“Yeah,” the man said, “yet anotherGremlins ripoff. When is the little-monster phase gonna go?”
“I love those, dude.CrittersandTroll. Hell, evenMunchies. Classic!”
The man seemed puzzled by this.
“Okay,” he said and shrugged.
Steve was surprised that he wasn’t more enthusiastic.
“Are you the owner?”
“My family owns the place, yeah.”
“My name’s Steve. I drove down to check the place out. It’s very cool.”
Steve began to walk toward the counter, and as he did so there was a sudden blur in his vision. There was a gray flicker, like television static flashing in the air. He blinked hard, and it was gone.
“Hi, Steve,” the man said. “My name’s Charlie. Are you a member?”
Steve looked closer at Charlie, still trying to place him. He had strong features and hard eyes that gave a stare worthy of a Western.
“No, I’m not a member. At least not yet.”
“Well,” Charlie said, still stoic, “it’s a $30 deposit.”
“You really rent videos here, man?”
Charlie squinted, annoyed by the question.
“Come on, man, what the hell does it look like I rent? Furniture?”
That’s when it dawned on him: the evil sensei fromThe Karate Kid. Not Mr. Miyagi, but the bad guy’s coach. That’s who Charlie reminded him of. He was an absolute dead ringer.
“Well,” Steve said, “you just don’t see too many mom-and-pop video stores anymore.”
Charlie shook his head slightly and reached under the counter. Steve half expected him to come back up with a baseball bat, but instead he brought out a massive binder. He took out a sheet and handed it to him, along with a pencil. It readMembership Form at the top.
“Just fill this out,” Charlie told him.
“Well, I’m really interested in buying some movies. Are the ones in the bin over there the only ones for sale?”
“Yeah. The other ones are full price. About $70 each.”
“Seventy bucks? Seriously?”
“That’s the current rate for new VHS tapes, man.”
“Oh,” he chuckled. “I remember that, back when they were crazy expensive. Man, you’re really committed.”
Charlie leaned on the counter. He had a look on his face that warned that he wasn’t sure if he was being insulted or not.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Nothing, man,” Steve said. “I’m just going to check out the bin.”
He backed away, wanting to avoid any confrontation. The place was cool, but Charlie’s service didn’t exactly thrill him. Was this supposed to be some sort of interactive theater? The guy was playing up the family-owned video store circa 1985 with strange ferocity. It was a little much.
He delved into the budget bin, sifting through the clamshells. He passed by the cornball comedies and summer-camp movies. He bypassed a few sports bloopers, crime capers and ninja sequels. There were a lot of golden turds in this pile, and they were all cheap, many of them long out of print and forgotten. He fished out a few for himself, thrilled to have found such rare cult flicks asThings,Monster Dog,The Burning Moon, SledgehammerandRock N’ Roll Nightmare. All of them were in their original packaging, too. He popped openMonster Dog’s clamshell to see if these were just re-creations, but they
were authentic. These were official releases and former rentals, complete with theBe Kind, Rewind stickers on the cassettes.
“Score,” he said to himself.
He brought the videos up to the counter, but Charlie was gone. He figured he’d returned to the back room. It was just as well, because Steve still wanted to browse, and it was easier without Charlie hulking there. He put the tapes down and looked at the VCR that had been humming. The blue light came from inside of it, which didn’t make much sense to him. As he looked at it, the light pulsed within, as if something was sparking or igniting. A bit of azure mist began to seep from the cartridge flap. He thought it was an electrical fire, so he went to call for Charlie, but as soon as he opened his mouth, another dizzy spell came over him. That strange static filled the air again, and this time he could hear it: the loud, nagging white noise of a dead screen. He leaned on the counter and held his head, shaking away the buzzing. He opened his eyes again, and the static dissipated.
“What the hell was that?” he asked himself.
