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kj-1130 · 4 years ago

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Nothing For Me

Part 3

Main Masterlist

|Part 1|Part 2|Part 4|

You were lying down, staring at the ceiling that was covered with glow in the dark stars. The only sound was the faint tick-tock of the clock that sat on your nightstand.

The duvet covered you, but you still felt cold. The heat was on but you still felt cold.

Your eyes burned with tears that were threatening to spill past your waterline and you didn’t even know why. Maybe it was the fact that you were forced to spend yet another day without your mom. Maybe it was the fact that Tony had left you in this tower all by yourself. Maybe it was the fact that you just didn’t feel good enough for anyone anymore.

“You don’t hate me, right M.I.A?”

It was such a broken statement; asking an A.I who doesn’t have emotions.

You always imagined being so much farther than this in life and sharing all those accomplishments with your mom. But here you were, trying to gain reassurance from a robot.

“I could never hate you, miss.”

The tears started flowing and you didn’t even care anymore. You were sick of trying to be enough for your father; it’s not like he even looked in your direction long enough to know you were there and not a figment of imagination.

It was silent for a moment before a ping sounded through the room.

“One message from Michelle Jones.”

You began chatting with the young girl about a month after the Battle of New York. Your mind was in a haze at the time and you weren’t fully aware of your actions until you heard her voice over the phone. The two of you became quick friends even if Michelle refused to admit it. Besides M.I.A, she was the only one you were constantly talking to. But the more you thought about it, it was sad to think that one of your friends was technically a robot.

MJ was always giving you a chance to rant to her about whatever you needed to. One day it would be about your asshole of a father, the next day it would be about a stupid, cringy, cliché hallmark movie and how they made the women so dependent on men--it really just depended on the day.

You sluggishly got out of the bed; the only thing that was giving you even a semblance of comfort at the moment. Picking up your phone, you read the text that read, ‘ft????’. You replied back with a ‘sure’, and waited for your friend’s call. The ringtone sliced through the tense silence that was in the room.

“Hey, what’s--why is it so dark in there?”

You gave a non-committal hum and slid back under the covers.

“You good?”

You let out a small sigh and asked your AI to activate and dim the lights.

“Just...pissed off and upset at the world--well more so Tony. Like I lose a parent, move in with the other only for him to throw me to the side like I’m some piece of garbage that should’ve been recycled. I’m here all by myself during the holidays--a time you’re supposed to be with family. I mean I’m always alone here, but I just thought it’d be different with Pepper here and how much she tries to doctor his life. But turns out, she ain’t shit either. I don’t even know why I got my hopes up in the first place,” you chuckled bitterly.

Letting out a deep breath, you turned towards where you left your phone standing and looked at MJ.

“I’m sorry for dumping all this on you. You don’t need that.”

Her eyebrows were furrowed and your mind immediately went to the worst case scenario. You took the silence as her contemplating how to tell you, you were just too much to be friends with. You were getting nervous that you were about to lose the best thing that’s happened to you since your mother died.

“Come over.”

“I--what?” you spluttered.

“Come over,” she said adamantly. “It’s obvious that you’re lonely over there. I’m pretty sure my parents won’t mind.”

“Why?”

Michelle let out a sigh and you saw her eyes begin to wander across her room. “Because, as much as I don’t want to say it, I’ve grown to tolerate you.”

For the first time in more than four months, you smiled.

When you arrived at your friend’s apartment, she immediately pulled you into her room. The two of you spent the night into early morning watching any cringy movie you came across and started to critique it.

In the morning once her mom came to wake the two of you up, she found you on the beanbags in the corner of the room, snuggled up under one blanket.

After a week stay at the Jones household, you decided it was time to go home--if you could even call it that. You felt like you were overstaying your welcome regardless of what MJ and her parents told you.

You made your way back to the tower after a long morning in the library. You knew it was dangerous to travel alone, but would anyone care or even notice you were gone.

The elevators opened with a ding and you were greeted with the sight of Tony and Pepper on the couch. You weren’t even supposed to be on this floor, so why in the world did it stop here? They immediately paused whatever conversation they were having and stared at you while you were trying to get the elevator to close and go to the floor you wanted.

“Young lady, where have you been?”

Oh so he actually knew you existed. What a shocker.

“Out.”

You continued to press the button harder as if that would help it close. You knew that he probably overrode FRIDAY to prevent you from moving but you really needed to get some emotions out and the closest victim happened to be that button. Pepper was watching the whole thing go down and you could tell she was trying to find a good moment to input.

“Hey, you don’t need to use that tone with me.”

You let out a sharp sigh and finally stopped smashing the elevator walls.

“If you really wanna know,” you began, walking towards the kitchen counter. You set your backpack down and grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge. “I was spending some time with a friend because I was left here alone.” You took a sip of water before setting it down. “Again.”

The strawberry blonde had a solemn look on her face and was staring at her lap as if she was ashamed.

“I’m sorry sweetheart. We didn’t mean to do that.”

You let out an unconvincing hum and grabbed your things before heading back to the metal box.

“Hey, we’re not done talking here.”

You rolled your eyes at Tony before grabbing your phone out of your pocket.

“Yeah, well,” you clicked a few things and the elevator began to close. “I am. Bye dad.”

Dad.

You used to long to say that word.

‘Dad can we go get ice cream?’

‘Daddy, I passed my math test!’

‘Can we go to the dance, Dad?’

Millions of scenarios would always pass through your head, wondering if life would be different if he was in your life from the beginning. All the embarrassment and teasing you went through for not being able to go to a daddy daughter dance. All the times you wished for a piggy back ride whenever your feet were tired after a long day at the park.

Every time you asked where your father was, a part of you would lose hope until that hope was just gone. You no longer asked about him, figuring that he was just nobody that would ever have to be concerned with. He didn’t want to be involved in your life, so you wouldn’t let him invade your mind.

But then she was just gone. Gone. Your whole life taken away from you in a snap. And there was nothing you could do except sit back and watch it all unfold.

When you came here, you hoped he would be there just like you hoped for your mother to get better. But as time went on, you realized hope was for babies. To you, having hope was as useless as a remote without batteries. It was as useless as a bag with holes. It was as useless as shoes without soles. From then on, you vowed to no longer hope as it would only cause pain. Why hope for something only to be disappointed in the end?

So as you were lying on the soft mattress only some could dream of having, under the blankets that were as soft as a sheep, you thought about hope. How hope shattered dreams and hearts. And how shattered dreams and hearts led to silent sobs and tears that would shed in the privacy of your room while the soft glow of the tv was the only light you saw.

#nothing for me miniseries #tony stark #tony stark x daughter!reader #tony stark x reader #teen!reader #avengers imagine #avengers x reader #michelle jones x fem!reader #avengers x black!reader #black!reader

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hoodoo12 · 4 years ago

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Costume

This month’s prompt on our discord server? “Costume”, for Hallowe’en, of course! SFW, Beetlejuice/gender neutral reader.

@beetlewise-and-pennyjuice @thewolfisapartofmysoul @janitor-boy @turtlepated @angelicspaceprince

Enjoy! `

You’d never have expected being invited to a Halloween costume party would be such a problem.

