#science fiction crime and mystery

[driveintheaterofthemind]

5 Random Pulps

[amoebaforce]

Cat/Mouse

Part 3 of 4 (Part 1) (Part 2)

After a string of bold thefts rocks the Edenite art scene, veteran hunter Nadine picks up the bounty of a lifetime. Fifty thousand credits, just to capture the elusive thief and bring her in alive. It should be an easy job... but one look at her mark tells Nadine she might have bitten off more than she can chew. On a space station full of secret dealings, dirty money, and luxurious lies, it seems even the simplest contracts are prone to complication. tags: minor violence, mentions of death

Stepping past the security guards that flanked the auction house doors, a frowning Nadine tugged on her shirt collar for what felt like the hundredth time. Despite the beads of sweat pooling uncomfortably at the base of her spine, heat was not the issue. It wasn’t even her clothes, really. Sure, the sharply pressed, snugly cut silk-blend suit was a far cry from her normal leather jacket and jeans. But it fit well, boasted enough pockets to hide all her necessities, and, according to Xerxes, cost enough to assimilate her with all the rich people milling about. 

No, tonight Nadine had nothing to blame but her nerves. After a week of planning, colluding, and gearing, the wait was finally over. It was time to perform. Nadine steeled herself, trying not to think of all the ways that her and Xerxes’ plot could go awry. Reminding herself of all the contingencies, back-up plans, and emergency exit protocols. Her frown deepened. 

Then, as if on cue, the tiny communicator nestled in Nadine’s ear crackled to life. 

“Don’t look so constipated,” Xerxes scolded, voice tinny and thin through the line. “You’re supposed to be a dapper art collector, not a scowling brute.”

Nadine fought the urge to roll her eyes. Her boss broke through the auction house’s firewalls almost an hour ago, commandeering the cameras so he could be her eyes for the evening — and already he was abusing the privilege. A snarky reply sizzled on Nadine’s tongue, but she knew it was worse than pointless. The earpiece only worked one way. That was certainly by design; Xerxes simply loved a captive audience.

A quick upward glance showed Nadine his vantage points. One tiny surveillance camera over the door she’d entered, and a pair of larger models at the top of the lobby’s central staircase, angled for a sweeping view of the red-carpeted floor and white marble columns. With that set-up, Xerxes could scan the faces of every single guest the moment they arrived.

And boy, were the guests arriving. There must have been a hundred people in the lobby alone, hailing from a half-dozen different planets. All were dressed to the nines, covered in silks and velvets and furs, dripping finery from every place it could drip. In the last five steps, Nadine had passed a cluster of laughing Federation delegates, three different CEOs, and a pair of Edenite celebrities — not to mention the myriad socialites, collectors, and art dealers hanging around, too. And any one of them might be in cahoots with the thieves.

The bounty hunter wove her way through the crowds, dodging hors d’oeuvres-toting waiters in black tuxedos, until she reached the foot of the staircase.

“Go up, then hang a left,” Xerxes instructed. “Take the third door on the right.”

Nadine took her time climbing the steps. Rushing would only draw attention to herself, and besides, a little piece of her wanted to savor the moment. Despite all the films and stories insisting otherwise, her line of work was rarely glamorous. Most of Nadine’s time was spent reading files, researching marks, renewing certifications — and waiting. So much waiting. Waiting for things to happen, people to arrive, crimes to be committed, businesses to close or open…

Nadine couldn’t possibly tally the hours.

So when presented with a moment like this, Nadine always languished in them. She let her eyes sweep over every head, admiring each decadent outfit and glittering accessory. Snippets of conversations lapped over her like waves:

“–had quite an impressive return, sir.”

“My assistant will send a note to your assistant, ambassador–”

“–and you simply must holiday on Caxal! The beaches are lovely this season.”

“Three million starting bid? That’s all?”

Nadine paused on the landing, a familiar ache gathering in the pit of her stomach. Her knuckles turned white around the railing. 

