Squirrel Eyes

by Scott S. Phillips

  With their costumes looking about as good as I could've hoped and their weaponry at hand, I sent the three guys up the hill, staring on as if watching a scene from The Omen – certain that some mishap would befall one or more of them before they could reach the top. The only sound was the scrunching of the grass beneath their feet and the occasional muffled roar of a passing semi's Jake Brake.

  At the top of the hill, Taylor turned, throwing his hands up questioningly, waiting for direction.

  "Get out of sight," I hollered, waving him back.

  The three moved further along, then stopped. The top of Taylor's head still peeked out, gripped by his blue knit cap.

  "Another few feet!" I watched through the viewfinder of Daniel's camera until the blue noggin disappeared from view. "Perfect!" I shouted.

  I took a deep breath and held it, glancing at Mia. She grinned at me.

  Thumbing the record button on the video camera, I waited a second for the tape to get up to speed. Then, fingers tightly crossed, yelled "Action!"

  Running like a striped-assed ape, Taylor crested the hill, frantically glancing back over his shoulder just as the script called for. As he scrambled down the grassy slope, Aaron and Noel appeared at the top of the hill in hot pursuit, waving their hatchets and kitchen knives in vengeful fury. The three drew closer and closer to the camera. I held my breath again.

  Taylor blew past. Then Aaron, and finally Noel.

  I gave it a few seconds, released that breath, and –

  "Cut!"

  I turned towards my actors.

  Incredibly, we had pulled off the first shot without incident.

  Taylor and I just stared at each other for a long moment. In those few seconds, fourteen years melted away like nothing; then we exploded with boisterous laughter, shook hands, hugged each other.

  Caught up in the moment, Mia threw her arms around me and gave me a knee-weakening smooch. Even Butters took part in the rejoicing, albeit from a seated position, while Noel and Aaron merely seemed baffled.

  Encouraged, we shot some coverage of the scene – close-ups of feet thrashing through the grass; the Blue Man's haggard face, panting as he runs for his life; the food raiders yelping and brandishing their weapons. Still no injuries, but Mia created a bit of a distraction when she ducked behind some bushes to change into her costume, emerging in black bra (she had improved on Kelli's original costume by foregoing the tank top entirely) and shredded, cut-off military pants, the khaki fabric hugging her rump in a manner that leached all moisture from my throat.

  Next up was the first fight sequence, as the Blue Man turns on his foes and slugs it out with the food raiders.

  Taylor, Aaron and Noel walked through some hasty fight choreography while I set up for a new angle. Mia strolled around nearby, practicing her lines and destroying my concentration.

  The half-assed stunts looked pretty good when they were accompanied by a little creative camera work, and once again, things went relatively smoothly, although Noel threw up one last time when Taylor got a little carried away with a fake punch and nailed him in the gut. After running the tape back and replaying the scene, we decided to keep the puking – it looked great on camera.

  It was time for the big man's first scene. I had planned things so everyone else could take a break while I did Boone's mutant makeup – a fairly simple latex and cotton job, just some radiation scars and patches of twisted, lumpy skin. Noel curled up under some bushes and fell asleep almost instantly, while Taylor, Mia and Aaron popped open Cokes and talked about what we'd shot.

  Boone, seated in the grass beneath a big pine tree, smiled up at me as I approached, carrying a box of makeup supplies.

  "It's going great, Alvin," he wheezed. He was drenched in sweat, his face glistening, shirt soaked.

  "Are you okay, Boone?" I put the box down and crouched next to him. "Let me get you something to drink, okay?"

  "Thanks – how about a Coke?"

  I dug around in the box, came up with some cotton balls and a bottle of rubbing alcohol.

  "I need you to clean your skin with this so the latex will stick," I said.

  His hands were trembling as he took the items.

  When I returned with his can of soda, Boone was wiping the grease from his face. He gratefully accepted the can and guzzled a long swig.

  "We don't have to shoot your stuff today if you're not feeling well."

  "Naw, I'm fine," he assured me. "Won't make any difference anyway – that walk from the road's gonna get me no matter when we shoot."