A problem shaped like a pestering, jealous ghost-demon named Beetlejuice. “I wanna go! Why can’t I go! You’re leaving me for a whole evening to have fun and I have to sit here and twiddle my thumbs?! You’re going to leave me in the dark in an empty house and I never get to do anything!” His whining was amazing, and not in the good way. “You could take me! We can do a couple’s costume! Like Mickey and Minnie Mouse, or you can be a brick, and I can go as a brick layer!”

You couldn’t help but snort in laughter at his suggestions, as raunchy as the second one had been. “Or, or--you know those horse costumes? We could do that! I could be the back half, because I like holding onto your butt--” “And also because you’re an ass?”

The specter grinned broadly at your jab, thinking that if you were joining in on the idea, his battle was mostly won. “Beej, sweetheart,” you said, patting his cheek, “the answer is no. No one’ll be able to see you, so a couple’s costume just isn’t going to work. I’m sorry.” His expressive face fell. You were pretty sure that if he could control not just the color of his hair but how much it stuck up, it would have drooped in a dramatic, cartoonish way as well.

“Fine,” he muttered sadly. “I mean, people could see me if you just, I don’t know, said my name a few times or whatever, but it’s okay, I’ll just stay here with the dust and spiders and wait in the dark for you to come back . . .” He turned to go, shoulders sloping dejectedly, and shook off your hand when you tried to take his wrist to attempt to make him feel better.

⁂

You actually had no idea what to dress as. Everything was too cutesy or overdone or trite. When watching those Bly Manor and Truth Seekers shows on streaming, however, something clicked into place. You could go as a plague doctor! And not only that, since Beetlejuice bragged about living through the Black Plague, he’d have firsthand knowledge of it and them and could assist making it authentic!

Excitedly, you told him your idea. Although he was still a bit crestfallen, he of course preened a little when you asked for his help and promised to give you all the details he could to make it the best plague doctor around. He went so far as to bring you an authentic beaked mask from . . . somewhere, which he proudly tried to thrust into your hands. Gingerly you accepted it, but tried to keep only the very tips of your fingers in contact with the leather. The clear glass for its eyes made it look more than slightly creepy.

“I’m not going to . . . catch anything from this, right? You didn’t get it out of a festering plague pit . . . ?” “Nah,” he replied dismissively. “I mean, yeah, it’s from a grave, but it’s super old so anything infectious should be gone, I’m pretty sure.”

One thing he’d never claimed to be was a doctor or infectious disease expert, so although you accepted his suspect contribution, you cleaned it inside and out with bleach. And tossed it in the microwave to nuke any possibly remaining microbes, for good measure.

You procured a black coat and hat on your own. Beetlejuice also dug up a black cane--telling you that the doctors used them to poke at people so they could examine them without getting too close--with a silver wolf’s head as a handle. You joked that that was a prop for the Wolfman but accepted it anyway. He also gleefully shoved so many aromatics into the beak it made your eyes water when you finally tried it on. “Thanks, Beej,” you praised as you tried to breathe through your mouth. “Wow. There’s a lot in here, huh? What is that, pine needles?” “Juniper, cloves, and camphor! Some mint too.”

“Uh-huh,” you croaked. You were going to have to grab some tissues to wipe your running nose and watery eyes during this party. “Okay, I’ll see you later.” “Have a good time!” he called after you, and you were glad he’d gotten over his disappointment.

⁂

You knew the people who’d invited you to the party tended to go all out for Halloween, and this year was no exception. It wasn’t Martha Stewart, but it wasn’t professional haunted attraction either. They’d filled their house with lots of skeletons and spiders, pictures that changed based on which angle you looked at them, a soundtrack that low enough to not impede conversations but was filled with creaks, moans, and shrieks, and a buffet spread filled with treats made to look gory.

Everyone was in costume, of course, from those same generic ones available at Halloween stores to homemade cosplay of movie slashers. A hush rippled out like a stone thrown into water when you walked through the front door, even as you called hello to your friends. The party-goers turned to gawk at you.

Gradually people returned to their conversations, and some people returned greetings. You grinned behind your mask; it was good to make an unexpected first impression.

Wandering through the party, you slowly became aware that few people sought you out, and when you tried to engage with others, they were polite but seemed anxious to get away. More than once you caught people glancing over their shoulders at you as they left you. It also became apparent that people gave you a berth as you walked through the house, even at the table spread with food and drink. At first it was kind of cool, like you were this mysterious being, but then it devolved into being a little weird. It had to be because of the aromatics Beetlejuice had stuffed to the brim inside the beak. “I’m sorry about the smell,” you apologized to anyone who would listen. “I just went a little overboard on it being authentic.”

You followed that apology with a little self-depreciating chuckle.

It didn’t make people seem more comfortable around you.

Unable to mingle, feeling like a bit of an outcast--maybe like a real plague doctor--you didn’t stay at the party long. Walking home along streetlight lit sidewalks, you had the same effect on anyone else out: veering to give you room, furtive glances back at you once they were passed.

There was no way you stunk that bad.

Sighing, you slowed down a little. Although there was a chill in the air, you were getting this hat and mask off your face. Maybe you could dump the herbs and whatnot in a garbage can, and reduce the stench. Your nose could use some fresh air anyway.

You happened to stop in front of a closed store’s window. As you grabbed your hat to yank it off your head, you glanced at your reflection and yelped in surprise.

It was you in a plague doctor’s costume, but nightmarishly extreme. Your coat--just a cheap plain coat you found at a thrift store, was smeared along the sleeves and hem with something that looked tacky and black, like old blood. Like your coat had been dragging along the floor of a slaughterhouse, and like you’d been wrist deep in something gory. The rest of the fabric looked moldy and stained and threadbare on the elbows. As if that wasn’t bad enough, your mask--

It was authentic, obviously, but the leather seemed to have molded smoothly to your face. The glass in the eyeholes didn’t show your eyes at all; instead, pinpricks of light, the reflection of an animal’s eyes, shone out.

Everything that looked back at you in the glass looked evil, depraved, and unsettling. The effect was overtly chilling, even as you knew you were looking at yourself.

You ran the rest of the way to your place. “Beetlejuice!” you shouted, throwing open the door so had it bounced back at you from the wall it hit. He sauntered in from the kitchen. “Heya babes! How’d the party go? I was just here, making rice krispie treats--the kitchen’s a bit of a war zone right now--is marshmallow difficult to get off the ceiling?”

“What did you do?!”

“I told you--I was making rice krispie treats--” “I mean what did you do to my costume!”

The specter stopped, and grinned. “Did you like it? Did everyone like it? I think the pièce de résistance was that faint whiff of rot. You really have to concentrate to smell it, but once you do, you can’t unsmell it--”

You gaped at that disgusting revelation and resisted the urge to grab him by the sharp labels of his striped coat and shake him; he’d see that as playtime. Through gritted teeth, you repeated, “What did you do to my costume?!”

“I made it authentic. Just like you asked,” he shrugged innocently.

Squeezing your eyes closed, you counted to ten, actually making it only to four. Your jaw hurt from clenching it so hard, but you didn’t loosen it much to say sarcastically, “And the way my eyes look? Is that authentic? Did plague doctors have creepy shiny eyes?”