For one fleeting season of Nadine’s life, she had labored under the delusion that she could fit in with people like this. That she might wear their opulent dresses and speak their money-rich jargon, comparing achievements and accolades in their lavish places. That she could have a beautiful, fabulous life, just like them. But that season ended a long time ago, and Nadine had a job to do.

With the fluid grace of a jaguar, a passing waiter slid to a stop behind her.

“Crudité, ma’am?” he offered, extending his tray.

The bounty hunter shook her head. She could hardly even look at him.

“No, thank you,” Nadine replied softly.

The waiter nodded and breezed away. With a stuttering sigh, Nadine jammed her hands in her pockets and carried on toward her destination. Third door on the right. When she got there, she found a partition that was double her height, three times her width, and meticulously carved from one solid length of wood. Exquisite. Expensive. The door was open, swung wide on its brass hinges to invite prospective buyers inside. Nadine’s earpiece crackled again.

“Damn,” Xerxes muttered. “Looks like the early birds are here for their worms.”

Nadine frowned, spotting the same problem as she strode into the auction hall. Though there were still twenty minutes until the first item hit the podium, a handful of bidders had already taken their seats. Mostly older folk, she noticed, or otherwise serious-looking characters whose fidgeting was wearing anticipatory grooves into their paddle handles. The atmosphere in here was tenser than the air of carefree schmoozing permeating the lobby. These people were here to win — and really, Nadine couldn’t blame them. After seeing some of the pieces up for auction tonight, she wished she had a few million credits to throw around, too.

“You’ll have to distract these snobs if you want to get into the passageway,” Xerxes said, as if Nadine hadn’t figured that out herself.

But how? Any help Xerxes could provide would definitely draw too much attention. Anything too drastic risked spooking the target back into the shadows, but something too ordinary wouldn’t give Nadine enough time to enter the back hallways.

Be logical, Nadine, the bounty hunter chided herself. Stack the deck in your favor.

She rubbed her fingers together, callouses scraping against the soft lining of her pockets, and set off sauntering up the middle aisle. Her unscuffed rubber soles snapped brightly on the marble flooring, dragging a few sets of eyes up from their auction catalogs as she passed. Only one pair lingered. They belonged to another Terran female, tall and lithe, with an ice-blonde bob that shimmered along her jaw as Nadine caught her attention.

Her vibrant green irises traced Nadine from head to toe, burning hot with intrigue, but the shiver her gaze incited was decidedly cold. Normally, Nadine would unequivocally appreciate the interest of a beautiful female, but right now, being ogled was entirely against her needs. The hunter paused at the front row, pretending to survey the empty seats as she racked her brain for ideas.

But before any ideas revealed themselves, the luxurious female was rising from her seat, expression growing more and more hawkish by the microsecond. Nadine swore under her breath. How the hell was she supposed to access a hidden door under these conditions? Her admirer slinked into the aisle, hips swaying through her column gown. Nadine’s eyes darted about the room. She was swiftly running out of ways to avoid a conversation — until, by the grace of some unknowable entity, a tiny black shape came skittering in through the door.

It was… a Terran dog. A poodle. Someone’s treasured pet, miniscule in size, fur shaved into patterns and bedecked with pink bows, and it was barking like a rabid beast. The creature sprinted down the aisle, dragging along a sparkly leash with no owner attached. Every head in the room snapped toward the racket — including the beautiful female’s. 

She and several others let out cries of surprise. From the hallway echoed a shrill scream. The dog barrelled blissfully on, right down the center of the aisle, like the galaxy’s most annoying heat-seeking missile.  

Nadine’s admirer was the first to move. She made to dodge; so did the poodle. And to Nadine’s benefit, and no one else’s, the two opponents dodged in the same direction.

The collision was exquisite. The dog wove half-way through the female’s ankles, knocking her slim frame immediately off balance. As she careened toward the floor, her stiletto heel came crashing down upon the poor little poodle’s perfectly manicured paw. The creature screeched. The female let out a foul expletive, and with a sickening thud, each of their bodies hit the hard marble ground.

