by Darius James
WELCOME TO THE APOLLO
SFX: Loud cheering and applause.
The Witch Doctor pulls another rabbit from between Bubbles’ legs. She twitches with convulsions. Her pores pop with sweat. Her belly heaves in and out. Her vulva sputters.
SFX: Hot, heavy panting.
Shreds of membrane dangle from the ceiling. The Witch Doctor cackles. The audience cheers. HUNDREDS OF WHITE RABBITS huddle onstage. Thousands of pink eyes stare from a white field of fur.
Darkness wafts in. Pink shifts to red.
SFX: Fade panting and bring up soft night sounds—a breeze rustling through the trees’ leaves, the whir and chirp of crickets. Cross-fade to:
EXT. Forest—Night.
A multitude of small red eyes dot the darkness. The illumination of the moon outlines the shapes of rocks and trees.
Pull back to long shot and reveal black-furred rabbits peering from the brush. Continue pulling back to Extreme Long Shot and reveal the tops of trees with the rabbits receding into the background underneath.
Barefoot in bone anklets and leopardskin bikini, with a leather pouch hanging off her hip, Bubbles stands on the crest of a hill, her figure silhouetted against the moon, holding a rice-paper parasol.
Bubbles looks to her left, then to her right, and strolls down the hill. Smooth white stones glitter in her path.
Dragonflies hover. Fireflies blink.
She pauses at a cluster of large, luminous mushrooms sprouting along the border of the path. Kneeling, she stuffs her pouch with the bright, bulbous caps.
Still red eyes without iris or pupil watch.
Munching a spotted mushroom, Bubbles resumes her stroll. Wind rustles through the leaves of the trees and carries the ghostly whispers of a flute. She stops. Her pupils contract to pinpoints.
With woolly legs and sable skin, a cleft-hooved SATYR squats on a boulder nestled under the branches of a willow tree. His head is bald and hornless, with large, sharply pointed ears. His eyes burn bright as coals. A large curved penis bounces between his thighs. The Satyr blows on a wooden flute with a merry leer. Watchful rabbits huddle in the shade.
As the Satyr’s penis pulses to his flute’s eerie song, Bubbles shivers with her lips aquiver and bounces on the balls of her toes. She reaches for the folds of her vulva, fingers the bead of her clit, and bites her lower lip. Long, lively fingers skip skillfully along the flute holes.
Bubbles is transfixed by the Satyr’s massive dick. The music and her tension build to a climactic pitch. Spasmodic with fluids, she swoons and pops, her eyes shifting in color from pale green to ice silver and back again.
The Satyr leaps from the boulder with his penis pounding in the air. He dances rings around Bubbles, wagging his penis just beyond her grasp. Her eyes follow the penis as the Satyr skips away.
Trailed by the clutch of rabbits, Bubbles follows. She grabs for the penis. It isn’t there. She catches air. The Satyr laughs as his penis bobs away. Bubbles grabs again, and misses, stumbling over rabbits underfoot.
As the rabbits hop away, Bubbles lifts her head and finds her rice-paper parasol in a splintered pile at the Satyr’s hooves.
The Satyr smiles his leering smile. And slowly fades away.
His face fades by degrees. Leafless trees with gnarled limbs and thousands of twisting black branches mask a cold, foreboding moon with a fan of arteries visible through his fading features. His face fades until his eyes are two glowing embers, fades until only his music is heard in the breeze rustling the trees’ leaves.
Silence.
The flute falls to earth and rolls into the huddle of rabbits. Bubbles heaves off the ground, picking through the shreds of colored paper and shards of broken bamboo. She cocks her ear and listens. Howls and guttural growls.
Bubbles turns. In varying stages of transformation, the rabbits are turning into dogs. Or more precisely—Doberman pinschers. Some die in the agonizing process.
Bubbles spins around in wild panic. Tarred lynching victims hang from the trees. Corpses protrude from the ground in grotesque poses. A WOMAN with her stomach slashed drags a rotted fetus on the end of an uncoiled umbilical cord. A face in the clay. An arm. A severed hand. The SHADOWS OF HOODED MEN prowl amid the woods’ other shadows.