He looked around, wondering if there was some kind of projector that had created the illusion. He figured it had to be part of the gimmick of the place, like a little added bonus in 3-D. But if it was, he couldn’t figure out how it was being done. He walked through the aisles and over to the wall, searching for a light machine or some other trick device. There was nothing. But in the far back he came to a small closet door. It was locked. A sliver of blue light came from the slit at its bottom.
“Did you need help finding anything, hon?” a woman asked from behind him.
Steve turned around and came face to face with Linnea Quigley, his favorite scream queen. He’d know her anywhere, having seenReturn of the Living Deadso many times, as well as many of her other movies. He even owned a bootleg of her horror workout. It was the actress, he was certain, and yet it couldn’t be her. If it were, she would have aged at least a few decades. This Linnea was exactly as she looked inNight of the Demons, and that movie was over 20 years old. He stood there, too thunderstruck to reply.
“Are you a member?” she asked.
“Um, no.”
“Well, then, you should get signed up.”
She walked over to the counter, and he followed her like a lost puppy, mesmerized. She was absolutely gorgeous in her tight black mini and studded top. Her curves were prominent, and her breasts had an enticing bounce — what he always liked to call theQuigley Jiggly. Her blond hair was frizzed and wild in that dated metalhead-chick look, with the front teased high in a hair-sprayed puff.Damn, she looked like Quigley.
They reached the counter and she handed him the same form Charlie had. He began filling it out without reading it, unable to keep his eyes off her long enough to do so. He was more than happy to sign up now. He would have put his hand in a meat grinder if she’d asked him to.
“We’ve got the best selection in Wickham,” she told him. “Dad likes to keep the customers happy with all the freshest titles. Big releases and small ones; action, horror, comedies, romances — we’ve got them all.”
He couldn’t resist.
“Did anyone ever tell you that you look like Linnea Quigley?”
She smiled, and he felt his loins stir just from that.
“I don’t think so. Who’s that?”
“She was a movie star. I’m sure you have some of her films here.”
“Was she like Kathleen Turner? She’s my favorite.”
“Well, kind of. Not really.”
He chuckled and, politely, so did she. He signed the membership agreement and then reached for his wallet.
“These are yours?” she asked, pointing at the videos he’d left there.
“Oh, yes.”
She started to ring it all up on the ancient register, and a new type of static flashed across his field of vision. It was a single line of static this time. It bounced before his eyes, crackling as it climbed up and down. Behind Linnea’s doppelganger, the VCR began to billow with mist that glowed like a blacklight, enveloping her in the neon fog. He looked back at her and saw her entire body flickering, making her disappear and reappear as the sound of dead air grew louder inside his skull. Dizziness spun him around, and he braced himself on the counter. The lights suddenly went out in the store, the only illumination coming from the gray afternoon outside. He could see that the store was empty now and in ruin. The shelves and all of their tapes were gone, as were the posters, cutouts and bins. It was an
empty, gutted slot in a plaza now, with cracked windows and a filthy, torn carpet. He watched the line of tracking static grow fatter in the air, widening to
fill the scope of his vision. When it smoothed out, the store was intact again: lights on, shelves full, back in business.
He steadied himself, wondering if he was having an acid flashback like no other.
“That will be $42.50,” she said.
“Are you doing that?” he asked. “The lights and the fuzz?”
“It’s just the tracking. It adjusts the video image.”
“Video image? No, I mean …”
There was a slow creaking of hinges, and he turned to see the closet door in the back creeping open. The azure light knifed out, bathing the store in a silvery sheen of atmospheric electricity. Looking back at her, Steve watched Linnea flicker again, changing her frame in an optical smear of gray. She mutated into Charlie in a sudden blip, as if someone had simply changed the channel on his reality. Steve now felt his bowels beginning to churn. He tried to back up a step and stumbled over his own feet, dropping him on his oversized ass. Charlie laughed at him through a haze of cyclonic static. In quick flickers, he changed back into Linnea. His face and body began to strobe, and with each pulsation he became another video-star actor: the detective fromDeath Wish 3, one ofThe Barbarian Brothers, Fred Williamson, Shannon Tweed and Dorf. He moved through the counter like fluid, his head a hellish myriad of familiar faces. One second he was Gary Busey, the next he was Adrienne Barbeau, all between flickers of furious fuzz.