The room exploded into noise. Every onlooker moved at once; chair legs squeaked as people rushed to help the poor unfortunate female, or the poor unfortunate dog. Nadine clapped her hand over her mouth, a laugh trapped in her trachea. When she forcibly tore her eyes from the chaos, her legs were already carrying her backward. The end of a laugh sparked through her earpiece.

“Holy shit,” Xerxes howled. “You’re the luckiest bastard in the quadrant.”

Nadine couldn’t help but agree. 

With no time to spare, she booked it to the left-hand side of the podium, where a rich tapestry covered the length of the wall. The hunter ducked behind the fabric sheath and found precisely what she needed: a thick metal door. A numbered keypad was perched above its handle.

“Two-seven-three-six-nine-four-one-nine,” Xerxes recited.

The numbers flashed green as the combination was accepted. A knot unwound itself in Nadine’s gut, and she pushed her way through with a sigh of relief. The door closed behind her, silencing all the chaos.

“There are fewer cameras down here,” her boss said. “Only at the main junctions. I’ll watch your back as best I can, but keep a low profile. Head to the right, then go down the first set of stairs.”

Nadine took a breath and obeyed. Every second she wasted was a second Ulu’zah gained. She had to get to the basement, to the vault, where all of tonight’s pieces were waiting. They’d been in there for four weeks straight — save for a few days ago, when they enjoyed an eighteen-hour stint of final appraisals and buyer previews. A luxurious span of time. Any two-bit thief might think to swap the fake in then, rather than opt for tonight’s shorter, riskier window.

But Ulu’zah was no two-bit thief. She knew better than to strike when her target was expecting to be robbed. Yes, the piece she wanted had been out in the open on preview night, but there were twice as many security personnel and staffers to dodge. If Ulu’zah posed as a buyer, she’d be expected to ask questions and shmooze the brokers, which might give someone a reason to remember her face. Plus, the auction house never moved things back to the vault until every guest was gone, so slipping away from such a controlled crowd would be nigh impossible. 

Yes, pulling the job tonight was the right move. And it made Nadine’s job easier, too. She’d have to thank the thief later.

Distant footsteps and muffled laughter sent Nadine diving for the nearest doorway. As she tucked herself out of sight, Xerxes spoke softly in her ear.

“Two security guards,” he reported. “They’re crossing at the next junction up. Be still until they pass.”

Obediently, Nadine waited for the sounds to fade before slipping back out. She kept her head clear the rest of the way, listening for any more patrols, but she didn’t hear so much as a peep before she reached the basement.

“Just as we suspected,” Xerxes chimed as she neared the goal. “Both vault cameras just had their feeds spoofed. The virus has been deployed.”

Nadine blew a slow, silent breath from her nose, reaching out for the handle. The plan ran through her head all over again. When she stepped through this door, Xerxes would lock it behind her. Deactivating the hyper-targeted virus would give away his presence in the system, so he wouldn’t see anything from here on out. No matter what happened in the vault, Nadine would have to handle it on her own.

Just like old times, she thought.

The door swung open at the push of a finger, gliding silently on its hinges. She made to take a step, but a memory danced through her head: a dark alley; a spray of lilac and gold. Nadine stooped down and untied her shoes. Tucking the polished leather derbies under her arm, she slinked through the doorway in her socks, slow and quiet.

The vault beyond was cavernous. Fifty feet wide with a forty-foot ceiling, and occupied almost completely by the biggest safe she’d ever seen. Nadine had studied the manufacturer’s blueprints — chromium alloy walls over eighteen inches thick, two computerized combination locks, a spinning door so large it took two people to turn the handle, linings that protected against fire and water and bullets — and still the real thing was larger than she expected. It could’ve been a bomb shelter, if it weren’t stuffed full of priceless art. 

