by Alan Spencer
Chris expected to encounter signs that said BLOWOUT SALE or EVERYTHING HAS TO GO. There was nothing like that on display.
Did Harvey plan to simply walk out of the store at midnight and leave it all behind? He wasn't sure what would happen after the store's final hours. Would Harvey clear the items out, or literally walk away from it all and say the hell with it, level it all, you bastards, and move on with his life? Strange how Harvey hadn't treated Gold Video like a normal store that was going out of business. Most owners wanted to recoup as much money out of their hemorrhaging failure as possible.
That wasn't Harvey.
He was a different creature altogether.
Chris sucked in a nostalgic breath and entered Gold Video for what would be the very last time.
The mood was dismal.
The mood was dismal even if this wasn't the store's final day.
The decor hadn't changed since the video store first opened thirty-seven years ago. Chris could only imagine when Harvey last shampooed his carpets over a decade ago what type of sludge he had sucked up from the fibers. He told Harvey the carpet looked like a sick baby had wiped its ass all over it, and it was probably due for a cleaning. The guy wouldn't even spring for a professional job. He did the job himself with a cigarette dangling from his mouth and a tall boy of beer within an easy arm's reach.
The carpet was only the beginning of the ugly disrepair.
The walls were faux wood wallpaper. Sections were peeling or completely missing, exposing odd shapes of dry wall. Big lights across the top of the walls had once given the look of a Hollywood actresses' make-up station. Now many of the lights were either broken, in need of changing, or missing. That left many parts of the room in shadow, or over bright.
White shelving units were placed in the middle of the store stocked with new releases. The first floor was designed for DVD and Blu-ray movies for rent, each sectioned off by their genre. The second floor was the VHS stock. The top floor, the third floor, was the porno. There were even viewing booths. Before you could enter that floor, a person had to check your identification. That was back in the day when people frequented Gold Video. Now, if someone went up there, Harvey didn't care. He let you go up, no questions asked. Nobody would stop said person from casting their peepers on adult material.
Harvey, the big man himself, was sitting behind his register. He was taking long gulps from a tall boy beer inside of a brown bag. He wore a Kansas City Royals ball cap. Out the back end, his gray and black mullet haircut burst free. He had a thick square jaw and glassy blue eyes. The man was probably drunk and beyond giving a shit. He was in his late sixties and about to lose his business. Chris didn't expect him to be in a good mood. When he said hello to the man, Harvey didn't say a word. He simply stared off at nothing.
Harvey was positioned behind the glass paned counter where he displayed rare movies for sale. They ranged from martial arts training videos, Faces of Death fare (real death documentaries), to out of print films. If you looked close enough, a person could see where people either tried to punch, scratch, or bash their way through the unbreakable glass. The scuffing made it almost impossible to see what was actually on display in some sections.
On both sides of the register were boxes of candy, bags of chips, and a tall refrigerator stocked with bottles of soda. A popcorn machine was on a table to the left of the candy. The machine wasn't on. The walls inside were crusted with butter and salt. Chris hadn't seen the machine working in weeks. A television hung from a corner of the ceiling. A VCR was hooked up from a backroom. It played anything Harvey felt like watching. Most of the time, to avoid complaints, he played bad '80's comedies or animated movies.
"Psssst. Chris. Hey. Over here."
Snake was standing in the back area. He was also a store regular. He would be here every day, then be gone for weeks, because he was a truck driver. He wore a jean jacket vest covered in Harley Davidson and biker patches. He had his hair styled in a long ponytail. The sides of his head were shaved to the skin. The man was missing half of his teeth from what he claimed to have lost during wild biker bar fights. He had such tanned skin Chris couldn't tell what his numerous tattoos were, except for the one on his arm of a naked woman having sex with a cobra snake. Snake was a biker, a free spirit, and a Vietnam war veteran. It was how Snake knew Harvey, because Harvey was also a veteran of the same war.
"Hey. Chris. Look by the bathroom. There she goes. She's making one last go of it. Where's she going to meth it up and take dumps when this place is gone?"
