All Too Surreal

by Tim Waggoner

  I’ll do better next time, he thought. Just wait and see.

  And if next time didn’t take, he’d try again. And again. Until he finally got it right.

  His house collapsed upon him, but he didn’t care. He was already too busy constructing the next.

  Horror Show

  “It’s over, Shrike!”

  Seventeen-year-old Billy Barton stood within a nightmarish landscape, a distorted forest rendered in broad charcoal strokes on a white background. In his left hand he held a ragged-edged piece of paper, in his right, a lighter, flame burning, a startling splash of color in this stark world of black, white and gray.

  The cadaverous figure standing before Billy chuckled, a sound like splintered, grinding bone. “Go ahead, Billy-boy — flame on! But if you torch that drawing, you’ll end up a crispy-critter too. Because you see, I’ve brought you into the drawing. You’re in my world now, and the only exit is marked D-E-A-T-H.”

  Shrike’s fingers — long, multi-jointed digits that resembled insect legs — flexed slowly, ebony talons seeming to grow even longer and sharper. His Ichabod Crane face grinned; wild, black Tim Burton hair waved in a sourceless breeze like some sort of undersea plant whose tendrils undulated in a lazy current. Tattered black rags served as Shrike’s garments, more torn scraps of construction paper than cloth.

  The lighter flame wavered as Billy’s hand began to tremble. “I created you, Shrike; you’re only a fragment of my imagination, just like this place. But I’m real! If I destroy this drawing —” Billy shook the paper once for emphasis; an image of the charcoal forest with Shrike standing in the middle of it rendered on its surface — “you’ll die but I’ll return to the real world!”

  Shrike grinned. “Think so?” He nodded to the drawing. “Take a look.”

  Billy did and saw that now Shrike had a companion in the forest: a crudely sketched figure that could only be himself, holding a piece of paper over an orange-crayon flame.

  Shrike took a step forward, multi-jointed fingers flexing, talons clacking together like crab claws. “You’re right about one thing: you did create me. You poured all of your adolescent anger and frustration into your art, and I’m the result. You made me so real that I was able to cross over into your world and take revenge against those who wronged you — your parents, your older brother, your teachers, the principal, the kids at school … I’ve fulfilled your every dark fantasy. And now you think you’re going to get rid of me? Toss me aside like a crumpled piece of paper? I don’t think so, Billy-boy.”

  Shrike gestured and the charcoal trees came alive. Their branches reached for Billy, the whorls on the trunks rearranging until they resembled the faces of the people Shrike had slain in Billy’s name. Their mouths stretched wide as they howled in fury; it was their turn for vengeance now.

  Billy ducked a tree limb as it snatched for him, and he touched the flame to the drawing. Shrike screamed —

  The phone rang.

  Damn it! This is the best part! Simon Karkull — whose name once had been Steve Johnston more decades ago than he liked to think about — looked longingly at the TV screen one last time before picking up the remote and hitting MUTE. Normally, he would’ve just let the call go to voice mail, but he was hoping to hear from his agent.

  He picked up the receiver and hit the TALK button. “This is Simon Karkull.” He spoke clearly and distinctly, using a lower register which implied just a hint of malevolence. Even when he was merely talking on the phone, he liked to project a certain amount of presence; he was a firm believer in the dictum that an actor was never truly off-stage.

  “Simon! Great to hear your voice! Peter Winston here.”

  Simon sat straighter on his threadbare couch, suddenly aware of the shabby purple robe he wore and the stubble that covered his face like some strange species of fungus. It was foolish — the man was calling from the other side of the country, for godsakes, but Simon couldn’t help feeling self-conscious. Peter Winston was a producer after all. Maybe not a Producer with a capital P, but a producer nonetheless.

  “So how are things hanging for you these days, Simon? It’s been, what? Ten years since we’ve seen each other?”

