by Mike Leon
Lily tries to scream, but the monster chokes that away from her. The Ghoul’s crushing grip is positively inhuman, more like that of some industrial machinery than any flesh and blood creature.
She drives the toes of her boots into its waist wildly, and pries at its banana sized fingers, but she is like an insect caught in the palm of a sadistic child, and she might as well try punching her way through a vault door.
The last thing she sees is the creature’s pale eyes, both of them, glaring down its arms at her.
EXT. COUNTRY ROAD - DAY
The inside of Gavin’s Escalade is packed with bodies like a Tokyo subway car. It wouldn’t be so bad if Gavin weren’t up front driving and Karen wasn’t stuck in the very back, sandwiched between two Cro-Magnons in letterman jackets. She gives thanks that they are too distracted by the floozy up front to annoy her much.
Summer, currently visible only from the thighs down, screams as she keeps careful footing on top of the passenger seat and flashes her enviable breasts at a passing car on the highway next to them. “Whooooo!” she hoots loudly into the wind outside. Adler, the football player smooshed against Karen’s left thigh, conspicuously leans forward in his seat to get a better look up Summer’s denim mini skirt. Karen doesn’t understand why. Everyone in the truck can already see up that skirt. Summer may as well have just stretched an oversized rubber band around her hips.
After getting a good ogle at Summer’s undercarriage, Adler turns his body to hover across Karen’s lap and flash a toothy smile at the his friend on her other side. “Bro!” he says.
The right side caveman, Carter, smiles back and repeats the utterance. “Bro. I know, bro.” Karen pushes her glasses back up to the bridge of her nose and attempts to re-engage herself in Simone de Beauvior’s The Second Sex despite them.
“So, Karen,” Adler says, poking her annoyingly in the knee. “When do we get to see your sweater puppies?”
“My sweater puppies stay in their dog house,” Karen says.
“Whoa!” Carter says. “Burn, bro!”
Adler lashes out and snatches Karen’s book from her hands in a quick movement.
“Hey!” she squawks as she reaches after the book.
“What do we have here?” Adler says, examining the title and mangling the pronunciation of the author’s name. “Simon Beaver’s Second Sex. What is this? Some kind of porno?”
“Whoa! Maybe she does like to party!” Carter says.
“Give it back!” Karen whines as she slaps at the book in Adler’s hands.
Adler turns toward the window, holding the book on his other side where Karen cannot reach. “I just want to read your porno!”
“It’s not a porno, Adler,” a masculine voice admonishes from the seat just ahead of them. It belongs to Trevor. “It’s a French existentialist indictment of woman as the Other. And it doesn’t have pictures, so you can’t read it anyway.”
“Whoa, bro! Sick burn!” Carter says. “Put some ice on that, bro!”
“Whatever, dude,” Adler snarks back at Trevor. “I read stuff. I read every Harry Potter twice.” He crams the books between him and the car door. Karen makes an angry face at him, but it is no longer worth fighting him for it. He seems to be enjoying this too much to give in.
And so Jenny involves herself in the dispute. Trevor’s beautiful blond girlfriend whips around to glare at Adler down the center of the Escalade’s cabin like an angry mom threatening to come back there. “God, Adler,” she says, her words sizzling with vocal fry. “You’re such a letch. Give her book back or you can find a way to get your own beer for the weekend.”
“I was just playing around!” Adler chokes as he immediately forks up the paperback for Karen. She takes her book back with an annoyed glare as Adler apologizes more. “Really. I was just kidding.” Karen is a little disappointed she didn’t think to hang the booze on the line first. Of the seven of them on this trip, she is the only one old enough to buy beer. She is also very certain that is the only reason the others invited her along.
“Good call, Smoochy,” Trevor says to Jenny, leaning in for a kiss. “Love you bunches.”