But Nadine wasn’t really looking at the safe. All she could see was the tiny female standing beside it, her purple face peeking out of a blue coverall as she tinkered with a strange cube-shaped machine. The device had a set of buttons and switches on one side, while branching cyan grooves covered the other five. Nadine felt her heart seize in her chest, then kick back up into a thunderous rhythm.

There she is, her mind screamed. Just a few strides away. You could grab her, you could stop this. Right here, right now.

But she wouldn’t. Not yet.

The door sealed itself with a gentle click. As if shaken from a trance, Ulu’zah started and  whirled her head toward the noise. As her eyes met Nadine’s, the thief’s face flushed violet. The tendrils framing her cheeks shivered.

“You,” she hissed.

Ulu’zah sidled backward a half-step, but there was no fear in her voice. Only urgency, and a strange hint of anxiety that Nadine knew was meant for another. The thief’s gaze flickered between the box in her hands and the hunter blocking her exit.

“Me,” Nadine agreed. She could practically see the questions and insults running through the Diralith’s mind. The hunter lifted her open palms. “Before you start punchin’ — just hear me out, would ya?”

Ulu’zah stole a glance at the locked door, then scowled at Nadine as if to say, What choice do I have? She checked her watch.

“I need to be out of here in three hundred seconds.”

“Hey, don’t let me stop you.”

A baneful pause. Ulu’zah let out a sigh and turned back to her machine. “Fine. Talk.”

Nadine’s heart skipped a handful of beats. If she kept up this lucky streak, she might just buy a lottery ticket on the way back to her hotel. She skirted a little nearer to Ulu’zah, careful not to come on too strong.

“You don’t have to do this, Ulu’zah,” Nadine started. The Diralith rolled her eyes.

“Oh, come on — we’ve been over this.”

“There are other ways to settle a debt.”

“You don’t think I tried a few before I settled on stealing?” she countered. 

But Nadine expected that. “Actually, I know you did.”

Ulu’zah glared over her shoulder.

“Like I said before, Terran,” she spat, “you might’ve read some stupid file, but you don’t know shit about me.”

With that, Ulu’zah pressed a button on her little machine and slapped it to the side of the safe. It stuck there as if magnetized, grooves glowing with bright blue light. Nadine watched in subtle shock as the cube split into quadrants with an electric zap. As the corners expanded away from one another, the section of wall it encompassed began to fizz and distort, and Nadine realized precisely what this was.

A portable space-time distorter. Manufactured by the W’althiri and illegal to possess on every Federation planet, it worked like hypertuned teleporters, converting a carefully calibrated amount of matter into base atoms and beaming them elsewhere to carve passage through walls of nearly any thickness. Distorters were unobtrusive enough to bypass most security alarms and triggers, making them the favored toy of traffickers and private armies galaxy-wide. This was the first one Nadine had ever seen in person.

When the quadrants reached their maximum spread, the energy stretched between them sparked and sizzled, and suddenly Nadine was staring at a yawning gap in the metal. She whistled to herself.

“Yer boss really brought out the big guns, huh?”

“Shut up,” Ulu’zah replied, and walked right through the wall.

Nadine sighed. “Okay, ouch. I’m here to help, y’know.”

“Oh? And how do you plan to do that?”

Nadine sucked her teeth and hurried after the thief, but Ulu’zah was taking her time — hard out be damned. Nadine didn’t blame her. There was a whole museum’s worth of art in here: paintings, statues, textiles, mosaics, jewelry, manuscripts, triptychs… But tonight, they were only here to see one little piece.

“Well, there’s an easy way and a hard way,” Nadine finally answered. “Easy way goes like this: you surrender to the Feds, accept a plea deal in exchange for intel on your posse, they arrest his ass, and I come visit you in prison for the next five to ten.”

Ulu’zah barked out a laugh as she made her way deeper. “You’re making a lot of assumptions there, hunter. The Feds won’t let me off that easy — and they definitely won’t catch Rock.”