  I sat down in the grass next to him. He was certainly putting on a brave face. "You sure you want to do this action stuff?"

  Boone smiled at me, shaking his head. "It'll be great. I might have to take a few breaks, though, just take it kind of easy. Bruce Lee I ain't."

  "You could've crushed Bruce Lee like a bug," I said.

  "If I could've caught him," he laughed.

  When finished, Boone's mutant makeup was some scary shit: upper lip skewed in a permanent, threatening snarl, one eye nearly hidden beneath a sagging, gnarled brow, his face a roadmap of distorted flesh. Boone was very pleased, growling at himself in the hand mirror I held up for him.

  Mia tucked Boone away in a thicket of bushes while Taylor and I set up for the shot. With everybody in place, I rolled the camera and the Blue Man raced past, the food raiders right behind him.

  As Noel neared the bushes, Boone roared out and tackled the little guy. Noel got the wind knocked out of him, but managed to keep down whatever was left in his belly.

  Holding Noel down, Boone tore his head off and flung it aside – a simple effect; I cheated the camera angle so that Noel's thrashing arms and legs were visible, but his head was obscured by Boone's massive shoulders. Boone acted as if he were straining against muscle and tendon and bone, finally jerking the prize free and holding it aloft: a Styrofoam head sporting a bloody latex-and-cotton stump and wearing Noel's ski mask. It looked cool as hell.

  Boone was doing okay so far, and assured me he was ready to continue. We set up the shot where he leaps to his feet and chases Aaron down, slaughtering him in splatteriffic glory.

  I called action.

  Boone struggled some getting up, but took off like a grizzly bear in pursuit of his prey. Aaron looked authentically scared as the big man bore down on him.

  After about fifteen paces, Boone collapsed on his face and lay still.

  39

  He wouldn't let us take him to the hospital.

  "This happens all the time," Boone reassured us, sitting up under a tree and nursing a cold soda. His mutant makeup had been peeled from his face during the fall; stringy bits of latex still clung to his features.

  Boone had probably been unconscious for less than a minute, but that's all it took to put the fear of God into me.

  "We're gonna have to sideline you, big fella," I told him. "My heart can't take all this."

  "No way, man," Boone insisted, sucking down a whistling gulp of oxygen. "I told you, this passing-out business is standard procedure."

  "How the hell do you move furniture?" Taylor asked.

  "Few steps at a time. Or I wheedle a couple guys into helping me," Boone smiled.

  "I wish you'd let us take you to the hospital, especially if it happens all the time," Mia said, shaken.

  "I've been plenty of times. Wasted a lot of money on it. I just got carried away chasing Aaron, is all."

  "What causes it? Is it just your ..." I hesitated, not sure how to put it. "... Your size?"

  "Naw," he said, patting his enormous belly lovingly. "It's what's in there with me."

  "Ooo boy," Taylor muttered, looking at his shoes.

  Boone thumped his chest like a ripe watermelon. "My chest cavity's full of some kind of fibrous tumors, is what the doctors say. Actually, they say a whole bunch of other junk, too, but the fibrous tumor part was the only thing I can remember."

  Mia's face clouded. "Cancer?" she timidly asked.

  Boone
shook his head. "Nothing so scary. The things just get too big and press on my lungs. They've gone in and done some weeding a couple of times – maybe I'm about due." He fixed me with a stern gaze. "But I'm making this movie."

  "If you say so."

  The thought made me nervous as hell. I tried to talk Boone into at least calling it a day, but he wouldn't hear of it. He insisted that he'd be fine to continue shooting after a little break – and besides, I needed to re-do his makeup, so that would give him some time to recover.

  Mia fawned over the big man, busting into our sandwich supply and making sure he was comfortable.

  Taylor and I reviewed the footage we'd shot of Boone; he was incredible on camera, our own Tor Johnson.

  "It's the Curse of The Blue Man," I said. "Good footage, endless suffering."

  "Oh yeah – how's your foot?"

  "It's reasserting itself a little. I'm okay, though."

  "What are we gonna do?" Taylor asked. "I sure as hell don't want to kill the poor guy."