He laughed. “Oh. That. Yeah, that was some artistic license. Just to give it some flair.”

A worn coat splattered with unnameable gore, the stench of random herbs plus decay, a mask that was already unsettling and silver eyes for some “flair” . . . this time you did make it to a count of ten, and released the tension in your jaw this time. He was only trying to help. He had provided the expertise you asked for, and he just took it too far because he was nothing if not over the top.

“We should’ve just done the horse costume,” Beetlejuice advised. “Want a rice krispie?”

You glared at him, but couldn’t stay too mad too long. Shrugging out of the coat, you said, “Yes. Take this costume out and bury it or burn it or something. You tricked, and I’ll have a treat.”

“That’s my babe,” he grinned, and took the disgusting outfit off your hands.

fin!

#writing #fanfiction #beetlejuice #Halloween

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sulfurousdreamscapes · 5 years ago

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Parts 8/8 complete.

Another record-breaking story for Sulfurous Dreamscapes! I'm really proud of the concept behind this one, and I'm keen to develop it as a WIP in the future.

Until then, feel free to read this short story treatment!

What: Girl finds man in a battle suit, who has been in a coma for 30 years.

How long: 5,500 words

Genre: Sci-fi

CW: War mention

Usually when something moves in the junkyard, it’s a rat or a wounded dog. This time, it was something else, and it was crushing the plastic and metal around it. Jodie and I were frozen with spray paint cans in our hands. The movement was just outside the light, so most of what we saw was our imagination, really.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, but Jodie shook her head.

“Wait,” she said and shook her can out of habit.

The heap of junk slid around, crunched, bent, dented and turned over. Jodie moved towards the heap, still shaking her can like it was pepper spray or something. I followed her, and I wondered if tonight was the night I was going to pull out my knife. Even Jodie didn’t know I carried a knife with me.

Jodie turned halfway towards me. “It’s a battle suit,” she said. “Hear the steps? It’s definitely a battle suit.”

“Let’s definitely get out of here,” I whispered back, but Jodie shook her head again. Instead she pulled a flashlight out of her pack and held it in her free hand.

As soon as the light clicked on, we saw the thing clearly. Grey metal, rusty and scratched all over, a humanoid battle suit maybe seven feet tall, crushing the garbage beneath it like it was walking on cardboard. There were no lights on it, not even tiny leds.

“Who the fuck is in it?” Jodie asked me. “That thing looks like it’s 30 years old. How is it even moving?”

“I wonder if its weapons still work,” I said. Jodie gave me a death stare and I shrugged in response.

The battle suit finally found level ground and was able to walk with more stability. One of its arms was limp, and its head was struggling to turn left and right.

“Maybe it’s a robot?” I asked. “I’ve never seen this model before.”

“If you saw this model, you’d be dead,” the battle suit said. Its voice was hoarse and thin, clearly of an elderly man.

“I don’t think it’s a robot,” Jodie said, turning halfway again. “They don’t give robots old-man voices.”

The battle suit raised its working hand and held a clenched fist pointed at us.

We waited.

“I think it wants us to give it a fist bump,” I said.

“They wrecked it pretty hard,” the battle suit man said. “I can’t prime my offensive systems. I can’t connect to the defence net. My arm is busted. I can’t move right. This is a fucking travesty.”

Jodie walked up to the battle suit, shaking her spray can as she went. “Last defence net shut down thirteen years ago, boss,” she said.

“What the heck is a defence net?” I asked from behind her.

The battle suit man grunted and lowered his arm. “It’s over, isn’t it? The war is over,” the man said. “I remember staring at the sky while pain surged through my body. I thought it was over for me, but a part of me said that the suit would keep me alive. I guess it did.”

Jodie whistled and stopped in front of the metal giant. “Didn’t think they had life support in battle suits that old,” she said. “I guess we keep underestimating history.”

She raised her spray can began showering the rusty metal with bubblegum pink paint. The man in the suit stood still, like he was receiving a medal.

“The war ended like, thirty years ago,” Jodie said. “You probably wanna get out of that clunker now.”

The battle suit man didn’t say anything. If it weren’t for the breathing picked up by his mic, I’d have thought he was dead.

“Wondering what happened to your friends and family, huh?” Jodie shook her head as she curved the spraying. “I guess you don’t want to find out.”

After she was done, she stood back to admire her work and shook the can some more.

It was a peace sign in glossy pink, emblazoned across the battle suit’s chest.

Everyone in the bus stared at us in the back, especially the kids, who stood on their seats and held onto backs of their seats. Jodie was reading a magazine, the kind with an oiled, nearly-naked person on the cover. I was trying to keep my attention out of the window. Meanwhile, the man in the battle suit sat with his right hand on his knee and his unlit gaze staring straight through the middle of the bus.

After Jodie was done with her magazine, she sighed extravagantly and stared at each of the passengers until they stopped looking at us.

“You should have a name,” Jodie said as she slapped her hand on the metal thigh. It was a pretty hard slap, you could tell from the sound.

“Jamshid,” the reply came.

Jamshid raised his right arm as if to slap Jodie’s thigh. She and I sat frozen, our eyes on the metal hand. A few seconds later, Jamshid put it back on his knee. “I thought it would be funny,” he said.

Our bus stop was in an underpass with graffiti and broken bricks. I identified some of the graffiti as Jodie’s handiwork, but it was my first time in that part of town.

“How far is she?” I asked, pulling out transparent slab of plastic that showed me a map of the area. Jamshid took a few steps closer to me, clearly looking at the map with interest.

“Not far,” Jodie said. “She’ll be super interested in the battle suit. She’s a collector of retro hardware, and a suit like this from the war… yeah, I think she’s gonna waive the repair fee on my bike.”

“And she can get Jamshid out of his suit?” I asked.

“Maybe,” she shrugged.

“That’s not what you said before,” Jamshid growled. “You said you know someone who can get me out of this suit.”

Jodie ran a hand over her peace sign handiwork on the chest of Jamshid’s suit. “I mean, it’s worth a shot,” she said. “What other option do you have? It’s not like we’re going to find the manufacturer warranty.”

“Take me to a military base,” Jamshid said.

“Yeah well, the military isn’t going to fix my bike for free, man,” Jodie shook her head. “And we’re not your mommies, you’re free to go if you think the military’s going to help you. If you lose us, though, I don’t know if you’ll ever find someone who can pull you out of that tin can.”

“The suit stays mine,” Jamshid grunted. “It’s not yours to sell.”

“That’s a lot of demands from someone who doesn’t even know if he can get out of his metal action figure,” Jodie snapped back. “Maybe you should just keep your suit with its limp arm and paralysed turning.”

I sighed and got between the two of them. “Can you two just relax? Let’s just get to Roohi and see what she has to say.”

Jodie and Jamshid stayed quiet from there as we entered the narrower alleys lined by street merchants and stray dogs. As in the bus, everyone had their eyes on the battle suit. And me? I had my knife.

