He licked his cracked worm-lips and made upsetting slurping sounds.
‘Kirby, remember the profit-sharing on this picture? You’re in, remember?’
‘Whuh thuh fuck? WHUH???’ He took a swill from a flask of belt-likker he’d saved. ‘You never! Never said! If anything, we was out, baby!’
Her ploy having failed, she was fast approaching the very limits of desperation. No matter how she may have shown off in front of Pepper, all she wished for, at this second, was to be away from the whole cinematic ‘thing’ (which had basically brought her to this hideous peril). To be sequestered from the world, if not within the liberating confines of a separate peace, then at least in a state immune from rage and rapine.
‘I’m sorry Kirby! I wasn’t thinking! If I didn’t say it then, I’m saying it now! You guys can come in! Should be plenty for everyone! Please, Kirby! Think about it!’
‘You LIAR! No way! Me ’n’ Bak’ll get ALL, baby, ALL! Unnerstand?’
‘You’re a stupider fucking shit-brain than I ever could’ve thought! I’m outright handing you millions, and you –’
‘OK, them vocal cords are gonna have to go. Then I can drill you. B’sides, I’m sick of taking your orders. You’s for fuckin’. An’ fuckin’-up! Nothin’ else.’
‘What turned you into such a pustule? A little booze? What’s the fire in your eyes, lieutenant? You and that other gurgling sleaze aren’t a bad team when you’ve got your shock collars properly installed. What’d you do, tonight, leave them in your panty drawer?’
Rage now, fully-throttled, erupted from the flipped-out second-string producer-ghoul.
‘That’s IT!’ he exploded.
He pulled a crude blade from his Geef Spretlok jacket, recently messed up with bleachy mucus spewed by dirt clod/cat turd-munching Bakyan, and forced Jana over by the wooden steps to the lodge. Feeling triumphant, he commanded her to spread-eagle herself on the discomfort of their incline.
‘I wanna watch you strip, bith! NOW!’
He waved around his weapon in a manner that would be howlingly comical were it not for the fact that here, in the green moonlight, there was nothing but grave intention going on.
Now that these two were back within her field of vision, Pepper looked on in anguish from the side windows surrounding the door. Then she withdrew.
Jana complied. At this point, danger was head-on. With the exception of her lace-up boots (handy for high-step crotch-kicking), she denuded herself in a matter of seconds, thinking that the stunning vision old Kirb saw before him might modify his violent sex drive into a more appreciative sex drive. Terms potentially more manageable than continuing along such a violent track. She had to maintain eye contact with him, so as not to lose his now swimming concentration, and by this she was unable, at the present time, to look around for any defensive mechanisms that might present themselves to her advantage.
It was a prudent tactic. Kirby froze, transfixed by Jana’s unbelievable fantasy figure, in all its chiaroscuro sensuality. Imagine a so-called dream babe in front of you, true to all the conventional standards of what a dream babe should be, in which the fantasies of 85% of the male public might be, at the very least, ushered into an admiration leading to lustful thoughts, only because the expectations of what constitutes a hottie were not only met, but exceeded, in this particular example.
Alas, some men, despite their proclivity for desiring such high-standard female forms, are not necessarily empowered to meet the same standards required, in all fairness, by such womankind.
Still, emboldened by his earlier pure grain alcohol rocket-fueling, Kirby strove to prove his worth in the light of his agonized mate’s still-writhing failure. With the exception of his clodhoppers (handy for thrill-chasing after fleeing nymphs), he stripped to the buff, hoping that the autoeroticism of such a gesture might match the clear and present display of Jana’s glories. Alas again. Ever the voyeurs, some men cannot live up to encountering the babes of Fantasy Hill face to face. Their perfection tends to become prohibitively intimidating. Thus, their sensitivities as the weaker sex stand exposed.
It was enough for Everyman to hang his head.
