Probably Monsters

by Ray Cluley

  We’re in the bar again. Same bar, same drinks, because it’s the same conversation. I only ended it where I ended it before so you didn’t get too bored reading the same scene and so I could end with that little dig at Open Water. It did suck, though.

  “I mean it has to be a symbol, or a metaphor or something.”

  “Why? Isn’t a thousand years of evolution into the perfect killing machine scary enough?”

  “Scary, yeah, of course. I mean it’s practically just muscle and teeth. But it needs to be something more if we aren’t going straight to Blu-Ray.”

  “Careful. Did you ever read Jaws?”

  “Read it?”

  “Yeah, the book. Quaint little things made of paper. People sometimes make movies out of them.”

  “Funny.”

  “The paper makes it easier to cut bits out.”

  “I know it’s a book. I’m just surprised you do.”

  “Right.”

  “Peter Benchley.”

  “Now you’re just showing off. Alright, Benchley, whatever. Anyway, there was a metaphor in there that was pretty fucking lame.”

  In case you haven’t read it, don’t worry, because Sheila can’t remember and Bobby has to explain.

  “Out in the water you’ve got a lone shark, preying on the people of Amity, right? Is it still Amity in the book?”

  “You’re the expert.”

  “And on land, you’ve got a money lender bleeding the people dry. A loan shark. As in L, O, A, N.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. As in really terrible.”

  They’ve got into the habit of toasting a good point, so Sheila does so here. “Well we should have something deeper than money anyway.”

  “Sex.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Me too.”

  “I’d rather talk about the movie.” She waggles her eyebrows like I’m told Groucho Marx does, or did, to show she’s joking.

  Bobby feigns disappointment by sticking out his lower lip, just going along with her joke because he loves her, then adds, “Big prehistoric phallic symbol of a shark.”

  She considers it, but, “I’d prefer vagina dentata.”

  “Why not both? Can it be both?”

  “Oh I don’t know.”

  Both of them slump in their seats, defeated for a moment. Thinking for a moment.

  Bobby complains, “Why can’t a monster just be a monster?” Then he blows bubbles into his drink with a straw.

  It’s a good point to end on for the moment, so let’s go back, or rather forward . . .

  S

  . . . to the movie. The movie stars, more precisely. They aren’t being filmed right now but they are acting. Not too much emphasis on the acting, what they’re doing is mostly natural, but they are acting a little bit.

  We’re with Phil and an actress called Brenda who we saw earlier splashing in the waves with her shrieking girly friends. Brenda was being Cassy then. They’re not in role here, though. Phil is being Phil and Brenda Brenda and they’re fucking each other in a crummy chalet room. They’re still acting a bit though because each wants the other to think they’re good at fucking, and each wants the other one to think that they think they are good at fucking, mainly so they can keep fucking on a regular basis for a while. For at least as long as it takes to make the film anyway.

  They are both naked. It’s all very well lit. Phil is sitting on the bed and Brenda has straddled him, bouncing in his lap at a speed that must be bringing him close, or her close, whoever—the main thing is, we’re joining them at a critical moment. She’s bouncing, ponytail hair whipping around behind her, with one arm draped around Phil’s neck and the other groping at his pectoral muscles which is fair because one of his hands is on her chest too, holding one breast then the other as if trying to stop them bouncing too much. His other hand is at the small of her back so she doesn’t fall off the bed, or more importantly so she doesn’t fall off of him. She is making a lot of noise because she wants him to think he’s good and she wants him to like how much she likes it so they can keep doing this for a while, and before this movie she did some others she’s not so proud of so she knows how to make those noises pretty good. Phil is giving her an occasional “oh yeah” so she knows it’s working.

  You get the picture. Young, damn fine-looking specimens enjoying the fact that they are young damn fine-looking specimens.

  They near climax, and it’s bound to have happened perfectly together if not for this interruption. The door to the room bursts open suddenly with the same shocking force their orgasm might have had, had it been allowed, but instead we’re going to have a climax of a different sort because, let’s face it, there hasn’t been any blood yet and a horror film tends to need some. Not always, some of the best ones don’t have any, but this is the movie business, albeit the budget movie business, and in the budget horror movie business blood is something they can always afford to use. Besides, they’re having sex, so death is sure to follow. It’s still the rules, even if Scream told you that already.

  Brenda turns, surprised, and for a moment her breasts are free of Phil’s hand so we get a tantalizing glimpse of both of them together. Phil gives a manly, “What the hell are you doing here?” which tells us whoever has come in is someone he knows but if it were a film they would not be in shot. As it’s a story I can even have the intruder speak and you still won’t know who it is.

  “No wonder there’s been no chemistry.”

  And Brenda screams, and so does Phil.

  S

  You must have a good idea who it might have been; there aren’t many characters to choose from. Unless it’s someone new but that wouldn’t be fair at this point, would it? Bit like cheating. So let me just say you’re right, and move on with the story.

  Bobby and Sheila are watching Phil and Brenda on a monitor. Nothing kinky—it’s footage from earlier in the week, not the sex scene from the motel. The sex you just read hasn’t actually happened yet, this is another flashback.