Roohi loved the colour orange so much that she hung fake oranges and marigolds outside her door, her windows were stained orange, her walls were painted varying shades of orange, and the little glass mirrors on her bead curtains all reflected an orange juice reality.

As soon as you stepped into her place, it felt like you were on a different planet, or some kind of oddly colour-graded movie. Jamshid moved his battle-suited body a lot as he stared at the orange walls and the orange paper butterflies and the orange beads.

“Why is everything orange?” he asked as Jodie went to fetch Roohi.

“From what Jodie told me, it’s because Roohi’s father once gave each calendar month a colour, and Roohi’s birthday falls on the month marked ‘orange’. So she just kind of owned it,” I said.

“I’d get sick of it,” he said, but then he followed my gaze and turned around to find Jodie and Roohi enter the room.

Roohi whistled.

“When the hell did you learn to whistle?” Jodie asked her.

“A week ago,” Roohi laughed. “I had to modify the code a bit to have it work with my shell, but…” She whistled a tune from a popular song.

Jodie was carrying wrenches and screwdrivers in her hands, which she clattered onto a table that was already crowded by cables and hardware. As she went in to fetch more, Roohi’s wheels rolled forwards. Her digitised face looked intrigued while her periscope camera inspected the battle suit closely.

“Enki Original, oooh” she cooed. “This is a rare one. They had these imported, but very few were actually made. See, the acquisition was a hassle—corruption at every bureaucratic level, you know how it is. They got a few in, but most of the units that saw battle were Enki-Hydras. I didn’t know any of these Original models existed, let alone see battle.”

“There were several,” Jamshid said while Jodie reappeared and dumped more tools in. “They are hard to control, and only the best pilots could be trusted with them.”

“Yeah!” Roohi’s face lit up and her screen was crowded with happy emojis and hearts. “I’ve read that they had production issues, so they had to use off-the-market stabilisers and magnets. Again, corruption and stuff, you know how it is.”

Jodie leaned against the table, drenched in orange like the rest of us, and she put a hand on Roohi’s metal, egg-shaped shell. “We’re hoping to get our pal Jamshid out of his battle suit. Can you do it?”

Jamshid took a step forward with a clenched metal fist. “Get me out,” he said, grimly and resolutely. Militarily.

“Uh,” Roohi said, and didn’t say anything more for a while. We waited in what looked like the cabin of a sunk ship in an orange sea. “Okay, so, there’s no manuals for this kind of hardware. And they didn’t have standardised armouring systems back then, so you can only get this battle suit off at a very specific armouring station. I have no idea where you’d begin to find one for Enki Originals.”

Jamshid grunted and turned for the door. “I should’ve gone for the military first,” he said.

“Sorry, man,” Roohi said. Her screen made a disappointed face, the kind with a slanted line for a mouth. “I guess they could have one, but it’s still a long shot. You know how it is.”

Jodie began talking to Roohi about her bike, but I touched Jamshid’s arm. I couldn’t see a speck of emotion on his metal face, not even a flicker of light where his eyes were marked.

“It’s going to be alright,” I said. “We’ll find the military. We’ll get help for you.”

“It was alright,” he barked. “For 30 years, it was alright. It was all alright until I woke up.”

It took so long for the clerk to return from the archives room that I counted six different pencil-pushers finish their coffees. The entire time, Jamshid stood at attention, staring straight at the wooden door with the translucent window. I was on the verge of getting physically sick from all the bureaucracy.

“Did you say your last name was Nurzai?” the records clerk asked, stacking up the papers against the table.

“Yes,” Jamshid said. His breath caught his name with a slight hesitation, as if he were receiving a misplaced family heirloom.

“I’m not seeing anyone with that name, sorry,” the clerk said.

I leaned over her desk and frowned in her face. “Come on, check those papers, I’m pretty sure he’s there somewhere.”

The clerk clenched her fist like she wanted to knock me out. “These papers are not related to your case. We do more work at the Veteran’s Service Office than just…” she eyed me and Jamshid suspiciously. “Whatever it is you are doing.”

“N-o-o-r-z-a-i,” Jamshid said. “Try that spelling.”

The clerk sighed and spent a few precious seconds flattening the dog-ear crease at the corner of a document. Then she got up and disappeared behind the door marked ‘Archives’ again.

I checked the time. Jamshid waited. The ceiling fan creaked, and more cups of coffee were placed empty on glass desks. I hadn’t had any sleep in hours, and I half wanted to swipe everything on the clerk’s table to the floor, get on the desk, curl up, and sleep.

“You should get some sleep,” Jamshid grunted and turned 90 degrees to stop me from crashing on the desk, all with his right hand. “You’re getting tired. A tired body is a weak body.”

I glared at him, but it was no use. There was nothing to glare at, just a bunch of metal and more metal.

The door squeaked open, and the clerk brought exactly one page in her hands. It was yellowed and splotchy, and the edges were weathered. She placed it on her desk, right where my butt could have been, and traced the record with her finger.

“Enki Original?” she asked, looking up at Jamshid and then me. “It says here that Upper Tech Sergeant Noorani was killed in action. This is the date of death, location and time of engagement, date of notifications sent to family… all accounted for.”

“He wasn’t killed in action,” I said, feeling a new surge of waking. “He was injured and in coma for 30 years. His suit kept him alive, and he only recovered consciousness now.”

The clerk pursed her lips. “Did you memorise that?”

“Excuse me?” I leaned in close to her.

The clerk jabbed at the paper. “It says here that he is _dead_. Unless this individual you claim can prove that they are the same recruit as on record, we cannot make any amends or provide any support.”

“How the fuck is he supposed to prove that?” I asked. The office hushed and turned to face me. Moustaches and old hairstyles with fake pearl necklaces. I refocused attention on the clerk.

“Well, we would require biometric proof, such as fingerprints or retinal scans… those work the best as ID proofs.”

“He’ll need to get out of his armour to get fingerprints and retinal scans, lady,” I said. “Getting out of his suit is the reason we came to you in the first place. I mean come on, you’re the military, right? You guys _put_ him in his suit in the first place, and now you won’t let him out?”

The clerk groaned and rested her head on a fist. “Please approach me with the required documentation and I will move forward with your request.” Her voice was droning now. She looked like she wanted to lay on the desk and go to sleep herself.

They wouldn’t let Jamshid into the diner, so I had him wait outside while it rained. I got myself a chicken wrap and got out again to stand by him. He saw me fumbling with the umbrella while holding the wrap, and he offered to hold the umbrella for me. I said my thanks with a mouth full of spicy chicken.

“You don’t ever get hungry?” I asked him while we watched the cars cut through the water-glazed streets.

“I don’t,” he said. The way he said it, it was like he’d interrupted himself from saying ‘I don’t know’. He paused for a few moments. “I don’t feel hungry. I guess the suit injects me with suppressants.”

I shrugged. “That’s rough. But maybe not, I guess. It is sad, though, that you can’t eat.”

“Why is that sad?” he asked. I watched his armour glow in passing headlights, as if it was flaming torches passing us by.

“It feels good, my dude,” I said. “Just like cuddling, I guess. Or what everyone says sex is supposed to feel like. It’s just the most basic thing that feels good to anyone, that’s eating for you. You won’t ever hear anyone in the world say they hate eating. It’s like lying down after a really, really, tired day.”