Kirby hung his, all right. For a potential rapist, this lesser caveman’s penis was disturbingly small, and at this point, not even prepped for sexual congress. In fact, it was screaming ‘RETREAT!!!!’ Urologists would no doubt consider him a case study for a groundbreaking paper in ‘The Lancet’: providing (naked) proof that the male of the species was indeed evolving towards a more animal-like internal storage of the phallus, which promised greater protection and practicality for man’s always-vulnerable junk.
But these were emotive cinema folk, not objective, detached scientists.
For his own part, Kirby’s self-hatred imploded with tonight’s self-examination. To his extreme dismay, he found he actually was the Mutant Wimp Boy so mercilessly ridiculed in ‘The Globster From The Backroom Basement Barroom Of Mephistopheles’ (Cinemation), which he himself had associately-produced. More than anything else in his life so far, this single horror-fact was the most destroying realization he’d ever beheld.
And from her distinctive directorial perspective, Jana could only think of that zinger line, delivered by the excellent Frances de la Tour, in their cleverest sex comedy, ‘Bring On The Prats, Tossers, And Bollocks Vendors!’ (Brit Naughty Bits): ‘Even scorpions have bigger dicks than eunuchs. And I should know. I’ve mated with both!’
But these were only freeze-frame microsecond notions in the really live, true crime drama now flooding over the safe danger of their little filmic fabrications.
Even though psychology is now passé in this Post-Post-Freudian Era, it was probably the best umbrella-explanation to apply to tonight’s sequence of unspeakable behavior. Through a cinematic glass, naturally.
Without a doubt, the unwanted humiliation of masculine malfunction was the source of Kirby’s latent rage, now set free this fateful, moonlit night. Perhaps this was the crossroads, when he would choose a pathway toward something far worse than mere rape. There was more than Jana’s bitchy repartee to wax insane over. Deficiencies in his own self meant that scapegoats must be found. All witnesses must pay. Look about, in anger.
Jana actually made things worse by instinctively smirk-giggling – for only a second or two – at his worthless codpiece-ette.
‘At least I won’t be raped with that thing,’ she thought, with the blackest of levities. ‘But – oh my God –!’
One thought further was unthinkable.
Kirby, still deeply drunk, started to hover over her, brandishing his blunt knife. He didn’t particularly care for her previous statements, so yes, it was time to go for the vocal cords, before any attempt to enact sexual prowess, certainly pathetic, could commence.
His mind whirled with impulsive plans to make up for his shame. He’d make her shut up, all right. With just enough time to get it up and fuck her before she croaked, and maybe he’d just ‘do’ her afterwards, too. It would be totally worth it. Then he’d finish directing the goddammed picture and claim all the grosses. Fuckin’ A!
It was time to scream. Simply scream.
And her scream’s dimensions? Would they have the proper power, the necessary authority? Was Jana a real director, or not?
It was wrought from the very depths of her soul, from beyond the staged precepts of what a certain kind of drama should be in front of a camera. In other words, in this case, transferred into the realms of life as it is, in the midst of something inherently unpleasant, an alarm of the highest magnitude was called for.
An ‘A’ level director was being accosted. Event in progress.
Warning: emergency-type red alert imminent.
And now, the scream.
And what, oh what, of Butterbugs?
Well before the BashBak invasion, he had evaporated out a door leading to an immense deck on the lodge’s northern side. Set free by the tone that Pepper’s world had brought forth, all sense of equivocation and job
-related conflict melted into the lunar-lit landscape. He may have been the subject of debate between the two allegedly rivalrous women in the same room, but their discussion had, through the efforts of gentle Pepper, been modified into an appreciative hymn to the night.
His own sense of wonder, reactivated, led him onward now.
Slow rise from the settee. The soft dialogue between Jana and Pepper. Jana tamed.