Looking back at the mutating rabbit pack, Bubbles runs. MUTANT DOGS with long floppy ears and fluffy tails snarl and snap at her heels. Castrated genitalia litter the ground.
EXT. Cemetery—Night.
Bubbles runs through the open gate of a cemetery enclosed by a rusted wrought-iron fence. Inside, she tumbles over a toppled stone. Clenched in solidarity salute, a BLACK FIST bursts through the dirt, clamping its fingers around Bubbles’ ankle.
Hot eyes and slavering fangs in swirling lime-colored mists.
The Mutants bound across the barren burial ground in grainy, supernatural slo-mo.
Bubbles tugs against the Black Fist’s grip, looking back at the approaching Mutant Pack. A Mutant leaps. And a blur of eyes, teeth, and saliva close around Bubbles’ throat. The FIST fades to bright, blood-red bathwater.
INT. Brownstone—Bathroom—Evening.
Bubbles gasps awake. The fist fades in bright, blood-red bathwater. The suds in the tub are a flat pink froth. A soggy joint floats in the water’s rippling rings.
BUBBLES
Christ, my period . . . !
INT. Brownstone—Bedroom—Evening.
Close-up of an unwavering candle flame.
Pull back and reveal the surface of a mirror with the candle placed in front of it. The mirror, streaked with menstrual blood in the shape of a figure eight, shows a labyrinth of reflections cast by the other mirrors in the room, all ritually arranged with incense and lit candles. The mirror shows, too, Bubbles, nude, on her four-poster mahogany bed, clipping the hair between her thighs with a pair of manicure scissors.
The candle flames flicker with sudden violence, and a flurry of air whisks the room.
The camera follows this surge of movement—which emits a sound, imperceptible to Bubbles’s ears, like notes cackled through a soprano saxophone—and stops on a shard of broken mirror, dusted with chips of cocaine and flakes of tobacco, lying on the nightstand by the bed. The grains of cocaine begin to move, lining up in formation like iron filings guided by a magnetic wand, and disappear. The flurry of air scurries away in a trail of musical giddiness.
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
Sometimes I feel like the little girl in Night of the Living Dead.
On the wall above Bubbles’ bed, another mirror reflects her image at many angles and repeats it into infinity. In front of the mirror, a pocket of air pressure pops and spurts a viscid, aqua ooze, which evaporates in a burble of giggles.
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
The dead devour the living, dragging ragged flesh through dirt, sucking down ropes of intestines like so much pasta.
Dolly in to the mirror’s maze of multiple images, all candle flames and flesh, and dissolve to a close-up of Bubbles’ cunt.
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
Blood rings the child’s mouth. She kneels by her father’s corpse—gnawing on her dear, dead, daddy’s arm. She murders her mother with a garden trowel.
Scissors pare her heart-shaped wreath of pubic hair. Tilt up the moist pout of her vulva, over her belly’s bed of fine down to the slit of her navel, and continue to the V of her cleavage.
Angle on the contours of her full, sloping breasts and pan across her swollen, rose-colored areolas.
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
Why do I want to eat my parents?
Dolly 180 degrees to her back. Tilt up to an over-the-shoulder shot of her face in the glass. And the ellipses of menstrual blood circling her eyes.
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
To puke them up, of course!
Dolly in to mirror and reverse angle.
Bubbles blows a stream of coca smoke through her nostrils. The swell of smoke curls with the slow sl
ither of a drugged serpent around her dilated and menses-masked eyes. She crushes the head of her joint in the nightstand’s ashtray and stretches her arms in the air.
Arching her back, she rolls her head about her neck, flexing splayed fingers. Her tongue lolls comfortably from her mouth.
Bubbles zazens in the radiance of candlelight and its reflections.
Suddenly, the door swings open and bangs against the wall. The candles are blown out in unison. All the mirrors fall.
The Maid’s imposing bulk fills the open door, her shadow looming large and dark across the floor. The chicken, nailed to the top of the door frame, revolves above her head. Droplets of blood splash her scalp and spill down her face. She clutches a pair of sewing shears in her right fist.
MAID
Ah jus’ bets you wonnerin’ what ah intends on doin’ wif dis big ol’ pair of cuttin’ shairs—!
The Maid whips her left arm from behind her back and reveals a squeeze tube in her fist.