I was expecting him to say something, but I ended up listening to the patter of the rain like it was call hold music.

Then I got it.

“Well, shit,” I said. “You can’t do any of those things now, can you? I’m sorry.”

“Your friend, Roohi,” Jamshid asked unexpectedly. “Was she… is she… well, is she a real person? Or is she a robot?”

“Oh, she’s not my friend,” I reacted as I reached the bottom of my chicken wrap. “She’s Jodie’s friend, really, and even then, not so much. They’ve known each other for a long time, maybe even since Jodie was a kid.”

“So she was in a shell? Even then?” Jamshid asked.

I paused tantalisingly close to gobbling up the last morsel of the wrap. “You know, I never thought to ask,” I said. “Maybe she was? I never really thought about any of that—whether she grew up human, or if she’s always been in a shell. I just thought she was cool.”

“Maybe she grew up human and had a very serious injury and she had to be put into that thing,” Jamshid said.

I finished the wrap and crumbled the paper cover that came with it. “Maybe she was born in a computer lab and all the memories she has of her father and his calender of colours—all that is just a script written by some imaginative intern. They’re both just as valid.”

“They’re not,” Jamshid said. Like before, he seemed to have stopped himself from saying any more. This time, he seemed to be reconsidering what he had just said.

“I’m gonna get another one, with sweet onion sauce this time,” I said, and returned to the diner.

Inside, most of the tables were empty and the few patrons there were loners. The woman behind the counter looked a lot more pleasantly at me than before, probably that I’d given her no trouble.

I placed my order and drummed my fingers against the counter, leaning back and forth to the rhythm of the music in the diner. My pocket buzzed, and I pulled out my phone to find Jodie’s face plastered on it with a toothy grin.

“You coming to the 'yard tonight?” she asked.

“Nah, I’m hanging with Jamshid,” I said.

“Still?” she groaned and cursed under her breath. “He isn’t a dog, you know. You don’t have to take care of him.”

“I know,” I said, but I didn’t have anything to qualify my position. “But he’s cool. I want to help him see his… I don’t know, his quest through.”

“His quest?” Jodie laughed and cursed at the same time. “You’re a slut for charity.”

“Did you get your bike back?” I asked.

“Nah, Roohi is being a hard ass,” she groaned again. “Says your new friend wasn’t good enough. Says 'What am I supposed to do with this? Money don’t grow on trees!’ and other bullshit. I mean come on.”

“Tough luck,” I said. “Maybe if you hadn’t wrecked it.”

Jodie chuckled. “Girl, that bike has a destiny of its own. It doesn’t matter if I wrecked it or not, it was just destined to get wrecked at that time of its life. You know what I mean?”

“I know that my chicken wrap is here.” I smiled and waved cutely before cutting the call.

The lady approached the counter and handed me by wrap while I swiped the payment on my phone.

“Nothing for your friend there?” she asked, nodding at the door.

“He doesn’t eat,” I said.

“Ah,” she said. “A robot?”

I raised a middle finger at her and left the diner with my wrap.

“So how different is the city from when you last saw it?” I asked. The robot-pulled rickshaw slid cleanly by the edge of the street. It was heavy, but at least the robot wouldn’t complain about a man in a battle suit.

“This isn’t the same city,” Jamshid said. “Not anymore.”

“After the war, the city changed a lot.” I felt a bump under the wheels of the rickshaw. “So much was damaged, they had to practically rebuild the city anew. Lots of people died, too, so they had to bring it immigrants from all over. Jodie’s parents were immigrants—but you probably figured that out already.”

“It used to be more beautiful back then,” Jamshid said. “Quieter, greener. People dressed decently, talked decently.”

“Declared war decently,” I added, and Jamshid scoffed under his helmet.

“I don’t recognise any of these streets,” he said. “Is this where you live? I don’t think this district even existed back then.”

“Nah, this one is pretty old,” I told him. “Perch, if you’ve heard of it.”

“Perch,” Jamshid said, almost like a machine hiss. “Parrot’s Perch. My family used to live in Parrot’s Perch.”

I turned to face the metal man. “No kidding?” I grinned. “Where? Maybe I know the place.”

Jamshid recited his address: a number, a building name, a street, a main street, a neighbourhood, a wider area, and finally, ‘Parrot’s Perch’. It was like he was reading off of a piece of paper in front of him.

“Uh yeah, none of those are ringing any bells,” I said. “But then they renamed all the streets after the war, and some places, too. I mean, you call it Parrot’s Perch, I call it just the Perch.”

“Kozue. That was an alcohol shop downstairs,” he mumbled. “And a bakery across the street. What was that name? Foragers’ Bakes. Funny name. Funny story behind it, too.”

I input the names he was mentioning into the Map and did not find any hits. The shop names were a bust, but I did find the street names in a database online. Navigating the old website for useful information was a mess, and I was really ticked off, but I finally found the name I was looking for.

“I found it. No liquor shop or bakery on there, but well…”

“Which way is it?” Jamshid asked with a tone of slight urgency.

“To the left from here, and then straight, taking another left by the bend,” I said.

“You heard her, rickshaw-bot,” Jamshid barked, and the robot recited an acknowledgement before turning to the left, down a street I’d seen a few times before.

“Maybe there’s someone in the area who knows your family. Someone old enough,” I said.

Jamshid held onto the steel railing in front of it. He gripped it so tightly, I was worried he’d damage the rickshaw. “I just want to see what it’s like now,” he said. His voice was a lot less convincing than it had been before.

We took the left at the bend, and as soon as the rickshaw stopped, Jamshid got up and jumped off. I swiped a payment and got down as well.

Jamshid stared at the mega-supermarket that spanned almost the entire length of the street. Shopping carts rattled and shoppers walked out with sodas and beers, clutching their precious bags of chips. Jamshid kept walking down the street, his angle seemingly ignoring the supermarket next to him. Finally, he found a really, really old fire hydrant. Jodie doesn’t even know what a fire hydrant is.

“Do you recognise it?” I asked.

“I’ve seen enough,” he grunted, and turned around before marching back from where we came.

When my parents are away for a while, I like to sleep on the roof. There’s no bed there, so I carry a thick mattress up. Jamshid helped carry it for me. I tossed the pillow onto one end and stretched myself under a black-orange sky. If you looked hard enough, you could see a star or two.

“Do you regret all this?” I asked. “Getting into the suit and all… I’d regret it.”

“I knew the risks,” Jamshid replied. He was looking at the city… or what would be seen of it, given that we didn’t exactly live in a high-rise.

“Did you?” I leaned back and looked at him with my head upside-down. “Did you know you’d be trapped in the suit for 30 years because of a coma?”

Jamshid sighed dryly. “No, I didn’t know that,” he said.

“What did you know? What did they tell you?”

“I’d read the literature,�� he said. “I thought I’d be invincible. Hits that could kill a man would just be scratches on metal for me. It was supposed to be really quick, too. Forty minutes, that’s it. They didn’t want to tax these things too much that early.”

