was probably a dozen feet down. I could see flames in the distance, and tongues of smoke from a few other places. I tried to tell Reginald I hadn’t meant to hurt him, but he just pushed harder. The window frame gave way and we both tumbled. I twisted my body so Reginald hit the ground first and I landed on top of him.

I couldn’t see anything but I smelled smoke worse than ever. My crotch felt broken, my feet felt broken. I forced my eyes open but everything had a double image. Sally had the door to the studio building open nearby and was yelling for me to get my ass inside. I limped to my feet and juddered in, then Sally locked the door behind me. Through the window I watched Reginald try to raise himself up.

“Example of the sort of human garbage they tolerate up here,” a voice said. It sounded sort of like Ricky Artesian, from back home, but wasn’t. I found a window with a view of the guy, who was a little smaller than Ricky and had tufty black hair. He dressed like Ricky and had the same red bandana. So did the half dozen or so guys behind him, who had just climbed out of a couple of all-terrain crawlers. The guy talked for ages about his issues with Reginald, who kept trying to get to his feet but couldn’t quite manage it. Reginald had the bad luck to be the only guy nearby who looked like a junkie and couldn’t run for his life. I wanted to go out and help him, but I could barely move, and Sally half-supported, half-restrained me. Sally wanted to stop watching when they got into it with the crowbars, but this was my fault, sort of, and I had to see it play out.

They didn’t torch him until they ran out of bones. I hoped he would black out, but he kept screaming the whole time, on fire. Maybe some people can black out and scream at the same time? I sure hoped so.

So at this point, you’re wondering what happened to Photo Finish. It was our most popular Vumblr entry yet, even though we only filmed about half the scenes Janelle had scripted, and what we recorded didn’t have that much in common with her and my storyline. Sally and some of the others did a fantastic job tweaking it with Zap!mation, to the point where the studio looked like twenty different places. With the red bandanas turning up all over the country and imposing mob rule, people were primed for people in silly costumes whacking each other. It turns out when everything is turning into bloody shit, that’s when people need Vikings against Samurai more than ever. Who knew?

The police tried to stop the red bandanas at first, but then the President went on television and said they were an official militia, like in the Constitution, because we were losing our grip as a nation. It was probably the Pan Asiatic Ecumen’s fault, but then again, everybody blamed them for everything.

Two days later, Sally said I had to get out of the house and breathe, because too many people were staying indoors all the time and we had a duty to show we weren’t scared. I crutch-hopped my way down the empty street as Sally ran rings around me for a change. I was glad I didn’t have to step over junkies any more, even though I worried about what had happened to all of them. Sally said they were locked up in camps, or tossed in bonfires, or just hiding out somewhere.

All of Sally’s film student minions cheered for me when we got to B.U. Even the ones who’d high-backed me when I first showed up in town. Maybe because I’d become a casualty of art, or maybe because the new movie had gotten mad hits. Either way, people wanted to carry me around and pour stuff down my throat, and everyone signed my osteogenic body-sheath. We were promoting creative anarchy and that made us super important radical artists, and hey, we should take it to the next level somehow. I thought if they wanted to promote anarchy, maybe we could find one of the camps, in Medford or Malden, where the red-hanky guys had rounded up the homeless people and undesirables, and set them all free.

We could film it. We could put Napoleon hats on all of them and turn them loose. It would look cool, sort of like the final episode of The Prisoner. Everybody liked that idea, and they were all up for doing it, but not on a day when they had classes.

The film students kept adding more and more layers to the plan. We would dress as animals, and there would be a huge round clock which we’d roll downhill to cause a distraction, and maybe we could time the attack to coincide with a joint lunar/solar eclipse so the lack of both moon and sun would sensory-deprive everyone. They jumped up and down with excitement, but I realized they were making the plans fancier and fancier because they didn’t want to have to follow through. That was fine with me because I was only half serious about the camp liberation idea too.