“Right. Rock. I did some diggin’ on him, and wouldn’t you know it, the Fed’s have got a case against him goin’ back years. And not just for theft, Ulu. For fraud, embezzling, kidnapping, trafficking, assault, murder. Did he ever tell ya that, Ulu? That he shot a man on Eden II?”

The thief bristled and stopped, and for a moment Nadine thought her words might have gotten through. But then, she glanced at the dais beside them, and that thought was forgotten. 

Sitting below a cloche of glass was Ulu’zah’s prize: a cracked clay pitcher with an angular spout, decorated with faded white fish swimming atop a sea of amber and taupe stripes. The females blew out identical breaths, their annoyances fading to background noise.

“There it is,” Ulu’zah whispered.

“It’s beautiful,” Nadine said. “The auctioneers claim it’s Mycenaean, but you and I know it’s really Early Minoan, eh?”

The Diralith shot her a baffled look, then started rooting around inside her waist-pack. “I know that, sure — but how do you?”

She produced a little parcel and unwrapped the paper to reveal another pitcher, identical in every way to the first. A little twang of wonder struck Nadine in the gut; Ulu’zah’s work was impressive through a screen, but in person it was downright astounding. Every detail was exactingly crafted, down to the chip in the rim and the wear patterns in the varnish. It wasn’t just a fake. It was a masterpiece. 

Ulu’zah reached for the cloche, but Nadine’s fingers were already on the handle, lifting the glass dome from its resting place. The hunter smiled. 

“You ain’t the only gal who’s been to art school.”

If Ulu’zah had balked any harder, she might’ve dropped her fake. “What?”

“Yup. Matter of fact, me and you got the same alma mater. Well, technically I never graduated, but you know what I mean.”

The Diralith swapped the pitchers with gentle fingers, shaking her head in disbelief, then wrapped the real one up and tucked it in her bag.

“You’re telling me you went to ECAD?” she jabbed.

Nadine was almost offended as she lowered the cloche. 

“What, you think I came out the womb with my bounty license? I’ve been doin’ this a long time, darlin’, but not that long.”

The females turned on their heels and rushed back to the distorted wall. Nadine’s earpiece squeaked into her skull.

“Running out of time,” Xerxes hissed. Nadine rolled her eyes and ignored him. As if she wasn’t checking Ulu’zah’s watch over her shoulder.

Ninety-eight seconds left.

“So,” Nadine tried again, “any thoughts on the easy way?”

Ulu’zah shot her a look. “Yeah, here’s a thought — you can either piss off and let me finish my job, or you can cuff me and leave me here for the guards.”

The hunter sighed.

“I was hopin’ you’d make a different choice.”

They stepped back out of the safe, and Ulu’zah deactivated the distorter. With a quiet whirr, its corners retracted and the wall was teleported back into place, seamless as the hunk of clay she’d placed inside.

“Well, Nadine,” the thief snipped, rolling the device in her open palm, “hoping only gets you so far.”

“You’re right, Ulu. That’s why us gals gotta have plans. Like this one.”

And in a flash, Nadine snatched the distorter from Ulu’zah’s hand and smashed it right onto the cold metal floor. The thief let out a strangled wail, lunging to stop her, but Nadine was already crunching the thing under her boot, strewing chunks of circuitry across the room. Ulu’zah’s eyes glazed with panic.

“No!” she cried. “Why the hell– You have no idea what you just did to me!”

Nadine dodged a wild slap, then caught Ulu’zah by the forearm and held her still. “I think I got a pretty good idea.”

Behind her, a sudden rush of energy proved her theory correct. Nadine turned, and there, standing amid the still-fading light particles of an unregistered teleporter, was none other than Web. Ulu’zah’s sleazeball Terran middle manager. He smiled under his sunglasses. 

“Ah, look who we have here,” he hummed, decidedly less frantic than his subordinate. He even had his hands in his pockets. 

How convenient. 

“Hey, Web,” Nadine said coolly. “How’s your thumb?”