“Forty minutes?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Jamshid said. “And five of those would be assembly and disassembly. It was a quick engagement, and we were the cavalry. A special surprise just when the enemy thought they had us on the run.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, we won,” I said.

“Of course we did,” Jamshid said. “We knew that even back then. The enemy never really had a chance, but they fought fiercely. I thought I’d be back at the base in an hour. I’d be eating sausages in the mess. That hour never really ended for me.”

I watched a tiny black insect crawl along the surface of the rood, tiny antennas feeling twitching and searching. It scampered away when my phone began vibrating with a call. It was Jodie again. I swiped yes.

“Hey, Roohi wanted to talk to you about your new dad,” Jodie said, and handed her phone to Roohi’s metal arm.

“Hey honey,” Roohi greeted me. Her voice sounded less electronic, somehow. “I was wondering if your friend is still with you. I couldn’t help but get curious, and I wanted to know if I could find out more about him.”

“What can you find out about him?” I asked.

“I don’t know!” Roohi laughed. “Anything. I just wanna go digging.”

“Jodie’s that boring, huh?” I asked, and Roohi laughed for half a minute straight. I got up with the phone and walked up to Jamshid. “What do you wanna know?”

“Could you check his serial number, honey?” Roohi asked. “Should be somewhere on his chest, over where his heart should be.”

I scanned his chest. It took a while as I asked Roohi what to look for, and she told me what to look for, and I finally found what I was looking for. A small metal plate, the side of maybe three of my fingers. It had a serial number, a model number, and a bar code of some sort. Below that were the initials of the armed forces. The pink paint had narrowly missed the plate. Any further to the right, and it would be gone.

I took a picture of the plate and sent it to Roohi, who cut the line after a very curt thanks.

“Roohi’s gonna dig up what she can about you,” I told Jamshid, who just grunted. “Maybe she can find out something that could get you out of there.”

“Please don’t,” he said, and laid his working hand on the chain link around the roof’s edge.

“You don’t want to get out of there?” I asked.

“I don’t want to think about getting out,” he replied. “Because then I have to think about not getting out.”

I nodded and looked at the floor for a while. “But you know,” I said. “That’s the same as not thinking about success, because then you have to think about failure. If you do that, you’ll never be successful.”

“I don’t want to be successful,” he said. “I just want to not fail.”

Before I could respond, he held up his hand at me, making a stop gesture. I shoved my hands in my pyjama pockets.

My phone buzzed again, and I picked up the call.

“So this was kind of hard, given how fucking awful government websites are,” Roohi said without any greetings. “But I’ve got his name, rank, posting, origin. I did a few more searches, and I found his family, too. I know where they live now.”

I looked up at Jamshid. “Did you hear that?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, still staring out at the city.

The van-cab ride blew a chunk of my account balance, but I figured this was going to be worth it. I wasn't going to make Jamshid ride a bus to see his own family. On the way, we stopped at a record store. He made me buy a very old record called "Midnight Flight". The cab driver was a little annoyed we took so long, but I guess he didn't want to complain to a customer in a battle suit.

Jamshid held the record in front of him in the van, reading the back of the sleeve. I tapped my foot to a song that Jamshid would never have heard of. The blip on the map drew closer and closer to its destination.

"You must be nervous," I said.

Jamshid lowered the record from between us. "Are you going to stay out?"

I hadn't expected that, so I gave it some thought.

"What do you want me to do?" I finally asked.

"I don't know," he said, and his voice was a lot weaker than it usually is. "I don't even know what I want to do."

The van pulled over and the driver pulled the doors open. He was grinning under his spiky moustache. "You know, I mostly carry cargo. A real, flesh-and-blood person in a battle suit? Can't say I ever imagined that."

"Thank you for the ride," Jamshid said as he got out.

The alley we had to pass through was so cramped that we had to walk one behind the other. Jamshid's battle suit barely squeezed through, and there was still a fair bit of scratching on the sides. Wires hung from above, carrying data and power, and the tiles below were broken, some even before Jamshid stepped on them.

After some asking around, we found the address. The door looked like it could fall off any minute. A bunch of boys sitting on bikes nearby eyed us, splitting their attention between me and Jamshid. Crows took turns watching us.

I rang the doorbell.

We waited.

The door opened to reveal a woman wiping her hands on a rag. She was squinting at first, but that turned into an alarmed frown when she saw Jamshid's battle suit. "Who are you?"

"This is Jamshid Noorzai," I said. "You're his family."

The woman half-turned back and yelled out a name, and mentioned that there's a man in a battle suit at the door. Multiple sets of feet shuffled inside. The first out were a pair of kids: both girls, mouths agape and looking at Jamshid like he was a god.

An older woman appeared from inside. Her hair looked like white cotton candy, and she wore a rather cheap gown. She wore the kind of eyeglasses that have a thin chain on them.

Jamshid made a sound, and his breathing was loud enough for all of us to hear.

The older woman was also frowning as she made her way to us, and the younger woman stepped aside, herding the kids away. The older woman grimaced at us while she squinted for a better look through her eyeglasses.

"Who are you two? What do you want?" she asked.

I repeated what I had said to the younger woman before.

The woman looked a little angry now, a little disgusted, like I'd made a profane joke about a dead person. She could've eaten my head clean off. "There is no Jamshid Noorzai," she said. "He died three decades ago."

"I got you this," Jamshid said, lifting his record, making sure the front cover was facing the woman. "Happy birthday, sis."

The older woman stared at the record and the anger and the disgust faded away, washed away by her watering eyes. Her head shook a little. She looked up at Jamshid.

"I guess I missed thirty birthdays," he said. "But this is what you wanted first, so I got it for you, just like I said I would."

"Jamshid?" the woman asked. Her voice was choked, and the tears were breaking through now.

"We'll figure out the other twenty-nine birthday gifts later, right?" Jamshid said.

The woman took a few steps closer, and she embraced the battle suit, pressing her head against the peace sign on the chest. Her tears flowed down the metal. When she began crying, it was like her voice was being snapped in half each time.

Jamshid placed his working hand on her back and pressed her against him. "I told you, didn't I?" he said. "I told you I wasn't lying. I told you I'd really come back, and I'd bring the record with me. It just took me a while, that's all."

I wiped the tears off my own eyes. The younger woman touched my shoulder. "Why don't you sit? Would you like something to drink?"

I hugged her.

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whispelanix · 6 years ago

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Gorillaz break their silence

(Literally everything here has been copied and pasted so don’t blame me for the poor grammar and spelling :P)

“We’ve been in deep discussions and training for our film. We didn't want to seem like the cliched musician-turned-actors so we’ve all been taking it pretty seriously. 2D's been having extensive vocal coaching to give him a big screen accent. At one point it was suggested that Mel Gibson should do his voice but 2D thinks he should do it. I got myself into a bit of trouble down at ‘Homies Place’, my local health centre. To make myself look in tip top shape on screen I was doing a lot of weights at the gym and consuming bucket loads of the bulk body mass products. I mean that stuff can really pile on the pounds. Unfortunetly I didn't really pay attention to an all over body program. I only worked on my upper torso. So I’ve got an incredibly defined top half and basically two giant sausages for legs. I’m tryna balance it out at the moment.”