Chris caught Raggedy Anne sneak into the woman's bathroom. She wore the same thin pink dress that showed off her legs, cleavage, and bruises. Raggedy Anne would take care of her meth fix, perform a sink bath, and flash Harvey her tits long enough for him to look the other way after dirtying up his bathroom.
"Maybe she'll go to the Walgreen's down the road?"
"No damn way," Snake laughed. "That drug store is a classy joint compared to this dump. There's no other joints like this. I mean, there's a strip club, sure, but they would kick her gangly butt out. They could put her to work, but I think she would put most of the customers off their cookies. When you got a roach motel living in your box, nobody wants a lap dance from you."
"What's her story anyway?"
"Raggedy Anne's story? She's like a UFO. The truth is out there, somewhere. What I know is only what I hear. Raggedy's mom, she's a real peach. She was nineteen years young at the time. Barely old enough to be a stripper. She was doing her thing at Bazooka's down the street. Really shaking 'em good, because I hear her mom's breasts were huge milk jugs. I mean if you squeezed those nips, they'd spray you hard. You could fill a glass in seconds.
"It turns out the owner offered Raggedy's mom a way to make big money. They hired her out for a gangbang after hours. The mom gets through the ordeal, but she's horrified at how she feels. Degraded, or whatever the hell. So she quits stripping. Nobody sees her again.
"Word is she got pregnant. She was too embarrassed to find out who the father was, because of the gangbang thing. The strip club owner doesn't want to get in trouble either, because he's afraid she'll go to the police and tell them about his prostitution business, so he hires a doctor to perform the delivery in secret. What does this doctor do with the baby? He shoves it into Harvey's movie drop box."
"Ah, you're full of shit. No way. Uh-uh. You're a dirty liar."
"Ask Harvey. True to my word. That's why he doesn't have the drop box anymore. Swear to God."
"Swear to a pile of shit. Nice piece of fiction you just told me."
"Give me a Bible. I'll swear on it."
"Still don't believe it." Chris turned to Harvey. The man couldn't look any sadder. "Is he going to be okay?"
"A man who has to worry about where his next paycheck is coming from is never in a good state of mind. He'll be okay. He made it this long in life. He'll find a new way to survive."
"It's the end of an era."
Harvey agreed. "End of an era."
Chris pointed at the stairs. "I'm going to take another look around for old time's sake."
Snake said this every time he went upstairs. "The second floor's a breeze. Don't let the third one bite ya."
The stairway upstairs had no door. Someone had punched it off the hinges many years ago. Harvey said it was a guy who had to pay a late video return fee and didn't like it. He said the door literally flew across the room and almost bashed into him. Harvey gave the customer his money back, and the guy left and never came back. He thought the man decided to rent from Blockbuster instead. Harvey also said the man could go fuck himself.
Chris walked up on the bare wooden steps that were also painted that hideous gold. The walls had old movie posters taped to them. They were so tore up, blocked by other posters glued above them, or torn up by customers, it turned the display into an overwhelming collage of faces, movie titles, and backgrounds. The only one that seemed to be mostly intact was the one for Blood Farmer, the Stan Merle Sheckler
horror classic. The poster showed a farmer in overalls clutching a pitchfork in one hand a severed head in the other. The farmer's daughter was in the background holding a cleaver and going "shhhhhh" with a finger to her lips. The tagline was: These crops don't drink water.
He couldn't shake the feeling of something great coming to end.
The nostalgia feeling would later progress to terror.
Upstairs was a wide open space of shelving. Everything was VHS. Big box and clamshell. VHS tapes inside of clear plastic cases without artwork. Harvey said he had traveled out of state hunting closeout sales or warehouses full of larger chains' back stock. Harvey could easily fill a U-haul trailer with what he scored from these places, he claimed.
A life sized wax figure of Elvira stood beside the entrance. She clutched a fake machete in one hand and the other a hand had a finger raised as if to say "Ah-ah-ah." Harvey had to tie down the wax statue's dress. Many people tried to view her prized assets.