“Dad was good to his customers,” Charlie said, leaning in close. “He was good to this town. But they all deserted him when the big chain video store came. GoddamnedBig Star Video. They were huge. They had room for a hundred copies of each new movie. He couldn’t compete with that. But oh, how he tried.”
Steve tried to scoot back, but was paralyzed by his fear. The mist coiled around him, the smoke serpentine and seductive. The whole store flashed.
“Dad put the family into serious debt trying to keep this store alive,” Charlie went on. “By the time he finally did go out of business, he was on a second mortgage. As if that wasn’t enough, he’d grown sick. Pancreatic cancer. That’s what the doctors said wasted him away. But I know it was a broken heart.”
Once again the store flickered with gray static, and he saw it again as it truly was: a dim, abandoned place. He noticed that one old and rusted VCR was still on the counter, long forgotten. It whirred in overdrive, pouring out the strange mist that generated it all. But Charlie had lost his illusion too, and that redirected Steve’s attention. Charlie stood before him asa maggot-riddled husk, his decomposed flesh like blackened alligator hide. His bottom jaw was missing, and he had two hollow pits for eyes, both of them churning with feeding insects.
Steve screamed and started inching backward in clumsy scoots.
“Do you know what it does to a teenage boy to watch his father disintegrate like that?” Charlie asked. “All he ever wanted was a little shop to provide for his family and to entertain the neighborhood. All of his members deserted him for Big Star. It was despicable. He died broke and ashamed, all because his customers had no loyalty, no respect for a family business.”
The flickering brought the store back to life, full of boxes and vintage charm, and Charlie was Linnea Quigley again. She leaned in close, teeth bared in a snarl of bloodlust.
“I didn’t just want revenge. I fucking needed it.”
The VCRs behind the counter turned on in unison, the wordPlay glowing like butane flames on each faceplate. The closet door flung all the way open now, and even on the floor Steve could see the silhouettes emerging from the blinding haze. They shuffled along slowly, their feet dragging and their arms limp at their sides. The televisions came alive too, not playing movie trailers this time, but rather showing what Steve deduced to be clips from Charlie’s life, like a presentation to coincide with his story.
“It was just a simple fire to begin with. I wanted Big Star reduced to ash. I didn’t intend for the fire to spread, but I wasn’t exactly sorry that it did. I was just a first-time arsonist. I didn’t know any better. That’s how I ended up trapped in there.”
Steve looked up at the set, watching a young Charlie dousing Big Star in lighter fluid and cackling in the glow of the smoldering store until part of a display toppled over and pinned him. Steve turned away as he saw the teenager begin to burn alive.
“At least I took a lot of the traitors with me,” Charlie said. “The entire block went up in smoke that night.”
Charlie snickered as he told his morbid tale. Behind him, the shapes had lined up, swaying side by side as if stranded at sea. Some of them were charred to the point of barely looking human. Their husks were encrusted in layers of tenebrous, cracked flesh. Others, however, were ethereal-looking, adrift in the blue light, one with it. The fog grew denser.
“Look, man,” Steve said, struggling to get to his feet. “I’ve got nothing to do with all of that. I’m not even from around here.”
“No one is from around here anymore. Wickham is long gone. Damn, don’t you ever just wish life came with a rewind button so you could go back to simpler, happier days? This town was my family’s home; now it’s just a wasteland. But I still need new members to keep Dad’s dream alive. Every video store always needs new memberships, and new souls give me the power to rewind.”
Charlie extended his arms as if presenting the store to him for the first time. Everything pulsed in the spotlight, the clamshells snapping like traps and the cutouts stretching taut in the azure static. Steve realized that the illusion of the video store was exactly that: a rewind on space and time, all orchestrated by this mad poltergeist.
“This was Dad’s dream,” Charlie said. “I vowed to honor it, even in this hellish beyond.”
