The First One You Expect

by Adam Cesare

  I plug my phone in, the cord running under my pillow, and pull the sheet up. I’m sober tonight and that makes it harder to sleep. I always take a night off the bottle when I see Burt drinking heavily. Earlier tonight he offered to drive me home, but I told him I’d walk, that I had a few phone calls to make and the night air would make me feel good. It’s a long walk, one that takes me over Sunrise Highway on a skinny footbridge, but it’s better than getting in a car with a wasted Burt.

  Normally I’d have taken a swig of Nyquil, but I’m all out so now I’m lying in bed with my mind racing.

  I usually love nights like this, nights when I’m full of ideas, because I won’t sleep, but tonight it’s different. If I’m excited about a project, I’ll stay up until dawn working on the script, sometimes photoshopping a poster. I haven’t been this wound up in a while.

  I can’t stay up tonight though, I shouldn’t. I’ve got an early shift at Stop & Shop and then we’re going to start working on the Kickstarter video.

  My pillow buzzes and I check my messages. It’s a text from Anna.

  “Who u calling a bitch?”

  Even though I just sent out the tweet, it takes me a second to register what she’s referring to.

  I start typing up a response, feeling a weight of dread pressing down on the happiness I was just skating across. Even after spending hours with her, going over character quirks and style tips and movies Anna should check out for inspiration, I still can’t read her, know what’s up with her.

  “I was kidding, no offense. I was in character, you know? Since you call yourself a slut in ur profile.”

  It only takes a second for her response, but the lag feels immeasurable.

  “A bitch and a slut are two different things.” The grammar is perfect for a text, she even spelled out the number.

  I can feel sweat slicking up my sheets, my neck oily. I should have showered.

  “I’m sorry.”

  The response time is longer now, so long I lay there, unsure if one will come.

  “I’m kidding, are you always such a pussy? Have a good night. :-P”

  “Ha. Thanks, u 2. Big day tomorrow.” I type back, ignoring the part about being called a pussy.

  The sweat begins to cool but still leaves me sticky. I only sleep for about two hours.

  NINE

  Burt has the stocking on the top of his head, pulled up around his eyebrows so that the end hanging off his hair looks like a spent condom. He’s got his arms crossed in front of him, his forearms so long and skinny that crossing them he looks much less imposing than if he didn’t. Glaring at me behind Anna’s back, Burt’s trying to stand still, but failing.

  Burt showed up to set reeking of vodka.

  Well, the set is his house, but he is drunk when Anna and I get there. After work I tell him that I don’t need a ride to his place, that Anna’s going to drive me. We show up forty minutes after him, stopping by my place to get the camera, and he’s drunk when we arrive.

  If my mother hadn’t held us up on the way to Burt’s, I could have been here in time to stop him from finishing the bottle.

  My mother’s eyes are a bit lighter as she talks to Anna. Without her Cat Killer costume on, Anna looks sweet, normal and Mom insists on calling me Nicky in front of her.

  “What a lovely home you have, Mrs. Anastos.” The words fit her so well that I can’t believe this is the same girl who whirls around knives, is unashamed to let me see the silky underwear she rocks, probably is still rocking now, as she butters up my mother.

  As she points to the framed photos along the wall, marvels at the Grecian landscapes, I wonder which Anna is the closest to the real her, which one is the act.

  “Am I in the fucking video or what?” Burt says.

  “Not if you can’t stand up straight,” I say.

  All three of us are quiet. We’re down in Burt’s basement, I shift and the grit from the packed-dirt floor crackles under my sneakers.

  Anna looks at me, her expression a little worried, the first time I’ve seen her unsure of herself. I hate that Burt’s done this to us.

  “Look, just sober up. We’ll film the sequences that don’t need you, the straight up pitch stuff with Anna talking to the camera. We’ll run through it a few times, catch a few different angles. If you go puke everything out, you should be ready to go in an hour, right?”