  Phil is being Bodie and Brenda is being Cassy and they are sitting on the raft we saw right at the beginning. Cassy is laying on her back, sunning herself, in a tiny white bikini because white is pure and virginal (though Brenda isn’t) and she is going to be one of the survivors (though Brenda isn’t). Phil is sitting next to her, glistening because he’s just been in the water and because the reflected light gives his torso more muscle definition. If all had gone well, this would have been the poster shot for the movie, with an added fin circling the raft.

  “You know, there was a shark attack here last year,” says Phil who is Bodie to Brenda who is Cassy.

  She sits up, but not entirely. Just enough that we can see she has a flat stomach and perfect breasts. She is propped up on her forearms and elbows, which pushes her chest out more. She knew to do this without direction because of the films she’s made before.

  “You’re kidding.”

  Bodie (you know it’s really Phil pretending to be Bodie so I’ll stop saying so) he shakes his head without looking at Cassy. “They like the warm climate.” He’s looking out to sea.

  “Bodie, are you trying to scare me?”

  “No.”

  “Because there are other ways to keep me on this raft, you know.”

  (“You see,” says Sheila, pointing back and forth between the characters on the screen, “there’s supposed to be some chemistry here. Some sexual tension. We’ve got nothing.”)

  Bodie glances at Cassy and she smiles a dazzling smile that is nearly as white as her pure virginal bikini and he says, “It’s true.” It’s a deliberately ambiguous reply because it’s true that there are other ways to keep her on the raft, but also it’s true that there was a shark attack here, the audience has already seen it in the film. We’re meant to wo
nder if we’ll see another one in a minute, or if we’ll get the kissing and groping Cassy seems to be hinting at. Either way the audience would be happy, most likely. What they get instead, though, is back story and shark info.

  “They’ll eat anything, you know. Turtles, tin cans. Surfers.”

  (“But probably not your meatloaf,” says Bobby and Sheila slaps his arm without looking at him, looking only at the screen. “This is shite,” she says. It’s a Britishism she likes.)

  Cassy sits up fully now, and the close up is of their faces together. It’s going to be one of those moments, where lead characters get closer emotionally as well as physically. The movement also tells the audience this is going to be important information.

  “They’ve got these jagged teeth, triangle teeth, and not just the one row. There are lots of teeth. They shed them and replace them all the time. And when it comes at you, its jaw drops open all the way down, like, ninety degrees, and all you can see is teeth and darkness.”

  Cassy puts her hand on Bodie’s arm, squeezes his bicep.

  “You know, when it’s got you, a shark will just roll, left and right. Waving its pectoral fins. The water resistance keeps you from moving much but the shark can move, and its teeth cut back and forth like a chainsaw.”

  “Oh, Bodie . . .”

  He looks at her then, pulled out of his memory, and gives her a weak smile. Then they kiss. Then they lay back. They kiss again. Cassy’s hand is on Bodie’s thigh. As she caresses him, his shorts rise up and we can see the beginning of a bite scar there.

  (“This is meant to be tentative,” says Sheila. “They’re kissing for the first time, she’s kissing for the first time ever actually, but here . . .” and because they’re married and they finish each other’s sentences sometimes, Bobby says, “Here she looks like a college slut.” “Yeah,” says Sheila, “She might as well just go right for his cock.”)

  As they lie kissing, a fin rises up out of the water briefly, passes, and is gone.

  Sheila hits the pause button so all there is on screen is dark water.

  “And that was take a hundred or whatever.”

  “I thought they were messing it up on purpose. Get a little more kissy-kissy.” Bobby gropes an imaginary woman in front of him.

  “They’re killing my movie.”

  “Our movie, baby.”

  “We’ll have to re-shoot it.”

  Except they can’t, because Phil and Brenda, who are the Bodie and Cassy they need for the scene, for the rest of the film in fact, will be dead soon.

  But then you already knew that.

  S

  The chalet door is open and the bed sheets are tangled and there is blood everywhere. There’s blood everywhere because there isn’t a body to hold it all anymore, not exactly. Both bodies are here, but they’re in pieces. Blood has soaked the bed, the floor, and it splashes up the walls in long lines. There’s even an arc of it across the ceiling.

  The man standing in the doorway is wearing a blazer, despite the heat, but no tie. His shirt is a grubby white because he’s a good guy but not too squeaky clean. He is looking over the scene calmly, hands in his pockets. He’s clearly a cop, even though he’s not in uniform and there’s no gun visible or anything. He just is, and you can tell just by looking.

  “Sir? You can’t be in here.”

  A patrolman stands near. He reaches for the man, then reaches for his gun when the other man reaches inside his blazer.

  “Steady,” says the man in the blazer we know is a cop. He produces a flip-fold ID. He shows it upside down, realizes, and turns it the right way. A little detail. It keeps us with the photo and the police badge for a moment. See, he’s a cop.

  “Sorry sir.”

  “New?”

  “Two weeks, sir.”