Across from Elvira was a wax figure of John Wayne. Two hands extended without weapons. Harvey had to get rid of the guns. People were creative and put other things in his hands. One time, he was clutching a dildo in each paw.
"Who the fuck has a dildo handy when they're coming into my store, never mind two dildos?" Harvey asked all of his customers the next day.
Chris avoided the wide circle of plaster that had fallen from the ceiling. The hole above him could've been a natural occurrence in an old building. Like an animal shedding its skin. You could see part of the long florescent lights in the exposed fixture. He wondered how many forms of asbestos and black mold thrived up there. Regardless of why it was there, Harvey wasn't going to fix it. "That shit costs money," he said to anything that needed repairing. "The only thing I'll fix in this place are the locks and the shitter."
From across the room, a man Chris hadn't seen before was shopping the tapes. He could've been in an old school punk band with his tall blue and pink dyed mo hawk. He was scrawny and covered in tattoos. He was wearing a Napalm Death t-shirt.
My kind of guy. I bet I know why he's here.
"Shame this place is closing today," Chris said, introducing himself. "I'm Chris. I haven't seen you around here before."
The guy had three giant stacks of VHS on the ground beside him. He was cleaning out the place. This guy was definitely a collector. He imagined the guy came from out of state to add to his collection.
"I'm Dominic Reed," the stranger replied. "It's my first time here. I was afraid this place would already be closed down. I drove all the way from New Jersey. I called here every day to make sure I didn't show up to a vacated property. I've hit four of these places in two months. I'm not sure how many of these places exist anymore. They're drying up. Soon, there won't be any left."
Chris studied the movies at Dominic's feet.
They were all horror flicks.
"You into horror movies?"
"Hell yeah. I'm trying my best not to pee my pants. I finally got my hands on a copy of The Hammer Massacre. They only printed five hundred of these, and that was almost twenty years ago. I even checked to make sure the actual VHS tape is in it. I can't count how many times I purchased a tape and the wrong one was in it. It's the worst feeling ever. One time, I got my grubby hands on Jack the Ripper Has Breasts. I get home, and I'm ready to shove this fucker into my tape deck when I realize it's Weekend at Bernie's 2."
"That's horrible. Jack the Ripper Has Breasts? I've never heard of it."
"It's a cult classic. Some of these I already have, but it's good to have more than one copy. These babies go for a mint on eBay. Me, I like to go out and hunt these things down. I hit it big today. Look at what I got here. Lots of good titles. Gore Storm. I'm Coming In, Bitch. Satan's Stewardesses. Ghoul Pool. That's just the tip, pal. Just the tip."
Dominic worked out Ghoul Pool from the stack and showed it to him. "Tell me this cover doesn't make you want to watch it."
The cover showed a green-fleshed goblin sitting in a hot tub. He was smoking a cigar and wrapping his arms around two big breasted bikini clad babes. A butler ghoul was handing out wine flutes on a tray to other monsters, demons, and beasts laying out on pool chairs in the background.
"Wait," Chris said. "I did see that movie. I rented it. My wife made me turn it off. She gets mad when the movies have nudity. I have to watch them when she's asleep."
Dominic's face showed honest concern. "You should be able to watch whatever the fuck you want anytime you want. It's un-American any other way."
Before he could comment on his wife, Dominic spoke first. "Hey man, you think that guy at the register will cut me a break? He won't try and charge me five bucks a tape, will he? Some even try to charge me twenty a tape."
"I bet if you throw down a twenty dollar bill, he'll let you take whatever you want. Good luck, though. He's in a mood."
"Yeah. What's his deal? Is he drunk?"
"Drunk, and a lot of other things. Harvey's normally a fun loving guy. I remember when kids would try to sneak upstairs to look at the porno, he used to have an intercom hidden at the doorway. He would yell at them right when the kids thought they were in the clear and scare the shit out of them."
"You really think he'll let me take these for twenty bucks? I got like fifty movies here."
"I don't think you'll have a problem. Tell him you're my friend from high school. That'll do the trick."
"Hey, thanks man. Do you collect movies?"
"I do. I had to relocate a good chunk of them to storage. I've got like three thousand movies. My wife made me do it when her sister moved into our house."
