At the very back of the theater, the curtains hung all the way to the floor, dangling so close behind the seats that it sounded like, and felt like, there were creatures behind the row, slithering and tumbling over one another. During some quiet parts of the film, this disturbing rasp of the curtains was louder than the sound coming from the speakers. The hidden, patiently convulsing mass behind the last row grew louder as the screen’s volume dimmed. I tried to make eye contact with the actors and actresses on the screen but they never looked directly into the camera, while behind me in the dark, waiting for the right moment for someone to come too close in the aisles, there waited the creature curtains. I looked up at the screen, dazzled by choreographed formations of dancers rising from out of volcanic waterspout; they blossomed like the human petals of some gigantic flower of life, then cascaded across a shiny ballroom floor as the camera panned over empires of majestic smiles and the glitter of an untouchable world. I wanted to climb into the silver screen and look like that, perfect and prim in a black hat and black pants, leading my-costar across the frame as diligent perfection-hungry cameramen followed us with boom mics and light reflectors. But at the back of the seats, the curtains slithered, menacing, the dry touch of some kind of black creature in the shadows making my skin just about crawl inside out. The song on the screen exploded then and the dance became another world even more majestic, even more filled with glitter than it ever had been before. But what made me jump out of my seat were the arms that reached up from the darkness of the curtains behind me and the hands extended from it that held onto my elbows. I ripped myself from the theater seat, dropping the cup of watery ice I’d been sipping from for hours, and I darted from the room, not looking behind me. Once in the lobby again, with the late morning sunshine flooding the theater’s stained red carpets with bright pools of orange and yellow, all was quiet. The Sunday morning church crowd had not filtered in so much yet from across the street because mass would not be over until noon. Mostly nobody was here. The few attendants behind the counters looked bored and tired. Without attracting any attention, I slid back into the movie and sat back in the same seat, wondering to myself if I could ever get tired of watching the same things over and over again or if I would ever feel like a normal person.
On a weekday the church pews are empty until the afternoon. The chapel is silent, and the vestibule looks haunted. I can feel the room still echoing with ghost motions from distant Christmas services, funeral gatherings and baptisms. Alone on a Monday morning, with no sound but the creaking of the rafters and a vacuum drone seeping in from some unseen pocket of the House of God, I cross my legs uncomfortably in the front pew, back and forth from right leg to left, lacing and unlacing my hands, certain that unnecessary worry and phantom dilemma are going to undo me one of these days.
Simple decisions were made cloudy by compounded pressure and too much whiskey. I left the cleric’s hall feeling as though I’d just woken up in a coffin, having found myself buried alive in some form of jest. And the fresh air outside did nothing to relieve me. If anything, the drive home served only to enrage me more; the excess of traffic, and the sounds of car horns blasting, and the seemingly endless sea of tail lights flashing low reds then high reds then low again, made me sick and dizzy. Why was my body seemingly sinking into the drivers seat? Was I melting? I used a pay telephone to put in a call to the office hall, to tell them I would be needing a week off. For a death in the family.
(Source: corpseonpumpkin.com)
The seance was a success. It drove us from the dining room in a disorganized rush, into the back end of the hall where the lights promptly went out. My heart pounded in my chest so hard on the third and fourth beats that I was unable to speak because it hurt. Someone was screaming.
(Source: corpseonpumpkin.com)
It creaks and it’s awfully loud, which I dislike in a tremendous way, but this is just the way things are and one can’t do a thing about it. It’s crowded, but you can be alone here and it’s not a bad thing.
Have a little fucking faith in yourself.