“Love you too, snicker doodle,” Jenny says, locking lips with Trevor in the middle of the Escalade, right in front of Karen’s face. They are a questionable mismatch of a couple in Karen’s view. Trevor is a scrawny intellectual type, a philosophy major. Jenny is a prom queen in every way. Karen doesn’t know if she was literally the prom queen at her high school, but she embodies most of the aspects that people associate with that. She is hot tempered, controlling, a bit spoiled, and not terribly well read, but she is not as awful as Karen expected. She just seems like someone who would want a musclehead like Adler, or Carter, and not Trevor of all people.
“Are we there yet?” Summer asks, now back in her seat at the front of the truck, with her plaid midriff-bearing shirt tied off again above her belly. She has a somewhat pronounced lisp, probably owing to her slightly crooked front teeth, but the boys do not seem to notice at all. Adler and Carter especially have fawned over her since they all got in the truck.
“I don’t know,” Gavin says from up in the driver’s seat. He looks up into the rear-view at Jenny. “Jenny, are we almost there yet?”
“Mmmm,” Jenny hums as she looks out the window. “Like another hour. We should look for some place to stop for drinks.”
“Wait,” Trevor says. “Summer, aren’t you from the same town as Jenny?”
“Yeah.”
“So how do you not know where we are?”
Summer shrugs. “I don’t know. I always just get boys to drive.” Her eyes light up as she sees another vehicle coming down the highway the opposite direction. “A woodie! Last to flash the woodie has to say padiddle!”
“That’s not how you play—” Trevor starts, but Adler punches him in the arm with an angry glare. Trevor presses his lips together in an expression of rage that Adler doesn’t even notice, but that stands out to Karen as unusually heated. After only a second, he reverts to normal.
Then Summer is back up in the sun roof pulling her top off again. “Whoooooo!”
INT. DARK CELLAR - DAY
Lily stirs and opens her eyes to the brief and fleeting sensation of blindness. She is engulfed in darkness. She turns over and her arm comes to rest on cold concrete. She takes a breath and the fecal stink of this place assaults her like the ham-fisted moral of a Neill Blomkamp movie.
“Blech!” Lily chokes. “Oh fuck. What is that?”
“You’re awake?” a soft female voice calls to her through the black. “I thought you were dead.”
“Me too.” Lily runs her hands over her body, patting for blood or open wounds. Her head throbs like she took a rubber mallet to the face, but she seems otherwise uninjured. Her clothes are still in place, which seems a small comfort.
“You haven’t moved since he brought you here.”
“What’s that smell?”
“What smell?”
“It smells like shit in here! You don’t smell that?”
“Oh. That’s the bucket. Just another reason we should all go vegan. Just saying, it doesn’t stink like that when you don’t eat meat. I’m a vegan, by the way.”
Lily fills her lungs with rancid air and gives it the ol’ Fay Wray until she feels lightheaded.
“It won’t work,” says the other girl. “I tried screaming for days until I lost my voice.”
“Days?! How long have you been here?” Lily asks.
“I don’t know. A long time, I think. My shirt doesn’t fit anymore.” Lily wonders how long it must take to shrink that much from lack of food. Then she wonders more about the other girl.
“What’s your name?”
“Addison.”
“I’m Lily. Where are we? What is this place?”
“This is where they take the political dissidents for reprogramming.”
“Who?”
“The Republicans and the corporations. The big fast food chains and Monsan
to. That’s who he works for. They found out about my blog and my eco cafe and they sent him. He killed my S.O. and put me in here. I was exposing too much—homeopathy, and the benefits of a vegan diet. Things they don’t want you to know.”
“I don’t think that’s what’s going on here.”
“It has to be. Why else would they do this?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t know why it didn’t kill me.”
“They want you alive and addicted to their toxin burgers.”
“That doesn’t really compute…”
A muffled but audible creak comes through the walls, or maybe a door. It’s impossible to tell in the dark. Addison’s breathing immediately increases in volume and intensity.
“Oh no,” she shrieks. “It’s time. He’s coming. No more. No no no no no. No more.”
A metallic creak in the darkness sounds like it might be the working of a lock. Lily turns in the direction of the noise as a door swings open, allowing in the soft glow of a single distant light bulb.