"Ouch man. No offense. Maybe when your sister-in-law moves out, you can display your shit again."
"She moved in three years ago."
"Ouch."
"Ouch is right."
"If you're a horror fan, I found a lot of Stan Merle Sheckler titles here. I bet there's a ton of others out there on the shelves. You should swipe them while you can. I'm going to meet the director soon. He's throwing a big party at his mansion. I run a DVD company, you see. I re-release cult films. Maybe you've heard of us. We're called Cult Crushers."
Chris's cell phone rang. "Sorry. Speak of the devil. It's my wife. This might take a minute. Good luck down there. I hope Harvey cuts you a deal. Enjoy the movies."
"Right on. Keep VHS alive."
Dominic gathered up his movies and scooted with his loot.
Chris answered the phone.
Ginny asked, "You coming home soon?"
"I might be awhile."
"Why? You said you were going to take a look at the place, talk to that loser guy, and leave. That should take, what? Fifteen minutes, max?"
"You don't understand. This is the end of an era. There aren't very many mom and pop stores out there still in business. This was a mainstay. This is history."
"You're so dumb. You got a Redbox at Wal-mart. Why would you need anything else? Who watches VHS movies anymore, besides you?"
"First off, Gold Video is way better than Redbox. Plus, there are so many movies on VHS that won't ever make it to any other format. This is cinema preservation."
Ginny muttered disapprovingly, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've heard it all before. You need to get home. Ginny's boyfriend is moving in."
"Who? What? When was this idea established? This is the first I'm hearing of this."
"Gloria met the guy two weeks ago. I met him too, while you were at work. He's a real good guy. He's suffered some hard times, but when he finds a job, he promises to throw in for rent. He's a nice guy. Trust me."
He couldn't speak. So much wanted to explode from his mouth at once that his throat locked up. He was trembling. His core temperature was rising. He was on the verge of self-destructing. He was sputtering, wheezing, and trying to wrap his mind around what Ginny had told him.
"Before you say anything," Ginny said, reading into his stunned silence. "Gloria needs this to happen. She hasn't dated since Robert. Robert left her for that younger gir
l, remember? One of his college students. That slut. Gloria was heartbroken. Her soul was...was...well, it was shattered. Shattered, Chris. Can you imagine? Gloria's never got over it. This will help her see there's life beyond Robert.
"Oh, and I need you to clear some room in the house. Your movie room is going to have to go. The movies, the shelves, everything. You can put them in storage, but it's on you to make it happen. I moved the stuff outside. You do the rest."
"Whaaaat? You already moved it? My movies are outside? I didn't agree to this. I'm not giving up my movie room. I pay the bills. Nobody else does. I'm literally the only guy who works under our roof. I get to enjoy my home. I earned it. Unless you and your sister want to pitch in a few dollars? That would mean you guys getting jobs. After three damn years, I assume the both of you have no real intention of working."
"I'm your wife! Don't you talk to me like that. Gloria can't help her situation. She's psychologically scarred. Robert was really bad to her."
"Yeah, yeah. Her soul is shattered. You already told me. Then tell her to go to therapy. Three years. At this rate, she'll live in our house forever. It's my fault. I put up with it for too long."
"Gloria is family."
"And I'm your husband. I work. I pay the bills. I'm not holding it over you, but I deserve one fucking room in my house. And it's a tiny room at that. It's like a glorified closet. I'm not giving it up."
"Chris, what's gotten into you? You've never talked to me like this. I thought you were supportive."
"You're letting a stranger move into my house without asking me permission. I let this go on for too long."
"You let what go on for too long?"
"Gloria needs to get a job, start saving money, and eventually move out."
"She's my younger sister. I can't turn my back on her."
"Then when is she going to start helping with the rent?"
He wasn't getting anywhere. Chris felt a hot flush come to his skin. He was suddenly burning hot. The room was a sweltering inferno. He was breathing and it didn't feel like he was taking in any air. He wanted to punch a wall. He could've punched in Harvey's door downstairs if he still had one.