by Adam Cesare
More tears came as her head was jerked back.
The smell of Umberto hit her before the sight of him did. He smelled sweet and salty, like candied meat.
His face was not nearly as ambiguous. Veins pulsed in his neck and forehead; rivulets of partially congealed blood dripped from the snout of the pig at the top of his head. His maniac smile was framed at the top by his blonde mustache, now dyed red with pig blood and matted at the corners with whitish-pink froth.
She tore her eyes away from his and they landed on the blade in his hand. It was no prop. They had not brought that with them off the plane.
“This has gone too far,” she screamed, thinking that at least Umberto would be able to understand her. He didn’t react, and her attention remained glued to the long, blood-flecked knife.
On her second official makeup assignment for school, back when she could afford school, Daria was working with a woman who told her that she used to be an actress. The woman was only a few years older than Daria herself, so Daria had asked why she’d chosen to retire so early.
The woman gave her a warm smile and laughed. “I didn’t choose to retire,” she said. As Daria curled her lashes and experimented with different shades of eyes shadow, the woman told her the story.
“When I was first starting out,” the woman told her. “I would take any jobs that were offered to me. Anything to keep my name out there and keep bread on the table, you know? So on maybe my fifth or sixth film—a horror movie—I figured that I was an old pro.” She rolled her eyes, causing Daria to smudge her work. “The thing that you start believing when you’re on movie sets so often, is that everything around you is complete make-believe. So on the last night of shooting this film, it’s my character’s best moment. She has been cornered by the killer and must fight his weapon away from him or be killed.”
By this point, Daria had forgotten all about the assignment, putting down her materials and listening to the woman’s story. The cinema was the business she was destined for, and she relished first-hand accounts any chance she got.
“So in this scene,” the woman continued. “I am wrestling with this actor. I was giving it my all. I always used to give it my all. So as an improvisation, because I was getting so into it, I grabbed on to the knife as he tried to stab at me with it. No big deal, right? Because it’s got to be a fake knife: everything is make-believe. Right?
“Well, it would have been, if the jokers responsible for making this movie had any idea what they were doing. The knife was real.”
Daria held her hand to her mouth.
“It wasn’t a prop, and it hadn’t even been dulled before the scene. Fifteen stitches. It cut through tendons and veins. I’ve never seen so much blood, and unless there’s another war, I don’t think I ever will.” The woman held up her hand to Daria’s face. There were two long white scars running across her palm. “So much blood that I thought I was going to die, but I didn’t. The production hadn’t even been insured, so I didn’t even get medical compensation. Now I have to write with my left hand because I can’t even hold a pen.”
The woman told the story with a steely detachment, but that didn’t stop Daria from crying.
“Don’t cry. I didn’t tell you that to make you sad,” the ex-actress had said. “I told you that to let you know that this business will fuck you up if you let it.”
That was the last thought that went through Daria’s mind.
And then the machete blade went halfway through her neck.
Chapter 13
Jacque
The girl’s head didn’t come off with the first swipe. But after the third swift chop, it hit the ground and rolled into the fire.
Umberto scrambled after it, picking it up and hugging it close to his chest to extinguish the flames. The result for Jacque was a splash of warm arterial spray, accompanied closely by the odor of burnt hair.
Jacque watched the rest of Daria’s body waver on its knees, nerves twitching. He vomited before it could slump down to the dirt at his feet. Barely able to rip the mask off in time, his throat stung as his stomach rolled and voided.
His gagging wrested Umberto’s attention away from the smoldering face he held wedged under his arm like a football.
Before he could stop himself, Jacque locked eyes with Umberto. That’s exactly what you’re not supposed to do, when dealing with a wild animal.
That’s what Umberto was: a crazed animal. He wasn’t a lunatic or a method actor too deep in character; he was a snarling beast, bent on mayhem, and he wasn’t through yet.
“Cut! Cut now,” Tito screamed, sounding like he was trying to will reality back into existence the only way he knew how.