“The trailer they’ve given me is enormous. Beats my old winnebago. So I get to hand pick all of my leading ladies and ,er...audition them inside my trailer. It's worked out very nicely for me. I haven’t told any of them that there isn’t actually a part for a leading lady, but you know they should do the research before they talk to me. Anyway in the movie I'm playing the part of a nasty spiteful, deceitful, smelly, bullying bass player from the band Gorillaz. So all the work I've put in as a method actor over the years has really paid off.”

“Yeah but the six months you spent learning ‘rapid water canoeing’ and shooting harpoons was a total waste. You should sue the guy who told you we we’re making ‘Deliverance II’. Fool!”

“Learning the harpoon is never a waste of time Russ. I was a natural! Noodle's had to put in a lot of work to make her Japanese accent sound convincing though. She’s been practicing her Samurai Sword fighting skills. She can now battle all creatures using just intuition. Even when blindfolded. She insists on doing all her own stunts.”

“Well I haven’t posted anything for ages. I couldn’t. I was in hospital. I really hurt my shin when I came off my bike during the filming of the 'Jump The Gut ' Gorilla Bite.”

“He’ll have to mime. So, yeah there is a film in production but we've had a couple of false starts. I mean it's like making a record. It's a long process. Plus you're dealing with Hollywood. It's the home of bankable profits.”

“An elephant's grave yard. Exactly!. I mean this is the city that made a remake of 'Get Carter'. But you know we've been through a lot of scripts and a lot of ideas. Halted production a couple of times. I mean at one point there's me and Murdoc both in chicken suits doing a Gorillaz remake of Richard Prior and Gene Wilder's comedy ‘Stir Crazy’. You just kinda get..”

“I forgot my costume one day and had to film a whole scene in my pants as punishment. I got my nob caught in the clapperboard. When the director yelled 'Action!' He got a lot more than he bargained for.”

“I can't believe some of the people they were thinking of getting to play me. John Craven even turned up at one point. I mean that guy must be pushing 70.”

“Except when Eddie Murphy turned up and asked if you wanted to borrow his 'Fat Guy' suit from the Nutty Professor but you couldn't fit into it.”

“All the Hollywood excutives want me to get my teeth fixed but I think they look fine and I can still drink beer through a straw with my mouth closed.”

“Anyway. The reason why weve got a new message board is because the old one needed a service. We do it every 5000 miles or so. But it's also important to have a new message every now and again.”

“A lot of people have also asked about why Kong Studios has been boarded up by the cops. Well its a long story. We were getting a lot of paranormal hassle while we were laying down some tracks for the new album. Apparitions. Hands coming out of walls. Doors bending. So the Police have quaratined the place until they can find out whats going on. What we do know is the studio was built on an old burial site.That combined with the fact the site itself was originally a dumping ground for old rubbish. Dead refridgerators, broken umbrellas, washing machines, all types of garbage. The place really stunk when we moved in. But while the cops have been investigating theyve found loads of bricked up rooms and new corridors. Theyve even found a room that was fire damaged from the previous owners. They were a gang of bikers called the Nomads and I think they tried to burn the place down during one of their all-night parties. Thats why we got the place so cheap.”

AAANNNNNDDDD I’ve given up so you can read the rest here https://web.archive.org/web/20120804175234/http://forums.gorillaz.com/viewtopic.php?t=125&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15 :P

#gorillaz #big slack #oh well #yes

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weekendwarriorblog · 4 years ago

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THE WEEKEND WARRIOR 4/2/21: GODZILLA VS. KONG, THE UNHOLY, OXFORD FILM FESTIVAL

I’m really not sure how I feel about doing the Weekend Warrior at quite the level I was doing last year. Even though the box office is slowly coming back, it’s still very frustrating to write about, and honestly, the Disney announcement last week about all the movies being delayed or dumped to Disney+ kinda brought me down. It just tells me that many studios are giving up on theatrical just as people have gotten so used to watching stuff at home, they don’t care about going out and being in rooms with other people, especially strangers. I guess I can understand that, but all the negativity that pervaded the narrative in 2020 is finally doing its damage as theaters reopen and some may have trouble even filling 25% capacity for some movies.

Then again, I’ve just come back from a weekend at the Oxford Film Festival, which became one of the first American film festivals to go in-person, although it is doing a bit of a hybrid in-person with virtual, so locals and a few out-of-of-towners (mainly me) were able to see all of this year’s great programming at one of the outdoor (and then indoor due to weather) venues. I was on the feature doc jury and got to see 11 terrific documentaries, some of which hopefully will get distribution and get out there, but why wait? While most of the movies are geoblocked to the United States (and some to Mississippi), there’s so much great programming to check out over the next month, and you can do so via OxFilm’s virtual cinema, which includes many great features and shorts. As far as the juries, I can highly recommend the Jury Prize winners, In a DIfferent Key, a fantastic film about autism directed by Caren Zucker & John Donvan, and the runner-up, Patrick O’Connor’s Look Away, Look Away, an amazing bi-partisan look at the fight to keep the Confederate-created flag of MIssissippi or change it, depending on your side of the fight. It’s a doc that really needs to be seen in other parts of the country. (Unfortunately, those are both geoblocked to Mississippi, as is Chelsea Christie’s Bleeding Audio, which tells the tragic story of the rise and fall of San Francisco’s The Matches and won for Music Documentary.) There are movies available everywhere in the United States though, and you can check out the full line-up of movies here.

Anyway, OxFilm gives me hope that there’s a future for theatrical moviegoing and as far as the box office, that hope comes in the form of the first holiday weekend since NYC and L.A. reopened as the Good Friday day off for most schools and Easter Monday that continues the vacation for others might persuade people to check out what’s happening in theaters, and fortunately, it’s a movie that’s so easy to market based on the fact that it has two of the biggest movie monsters facing off for the first time since 1963.

That’s right -- opening on Wednesday is the anticipated GODZILLA VS. KING KONG, starring… well, does it really matter who it stars other than Zilla and Kong? Probably not. The fourth movie in the Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. Monsterverse takes the star of 2017’s Kong: Skull Island ($168 million at domestic box office) and pits him against the title character of 2014’s Godzilla ($200 million) and 2019’s Godzilla, King of the Monsters ($110.5 million). MInd you, I just include those domestic grosses for reference, because even if we take into account that scary dip from Godzilla and its direct sequel, it won’t really matter when you take into consideration a little thing called…. COVID! We’ve already seen movies gross more than $50 million since everything shutdown

I already reviewed this over at Below the Line, so I don’t have much more to say in that regard. It’s good if you like giant monster fights but isn’t much beyond its amazing monster battles, which is why I won’t even mention the actors that appear in it or any of the characters.

Godzilla vs. Kong is probably going to be the widest release since COVID hit with 2,600 theaters on Wednesday and then expanded to 3,000 on Friday when Regal reopens many (but not all) of its theaters. While I expect it to do fine on Weds and Thursday, making probably $4 or 5 million, it should really explode on Good Friday, which should allow it to make somewhere between $18 and 20 million over the three-day holiday weekend, so let’s say $25 to 26 million before Monday.