  Burt is tapping his feet while I speak, right foot left foot. His eyes are all over the basement: to the boiler, to Anna’s ass, to the boxes of junk labeled “mom” around us, but never meeting my stare. The guy’s ashamed, the skin beneath his beard red and wet.

  He doesn’t say anything, just nods, swinging his hand over and catching the banister, the stairs rocking as he climbs back up into the house, leaving Anna and I alone in the basement.

  There’s a moment where neither of us speak, and the reality of the situation is apparent to me now. I have these depressing moments sometimes, not moments of doubt, exactly, more like moments of stark clarity. We’re not on a film set. She’s not an actor and I’m not a director. We’re two people standing in a friend’s basement. There’s no glamour here, no one cares and I have the sick feeling that we’re going to put this video up and get nothing. I’m usually alone when I realize these things, but now Anna’s with me and that makes it so much worse.

  I don’t know whether to sob or smash the camera into her face and then hang myself with my belt. I wish I could tear my skin off.

  I look at her, ready for her to say that she’s realized it too, that there’s nothing here that’s going to further her career, that she’s ready to leave. She can give up like I wish I could give up. She doesn’t yet need a do-over on the last ten years.

  “We don’t need him anyway,” she says and places a hand on my shoulder. Her heavy neo-Elvira makeup is warpaint that darkens her eyes. “We can do the video ourselves. You’re going to make me a star, right?”

  I nod.

  “This place is great,” she waves her arms at the basement and I see it, it is great. Production value out the ass, no extra lighting needed. I’m not a Tony Robbins guy, not a convert to the power of positive thinking, I just make my shit and try to sell it the best I can. But I do get low, sometimes. Blue. I’m glad she’s here to bring me back, make me see the possibilities.

  The house above us is quiet and I can hear the bathroom door close and Burt start the faucet running.

  Hopefully he’ll be able to clean himself out.

  Anna has It and people will pay to watch more.

  She inhabits the frame, even though we’re only in one room, with only a few pieces of set dressing (a rubber severed hand from Party City’s Halloween selection, a dull machete), Cat Killer is determined to get us our money.

  “If we don’t meet our goal in thirty days we won’t receive any of the money. Scroll down to the sidebar and you’ll see what kind of rewards we’ve got in store for you. DVDs, posters, signed eight-by-tens. And one very lucky donor could even get dinner with me. And don’t even think of bringing me to some Vegan shithole. I want blood.”

  She smiles, we haven’t scripted half of what we’ve got so far. It just rolls out of her. Her onscreen demeanor is a mix of Anna Diamond and Cat Killer, both girls a far cry from the sweet Anna Friedman who talked up my mother earlier today.

  Maybe one day, after the movie is wrapped, I’ll talk to her about the idea that we both share a weird form of split personality disorder. I can ask her who she thinks of herself as: Friedman or Diamond. Whether she’s a Tony or a Nicholas. She’ll understand it like she seems to get most things about me.

  “This movie’s going to have everything, it chronicles the demise of the musty has-been slashers and the rise of a new icon. But there is one aspect we’re keeping old school: the gore. With your help, we’re going to have mind blowing practical makeup effects. We need plaster, latex, paint and actors and that’s the main reason why we need to raise five thousand dollars.”

  Behind the camera
, I point up at the ceiling, indicating that we’re shooting for more.

  “This stuff is expensive, so we’d love it if we could reach more. In fact, for every thousand dollars we go over our initial goal, I’ll be sending our backers a special picture, one less article of clothing for each thousand.”

  It’s genius.

  “But watching me stand around and look pretty is not all you want to see in this video, is it? You want to see me do my thing, right?”

  She’s looking directly into the camera, I can hear Burt flush the toilet upstairs, the mic picks it up but Anna seems unfazed. Burt has been up there for about ten minutes. At a certain point I thought I heard retching beneath the sound of the faucet, but it’s hard to be sure. I hope that he’s empty, ready for a cup of black coffee.

