The Altonevers (40 page)

“
You still haven't told me
what we're watching,” Anna says as a question.

Bloop 5

“
Shhh it's about to start,”
Daisy winks to Anna, with a finger

over her dimly lit smile.

Bloop 4

“
What is?”

Bloop 3

“
It's a biopic, one of my
best films.”

“
Of what?”

Bloop 2

“
My life,” she says filling
her mouth with a fist full of buttery popcorn, into her zealous
expression.

Bloop 1

The feature film opens to a young
child, a girl tap dancing in her parents living room. Then showing
her as a bubbly blonde high school hot girl with a letter jacket.
An energetic pony tailed teenager, a cheerleader dating the captain
of the football team. Then showing the girl breaking up with the
boy, with tears streaking down her cheeks. Spreading sniffles
around the picture house. The girl in the film is arguing with her
parents up the stairs and packing her bags. Setting her sights and
sails on the city of movie magic and technicolor dreams. Aspiring
to become the star she knows deep down she’s always been. Boarding
a bus and being waved off by her family and friends, leaving her
small town behind like all the other enchanted youths taking a
chance on a performers pilgrimage to become a star of the silver
screen.

Beaming with exhilaration in
anticipation of the adventure what life will be like on her own,
what this spectrum city of dreams has in store for her. This
exuberance lasts for the first few months, long enough for her to
land a few small roles as an extra. Jumping for joy when winning a
part with a line in it. It was only four words, but it was the
greatest feeling her life will ever know. She catches the eye of
the casting director, who sweet talks her, selling her the lie of
him being able to land her a leading part in a major film with a
big studio. She sleeps with the man, and he never speaks to her
again. She hates herself for it, though another man, a producer
lies to her in the same sweet way. She doesn’t believe him or any
of the others after him. Knowing deep inside that she's only lying
to herself, but her unrequited desire to grace the silver screen
brings her to her back, again and again. Though she is with some
talent, she’s young green to it all, they see nothing past her
beauty, and this happens time after time with her never landing a
single role. She keeps answering the phone, unable to let any
chance of her to live her dream of being queen of the cinema slip
through her fingers, each time loathing herself more.

The crowd weeps. Shouting angrily at
the screen as the girl in the picture continues. Continues being
taken advantage of by actors, writers, anyone in the industry
peddling false promises she’s too naïve and desperate to turn away,
like a junky for another hit she tricks herself into it being the
last time. She continues, and hating herself so much she descends
into drink and pills to numb the pain of her selling herself for
nothing but compromising her integrity, losing her dignity for just
the slightest chance to live her dream, it drying by the drop dying
inside as she does.

For months she lays in bed in the
fetal position. Lost in the fantasies playing through her head like
a film, of her just arriving on set to work, even daring to see
herself in a leading role and entrancing the film houses as a
silver screen enchantress. Envisioning the many different faces in
the crowds following every on screen movement she makes. Her beauty
so breathtaking, and performance so captivating it entices the
empathy of viewers to feel what her character feels, and know what
her character knows. Dreaming with her eyes closed of the crowd
standing to their feet in roaring ovation, whistling at her
flawless performance after the end of every film she
makes.

The phone rings and she's back to
contemplating her life as being for the pleasure of others,
admiring, desiring her only for her beauty and nothing else. The
phone is ignored. It rings again, she sniffles clearing her throat
to hide her sorrow. It’s a casting agent. A wicked one who, like
all the others lies so that he may feel himself inside her. Not
believing the man, but still unable to let go of her already sin
stained dream, she goes to his house.

She gets in her car promising herself
she won't do it. If there's no role she'll just leave. She arrives
at the man's house, refusing a drink and repelling his advances,
though his advances grow more forceful. She tries to leave, but the
man grabs her. She fights back but the man strikes her. He easily
overpowers her girlish figure. Pinning her down and taking her
roughly for himself. As she cries and squirms the man continues
raping her, hitting her and telling her to shut up.

Anna and the rest of the picture house
are brought to tears. Weeping and enraged, jeering at the
villainous man filling the screen. Daisy in the seat is bawling
like a blithering baby, gazing as hot tears stream down her supple
cheeks. Anna can't tell if she's on the brink of a mental breakdown
or bliss. When it's over the girl picks herself up, stumbling away
broken...again. Trying to hold her torn dress over her bruised and
scratched body. Demoralized, disheveled and retreating in disgrace.
Disgusted with the man and herself, regretting even getting in the
car. She returns home, curling up into her own bed. Weeping and
whimpering for weeks, dreading the sound of her phone ringing like
it where death itself. She rips the cord from the wall.

After months of not bathing, laying in
her own filth, living on the dwindling coins she saved from her
childhood piggy bank, and hardly even lifting her head from her bed
cover, she snaps. Using her last bit of change to buy a gun, a
pretty chrome revolver. She drives back to the man's house, the one
who had raped her. She beats him mercilessly, chasing him through
the house, pistol whipping him and kicking him like a dog. Then
shoots him in his dick and watches him bleed out whimpering agony.
And blows his vapid trophy wife's face off, who was home when she
last visited.

The names in her little black phone
book become a blacklist for her streak of violent revenge.
Remembering the faces of those who’ve taken advantage of her, who
made feeble promises, lied to her to appease themselves in the
pleasures of her flesh. She drives and hunts each of them down.
Killing four more of her abusers, each with her pretty chrome gun.
The crowd cheers, rooting in an uproar of applause for her on her
destructive path of relentless vengeance.

