Tony Burgess - Pontypool Changes Everything

The room is suddenly pitch black, and they both scramble under the bed. It will take an hour and fifteen minutes before a hand reaches for them. Mrs. Wheeler will feel her hair being tugged viciously from her scalp. In the meantime they wait in the dark feeling only the sprinkle of fibres falling onto their cheeks.

In the second stage of the disease victims display symptoms similar to those of aphasiacs. Their ability to use language erodes. This disease, however, is not an organic one. Nor is it a disorder of the personality. Once infected, the victim produces the virus in the language he or she struggles with. The mature virus is a sort of hard copy of this production. The latter part of the second stage resembles Tourette Syndrome. The victim becomes frantic, rebelling against the onset of the disease by wilfully destroying, ahead of the virus, his or her own normative behaviour. It is a desperate attempt to escape. The victim batters at what is perceived as the horizon of his or her being. And the horizon, now heavy and meaningless, drops like a stone when approached. The victim becomes dangerously aggravated and insensible at this point. The horizon is, then, somehow transferred into the mouths of those not yet afflicted. Stranger’s mouths are the escape route through which the victim attempts to disappear, in a violent and bloody fashion. They often drown on the blood of those they attack or choke to death on the flesh.

Greg turns the page and studies the four panels that illustrate, without text, a cannibal on a throne surrounded by decapitated people. The cannibal holds a head in his upturned hand, his chin covered with blood. The head is upside down, and a little pink fray appears along the rim of the neck, the lipstick on the glass. Greg closes the comic book and checks the number on the top right of the cover before replacing it on the shelf. He leaves quickly, feeling the hostile glare of the man in an undershirt behind the counter.

Grant Mazzy lives, much like everyone else on Earth, in an apartment. In spite of his occupation, he is less vain than you’d expect. When he’s at home he spends no time in front of his reflection; in fact, he keeps only a small shaving mirror, and he has only seen his face at home bent by steam and encircled with moisture.

The face reminds him of work. His reflection makes him think of an alarm going off at 6:30 in the morning.

No, at home Grant kicks back by being facelessly, anonymously good. Grant’s true passion, the reason he keeps living, is to work tirelessly for charity. He sits on the boards of three major charities, lending his name and profile for their benefit. What he loves most, however, is the anonymous time he devotes to lesser known charities. Particularly the anti-crime program that is run in one of the city’s meaner parts of town, Parkdale. Grant volunteers his time as a counsellor on a distress line. This number is publicized in laundromats and bus shelters. Strictly small time, no budget, non-professional, a do-it-yourself, hands-on, community repair kit.

Grant pops open his small humidor and drops the point of his finger along the shaft of a dark cigar, a Monte Christo “A.” He rolls it into the corner and separates a Robusto that lies heavily on a bed of Punch Double Coronas. Grant hangs his hand over the box, rocking the Robusto between his fingers before pulling up the “A.” He rolls a silver bullet into its tip, softly popping out a plug of tobacco. He lights the cigar in big wet sucks. When the phone rings, Grant expertly rolls the cigar to the corner of his mouth with his tongue and slaps the speaker-phone button.

“Hello, my name is Bill, you’ve reached the Parkdale Crisis Hotline, how can I help you?”

Grant rolls his head, twirling the smoke in the air until it hangs evenly across his face; then he sits forward through it, closing one eye and hanging the cigar down loose from his mouth.

“Hello? Anybody there? Hello?”

Grant spreads his fingers above the phone and when the sound flattens he pats his thumb down to disconnect.

When Grant was in university, studying political science, he lived in Parkdale. Back when the Queen Street Mental Health Centre opened its doors to free its residents of their institutional bondage. Once freed, these high-functioning mercenaries swung into action and with strange ability they frightened the proto-Yuppie colony that had just recently moved into the area. A certain segment of Toronto had clearly developed a crush on Parkdale’s depression.

Grant Mazzy was renting a room on Wilson Park from an exiled Polish religious leader whose insane son almost always stood beside a grandfather clock in the hallway. Grant had a serious masturbation habit at the time, and his room was a sort of Jugs and Beaver emporium, smelling of curdled seed. Being unable to afford furniture, Grant was forced to make love on the coveted hardwood floor. The battering of his elbow against this floor drew complaints from the security guard who lived below. A soft, giant man who was orange from head to toe, this security guard worked sixteen hours a day and spoke aloud only once or twice a month. When Grant moved in and commenced his school term with one-handed procrastination, the security guard leapt into action and complained to the landlord daily.

One day the religious leader, a truly fanatical man, decided that with an insane son impersonating a suit of armour in the hallway, and a hot pervert in the attic, he needed an exorcism. When Grant climbed the stairs that day and opened his door he met with a flying Bible, candles, and wild Latin keening. The girlie mags were stuck together with red votive-candle wax in the middle of the floor. The landlord, now moaning loudly through a perfect O in the centre of his beard, was clad — they were visible between black robes that fell open — in white jockey shorts.

Grant wasn’t angry. He was frightened. He turned to go down the stairs, only to see the bearded son lurching up, his face apple red in the candlelight. The son bared his teeth, raised his limbs against their medicated stiffness, and closed his eyes tightly. Safe distances were closing. Grant sat down on the stairs, and he too closed his eyes, waiting for either the madman to pounce on him or the papal dervish to strangle him with a soiled holy thong.

A loud siren from outside distracted the men on the staircase, giving Grant enough time to break for the door. The house across from Grant’s place was spewing black smoke into the sky. Several police cars were pulled up on the lawn and people, mostly in hand-cuffs, were being led out of the building. Grant learned later that the fire had two sources. A man on the first floor who resembled an overweight General Custer had fallen asleep. A neglected pot of beans on the stove caught fire. Meanwhile, on the second floor, a struggling art student had ignited his upper body while experimenting with free-basing. The two fires failed to disturb a man who was pressing a pillow down on another’s face on the third floor. And when the killer’s victim was dead, the perpetrator ran down the stairs to help orchestrate the rescue. In the middle of this pandemonium, an older woman mentioned to a fireman that General Custer on the first floor had raped her on several occasions over the past two years. When they dragged him from his bed it took a team of paramedics two hours, not to save his life, but to wake him up.

It was at this moment, the inauguration of Parkdale’s new reputation, that Grant discovered two things. First, that his sanity was a goldmine. And second, that he would do whatever it took to save anyone he could from the dangerous squalor of this part of town.