  My mind was already doing an end run around the problem. "What if we just re-work it a little bit?" I said, "He's gonna get mad if we coddle him, but how about if we change the approach — he's pure force, like an industrial press. His underlings do all the footwork, bring his prey to him."

  "That was Jabba the Hutt, wasn't it?"

  "Kind of, except Jabba was a big pile of wriggly poop. Boone's gonna be all potential, like Hannibal Lecter before he got out of his cell. He only moves when he has to – and when he does, it'll be bloody."

  Taylor dug it. He looked over at Mia, squatting next to Boone in those crotch-rending shorts.

  "It's kind of cool to be nineteen again, ain't it?" he grinned.

  40

  Taylor and I were dangerously close to shitting our pants throughout the rest of the day, particularly whenever Boone would get up and move around, but everybody made it through alive.

  The big man liked the changes we came up with for his character, and we were able to keep the footage of Noel's head being torn off by rethinking what came next. Instead of chasing after Aaron, the mutant leader bellows a command and I burst from the tree line, face covered in latex and cotton, and take the escaping food raider down (my one-and only appearance in the movie, I vowed). Meanwhile, the Blue Man stumbles across Mia, chained to a rack built from fallen tree branches (and I doubt I need to mention that everybody pitched in to help fasten the lovely girl's chains). I planned to shoot the rest of Boone's scenes in the shadows of the forest, using spooky, intimidating camera angles.

  Mia's performance, I might add, totally rocked. Seething with super-tough sexuality, she nailed every line, hit every mark, and already had me thinking sequel. Aaron and Noel handled themselves well, too, especially considering Noel's volcanic stomach. Taylor wrung promises from both of them that they'd return for the rest of the movie, then we wrapped for the day.

  Later that evening, however, Taylor and I began to fear for our own health. Boone hadn't told us we were moving his pals from the first floor to the third floor – or how much goddamn furniture they had. We insisted that Boone take it easy and let us do the work, our excuse being that we couldn't afford to have anything happen to our biggest special effect now that we'd shot extensive footage of him. He bought it and settled for helping pack small items into boxes.

  The Bismarck we had to sink was a huge black vinyl couch with a hide-a-bed in it. Even with the mattress removed, the thing felt like it weighed seven hundred pounds, and there was nowhere to get a good grip on it – that vinyl is slippery shit. After an extensive struggle and several minor injuries – including dropping one corner of the monster on my sore foot – we managed to beat the couch into submission and wrestle it into its new home.

  Boone, Taylor and I hit the Frontier for dinner, but Boone did all the talking, excitedly yammering about the day's accomplishments. While we were definitely surfing on the big man's wave, Taylor – due at work soon – almost nodded off in his enchilada plate, and I was pretty wiped out myself. Scheduled to head back into the mountains at 9 AM the next day, we called it a night.

  Fortunately, Mom was far too involved in a rerun of Hunter to ask many questions about my day. I staggered into my bedroom and fell into the bed. As I stared up at the ceiling, a familiar, ominous dorsal fin split the surface of my psyche, coming in hard and fast. Good old Guilt.

  I got up and made a forbidden phone call. Kelli answered on the third ring.

  "It's Alvin," I said hoarsely.

  "I figured," she said. "Nobody else would call me this late."

  Neither of us said anything else for several seconds.

  "Okay then, I'd better go," Kelli said.

  "We started shooting today."

  More silence. Then: "Anybody hurt?"

  "Not really. A lot of vomiting, though."

  "Everybody, or just one person?"

  "Just one."

  "Did your Tiki Waitress show up?"

  Your Tiki Waitress. "Yeah. She was really good, actually." Oh God, wrong thing to say. "Not as good as you, though."

  Kelli let out a little snort. "Nice save."

  "I'm tired."

  Again, several seconds passed.

  "So it went okay?" Kelli asked.

  "Yeah," I said. "We're getting some really good stuff."

  I heard her draw a deep breath, the kind you take when you're gearing up for something. It made me edgy.

  "Y'know, Lydia never stops talking about being a mutant."