Tito Bronze had directed nearly fifty films. The murders had always ended whenever he yelled cut. He was now unable to restore sanity to the situation with a simple word.
Umberto gripped Daria’s scalp and tossed the head at Jacque with a quick underhand lob. Without even meaning to, as if it were some precious object that could be saved, maybe even re-attached, Jacque reached out and grabbed the head before it could hit the ground. He dropped it as soon as he felt the clammy warmth of the dead flesh.
Down in Umberto’s chest, a deep rolling laugh began and he raised the machete high again. Jacque could see in his eyes that the novelty of the first murder was already beginning to wane. Umberto was ready for another.
Jacque took one look out at the rest of the crew. Cynthia was frozen in terror and disbelief. Tito had taken a step backward and was clawing at his thinning hair in frustration, still muttering ‘cut.’
Denny was the only one who’d moved closer to the action, and it wasn’t to help. Denny’s hands were white, one clenched over the camera and the other steady on the focus ring. The eye that Jacque could see was jammed shut and the other was pressed against the viewfinder so hard that there were broken blood vessels speckling the bridge of Denny’s nose.
None of them was going to be very much help.
Umberto reared back to swing and Jacque dropped out of his way, diving towards the maniac instead of away. Jacque felt the burn of the connection graze his hip before he could take the legs out from under Umberto and tackle him to the ground.
They both fell, Jacque sending his hands out in front of him. It was reflex meant to protect, but both hands landed in the dying fire. Daria’s blood had mixed with the ash and dirt, forming a boiling paste that clung to Jacque’s hands even after he pulled them from the flames.
Behind him, Umberto grunted and tripped over his boar fur cape in a clumsy attempt to find his footing. Umberto steadied the pig skull on top of his head before trying again. Jacque flipped himself onto his back and whipped both hands at Umberto, flinging some of the boiling sludge at his face and blinding him.
“We’re going to run out,” Denny said, his voice measured, calm and professional. The young cameraman was only a few feet away from them now, and warned the crew that they better wrap this fight scene before he had no more unexposed film left in the camera. This meant that Denny had lost it as well. Given the events of the last few minutes, Jacque could hardly blame him.
Umberto dropped the blade, screeching as he clawed at his eyes. If the wild animal comparisons were in doubt before, they were 100% accurate now.
Jacque pounced for the weapon, tearing his already blistering hands as he wrapped his fingers around the hilt. He stood, keeping the edge of the blade over Umberto’s head, ready to bring it down if the crazed Italian tried anything.
Umberto looked up at Jacque, and he could see how badly the man was hurt. His right eye was red and enflamed, but still open. His left was swelled shut, tears of blood streaming from the corners. Umberto bared his teeth, lifting himself to his feet and causing Jacque to take a step back.
“Easy,” Jacque said, forgetting that Umberto couldn’t speak English. Regardless, the man seemed to get the message as Jacque lifted the weapon higher, his grip loose around layers of dead skin and jellied blood. If Umberto sprang, Jacq
ue intended on slicing through the boar snout and splitting his head down the middle.
“Damn, we’re out,” Denny said and hoisted the camera to the ground. He cradled the large piece of equipment like a child and the viewfinder left a ring over his right eye that made him look like the dog from the Our Gang shorts. “Everyone take five while I reload.”
The shock was beginning to fade, and Jacque could feel the pain radiating from his burnt hands. He sucked in air, trying to catch his breath and wondered how long he would be able to wield the machete. Jacque took a step away from Umberto and towards the rest of the group. Umberto matched it.
Jacque took another look at Tito and almost sobbed with relief. The old man had the pistol drawn and was walking towards them now. Denny picked up the camera and carried it over to the crate at the edge of town, no doubt about to use the film bag to switch in a fresh spool of 35mm.
“Oh thank God,” Jacque said as Tito approached him and leveled the gun.