The monster enters, slouching through the doorway. It wears the same thick black padded armor from all those months ago when they burned it outside the video store, now shredded and charred, and probably horribly rancid, though the smell of the bucket covers that up.
Lily sees the bucket now, a cheap tin pail with a wire handle in the corner of the empty concrete cell. Addison cowers nearby, a flabby woman dressed only in a filthy brown skirt. A doughy belly distends over the waistband and her hefty breasts ripple as she hyperventilates.
“No no no! No more!” Addison cries.
“MEAT!” the Ghoul bellows as he stomps into the cell, drooling through crooked fangs and digging into a white paper sack he carries with him. “MEAT!”
One of his hulking gauntlets emerges from the bag with some boxy object which he soon discards over his shoulder. It plops down on the dirt floor near Lily and its all-too-familiar logos and slogans bring a maddening absurdity to this living nightmare.
It is a McDonald’s hamburger box.
The Ghoul forces Addison’s jaw open with his titanic grip, and even as she screams, he forces the double quarter pound cheeseburger, whole, into her gaping mouth. He packs every last ounce of the meat and bun past her lips and then presses his palm over her mouth and pinches her nose shut. Addison struggles frantically to chew. Her eyes roll back as she gags, heaving into her closed mouth. She chokes down the half pound burger with a gulp that is audible across the room, then sucks in a horrific gasp of air that sounds like a belch played backwards.
“No more,” she cries. “No more!”
But there is more. The Ghoul reaches into the fast food bag two more times, forcing a total of three double quarter pounders down Addison’s throat. Then, finding nothing else in the sack, he upends and shakes it, growling angrily. The monster turns and leaves Addison curled on the floor, clutching her belly. He stomps toward Lily and looms over her, gurgling loudly. He stoops to look her in the eyes.
Lily presses her back to the wall, shaking in terror as there is no retreat. “What do you want from me?” she says.
The monster blinks quietly, then drops the McDonald’s bag in her lap. “Flesh for my hunger!” the monster roars down at her. Then it stomps out of the room and yanks the door closed behind it.
Lily is left in complete darkness, with the wretched sounds of Addison dry heaving on the floor somewhere, desperately fighting back vomiting.
“You’ll feel better if you throw up,” Lily says.
There are two more yaks before an attempt at a response. “He-He-hyechh—he makes you eat it,” Addison belches out.
That revelation is disgusting, but not nearly as horrific as what Lily already deduced. Addison isn’t starving to death down here. The Ghoul is plumping her up.
EXT. FOOD STOP - DAY
The Food Stop appears to be the only man-made structure for a few miles. Gavin does not know how far they are from downtown Morston, but if there is time during the weekend, he would like to drive down there and have a look around at the buildings that were blown up by the terrorists last week, and maybe that mall where the massacre happened. Supposedly, Jenny was there, but she never talks about it.
Gavin presses the gasoline pump’s metal tab down again so he does not have to hold the sprayer, but it almost immediately kicks off when he moves his hand away. On Trevor’s suggestion, he pulls the sprayer from the gas filler, shakes it, then puts the nozzle back in. That works.
He rests his back against the Escalade as the black and white digital numbers on the pump’s display flicker and flash higher and higher. Adler and Carter stand stretching their legs and flapping their jaws on the grey cement of the Food Stop gas station just beside him, but Gavin has little interest in their remarks, or the climbing digits on the gas pump display. His focus is on Jenny as she and the other girls walk into the attached convenience store.
Jenny. Sweet Jenny. Jenny Brunswick. The most beautiful girl Gavin has ever met. She is tall and thin, with a smile that can light up a room. Her voice is like the soothing feel of velvet and her laugh is a warm reminder of home, even though Jenny has never seen his home. She just makes him feel that way somehow. When Gavin thinks about Jenny Brunswick, he thinks about eternity.
“Bro,” Adler says. “Summer, bro. I just want those titties in my face. You know? I just want to lick those titties.”
“Not if I get there first, bro,” Carter counters as he shakes his head in disapproval. “You can have my sloppy seconds.”