  I laughed, relieved. "We're shooting again tomorrow, if you want to come along. Nine o'clock, at my mom's house."

  "I suppose I ought to try and make my little girl happy," Kelli said.

  "You're that kind of a mom."

  "You're not getting laid when this movie's done, I hope you realize that," she said.

  Says you, I thought, visions of Mia frolicking through my head. "Just be here on time," I told her.

  Fast and merciless as it was, Guilt couldn't keep up with the warp-speed onslaught of Exhaustion. For the first time in six months, my sleep was relatively untroubled.

  41

  She continually went into hysterics every time she heard my name, but that Lydia was one maniacal little mutant when the camera was rolling.

  Swiping from the zombie-infected daughter in Night of the Living Dead, we decided Lydia would be a flesh-eater, lunging from the shadows to bite meaty chunks from her unsuspecting prey, the horror only amplified by her pigtails and cute sundress, bloodstained and threadbare. Afraid the latex might irritate her little-girl skin, I slopped unflavored gelatin on her face to simulate radiation scars. The gooey, jiggly substance motivated Lydia to throw herself into the role with cannibalistic aplomb, snarling and growling as she attacked. We first see her dining on the remains of Noel's decapitated body, then she scampers away to sit on the mutant leader's lap, blood and bits of stringy flesh clinging to her face as he strokes her greasy hair.

  "She'll probably have psychological problems for the rest of her life," Kelli said.

  I'd been nervous about Kelli being there – especially after the whole Mia incident – but having her around just seemed to complete the picture. Taylor was positively gleeful, a mood I never would've thought he could pull off. He and I tried to convince Kelli to appear in the movie, but she wouldn't have any part of it, preferring to stand behind the camera and cheer everybody on.

  All in all, our second day of shooting was going even better than the first. Noel had gotten over his nervousness and was doing a fine job of playing a mutant war-dog, and, while Aaron was slightly freaked out by the discomfort of the latex and cotton on his face, he rose to the occasion and delivered some terrific grunts and snorts of mutated fury.

  I rolled tape on the day's biggest action sequence, wherein Mia slugs it out with Aaron. They were to trade a few punches (during which Mia's lovely fist dislodges several teeth from Aaron's mouth in a shower of gore), then go into a clench before tumbling over a slight drop-off, where th
eir battle would continue.

  As her fist connected with his mouth, Aaron beautifully spat teeth and blood, splattering Mia's chest and belly with crimson. However, as they went into the clench and hit the ground, Mia accidentally burst forth from one side of her bra.

  "Cut!" I hollered, secretly continuing to roll tape, a bastard to the end.

  Mia looked up from grappling with Aaron. As one might expect, Aaron did not look up from where his gaze was focused.

  "What's wrong?" Mia asked.

  "You, uh ..." I gestured toward her exposed boob.

  Mia glanced at herself, then back at me. "Keep it. Production value."

  Coolest girl ever.

  The fight scene continued with its new R rating; The Blue Man just kept getting better and better.

  Lydia had adopted Boone like he was a big stuffed animal. When we broke for lunch, she hung on him, peppering him with a barrage of questions on every imaginable subject. He did his best to answer each and every one.

  Kelli walked over to where I was crouched, mixing a new batch of fake blood.

  "Remember that bottle of blood you made that fermented?" she asked, peering over my shoulder.

  "Yeah. That was some nasty shit," I said.

  She stood behind me for a long moment, not saying anything else, just gently tapping her knee between my shoulder blades.

  "I'm sorry about the other night," she said. Her knee stopped thumping against me.

  "Don't apologize," I said. "You have every right to be pissed off at me – I acted like an asshole."

  "No, no – I mean, yeah, you acted like an asshole, but what I said to you ... I sounded like I'd been sitting around pining for you for all these years, only to have you show up and break my heart all over again. That's not the way it is."

  Whew. Still crouching, I turned to look up at her.

  "I don't get out much, y'know? It's hard for me, with Lydia and everything. I don't meet a lot of people. Guys." She paused, considering her words carefully. "Something about the loneliness ... it just set me off, stirred up old feelings."