Umberto took another step before the gun was on him.
“Don’t you move,” Tito said as he pointed the gun at the maniac.
Jacque let his arms drop dead to his sides.
“Did I say you could move either, Jacque?” Inexplicably, the gun was on him now. “Nobody does anything until the boy gets more film in the camera.”
Chapter 14
Cynthia
Tito pointed the gun at Jacque’s gut and raised it level with his face as he spoke. Cynthia was too far away to make out the words, but the action was loud and clear. Before she could cry out in response, she saw Jacque’s eyes move from the barrel of the gun to her and then back again.
He was trying to tell her something. “Run!” was the message he was trying to send her with the glance; at least she thought that’s what the look meant. She hoped she had interpreted it correctly, because she dove to the ground, not needing to be told twice.
She dipped low to the dirt and ran between the two nearest huts.
“Hey, where you going?” she heard Denny call from somewhere behind her. The D.P.’s voice was despondent: he had lost it as well, but in a less violent way than the others. Always a professional, Denny was just doing his job. She ignored him and dove into the tall grass.
There was a thunderclap, and the patch of grass a foot from her face exploded as a bullet zinged by her ear. Cynthia caught a quick whiff of cordite and lawn clippings.
“That was warning shot,” Tito yelled out to her. “Come back or the next one is going to be in you.”
She hesitated for a moment before crouching deeper into the cover of the grass and diving into the jungle at the other side. In the distance, she could hear curse words rendered in a myriad of languages. She ran deeper into the jungle.
Then Tito said the words she was most afraid of:
“Avanti! Go get after her!”
There were footfalls and whooping in the distance. She didn’t know which direction she was running, her course altered by both her own frenzy and the twisting impediments of the jungle that she had to hop over and crawl under.
The whooping morphed into a familiar laughter. Umberto, probably once again brandishing the machete.
She had to hide or she could end up running in circles, or into the open terrain of the beach or airstrip. She would never be able to escape Umberto in a straight footrace. Even injured and half-blind, his stride was twice as long as hers.
Some kind of animal leapt between the branches above her head and caused her to look up. Even in the daylight, the tall treetops were an impenetrable tangle of overlapping leaves, vines and moss. Up was her only option.
Stifling a grunt of exertion, Cynthia shoved her hand into the nearest knot, praying there was not a snake or a bat inside. She swung her arm up to the lowest branch that looked like it would hold her weight and pulled with all her might.
There were very few trees to climb back in Queens, but this made climbing the few trees there were a point of pride for all of the neighborhood kids. Out of all of them: Cynthia had been the best. Even though she was one of the smallest children, she compensated by being both quick and fearless. Having mixed-race parents probably helped, too: it gave little Cynthia something to prove to the all-white and all-black kids.
So now she scrambled to the top of the tree, just as she had done when she was a child. She broke through the canopy and was temporarily blinded by the blazing late-morning sun. As she looked out over the jungle, Cynthia was glad that she made the climb. If she’d run a few hundred yards further, she would have been on the beach.
The hooting resumed in the jungle below. Umberto was closer to her now, but from the sound of it he was unaccompanied. Denny was probably through reloading the camera by now, with Tito probably still holding Jacque at gunpoint. At least there had been no more gunshots, she thought. That probably meant that Jacque was still alive. Unless Umberto chopped him up into tiny pieces. She hated herself for the thought.
She would not break down. She would not stop hoping or fighting.
Wrapping her hand around the base of a large branch, she used one foot to break it off. A club to defend herself. The snap was muffled, but still loud enough that it was possible Umberto may have heard it below.
She tried to swing the branch, keeping one arm around the tree for support. It wasn’t going to beat a machete, that was for sure, but it was better than nothing. It was smaller than a Louisville Slugger, but so jagged and pointed at the broken end that she contemplated for a moment whether it wouldn’t make a better spear than a club.