  Despite himself, Simon found his attention returning to the TV. Flame had engulfed the charcoal-drawing forest, and Billy was running toward a sudden fissure that had appeared in the air. Shrike, surrounded by a halo of flame, shrieked his rage and pursued Billy toward the dimensional rift. Simon smiled. He remembered filming this scene before a blue screen, just himself and Terrance, the actor who played Billy. No trees, no rip in space, no flames. It had been quite a challenge, but he thought he had done a creditable job of it. In Shrike’s expression, one could read a complex mixture of pain and fury, along with a dash of fear that —

  “Simon? You there, buddy?”

  Simon tore his attention away from the screen. Look alive, man! You’ve got a producer on the line all the way from Hollywood C-A! For an (let’s face it) all but washed-up actor, it was the equivalent of Jehovah ringing up from Paradise for a bit of a chat.

  “Eight years.”

  “Pardon?”

  “It’s been eight years since we saw each other. At that horror film convention in Atlanta, remember?”

  A half-second pause. “Riiiiiiight. The convention. Good times and all that, huh? Anyway, the reason I’m calling is I got a call from your agent the other day. He told me that you heard a rumor about another Shrike movie being in the works. Said you read it on the, uh, Internet.”

  “You needn’t sound so skeptical. I may be an old dog, but I have picked up a new trick or two since the last time we worked together.” Simon didn’t want to admit the reason why he had learned to surf the ‘Net was primarily to check on fan sites honoring himself — and, of course, Shrike. “Is it true?”

  Another pause, several seconds long this time. “Yes, it is. The financing’s in place and we have a decent script, though it could still use a little tweaking. We should be ready to start shooting in a month for a full-scale theatrical release sometime next year, maybe around Thanksgiving or Christmas if we’re lucky.”

  As Winston spoke, Simon’s pulse quickened and he felt a familiar thrill in his gut. It was the same surge of adrenaline he experienced whenever he stepped onto a stage or in front of a camera. “So when do I get to see the script? I don’t care how rough it is, just so long as I can start getting a general overview of where —”

  “That’s the thing, Simon.”

  Winston’s tone stopped Karkull dead. He flicked his gaze to the television, watched as Billy made it through the dimensional tear a split second before Shrike could grab him. Watched as Shrike — as himself — screamed in agony as he was devoured by flame. No matter how many times he had seen this part, Simon had never gotten used to seeing himself get flash-fried.

  “Simon?”

  “Hmmm? Oh, yes. About this script. I hope it’s better that the last couple. The first Shrike film —” Simon gestured at his television without thinking — “was an effective little piece of psychodrama. The way Billy’s inner torment was embodied in Shrike, how the boy based the monster on his serial killer step-father, named him after a species of bird which impales its prey on thorns … Hardly Shakespeare or Ibsen, of course, but all in all, not a bad representative of its genre. Not like the sequels … little more than slice and dice pornography, especially the last two. Of course, I tried to turn in the best performance I could, but without a decent script to work with —”

  “You’re not going to see the script, Simon. Not this time.”

  There was more, but Simon stopped paying much attention after that. Winston said something about how he was making this call purely out of courtesy, because of how many times they had worked together over the years. How the studio wanted a new Shrike, something more “modern” and “edgy, “younger” and “hipper.” How Winston had lobbied hard to get Simon a supporting role, even a cameo, but the studio wouldn’t hear of it, blah, blah, blah. />
  Eventually, Winston paused and Simon muttered a “thanks for calling” and disconnected. He dropped the receiver to the couch, fumbled for the TV remote and unmuted the sound. The film, titled Dark Art (but often referred to on the Internet as the First Shrike Film, the One That Doesn’t Suck) had ended. Billy had escaped Shrike’s trap — which in symbolic terms was the morass of his own anger — and been reunited with Heather, his supportive (and well built) girlfriend. Roll credits.

  Now Simon stared at himself again, but this time it was a self twenty-some years older than the one who had met a fiery end only moments before. Dressed in a black turtleneck and seated on a papier-mâché rock before an amateurish painting of a cave wall with a few lopsided stalactites and stalagmites, Simon Karkull, host of Karkull’s Cavern of Terror, grinned.