The other members of the store began to close in on Steve, engulfing him. Their rotted fingers tore at his flesh, dragging him toward the smoldering closet from whence they’d spilled. He tried to twist in their grip, but it only caused their nails to sink deeper into him. He tried to scream, but the only sound that escaped his throat was of television static, a deafening, nightmarish fuzz.
“We’re so glad you chose to join us, Steve,” Charlie said, leaning forward with a laminated membership card. “Thanks for making every night a ride on the Video Express.”
Giving From the Bottom
With the electricity cut off, the only light in my bedroom came from my neighbor’s obnoxious holiday decorations that burned candy-colored piss radiance from dusk till dawn. I sat on the scuffed-up hardwood floor, my back against the wall, my knees pulled to my chest for warmth.
They’d turned the gas off, too: Merry Christmas, Lewis.
I was on my last bottle of rye whiskey, relying on the constriction of my blood vessels to numb me to the stab of the cold. I had plenty of cigarettes, nothing to eat, and a huge pile of cardboard boxes filled with my ex’s shit. I sat there staring at it with a combination of longing and annoyance, taking long pulls from the bottle.
I’d been sober for nine months. Then she walked out and took my willpower with her. Now I was on the floor in our broken home, unemployed, wishing for a drunkenness that would not come. I was back from my break, back into the raw sewage of my solitude, back in the bottomless bottom. Meanwhile, she was out there, with him, probably in a luxury hotel room in some warm climate, a martini glass in one hand and his crotch in the other. All the random crap she didn’t need yet was here with me, sealed up in water boxes from the grocery store, sitting in the corner like a monument to all of my many failures.
The cell phone rang. They hadn’t cut my service yet. So I clicked it on.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Hey, Bubba,” Sal replied.
We hadn’t talked in months, but that was just how it went with us. There were three basic reasons he called me: nostalgia, despair, and need. Otherwise he was usually adrift, and I had, up until recently, been busy being good.
“Hey there, Sal, how’s my cousin doin’?”
“I’m doin’, I’m doin’.”
He sounded a little wired, but n
ot totally coked-up, which I was grateful for. There was a slight tick in his voice, but the whiskey was slowing me down now too.
“When did you get out?” I asked.
“Six weeks ago.”
“How’s that working out for you?”
“It’s OK. I’m staying with Jeanne.”
“I thought she dumped you.”
“So did I. Turns out she’s not as smart as she looks.”
He laughed and I didn’t. Then we fell silent for a moment. From the noise in the background, I assumed he was driving.
“How about you, Bubba?” he asked. “You still sober?”
“Sure,” I said and took another pull from the bottle. I decided not to ask about him.
“I can’t believe it’s Christmas Eve already,” he said.
“Another year gone.”
“It goes too fast.”
“And faster every year.”
“Amen to that, Bubba.”
We fell silent again for a moment, and then he said, “Listen,” which let me know that he needed something from me.
“Listen, if you’re looking for work, I’ve got an easy job lined up. I heard about Adrian leaving you and about you getting shit-canned from your gig. You know you can always count on me, right?”
“Right,” I said, even though it wasn’t really true. It was important for Sal to think that he could be there for people who were always there for him. But all they could count on him for was disappointment.
“Lewis, man, you should’ve called on me,” he added.
“Just wanted to be alone, I guess.”
“Its not good for you. You should be getting out there and starting over. Go party. Get a woman. Get some dash in your pocket.”
“What’s this job you’ve got lined up?” I asked, knowing it was something I shouldn’t do, something that could further demolish the straight-line life I’d worked so hard to create for myself.
“It’s a total baby dance, Bubba. No worries, easy turnaround.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
Things can fall apart so fast in life. I couldn’t believe I was considering this already, but what else was there? I told him to head on over, and hung up. Then I finished off the last of the whiskey in one long pull and threw the bottle against the wall. It shattered, and the glass fell like tiny, discarded diamonds across the cardboard boxes that just sat there silently, like cheap coffins sharing pieces of my butchered heart.
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