He found the door to the deck and passed through. The prospect was even grander out here. From the far end of this elevated observation platform, there was a vantage point that allowed for an unexpected access view, thanks to a gap in the hills, of the high white tops of the jagged Smith-Kem Range. Butterbugs gasped at the beauty that popped from the realms of perpetual snow, shown off in the blue light. He noticed that a weathered bench had been placed just here, clearly for exclusive enjoyment of moments like this.
Things seemed to fit, all of a sudden. Fit, into the scheme of things. Things Butterbugsian. He assumed, quite without any sort of attachable strings to anything that might resemble a complication, there would be many more moments, in which to sit on said bench, and review what the scene was like at the moment. And he would not be alone, as he was now.
He wandered the land. It was not a harsh environment, this night. Clumps of while-away scrub alternated with drymoss and chijhen-stalk, and low bent-clump trees provided a bit of bowery shade from the moon’s bright rays. It was a splendid day-for-night panorama of dreamy premium settings. Bill Mellor or Geoff Unsworth could have reproduced their subtleties on film, with just the right nuances! (Ah, the eternal goals of approaching reality, at any time of the day, with cinematic artistry…!)
What would it be like to stay? First off, if Pepper were present, locale would be irrelevant. Was that indicative of love, then? The question was unnecessary. Was he in love? The question was unnecessary. What was necessary to ask was: what did he want to do now?
Well, he wanted to get to know Pepper better. He was still a sensible lad. Good enough. She was so neat, so cool, so appealing. He just wanted to happily glue himself to her and meld with all that wonderfulness. Oh, and she was mighty sexy, too. That was so nice!
Thing was, he didn’t want to finish the picture he was starring in, despite his obligations. Making movies seemed so… trite. In comparison with the majesty that now surrounded him. Movie moments were so utterly fleeting. On stage for so short a time, in front of an ADD public. ADHD, too. To what did it all add up?
It was not inappropriate for him to run this banal review through his mind in the midst of his night-walk magic. After all, he had been going full blast in his career, always keeping things minimal, always tripping through with the lightest of baggage but the heaviest of understandings, with scarcely any personal introspection or attendant problems as accompanying consequences.
It was just that, here he was, in the presence of Pepper (and Prairie, of course), and the ambience was so unique. This contrast, despite his massive cinema life, in which it might be thought that all possibilities and potentials might be known, if not experienced, by now. The exceptional mindset gifted by such experience could not, of course, be denied.
Thus, the question: was he in love?
‘Quite… quite possibly…,’ he proudly whispered out loud.
‘And I think, quite probably!’
And now, the scream itself. It broke the air in half.
The actor took his cue. No megaphoned directions. Just instinct now. He knew that timbre, that implication, that message of emergency, that voice. The soles of his Amish-clad feet made the surface of the demi-desert into high-traction tracks, and there was absolutely nothing to blockade the actor’s surge forward, as progress toward the source of the scream had to be accomplished with all possible dispatch.
The moon, the quietude (other than the prolonged soul-expanding scream), the levelness of the plain, the clarity of the high altitude, and the lodge’s mass, all led Butterbugs back to the essential fount of new conflict with total efficiency. Despite the ease in returning, his conscience was nevertheless wracked with guilt, over having left his (apparent) charges vulnerable to crude threat. That is, if even such a thing was possible in this elevated enchanted zone, so full of Pepper and Prairie goodness and appreciation, and –
He rounded the bend beyond the deck extension and entered the forecourt, wherein were contained the frontage and the front door and the steps to the front door and the writhing offender and the spread-out nudie director and the hovering, leering, plotting, threatening nudie Assistant Producer #2, who now prepared to embark on violent, irreversible revenge for his own very short – comings.
Butterbugs’ footfalls were fortunately almost silent on the sandy grit of the forecourt’s flooring. He delineated a great circle, so as to approach his target with the utmost accuracy, so as to achieve a dead-on strike in case he was to face the opposite direction, on top of his naked prey.