  In any other story, that would mark him as a dead-man-to-be. Not this one. He’s not in the story anymore, except for his arm in a moment, and the arm is still attached to his body when that happens.

  The detective steps further into the room and looks around so we can see again the bloody horror of it all. So much blood. And chunks. Occasionally there’s a piece you might recognize, like an elbow or a few toes still connected.

  “Let us through,” comes Sheila’s voice from outside.

  “Ma’am,” says someone else, “stop.” Our two-week-old patrolman.

  The man who is a detective glances behind at the noise briefly, then squats down and tilts his head to look under the bed. It means the doorway is free behind him to frame a good shot of Sheila and Bobby together as they stand on the threshold, held back by the arm of the patrolman. Sheila brings her hand up to her mouth, either to stifle a scream or hold back vomit. Bobby says, “Bloody hell.”

  “Bloody,” says the cop, reaching under the bed with a pen. “You got that right.”

  “What happened?”

  Bobby’s question is a stupid question in the general sense, but in the specific actually quite interesting.

  The cop brings something out from under the bed using his pen. It is triangular and jagged.

  “If I didn’t know any better,” says the cop, “I’d say it was a shark attack.”

  It’s too early to say so, of course, but it saves writing a post-mortem scene. Besides, this is the CSI generation. He should have figured out the whole case by now.

  S

  “What are we going to do now? We can’t just re-cast both of them.”

  “Just one, then.”

  Sheila thinks about it. The day of filming has been cancelled, so they’re sitting on set in the sun. The set they’re sitting on is the raft because it keeps people from coming over and asking them questions. They can see everybody else, the crew, the cops, the reporters, back on the beach.

  “He said shark attack.”

  “Yeah.”

  “On land. Interesting.”

  “Yeah. Shame we’re not making a film about making a film about a shark attack, it could have been a good scene.”

  “Original.”

  Bobby dips his foot into the water, likes the temperature, and puts both feet in. Sheila is lying back, propped up on her elbows. Her bikini is black and oily looking because it’s wet. She is thinking about how to fix the film but Bobby is thinking about her bikini and how he’d like to take it off but figures that might be a bit weird after what just happened. And anyway, they’d have an audience. Not you, so much, but the people on the beach. Sheila and Bobby don’t know about you, this isn’t that kind of story.

  “The scene where Bodie looks out to sea with his arm around his surfboard.”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, instead of having him turn around and walk back inland, another failed attempt to get back surfing, we could just cut it with him looking. We could put that in after the raft scene instead, which we already have—”

  “Without chemistry.”

  “Without chemistry. And then that can be his last scene. Looking out to sea, surfboard in the sand beside him, arm around it like a lover.”

  “There was more chemistry between him and the surfboard.”

  “We don’t see him again, but we do see the surfboard. It washes up on the beach—”

  “—with a big bite out of it.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Emotional.”

  “Yeah. He finally kisses Cassy, having told his story, gets some closure of sorts, and that’s it.”

  “Meanwhile, Cassy the virgin never-kissed-anyone feels like it’s her fault.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Except we don’t have a Cassy anymore. And too many shots with her and Bodie together to simply re-shoot.”

  Bobby kicks his feet in the water. He’s not worried about how a shark can detect minute disturbances in the w
ater with its lateral line sensory system. He knows about it, he just isn’t worried about it. Neither is Sheila. She drapes one hand into the cool water as she thinks about how they can fix their movie.

  “Bobby? Sheila?”

  The voice comes from the radio Bobby has clipped to his shorts. They didn’t swim out—they came in a small motorboat.

  “Ignore him.”

  “It’s Tony,” Bobby explains. “You know how he gets.” He unclips the radio and says, “Yeah, Tony, Bobby.”

  “We got a dwarf here wants to speak to you.”

  “Did you say dwarf?”

  “Midget, then. Vertically challenged. Whatever. Says he was in Jaws. Says he’s come to see you.”

  “Shit,” says Sheila, “I totally forgot about him.”

  “Dwarf?” says Bobby again, this time to Sheila.

  “Little person, for the cage scenes with the real shark. To make it look bigger.”

  “Oh.”

  She makes a gimme-gimme gesture for the radio and he hands it over.

  “Hi Tony, Sheila. We’ll come get him.”

  “Roger that.”

  Sheila sighs. “At least out here nobody else will bother us.”

  Bobby puts his hand on his wife’s knee and tries his smile. It nearly works. “We’ll get through this.”

  There’s another burst from the radio.

  “Bobby? Sheila?”

  “Tony, yeah, what?”

  “There’s someone here to see you.”

  “A dwarf, yeah, we know, keep your panties on. We’re coming to get him.”

  “No, not him. A cop. Says it’s important.”

  Bobby looks at Sheila who says, “Fuck it, bring him out here too.”

  Bobby looks at their tiny outboard and says, “We’re gonna need a bigger—”

  “Don’t. Don’t say it.”

  S

  The cop wants to talk to Bobby and Sheila about some film footage. Not theirs, though.

  “You got somewhere I can play this?” he says to them as they pull their boat up onto the sand. He shows them a video cassette.