  “Follow me,” she says to the camera. Behind the viewfinder I hitch up an eyebrow. “Yes, you,” she says, still playing with the audience but talking to me. She points to the stairs with the end of the machete and begins to climb up backward, feeling out each step with her heel, careful not to slip.

  I follow her. I’m unsure where this is going.

  “To prove how invested our writer-director Tony Anastos is in the quality of this film, he’s left nothing to chance.”

  She’s at the top of the steps now, the door is open and I can see the kitchen countertop from the viewfinder. It’s breaking the illusion of the basement being some dark netherworld and also giving her some ugly backlighting. I’m not sure if I’m going to be using this footage in the video, but I let it roll to see where she’s taking me.

  “Most of you probably know The Debaser, you’ve followed his adventures for years and are probably no doubt looking forward to his return, maybe even as a special guest in my film.”

  She’s through the kitchen doorway now, pulling the camera closer with one finger, turning her back so I can catch her skirt, the fabric bouncing against her ass, the fishnets tight against her legs.

  I notice another aspect of her costume for the first time now, the sheath wrapped around her right thigh, half of it obscured by the skirt, giving her a pointed silhouette.

  We’re walking toward the bathroom. She stops in the first floor hallway, turns to address the camera.

  “I’ve been reading your concerns on the message boards, how you’re worried about the same old props, the same lame fake knives,” she holds up the machete, then drags the dummy blade across her white wrist. The metal leaves a slight redness, but doesn’t break the skin.

  “Fucking nothing,” she says, holding out the mild abrasion, then tossing the machete over her shoulder, putting a gash into the hallway molding that I can see from behind the camera.

  “With your donation, we’ll be able to afford premium props like this one.” She flips up the side of her skirt and puts one hand on the sheath, removing Rambo with the other. When did she take it? Has she had it the entire time? Has she stolen from me?

  I almost want to ask her, but my voice would ruin the take.

  “A beauty, right? And totally unsafe around a crazy mother like me.” She smiles and holds her arm out again, cutting the back of her arm with the blade. I take a quick hissing breath and her eyes dart up at me, warn me not to make any more noise. “Did I mention I’m a cutter?” Her voice is sweet and innocent, Muppet Babies Marilyn Monroe.

  The wound is real, a two inch cut, not deep and too pale to show up on video at first. She uses the side of the blade to push down on her arm, the blood welling up in the cut, causing it to glow bright red.

  The light in the hallway is shit, but she’s positioned herself under the one bare bulb, given us the best lighting possible.

  There’s coughing from inside the bathroom, Burt is still in there. The faucet still running, a constant stream uninterrupted by the washing of hands. The sound makes me think that he’s either still puking or passed out in front of the toilet.

  “All you fanboys won’t want The Debaser after what I’m about to show you.”

  She takes a step back, puts her free hand on the door, a thin line of blood traveling down her arm now, toward her elbow. She knocks and the blood drips, splashing onto the gold doorknob.

  There’s no answer from the bathroom and Anna pushes the door open. There’s a split second where I’m really hoping I’m not about to see Burt on the toilet, taking a shit.

  “And here he is. Our fearsome killer. Is this video canon?” she asks, not waiting for the reply. “Yup. This is the official, first ever unmasking of The Debaser. And, surprise! He’s a drunk sack of shit.”

  I enter the room, Burt is laying next to the toilet, his eyes-half open. He’s still got the stocking on his head.

  He looks pathetic, my heart breaks for my friend, for his dead mom, and for what a shithead I’ve been to him for the last decade.

  Would yelling “cut” stop his humiliation? Or would it just speed us on our way to the three-way argument that will no doubt come from Anna and I busting into the bathroom.

  “What the fuck?” Burt says, the first word getting lost in a drool bubble. He has puked, I can smell it, but it hasn’t made him very spritely. Not spritely enough to have flushed.

  Anna ignores him, the smell, turns to the camera. She’s yelling now, some James Dean method shit, her face red, a vein popping.