Also opening theatrically, this one on Friday is the Screen Gems horror movie THE UNHOLY from Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures, the directorial debut by Evan Spiliotopoulos (writer of Disney’s mega-blockbuster Beauty and the Beast live action movie and the Rock’s Hercules ), who adapted the story from James Herbert’s novel “Shrine.” The movie stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan as disgrace journalist Gerry Fenn who is trying to get stories for a supernatural tabloid when he comes upon a deaf teenager named Alice (Cricket Brown) seemingly praying at an oak tree in a rural community in Massachusetts. When she seemingly gets her hearing back and is able to talk, word quickly spreads that she’s able to communicate with a benevolent Virgin Mary-like spirit that gives her the powers to heal. Since this is a horror movie, you can probably guess that things quickly get ugly and scary. THe movie also stars the wonderful Katie Aselton as a local doctor, who doesn’t do very many doctor-y things.

Before we get to my review -- and I’ll blame the review embargo on it for this week’s column being so late -- let’s talk about the movie’s box office potential, because religious horror-thrillers have quite a significant draw over a certain audience going straight back to the ‘70s with movies like The Exorcist and The Omen (the latter one of my all-time favorites) and The Unholy does dip into the toe of both of those. It’s been a long since there’s been one of those which might make this a draw for audiences into theaters, especially over Easter weekend -- that may be meant as irony -- but there’s also a little movie called Godzilla vs. Kong, which is just way more of a draw even with it being on HBO Max, but also because it’s likely to get better reviews. I’m not sure how many theaters Sony is getting this into, but I expect it’s somewhere around 2,000 or so, and that might be enough for the movie to make around $4 to 5 million this weekend, but probably VERY frontloaded to Friday.

Now let’s get to that review…

The Unholy begins with a flashback scene to “February 31, 1845” with a scene right out of the Salem Witch Trials of a woman being mutilated and strung up to a tree. This plays a very important role in a story that involves a fairly ludicrous premise that mostly involves Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s character finding something called a Kern Baby, essentially a porcelain doll wrapped in chains that he decides to smash in order to create a fake supernatural story about how smashing the doll causes crops to fail. In fact, smashing it releases the spirit of the woman we saw in that opening scene possessing a deaf teen girl named Alice who starts to heal everyone in her rural community, while also releasing the evil that had that woman’s spirit bound into the doll in the first place.

There isn’t that much more to say about the plot to a stupid horror premise so full of religious hokum as more characters get involved with trying to figure out if Alice is actually healing people or not. This includes the benevolent local priest Father Hagan, played by William Sadler, and a Bishop (really) played by Cary Elwes, who is using such a bizarre accent, kind of like a cross between the Bronx and a heavy Irish brogue, that it’s impossible to take his character very seriously.

Just knowing what studio garbage Spiliotopoulos has written did not make me very hopeful for his directorial debut, which is just all over the place in terms of tone and pacing, dragging at times and then throwing the type of cheap jump scares and schlocky CG horror creatures at the viewer with very little of it actually being very scary. " (The creature version of "Mary" just looks silly.) Besides being highly derivative, ripping off almost every religious horror movie, both bad and good, some aspects of the movie are so laughably bad that it’s hard to take much of it seriously. Worst of all, it ends with just a really horrible climax that reverses any good will the movie might have created with the casual young horror fans that usually like this thing. Honestly, I wouldn’t be shocked if it’s another one of those unrare “F” CinemaScores we see whenever a studio horror film doesn’t bother matching up to the quality of something like The Witch or Hereditary. Horror fans definitely want more than the usual these days, and The Unholy just seems like a lazy waste of time.

A movie that I’ve been looking forward to seeing and just haven't had time to watch is Emma Seligman’s SHIVA BABY (Utopia) that stars Rachel Sennott as 20-something Danielle who runs into her sugar daddy (Danny Deferrari) at a shiva with his wife (Dianna Agron) and their baby, as well as her parents (Fred Melamed and Pollyw Draper) and Molly Gordon as Danielle’s ex-girlfriend. It’s actually playing at the newly reopened Quad Cinema, so who knows? Actually I did watch Shiva Baby and was kind of disappointed. It seemed very twee and precious, and Sennott's character seems like the type of spoiled Millennial white girl that I hate in indie movies like this. I also just didn't find it particularly funny. Oh, well.

Streaming Friday on Netflix is Ricky Staub’s CONCRETE COWBOY, starring Idris Elba, Caleb McLaughlin and Lorraine Toussiant with McLaughlin being a teenager who moves in with his estranged father (Elba) in North Philadelphia where he learns about his passion for urban horseback riding.

Opening in New York (at the Angelika and Village East) on Friday and in L.A.and other cities on April 9 is the Oscar-nominated International Feature THE MAN WHO SOLD HIS SKIN (Samuel Goldwyn Films), written and directed by Kaouther Ben Hania, and starring Yahya Mahyni, Dea Liane, Koen De Bouw and Monica Bellucci. Tunisia’s submission is the story of Sam Ali, a Syrian who leaves his country for Lebanon to escape the war with hopes of travelling to Europe to be with the love of his life. To fulfill that dream, he allows his back to be tattooed by a contemporary artist that actually brings more trouble to the poor young man.

Hulu will debut the doc WeWork: or The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn (Hulu), which I still haven’t gotten around to watching but seems like an interesting subject for a doc.

A little closer to home at the still-closed Metrograph, they’re playing Claire Dennis’ 2004 film L’Intrus through April 8, and on Friday will open Sky Hopinka’s experimental debut maɬni – towards the ocean, towards the shore (Grasshopper Films) which follows Sweetwater Sahme and Jordan Mercier as they wander around the Pacific Northwest, mostly speaking in the Chinuk Wawa language. The latter is free to digital members ($5/month, $50 a year!) and $12 for non-members… pretty easy decision there, huh? Ms. Dennis’ film is also available to members.

Not only that, but New York’s Film Forum is also reopening this Friday with the double feature of Almodovar’s remastered Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and his new short The Human Voice, starring Tilda Swinton; the fantastic doc The Truffle Hunters; as well as his Fellini’s masterful Oscar winner La Strada (Janus Films, 1954), starring Anthony Queen and the wonderful Giulietta Masina! (That’s what I’ll be seeing this Sunday!) On top of that, Film Forum will continue its fantastic Virtual Cinema programming, which will launch Eric Roehmer’s A Tale of Winter (1992) this Friday with Roehmer’s A Tale of Summer (1996) joining the Virtual Cinema starting Friday April 9.

Got exciting news that Film at Lincoln Center will be reopening on April 16, but this week, they’ll be launching the latest edition of Neighboring Scenes, its annual series of Latin American films done in conjunction with Cinema Tropical. It’s 10 films that you can watch with an all-access pass for the low price of $80, and it usually has some good movies in the program.

A couple others out this week, including Funny Face and Every Breath You Take (Vertical), which I don’t even have time to look up what they’re about. Sorry!

That’s it for this week. Next week, Neil Burger’s sci-fi coming-of-age thriller, VOYAGERS, will hit theaters.

#the weekend warrior #godzillavskong #theunholy #movies #reviews #streaming #shivababy

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