MAID
—’n dis cheer tube o’ K-Y!
She lumbers toward Bubbles with slow, thudding footfalls. The floorboards crack with every step.
MAID
First, ah’s gwine cut d’locks off’n y’haid!
Bubbles crab-scuttles on her back to the upper left-hand corner of her bed.
MAID
Den ah’s gwine grine hembane ’n’ bellydonna berries wif some o’ dat good rasta reefa dem nappy-haided niggas sell down at d’candy sto’ ’n’ mix it up wif d’K-Y!
Bubbles sprawls against the back wall holding a tangle of sheets to her breasts. The Maid stands at the edge of the bed, shoving the sewing shears and tube of K-Y into her apron’s front pockets. Her eyes and teeth gleam in the dark.
MAID
Den ah’s gwine glop d’K-Y Juju jelly-jam down ’round y’titties ’n’ up ’twixt y’ass—arubbin’ ’n’ apokin’ till it melts into y’pores ’n’ gits down into y’blood! ’N’ whilst yo’ ass be doin’ d’freakie-deekie on d’bellydonna, ah’mo roll d’res’ o’ dat rasta reefa into a big spliff, slap on some zootin’ Calloway sides, ’n’ blow dat spliff lak ah’s a howg-ridin’ hophead in Harlem! Hah!
The Maid lunges, grabs Bubbles by the braids, and winds them around her wrist. Bubbles is a flurry of legs and fists. The Maid yanks at the roots of Bubbles’ hair. Bubbles is paralyzed with pain and acute despair. The Maid drags her off the bed, and Bubbles hits the floor.
Caught by her ankles, Bubbles gropes about, her fingers finding the collar of the black leather jacket lying beneath the bed.
CUT TO:
Long shot, from under bed, of Bubbles, with the collar of her jacket bunched in the ball of her fist. She is then dragged by the Maid through lumps of melted candle wax and shattered mirror glass, out of the bedroom, and along the hall.
As Bubbles recedes into the background, reverse angle and dolly in for close shot of the bed’s rear-left leg.
Aqua ooze spurts in a twitter of giggles and evaporates, and translucent outlines slowly take shape in a shimmer of gold and cocoa hues. A tiny upright soprano saxophone stands on its mouth by the bed’s leg. A nude, coal-skinned IMP with sharp, crescent features convulsed in laughter sits by the saxophone, jacking off. His pelvis bounces under his tiny fist.
Fade to:
INT. Brownstone—Attic—Night.
In close-up, track the objects arranged in the attic’s rotted wood floor: Melted Barbie dolls in mangled poses—arms, legs contorted in puddles of hardened plastic; heads welded to hands; pins piercing quadriplegic torsos of muted gender—black skull candles bleeding beads of red wax; maggots writhing inside the mouth of a severed dog’s head; cryptic Afro-pictograms in metallic red marker on a black statuette of Marilyn Monroe; flour and ash in swirling designs; jars filled with eyeballs, human hearts, fully formed fetuses, and inverted crosses floating in murky green fluids on the lower shelves of a multitiered altar; censors smoking with nasty odors; and the tail of a RAT receding into a hole.
SFX: Synthetic, computerized drum rhythms beat stadium-loud through a boom box’s huge dual speakers.
The door in the attic’s floor squeals open with a phlegmatic peal. The Maid rumbles through like a monstrous black beetle, dragging Bubbles behind her—bump! bump! bump!
MAID
If papa doc kin bring ’bout d’sassination ob d’res’dent ob d’Nited States wif his juju*, ah kin cer’inly drive a young whyte gal crazy wif mine! Kee! Kee! Kee!
The Maid locks Bubbles’ wrists into a pair of handcuffs connected to a chain-and-pulley system suspended from the ceiling. She heaves Bubbles off the floor, grunting with each tug on the pulley’s rope.
Bubbles dangles rag-doll dumb. Her teeth chatter. The muscles of her jaw constrict in a cold mix of cocaine and terror.
The Maid drops the handcuffs’ key into her apron’s front pocket and withdraws the pair of sewing shears, brandishing them in Bubbles’ face.
MAID
So you don’t kno’ wha’ choo do wifout yo’ mane o’ Goldi-tale fairy-locks, huh? Hah! Well, weeze jus’ gwine hafta see ’bout dat, won’t we?