  “You want a game-changing slasher like The Burning or The Prowler? Have you had it with that DIY made-in-a-backyard shit? Don’t you want to see a girl finally dish out the pain?”

  She points the knife to the camera. All the phrases, all the genre buzzwords, those are things I’ve said. She picked them up very quickly, internalized them. Nobody is going to be calling her a fake geek girl.

  “I’m Cat Killer and this is what you can expect in my fucking movie,” she says, then lowers her voice to address me: “Don’t you dare cut that camera.”

  Anna grabs a clump of Burt’s hair, her fingers digging deep enough to get a firm grip on his scalp even with the stocking in the way.

  Burt’s look of surprise must be a mirror of my own.

  Anna bends her legs slightly, straddling Burt and lifting his head over the toilet using both hands, the seat already up. The flat of the knife presses against Burt’s forehead as she lifts, she’s holding it with two fingers, the others cinched around his hair.

  Pressing his clavicle flat against the bowl, she frees her knife hand and leans her knee into him. She’s a hooded executioner, her eyes wild.

  He’s not even fighting, probably because he hasn’t seen Rambo, hasn’t put it together that this is a real knife.

  She cuts Burt’s throat and his blood spills into the toilet.

  The stream is neat at first, almost too perfect the way it doesn’t go anywhere but the bowl, but then she begins sawing and it’s everywhere.

  When she’s done, she’s out of breath, and looks at the camera for the first time in over a minute.

  “Thanks for watching.”

  TEN

  When the first slice happens, my immediate thought isn’t to scream, isn’t to try to help Burt, what I think is: Damn, that looks good.

  I hate myself for it later.

  It is only a second after that—when the knife is already too deep and no one could help Burt—that I feel its realness. Anna going in for her second pass at his neck, in-and-over with the knife, Pez dispensering my oldest friend.

  The second emotion to supplant awe, is pants-shitting-terror. Not of Anna, no, my mind still hasn’t puzzled out that I’m standing in front of a dangerous person, but I’m scared of the trouble I’m going to be in.

  I haven’t done anything, but still I have the grade-school end-of-the-world chill. It’s the feeling that any second I’m going to be called into the Main Office and, this time, no amount of crying or bargaining is going to stop the principal from calling my house.

  There’s no way we can get away with this. I think, already trying to think of angles, ways to exonerate myself before the blood on the tile has had a chance to coo
l.

  I hold on the scene much longer than I should. Every centimeter of magnetic tape is another year added to my sentence.

  It’s only after I cut the camera that I realize how far Anna’s gone and how completely cognizant of her crime she is. This wasn’t a heat-of-the-moment mistake, not with the way she followed through like that. She managed to get his head so far off that when she removes her knee the weight of his torso drags his body down but the head refuses to come with it. There’s a squeak and a tearing sound that I didn’t even know was possible, at least it’s never a sound I’ve heard on film.

  We stand in the bathroom and the air around us feels sweaty, like the spilt blood is a heat source, a radiator on full blast. In the silence, I try to work through some possible scenarios. Should I run from her, try for the phone? Am I in a slasher movie now, a possible victim? I’d never make it out the door, I’d trip. I know it.

  She’s stronger than me, she’s proven that, not only a stronger conversationalist, but by nearly beheading my best friend in front of me. Instead of me yelling, screaming or begging, it’s her that speaks first. I don’t get to ask why, don’t panic before she offers an explanation, in a way. In her way.

  “You said he lives alone, right?”

  I’m silent. There’s no way.

  “Nobody’s going to walk in, you can relax. I’ve just gotten us that five grand.”

  It’s like before, like when I heard her pitch in the staffroom of Stop & Shop.

  She talks and I listen, not nodding this time, trying my hardest not to give her much in the way of anything. I don’t want her knowing how I’m feeling.

  She finishes and I have to admit: it’s not a bad plan.

  We can get away with this.

  ELEVEN

  I add a cut to the footage, but not much of one. I use the arrow keys to snip out a few frames before Anna’s first knife stroke.