Jeff Strand - Graverobbers Wanted - No Experience Necessary

"You'll be more than crippled when I'm done with you," Farley informed him. He began to apply a generous portion of rubber cement to the latex. "Tilt your head back. Further. Further. Good."

He carefully positioned the latex in the center of Roger's neck, and then pressed down on it firmly. I had another uncomfortable moment as I realized that with one violent push Farley could probably crush Roger's throat. I was getting seriously paranoid.

"Now you have to sit here perfectly still while it dries," Farley said.

"Oh, joy," Roger muttered.

"Don't talk, either. Okay, Andrew, you can move on to your next tour station. I'll call you back when we're ready."

I figured leaving Roger there unable to move as sticky stuff dried on his neck was suitable punishment for one of the many pranks he'd played on me over the years, so I walked over to Carl. "You're the cameraman, right?"

"That's right." Carl shrugged."Not sure exactly what I should tell you. I point the camera where stuff is happening and try to keep it in focus, basically."

"Could I see your equipment?"

"Yeah, if you want."Carl led me to the other side of the room, where the camera equipment was stored. I had no real interest in seeing it, but I wanted to speak with Carl away from the others.

"So how did you get into Ghoulish Delights?"

"Mike Ashcraft asked me. He and Rachel were the ones who started this. He's our director but he's on vacation." Carl alternated between looking at me and the floor when he talked.

"Yeah, Rachel told me. So, were you two friends, or classmates, or did you work together on another project, or...?"

"Worked at the Legacy Six theatre together.Used to fight over who got to keep the good movie posters."

"So what's he like? I mean, what kind of person comes up with an idea like Ghoulish Delights?"

Another shrug."He's a little askew, like the rest of us. Nice guy.Doesn't try to tell me what to do when I'm taping, so he's pretty easy to work with." He thought for a long moment. "Aside from that, I don't know what else to say."

I asked him about the cameras, just so he'd think I was interested. He spouted off some technical specifications that meant absolutely nothing to me, but I nodded as he spoke. When he'd finished, I thanked him and turned back to the throat ripping demonstration. "Is he ready yet?"

"Not yet," said Farley. "The actors always hate this part. I know I do. That's why I stay on this side of the special effects."

Roger didn't look like he was enjoying this much, which was all right. I walked back over to the action figure setup. "What exactly does this represent?" I asked Linda.

"This is just a scenario we're working on," she replied. "We have about twenty of them right now, but we try to add more whenever we've got some downtime. The more variety we have, the easier it is to find somethingthat appeals to the customers."

"What kinds of scenarios do you have in your collection right now?"

"For the most part, they're just variations on the stalk-and-slash theme. We're not making movies for commercial release, so we don't need shocking plot twists or bold new concepts. Essentially a Ghoulish Delights movie involves somebody running around killing everyone else." She explained this in a remarkably perky voice, as if she were hosting a cooking show.

"Hey, that's all I need in a movie," I said.

"Most of the work is done after the customer has selected their scenario. Technically, one of the scripts could be filmed as-is—it has dialogue and everything. But since we never know where we're going to shoot it, and we can't possibly have a script already prepared for every possible combination of actors, we have to make a lot of small changes on the set. Plus, we're not dealing with professional actors here, so a lot of the time we'll have to tone down some of the dialogue or revise it to make it easier to deliver. Once we had a script comprised of nothing but screams and one line, `Now you die!' And the guy ended up forgetting to say `you.' Suffice it to say that we haven't started rehearsing our Academy Awards speech yet."

"Of course, my loving girlfriend here has justdescribedmy job," said Dominick good-naturedly. "I let her help sometimes, so she occasionally forgets that I'm the one in charge of the script."

"Actually, hedoesn'tlet me help, I bully my way into it," said Linda.

"That's exactly right."

"But he loves a dominant woman."

"I don't remember asking for one at Christmas."

"That's because I wrote up your list for you, being a dominant woman."

"That figures."

"Oh, is my sweetie being sulky? Nobody likes being around a person with a stinky attitude, even if they have a cute little dent in their chin like you."

"If you keep it up, that Roger guy is going to want his throat torn out for real," Dominick told her.

I was getting to that point myself. I was also starting to notice that Dominick smelled kind of weird, but I couldn't identify the scent.

"I'm so sorry, sweetie, did I steal your glory by telling about what you do, with my help? Here, you can tell them what I do now."

"No, that's all right, I wouldn't want you to stop being the center of attention."

"Good." Linda turned back to me. "I do all the set decoration and prop work, except for weapons, which Dominick does."

"What kind of set decoration?" I asked. "Doesn't it take place in people's homes?"

"Usually their homes, or sometimes outdoors.I make sure furniture gets rearranged to fit what we need for the scene, and if the scene calls for somebody to be making cookies, I'll set that up, and stuff like that."

"Doesn't sound like she does much, does it?" asked Dominick. "That might explain why she feels the need to keep invading my territory."

She swatted him playfully on the arm. "I also do the lighting, which is very important in that it allows people to actually see themselves on the videotape."

"Essentially, her job is to go from room to room and find out where all the light switches are," Dominick said. "Once she's done that, she goes back and makes sure that they all operate on the up-for-on, down-for-off principal. Occasionally her job will be made more difficult with a knob instead of a switch, but that's what she makes the big bucks for."

She swatted him again, also playfully but with a hell of a lot more force than last time. "Actually, I work with very large, powerful lights, which I have to set up out of sight of the camera. And I have to make sure that they don't burn down the customer's home, which tends to screw up our chances of a good referral."

"I can see where that would prove problematic." I was still noticing Dominick's aroma, which I suspected was some kind of funky Goth cologne. "This is off the subject," I said, "but what kind of cologne are you wearing?"

Dominick frowned, then lifted his palm to his nose and sniffed. "Oh, that.Catfish."

"The mighty sportsman was out terminating helpless fish this morning," said Linda. "Those manly impulses get the best of him sometimes. Normally he does a better job bathing afterward."

Farley waved to me. "If you've had enough of the lover's quarrel, I think he's dry."

I returned to where poor Roger sat. "How's it going, buddy?" I asked. He gave me the finger on the sly, which I thought was shockingly unprofessional for a magazine editor.

Farley began to brush on some flesh-colored makeup, hiding the edge of the latex and making it look like a natural part of Roger's neck. "We do almost entirely aftermath gore here," he explained. "It's pretty complicated toactuallyshow a throat being ripped out, and it definitely takes more time than we've got when we're just visiting somebody's house for a day. And it's a little more gruesome than most people want anyway, the wimps. So we won't actually show anything really gross happening, we'll just show what it looks like afterward."