The footsteps were close now. How had Umberto been able to track her path so closely? She felt herself go faint. Maybe he could smell her. Worse, maybe she had left some kind of trail for him to follow as she blundered through the foliage of the forest floor.
Umberto had changed somehow. Maybe he’d tapped into something beyond his normal neuralgic capacity. Maybe whatever had made him crazy had upped his competency level. She held her breath as she listened to his approach. She wondered whether the leaves of her hiding-tree would be enough to conceal her, or whether her body would cast a big obvious shadow onto the pathway below.
She gripped her makeshift bat as Umberto circled the area below her. He was no longer laughing or howling now, but sniffing the air like a bloodhound. He downed the atmosphere in big gulps: he knew she was nearby.
She held the point of the branch down towards him and considered jumping from her hiding spot and attempting to skewer him to the ground with her spear. Even if she were able to hit him, the impact would probably kill her, too.
Instead, she decided to wait.
Through the wall of leaves, she could only see glimpses of him. She could tell that he still wore his boar-headdress and pig-skin cape, but his loincloth must have come undone during the chase. His semi-flaccid bloodstained manhood flapped against his thigh as he marched around the base of the tree in circles. It was the least sexy thing that Cynthia had ever seen.
He rooted through the ferns and bushes that surrounded the area, figuring that she must be lying down in the roughage to conceal herself. After he had done this twice, he screamed something in Italian. She didn’t know what he said, but his words were laced with frustration. He kicked up clouds of dirt and looked from above like an overgrown spoiled child.
Naked and miffed, he walked back towards the village the way he came. She watched him as he walked, searching the forest floor for his loincloth and finding it right before moving out beyond her sight.
Same old Umberto, Cynthia thought and allowed herself the briefest of smiles.
Chapter 15
Tito
When Umberto had first walked out of the forest wearing the pig cape, Tito’s initial reaction was abject terror. Not because Umberto looked dangerous or deranged, but because the Golden Guinea was interrupting such a beautiful shot.
As Umberto gripped Daria by the hair, Tito was overjoyed by the actor’s dedication to this film, and his newfound panache for improvisation.
The feelings of frustration and joy were not new to Tito.
It was only when the chopping started that the unfamiliar emotions took hold.
The humanist in Tito recognized how unnatural it all was, how contrary to everything he had ever witnessed on a professional movie set (and he had been on many). There was a certain indefinable primitive reality to it. Jacque had vomited in response, and Tito couldn’t blame him for that. The adrenaline rush had almost been too much for himself to handle.
But as Denny pushed the camera in for a closer look, and Tito began to shout “cut,” Tito heard a voice at his ears. The voice was not distinguishable from his own, but still alien in a way. “This movie has just gone from good to great,” it said.
As wrong as the feeling was—and it was wrong—he agreed with the voice. This shot: this was Tito Bronze’s Odessa Steps. All his life he had wanted to achieve this level of pure cinema…and now he’d done it.
This was the sequence that would outlive him, the one that he would be remembered for. It would be studied by scholars and critics until the end of time.
So when the camera had run out of film and Jacque was about to do something drastic—possibly kill his star—Tito had acted to protect the remainder of his film. He thumbed back the hammer on the Korovin and pointed the small gun in Jacque’s face.
Get one thing straight: Tito wasn’t condoning murder. He wasn’t ready to perpetrate murder. He was only trying to secure his cinematic legacy.
“What are you doing?” Jacque asked, flashing a panicked look behind Tito. Tito ignored his question and turned the gun on his little actress squeeze.
Tito was a mediocre filmmaker, but he was an excellent marksman. He could have taken her out, but they needed her to complete the film.
Umberto may have been covered in layers of human and pig blood, but he was still an actor. Actors are cattle and should be treated as such, or whatever it was that Hitchcock had said.
“Catch her,” he shouted at him. Much to his relief, Umberto listened and ran off into the jungle instead of attacking and killing Tito. The actor may have lost his mind, but he still knew who was writing the checks.