“It doesn’t matter, bro. She’s so fine I’d suck the last dick that was in her just to get some of that runoff. You know?”
“Damn, Adler. Gross.”
“I’m gonna hit that though. My game is off the chain right now. You don’t even know my game. I been studying the game. Meditating the game. I got the Ross Jeffries instructional videos. Three words. Neuro linguistic programming.”
“Is that like computers?” Carter says.
“Nah, bro. It’s like hypnotism. You say certain words it makes bitches all wet for your dick and they don’t know why.”
“You’re fucking with me.”
“No lie.”
“What are some of the words?”
“There isn’t a list. You just have to be subtle and tell them what to do without them noticing. Like you say, hey girl, I bet you like pudding. She thinks you’re just talking about chocolate stuff, but in her mind she’s thinking pudding is like putting, which is like putting your dick in her. So that makes her think about your dick and how your dick tastes like chocolate and then she wants your dick. That’s how the pros tame the strange.”
“You don’t actually think that will work?” Trevor says with an air of incredulity.
“I know it does,” Adler assures them all. “I’m knee deep in puss right now. I practically have a pussy plantation.”
“Bro, not cool,” Carter says.
“What? I’m black. I can make plantation jokes.”
“It’s still really offensive,” Trevor says.
Adler laughs. “What’s your game plan, Trevor? Obviously you can spit game if your skinny ass is tappin’ that.”
“I don’t need to… spit game.” Trevor says it like the words are foreign and inconceivable. “I’m her boyfriend.”
“But you are tapping that, right?”
“What happens between Jenny and me isn’t your business.”
“So you’re not tapping that? Cause I heard she doesn’t put out.”
Gavin doesn’t want to hear any more of this. Thinking about Jenny and Trevor together is making him feel gross. “Alright, Adler. Give the guy a break.”
“It’s cool.” Adler chuckles. He raises his hand for Trevor to slap. “I’m just fuckin with you, bro. I know you get up in that.” Trevor uneasily smacks Adler’s high five.
INT. FOOD STOP - DAY
Summer places a handle of vodka in a blue basket at her feet, as Jenny reads the label on a bottle of pink mixer. “What do you
think of Carter?” she says. “He’s like hot, right?”
“Carter?” Jenny grimaces like she might retch. “Ew! He went all the way with Becky.”
“Ew! All the way? Like sex?”
“Yeah! Gwen told me about it. Michelle told her. She heard it from Aiden, who heard it from Carter.”
“I can’t believe Becky did...it. I never thought she was a slut.”
“Um...” Karen, previously uninterested in the conversation as she nosed through the selection of canned iced tea, puts her hand up for the attention of the other two girls. “So, do you two not…? Well, you know...”
“Oh, oh, God no. We don’t do that,” Jenny says, shaking her head adamantly.
“Never,” Summer says. “I’m not a slut.”
“We both took the Patience Patrol virginity pledge. That’s what these are for.” Jenny holds up her left hand in front of Karen’s nose to display a sterling silver band on her ring finger which is engraved with the words TRUE LOVE WAITS. Summer also shows off a matching ring. “Wait. Have you done it?” Jenny asks.
Karen is caught off guard by the question. Among her usual company, her answer would be embarrassing, but here it seems a welcomed response. “Well, no, actually. I mean I’ve never really had the chance to.”
“Karen, you shouldn’t have premarital sex,” Summer says. “That’s how you get AIDS.”
“Well, to be fair, you could be married and still get AIDS,” Karen says.
Summer cocks her head to the left, as though it may increase blood flow to that side of her brain and help with the processing of this arduous mental task. “Is that true?”
“Yes,” Jenny says.
“Then why don’t our parents have AIDS?”
“Karen,” Jenny starts, leaving Summer to remain in the bubble of stupidity where she resides. “The Patience Patrol says your sexuality is like a flower. Imagine every time you have sex with a boy, they take a piece of that flower with them. It just gets smaller and smaller every time. When you finally meet the boy you’re going to marry, there might not be any of the flower left!”