The Maid snips a lock of Bubbles’ hair and steps back with her fist on her hip.
MAID
How ’bout a “hep” hunkie doo-doo cut, lak dat crowd o’rich junkies wear downtown, wif d’ziggity zags ’n’ criss-crosses cut all into dey haids! Or maybe you’d like a conservative boll-dagga buzz cut? Or would you r’fer som’n wil’ ’n’ stylus but ’spec’fully tasteful—lak you jus’ come back fum radiation treatment fo’ terminus cancer!
SFX: The hiss of slow and oppressed breathing.
A mustache of sweat beads on the Maid’s upper lip. Her mouth trembles into an agitated smile. She lifts her hand to delicately caress Bubbles’ bruised and swollen face. Instead, she grabs Bubbles by her two braids and yanks her hair at the roots, whispering—
MAID
When ah tetch you lak dis’, wif yo’ hair balled in m’fist, it sets my grits to boil an’ bubbles down m’leg!
The boom blaster blares a frenetically energetic and wholly schizophrenic audio collage of fifties sci-fi and kung-fu movie soundtracks integrated into a studio remix of James Brown’s “Cold Sweat.” This fuels the frenzy of the Maid’s snipping shears. A blizzard of blond falls to the floor and glitters in the skull-candle’s light.
Save for two tufts of hair arcing over her right ear and another swaying over her brow, Bubbles is left nicked, bleeding, and bald.
The Maid drops her shears. She falls to her knees and unloads the contents of her apron’s front pockets on the floor: mortar, pestle, K-Y tube, a branch of belladonna, henbane, and a compressed square of marijuana buds. White noise issues from the boom box’s speakers.
MAID
Kee! Kee! Kee!
The Maid plucks berries from the belladonna branch, crumbles henbane in her fist, and unravels buds from the reefer square.
MAID
Dis blend made me mighty pop’lar in d’sixties when ah was dealin’ to d’hippies!
She tosses the herbs into the mortar’s bowl and grinds them down with her pestle.
MAID
Ah was o’ mess back den! M’name was “Moonpie” ’n’ ah wore high-warda bell-bottoms dat hung an inch ova m’ankles ’n’ was too tight fo’ m’ass! D’waist stopped three-quarters up ’n’ m’ass fell in lumps ova d’top! You could see crack fo’ days! Kee! Kee! Kee!
A worm of ooze is squeezed from the K-Y tube. And the concoction glows a ghastly green. The Maid dips her hands into the bowl. Then her fingers slide into the folds of Bubbles’ cunt.
The Maid puts her menses-tipped fingers in her mouth. Her fevered grin spreads like buckwheat batter plopped into a hot buttered skillet.
The Maid stands, shrieks, and rattles her breasts in a quiversome trance dance—barking like a dog, mewling like a cat, and hissing like a snake. She smears the gel on Bubbles’ body with lascivious care.
Bubbles twists, turns, and gyrates in sweaty serpenti
ne squiggles. The boom blaster bleats sinister, heart-synched polyrhythms.
The Maid has inflamed eyes and nattering teeth. Her clothes split at the seams and shed to the floor. Her obese and voluptuous body is a patchwork of crazy-quilt skin. Her eyes and teeth in close-up descend on Bubbles in pixilated slo-mo.
The Maid holds Bubbles tightly around the waist. She absorbs Bubbles’ flesh into her own. The two grind pube to pube.
SFX: Echo the fall and rise of Bubbles’ high-pitched, staccato sighs.
Zoom to close-up of Bubbles’ eyes during her final spasmodic screech. Spin-wipe to:
EXT. Cotton field of the Old South—Day.
Toothless OLD COONS strum Happy Nigger Banjo Tunes for dancing PICKANINNIES slapping hambone on their knees and thighs.
Reverse spin-wipe to:
INT. Brownstone—Attic—Night.
Zoom out from close-up of eyes to medium shot of Bubbles.
BUBBLES
(screaming)
Ride it, Lightnin’!
A hard wave of convulsions thunders through the Maid as she falls to the floor. Her teeth gnash. Her limbs thrash. The boom blaster’s computerized Petro-rhythms pound concurrently with her disjointed movements.