He grinned and parted his lips around some snappy reply, but alas, Nadine didn’t let him finish. Once more her body acted mindlessly, sliding into martial form as she closed the distance between them. Web scrambled to defend himself, to pull his arms from the confines of his jacket — but Nadine had been thinking of this moment for seven long, long days, and no rushed defense could spare him her ire. She twisted, coiled, released.

And his jaw crunched spectacularly against her knuckles. Web spun on his heels and slumped heavily onto the floor, clutching his bleeding mouth. Ulu’zah gasped behind her hands. Nadine shook out her wrist and gritted her teeth at the way it smarted.

“Great skies,” Ulu’zah murmured.

“Right then,” Nadine said. “Time to do things the hard way.”

[czgif]

Jiří Menzel in Ferat Vampire (Upír z Feratu) 1982, dir. Juraj Herz IMDB

[theneondreaming]

Frank Black

Millennium

[movies-to-add-to-your-tbw]

Title: Austin Powers

Rating: PG-13

Director: Jay Roach

Cast: Mike Myers, Elizabeth Hurley, Michael York, Mimi Rogers, Robert Wagner, Seth Green, Fabiana Udenio, Mindy Sterling, Paul Dillon, Charles Napier, Will Ferrell, Joann Richter, Anastasia Sakelaris, Afifi Alaouie, Monet Mazur, Mark Bringelson, Clint Howard

Release year: 1997

Genres: comedy, science fiction, crime

Blurb: As a swingin' fashion photographer by day and a groovy British superagent by night, Austin Powers is the 1960s' most shagadelic spy, baby...but can he stop megalomaniac Dr. Evil after the bald villain freezes himself and unthaws in the '90s? With the help of sexy sidekick Vanessa Kensington, he just might.

[spookyspaghettisundae]

Only Echoes Remained

The dark of night was still hours away. Even so, the pine trees in these Appalachian woods conspired with a thick fog and gray skies to suffocate the light, coating their world in a gray mist.

Despite the wintry cold trapped inside the car, and the stench of cigarettes caked into every piece of fabric, Braylon Turner was sweating bullets. Leroy had told him to keep the old car’s lights off while they drove through the woods, up a meandering and narrow path into the dark heart of Bumfucksville, Nowhere.

Leroy was also sitting on the backseat with Jimmy “Changa” Chance, keeping the muzzle of a revolver jammed into the spot where Jimmy’s jawbone connected to his wiry neck.

Gun metal had scraped the skin raw there, turning it a deep and uncomfortable red. The skin around it glistened with sweat, just like Braylon’s creased forehead.

Whenever Braylon met Leroy’s gaze in the rearview mirror, Leroy looked cool. Cold as ice.

Grim in his expression, Leroy mostly stared ahead, as if he was driving the car himself, while he kept that gun close to Jimmy, keeping the smaller man in a one-armed bear hug. He not only lorded twice the body mass over their hostage, he had something Jimmy didn’t: Leroy used to work as a gun-thug for one of the local gangs.

Now, coal from the mines had turned the edges of his fingernails black. Like the fingernail on his index finger, curved around the pistol’s trigger with skill and grim certainty.

Certainty that he could squeeze that trigger, and certainty that he had no qualms of painting the backseats red with Jimmy’s insides, whatever consequences be damned.

Leroy carried all that in his aura. A darkness. He had shot and maimed and killed people before.

The car slowed. Its old brakes squealed as the vehicle stopped.

At a crossroads.

“Where to next?” Braylon asked.

“Right,” Jimmy squeezed out.

Braylon stepped on the gas and they continued on.

Jimmy started whining again. “Look, guys, you might not give a shit about how much trouble I’ll get in by doin’ this? But you don’t know who you’re fuckin’ with if you wanna go—”

“We know and we don’t give two shits, you lil’ rat-shit weasel,” said Leroy. “We better be there soon, like you said, or I’m about to give this lil’ gun a test drive on separating your brains from your brainpan.”

