Tony Burgess - Pontypool Changes Everything

Greg’s Higher Power looks over, impressed. Grant spreads his hands flat across the desk under the lamp.

“Now we’re going to go downstairs, into the basement. I want you to stand guard for me for a while. We’re going to do something criminal, uh? A little bit. Enough to make the tiny world gag. Ready?”

Greg looks over to his Higher Power, who shrugs and places his hand over his heart.

Greg sits in a chair in the basement leaning back against the wall. His Higher Power is distressed, pacing in front of the door that Grant has disappeared through. The Higher Power puts his ear to the door.

“What do you think he’s doing in there?”

Greg shrugs.

“What a show he puts on. Very dramatic individual. What do you think he was talking about?”

Greg looks up at the tall figure.

“I don’t know, why don’t you open the door and ask him?”

The Higher Power puts his hands under his chin and mouths “No.” Greg shrugs again, this time a little contemptuously. The Higher Power lays a hand on the door behind him and drums lightly with his fingers.

“OK, OK. Let’s find out what we’re getting ourselves into.”

He clicks open the door and as it falls ajar he steps clear. Greg can see Grant’s legs. He’s leaning against a file cabinet. The blond head of a teenage boy is working back and forth between the dangling ends of his undone belt. The long legs of a woman step in front, blocking the view. Her hands gather the back of her skirt, raising it across the bare cheeks of her ass. The Higher Power reaches in and pulls the door closed.

“Oh Christ, that’s all you need.”

Greg is obviously affected by this. His face is flushed, and his breath quickens. The Higher Power, knowing full well what does and doesn’t lie within the bounds of his control, gestures defeatedly to Greg’s hands — which are now descending purposefully into the top of his jeans. Greg leans, bent over in concentration, a gangster clutching his fatal wound. And when he expires, he looks up, his face soaked with sweat. Unable to make eye contact with his Higher Power, he asks, “Nobody came by, did they?”

The Higher Power, looking a little older now, smiles wearily and again mouths a silent “No” while absentmindedly waving a hand up and down the hall.

“I gotta say though Greg, there are people who’d disapprove of this. People you respect.”

The door pops open behind the Higher Power and Grant emerges, his cheeks pink and his eyes glazed. No sign of the other two. He looks up and down the hall, causing the Higher Power to look away quickly, embarrassed, even though he’s invisible. Grant walks towards Greg and leans over, placing his mouth beside his ear.

“There are two other volunteers, like you, that are working down here this morning. They just sucked my dick. Thought you should know. Thanks for making it possible. Now go in there and see if they need any help with the filing.”

The church is a three-cornered hat made of newspaper. The hat is lowered by hand into a pool of oily water on the street. The water is refreshed from below by a catch basin. A strongman in red-striped tights with fists against his hips shakes his face, just beneath the surface, just beneath the paper boat. Cold water rattles between his closed eyes and the newsprint hull.

This is the strange little vessel that God made especially for people who have overcome addiction with the help of baby Jesus. They are sitting in the basement of the hat, crowded around card tables and spooky candles. They are trying to isolate a kind of breathing that starts in the left lung and moves up the abdomen like a light hand, teasing in pinches and rolling nipples between knuckles. A flame enters the room and steps around the seated people. Without making eye contact the flame mounts the wick, splashing hot wax on thighs drawn around the candle. Finally, the flame crosses its legs, lights a cigarette, and blows illuminating smoke in a man’s face. The man looks up at the candle and speaks with lips that are made gold by the light.

“My name is Donny, and God knows I’m still an addict.”

A woman to his left frowns for him, and a little bald man to his right looks down thoughtfully at the tight T-shirt he’s wearing. It has risen above where his swollen belly hangs out its starkly public flesh. He pulls at the shirt with his thumb but fails to hide his belly. He folds his hands in front of it and looks up bravely across the table. A thousand hairs weave and wiggle on his bared stomach. He has to concentrate to listen. The room of people becomes silent to dignify his struggle. The man is visibly grateful. He focuses thoughtlessly on Donny. Donny begins explaining something that is constructed like a list. He has bulleted his lists with a light karate-chopping hand on the table edge.

“And if I do these things to the best of my ability, maybe I can live a life free of the fear that I’ve lived with ever since I was a kid. Fear. I’ve always been afraid that I was a geek. And I was willing to trade in anything not to be myself. To become a wiseguy, someone who intimidated you. But now I’m trying to find out who that geek is. Who he was trying to become. I hear the word geek and I realize it’s a word that I use, that I still use, to intimidate myself. Not you. You don’t give a shit. I know that now. I have only ever scared myself. I don’t have to do that today. Keep an open mind.”

A woman is sitting across from Donny. She has taken the lovely breasts that God gave her for feeding babies and frolicking alone in the woods, and surgically redefined them as “huge tits.” She has been staring at the folded hands of the bald man all through Donny’s sharing. She thinks that this little bald man’s bravery is beautiful, and she has been fantasizing about oiling up that taught tummy and riding it like a pony. Donny has lowered his golden face in his own dramatic pause, but he can’t help but look up to see if it’s really the moment he thinks it is. He sees the glazed eyes of the woman across from him and, of course, her sweatered breasts plunge him into a powerful default response. Donny feels his penis jumping in little coughs, and he smiles at the woman, who isn’t looking at him. He thinks before speaking — I’ll never be the geek I wanna be.

“My biggest problem is about eight inches long. That’s the distance between my head and my heart. I can think just fine, thank you very much. That’s what I do best. Taking the world apart and putting it back together exactly the way it should be. I do this so fuckin’ well that when I’m finished I’m in a fuckin’ room full of nutcases who wanna teach me how to pray for God to fix me. But, you know, he does. Really. He does fix me. These are better days, only that lump of shit that lies eight inches south drives me crazy.”

The little bald man has sat forward, resting his face in his hands. His elbows are on the table beside Donny’s hand. It still chops away even though lists no longer govern what he’s saying.

“You know, when I ask people, y’know, what the fuck should I be like now that I’m no longer like myself, you know what they say? They say, ‘Hey Donny, just be yourself!’”

Donny leans forward, drawing his audience over a nastiness he knows they’ll all enjoy.

“Well, well, well. That’s just never gonna be a good fuckin’ idea, is it?”

The bald man smiles against fingertips that hide his mouth.

“I am a person who wants you to die along with him. That’s who I am.”

The woman across from him feels, along with everyone else in the room, all of the possibilities, the little shiver of Donny. She bisects the upholstery of her cleavage with the table edge. Donny gently drops his hand, transforming it from a karate chop into a coin that rolls across the table and lodges securely in the soft slot of her body. The little bald man sits back and his belly flies like a huge fruit bat out from over his belt. He has grown exited and he speaks.