  “What did you think of that ending, fright fans? Myself, I always get a little hot under the collar when I watch it.” A quick tug on said collar for emphasis. “That’s all the time we have for bad puns this afternoon, I’m afraid. Join me next week as together we face the disco horror of The Rollerboogieman. I’m Simon Karkull, and I hope you have an absolutely terrifying week.” The camera panned back as Simon released a burst of mad laughter.

  The real Simon Karkull — the one sitting on his couch, still in his robe even though it was four in the afternoon on a Saturday; the one who had taped that cheesy ending bit at a local TV studio several days ago; the one who had just been informed by a Hollywood producer that he wasn’t hip or edgy enough to reprise a character he had originated and played in seven films from 1978 to 1987 — turned off his television and stared at the blank screen for a long, long time. When he was finished, he got up, made himself a rum and Coke minus the Coke, came back, sat down and stared some more.

  When Simon was drunk enough, he staggered into The Room.

  His condo, while not exactly on the luxurious side, was large enough for a bedroom, a guestroom (not that he ever had any guests), and The Room — the place where he kept the memorabilia of what could only laughingly be called his career.

  Simon managed to flip on the light after only two tries, and found himself surrounded by framed movie posters and play programs, photos of himself in character, posing with directors and co-stars and occasionally someone far more famous than himself who got a kick out of having a picture taken with a cheeseball horror actor.

  The shelves were filled with bound scripts — beginning with faded typed pages containing the lines for his role as Santa in the play Wrong-Way Reindeer in which he’d starred back in third grade, and ending with the script for the last film he’d been in, a direct-to-video stinker called Cannibal Coroner. There were a few awards displayed, though nothing major. All had been earned before he first donned Shrike’s make-up — with the lone exception of Arterial Spray magazine’s Bloody Good Show award for Best All-Time Actor in a Horror Film Series. The award, a brass representation of an anatomically correct heart, was covered with black scorch marks. Simon had taken great delight in stubbing out cigarettes on the hideous thing back in the days before his doctor had made him give up smoking.

  But the crowning piece of his collection rested framed on the wall just above the brass heart: it was the sketch that had appeared in the climactic scene in Dark Art, the very same scene he had been watching when Peter Winston had told him with exquisite politeness to go straight to hell.

  Simon had kept it, framed it, because to him it represented the last time he had truly been an actor. Not long after Dark Art became a hit — after the Shrike posters, action figures, and video games — Simon Karkull became a joke, a ludicrous man who put on a fright wig and went “boogah-boogah!” for a living.

  He peered closely at the drawing, examining the figure that represented Billy Barton. The artist had worked in broad strokes — out of laziness, incompetence or both — and the boy’s features were indistinct, little more than a hint of eyes, nose, and mouth. It was a cipher’s face, one that could have belonged to anyone, really.

  Standing in front of the drawing, gut churning from too much rum, throat sore, bitter taste in his mouth that had nothing to do with alcohol, Simon looked at the roughly sketched face atop Billy Barton’s body and imagined that it instead belonged to a bastard of a producer named Peter Winston. It did look kind of like him, Simon thought, if you squinted your eyes, tilted your head, and hated with all your heart and soul.

  Screw it.

  Simon turned and left the room, switching off the light and closing the door behind him. And if as he pulled the door shut he heard a dark chuckle that sounded like splintering, grinding bone, he told himself it was just the booze.

  Simon woke to the electronic warble of his phone. He opened his eyes and pushed himself off the couch, swaying and nearly collapsing as a fierce pounding erupted inside his skull. He looked around the room, desperately trying to orient himself. He was Simon Karkull, Has-Been, and this was the living room of his condo.

  He picked up the phone from the coffee table, hit the TALK button, and held the device gingerly to his ear.

  “Yes?” More of a frog’s croak than a word.

  “Mr. Karkull?”

  “Yes.” Another croak, slightly closer to human speech than the first.

  “This is Suzanne … from the Limelight Players?”

  The throbbing in his head picked up tempo, as if following the lead of some unseen, malicious conductor. He sighed. “I missed rehearsal last night, didn’t I?”

  Among the many humiliations he found himself faced with as he approached old age, Simon had been stupid enough to agree to direct a play for the local community theatre group — a production of Fiddler on the Roof, nonetheless.