She gets caught in a high speed chase
with a fleet of squad cars barreling down the highway behind her.
The young woman, young and naive doesn't know what to do. She
panics and drives full speed off a cliff. Screaming her lungs out
all the way down until the car smacks with the sound of compressing
steel at the bottom of a thousand foot valley. The picture house is
madhouse of cheering and weeping for her, showering applause and
acclamation's of her story and her talents in portraying her life
on screen. Drawing out the crowd’s adoration for the Daisy on the
screen, and compassion for the Daisy in the seat.

The Daisy in the seat lives for this
two hours of actually living out her greatest aspirations of being
a queen of the silver screen. Sitting in the dark theatre as the
light splashes from the screen to the faces of the crowd and her
own, so she can watch the slightest change in the expressions on
their faces, their smiles, laughter and even their sadness as see
performs. Rejoicing in every laugh, quivering lip or wet eye.
Watching the crowd as though they're the show in the same way they
watch her on the screen. The single second of pitch black as the
picture switches to the credits, and before the lights come on is
to her like the sensations of climaxing, sensually and spiritually
in pure thoughtless bliss that tessellates through her entire sense
of being. The culmination of two hours of her watching every face
in the room, seeing her as the star of the silver screen she is in
her dreams, weightless, lost in finding her moment of nirvana just
before the credits roll, and the lights come up. The crowd settles
to near silence when shuffling up the aisles and out of the dimly
lit picture house. Not one of them just cheering could recall
anything about what they'd just seen, or felt in seeing the film of
Daisy’s actual life. Passing by the Daisy in the seat like they'd
never seen her before in their lives, who's sitting, weeping and
laughing in both torment and bliss.

“
Well that’s that” Daisy
says springing to her feet, exuding the beaming bubbly persona that
Anna knows her to be. Her deal, contract here, so she may still
exist as she is, is to be the greatest actress to ever grace the
silver screen, though forgotten the instant credits roll and the
house lights lift.

“
If that’s your life, then
how are you still here?” she asks.

“
I’m under contract.
They’ll never remember my name when the credits roll. It's was in
the fine print,” Daisy says.

“
Anyway what'd'ya think?”
the starlet asks.

“
It was marvelous.
Absolutely stunning, warming to the soul,” Anna says.

“
Ohh, thank you Carrots,”
she says smiling, wrapping her arms around Anna and squeezing her
with a tight, vice grip of a hug.

“
You’re very welcome. Your
performance was immaculate, and you somehow looked even more
ravishing on screen then you do standing in front of me now. There
was no angle that wasn’t favorable to you,” Anna says to brighten
up a friend and because it’s true.

“
Thanks. Thank you Carrots.
Ya gotta love the magic of the movies, right,” Daisy says wiping
her nose.

“
Right,” Anna agrees, as
Daisy sniffles a last loud sniffle and wipes her last big tear.
Ascending in seconds to the towering heights of her usual
exuberant, manically soaring self of pure sensuality
embodied.

“
Wanna get some ice cream,
Carrots?”

“
Yes, I'd love to, but not
carrot ice cream,” she jokes nervously as one does to ease
tension.

“
Ha! okay,” Daisy says. The
two step out from the dark of the picture house into the blinding
glow of beaming broad daylight. Anna rubs her eyes adjusting to the
outsides brightness deep in the Vivids. Daisy simply flips the
black sunglasses sitting atop her head like a tiara, down to the
bridge of her masterfully sculpted nose to cover her brilliantly
shining blue eyes. Anna sees her, the Daisy standing next to her,
as the happy little girl that was on the screen, forever tap
dancing in her parent’s living room.

Harley and Popper from the
helicopter

Vivian’s been staying
locked away alone in her room for the last week. Only letting Daisy
or Anna come in to see her. Saying that no man should have to
suffer the torture of seeing her as she is. She ordered everyone,
even Harold, out of the main hall. An expansive three tiered
baroque rotunda of cream colored walls covered in elaborate inlays
resembling romanticized mythological scenes. Everywhere is
decorated with a grandiose wealth of gilded age grandeur, from its
detail of curbed wood, animals furs and gold leaf to the ivory
accents dressing.
The ground level's been
emptied of its rowed seats and converted into a two hundred table
white clothed dining hall set with shining champagne glasses and
glinting silverware. The theatre, is crowned by a grand chandelier
composed of thousands of tiny diamonds, each bend and multiply the
others refractive effect, absolutely ablaze in its own paradigm of
shifting prismatism. The checkered marble floor slopes up at a
slight incline away from the six foot high pine wood stage that
sits at the south of the room.

“
How do I look darling?”
Vivian asks.

“
Absolutely ravishing.
Astounding to the eye as always,” Cider answers, causing Vivian to
roll her true blue's at him. Rolling the long cigarette filter in
her elbow length white leather gloved fingers, spinning a trail of
smoke in the air.

“
Absolutely radiant,” he
adds.

“
A real gentleman,” she
says with humor.

“
What else can I
be?”

“
Radiant?” Vivian says, “as
glowing as you I hope.”

“
What's that supposed to
mean?”

“
Oh please little dove,
I've never seen you so taken by a dame.”

“
Oh yeah?” Cider takes a
big gulp of his drink as Vivian draws a breath of her slender
smoke. She's been smoking and drinking vodka with a constant
thirst.

“
She is a good looker. I'll
give ya that, but taken. That I don’t know,” he says looking like
away seeing a bird that isn’t there.

“
Ha! Don't know. What is
there to know? It’s scribbled all over your silly face. Even
seeming to be smoothing out some of those chicken scratched pocks
of yours.”

“
She's been getting worried
about me going out there lately, to the Fades. Telling me to stay
in bed, to stay home. I think she really likes it here,” he
says.

“
How adorable of her. She
must care for you like you care for her. Don't you think
so?”