It was a countdown progression, as if the whole process were mechanized as part of a P.T. Barnum exhibit for a prurient public. The principal performers were controversially unclothed, and by the look of things, the entering comet figure, Butterbugs to be precise, appeared to be the baleful intruder, ready to strike the dolorous stroke against the existing players.
However, there simply wasn’t time to adopt any sort of judgmental assignment of roles to the three persons now in this arena. (Actually four, including the gaspingly incapacitated sufferer on the ground, a supernumerary character, now and for the foreseeable future.) Butterbugs’ entrance was so expedient, it was almost completed before the scream from the confronted one ceased its pierce of the night air.
It was a simple maneuver that followed. Butterbugs could see his director’s dilemma. He simply entered, up from behind Kirby’s back, placed one hand under his Adam’s apple and the other in the small of his back, and engineered it so that the offender’s spine was bent backwards, thus incapacitating him from his mission of bearing down on Jana’s erotically-exposed body. The instrument of prime threat came not from Kirby’s dysfunctional private parts, but from what appeared to be a sharpened piece of aluminum flashing found in a scrap heap of unused roof-repair parts, the effect being one of certain ugly damage. For what is a madman with the most primitive of assault weapons? As lethal as an activated AK-47, thank you very much.
From this all-stops-out assault though, Butterbugs was able to reduce the offense to a laughably goofy attempt to get said director to like him through attempted rape, attempted assault, attempted battery, and possibly, attempted murder.
With a strangled yelp, Kirby registered his failure to do anything but make a disgustingly creepy fool of himself by ending up in the dust, already farmed by his unfortunate friend Bakyan, who was still shrieking his displeasure at being discombobulated in such a rude way. Plus, the exposure of his nearly eunuch-like nakedness in front of a big star was perhaps the most shocking thing for him to endure. After all, producers are supposed to have bigger pricks than anyone.
The thrust backwards, authored by Butterbugs, was certainly grand, but there was no time for anyone to claim reward for any such tectonic change. Because, in the very next instant, a die was cast in which the resolve of this whole sorry and sick sequence would be successfully brought to bear on all participants.
An upper window opened. Two voices from above were heard, working in complete concert.
To Kirby, from the moon it came.
As a cinema man himself, perverted perhaps, but still capable of appreciating a good camera setup, he was even a recognizer of irony.
It was, however, not from the moon, which happened to shine far overhead by its own reflective power. The source of the oncoming object was in fact that very upper window of the lodge.
It, the it in question, was a cast iron urn, dropped, after careful calculation, by the lodge’s occupants. Pepper and Prairie dared remain at the casement’s edge, inspecting their projectile, nurturing it in their minds, and sending arrow prayer
s after it, that it might reach its destination with extreme prejudice.
Kirby, lying there in the front row’s only seat, noted that the luxury of his inebriation had suddenly been wrenched from him, due to an adrenalin delivery at that very second. He also had the opportunity to notice that with the alcohol barrier removed, and a top-notch circulatory system at the ready, his penis was now cleared for erectile takeoff. This was duly accomplished in just a jiffy. That is to say, in remarkably quick time. Which means, in virtual digital or vibrating quartz-time. In other words, instantly. ’Twas a thing to be most proud of, so that down there, quivering where it mattered, was his very own special proof that now he could go ahead with his scheme of Jana-penetration, regardless of being flung back in the dust.
Hell, that was no restriction! He could easily rebound by springing up, whirling about, mayhem-ing his primitive but woeful blade into that peacenik Butterbugs, then the prize would be his. Simple, simple.
Jana, for her part, was still co-operatingly frozen in pose, the scream having spent all evasive action potential from her hot and waiting body. She now beheld the Assistant Producer #2’s ultimate statement of what he really thought of her: erection achieved. She snort-laughed, the best and most economical way of registering scorn when in a tight spot.
Ignoring her snort, as it was yet another expression of the contempt and hatred he knew she already had for him – erection or no erection – Kirby again regarded the moon – now as a sign of good luck. But it was gone. In its place, a dark circle, ever widening.
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