  “We tried calling, but there wasn’t any answer.”

  That’s because I was too damn drunk to hear the phone. “I wasn’t feeling very well yesterday afternoon, so I thought I’d take a little nap before rehearsal. I must have slept the entire night through. I’m so sorry. Did you still have rehearsal? How did everything go?”

  Simon wasn’t especially interested, but he was being paid a modest sum to direct the show, and he had to at least keep up the illusion that he gave a damn. As Suzanne rattled on about last night, he found the television remote, turned on a cable news channel, and sat back down on the couch. If he was lucky, his hangover would kill him any minute now.

  He sat through a segment on a pharmaceutical company accused of unfair trade practices, muttering an occasional Mmm-hmm or Uh-huh to Suzanne, until the entertainment news came on. A helmet-haired blonde with glossy pink collagen-puffed lips tried her damnedest to look serious as she presented her report.

  “Peter Winston, producer of violent horror films such as Dark Art and Blood Tide, has fallen prey to the same manner of violence that fueled his movies. According to authorities, Winston was found dead this morning in his Beverly Hills home, mutilated almost beyond recognition.”

  “ … And then Constance said ‘So I improvised a few lines. What’s wrong with that?’ And I said, ‘You have to respect the text, Constance,’ and she said —”

  Simon pulled the phone away from his ear and disconnected, cutting Suzanne off in mid-sentence. He put the phone down on the coffee table, gaze fixed firmly on the television, Suzanne and the rest of the so-called actors who made up the Limelight Players totally forgotten. Simon couldn’t believe what he was hearing; it was like some dubious plot contrivance straight out of one of Winston’s films.

  He listened as the anchorwoman related the details with a self-righteous smugness seasoned with a dash of ghoulish glee. Sometime late last night, an intruder had broken into Winston’s home and sliced him to shreds in an attack that police said resembled the killings in the Shrike films. The implication was that a deranged fan was responsible, but the police admitted they had few clues to go on at the moment.

  As Simon turned off the TV, he felt slighted. Why hadn’t a reporter called him up to get his reaction to Winston’s death? After all, he had starred in
seven of the man’s highest grossing films — emphasis on the gross. Maybe he should give one of the networks a call …

  He realized what an ugly turn his thoughts had taken, and he chastised himself for being so self-centered. A man he had spoken to only yesterday had died in a horrible fashion, and all he could think about was himself. So Simon forced himself to think about Peter Winston for the next several minutes, and he especially thought about their conversation yesterday. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that he wasn’t particularly sorry that the man was dead. No, he wasn’t sorry at all.

  An hour and forty-five minutes later, as Simon sat at a rickety card table signing autographs at Beyond Comix, he decided that Peter Winston had gotten off lightly. Given his hangover, he’d considered skipping out, but after missing rehearsal last night, he didn’t feel as if he could afford to. Kingsborough was a small city and word spread fast; the last thing he needed was reputation as an unreliable drunk. Well, more of a reputation than he already had, that is.

  A grand total of seven pimply faced fan boys showed up, three of them dressed to resemble Shrike. Two of those three wanted to discuss such arcane matters as what sort of horror archetype Shrike was. They might as well have been speaking Urdu for all Simon understood, and fifteen minutes before the autograph session was supposed to end, he pleaded illness — which wasn’t altogether a lie, for after all, he was quite sick of this — and got the hell out of there.

  He wandered the streets of Kingsborough for a while, enjoying the early spring weather despite the merry hob it played with his allergies. It wasn’t Hollywood, and northern Ohio was hardly So-Cal, but it had been the only place with steady work, and so he had moved here in order to avoid becoming a homeless drunk. Three years later, he was still trying to decide whether he’d made the right choice.

  After a bit, he found himself wandering into Schuyler Park. Once a centerpiece of downtown in years past, the park was now primarily a haven for drug traffic and men looking for quick, cheap sex. Simon had come here himself for the latter once or twice after he’d moved to town, but after being caught and let off with only a warning by an undercover police officer who luckily was a horror movie fan, Simon hadn’t been back. But today the place suited his mood. Like him, the park had seen better days.