He gave a painful shove of the gun’s muzzle into Jimmy’s neck for emphasis.

“Okay! Okay! Jesus, fuck, calm down, man! You’ll get your money back, okay?”

Braylon flinched. He didn’t care about the money. He cared about the twitch in his fingers, the sickness in his stomach, and the yearning for his next fix.

The money had always only ever paved the way. The goal had always only ever been the sweet release of the soaring heights beyond that.

Leroy, on the other hand, fundamentally disagreed. He growled. The former gun-thug might have genuinely wanted to hurt Jimmy.

“Our money,” he growled. A strange way to put it, as it had been, at this point, Leroy’s money that Braylon had smoked. “You, what—you get your rocks off on squeezin’ some poor assholes for all their savings while they kill themselves?”

Jimmy protested much and pointed at the rearview mirror to accuse Braylon. “Look, man! Look! You tried to sell some o’ that product, like every other two-bit junkie, and here—”

Leroy jammed the gun into Jimmy’s neck again and sneered.

“Shut the fuck up, weasel. You gonna complain now about dogs be eatin’ dogs? You’re lucky if I let you walk outta all this alive. I put other shit-kickers six feet under for less.”

Braylon slowed. The curves of the dirt road were treacherous, the path littered with muddy ditches—one mistake, and they’d get the car stuck, stranding them in some backwater woods for days. According to Martha, there was a clan of cannibals living out there, too.

Dirt and grit from the coal mines marked Braylon’s fingernails just like Leroy’s. Shaky hands danced between the weathered old steering wheel and the stick shift as he switched gears, making the car snake more slowly through the forest.

Leroy hissed at him.

“Don’t fuckin’ slow down now, man. We got places to be.”

“Why’d you… why’d you d-do this, anyway?” Braylon stammered out.

Leroy didn’t answer. He glowered into the rearview mirror, meeting Braylon’s gaze.

“Keep your eyes on the road, man.”

Braylon knew better. He did as Leroy said.

Part of Leroy just wanted his money back, but they were friends. They had been digging coal together for the past two years, drinking together sometimes, and sharing their grievances and grief in all the quiet moments in between.

Leroy had given up on his old dreams of big money. Whatever he was doing now, with Jimmy in his iron grip, he was doing all this for him.

His meaty fist dwarfed the silvery pistol in his clutches, just like he dwarfed the spindly Jimmy in his grip on the backseat.

Braylon licked his salty lips, hungry for some kind of freedom, hungry for the impending release he envisioned to be awaiting him at the end of this road.

That’s why he did as Leroy said. He kept his eyes trained on the prize, on wherever the dirt road curved around the trees and frosty mounds. He pictured himself inhaling those poisonous clouds of smoke, and finding the release from his lousy life that it always brought him, however ephemeral, however temporary—however harsh the crash back into reality ever followed. Time bled from future into past.

He’d soon be doing that, sitting on a porch, inhaling toxic smoke. Flying high, on strange wings, all horrendous pain be damned.

And then, they were there.

A small, old cabin awaited them in these woods, separated from a smaller shed. A rusty old pickup truck stood parked in the driveway. Ice had turned old leaves and pine needles into spiky clumps of dirt all around.

Even the snow stayed away from these grounds.

A bald, old, and grizzled-looking man stepped onto the cabin’s porch, sporting a stained apron and foggy plastic goggles strapped over his eyes. His silvery beard looked unkempt, but long, and speaking volumes of a long life to boot.

His rubber-gloved hands held nothing. His whole posture portended a quiet power, a certainty to rival the grim reaper’s very own image. The old cook stood still like a statue, staring at their car as they arrived, pulling onto his sorry lot.

The goggles and his stony expression masked whatever the old cook might have been feeling or thinking while he watched the three men emerge from the car.

Braylon, a sweaty and haggard mess he had never seen before in his life.

Jimmy “Changa” Chance, another sweaty mess, whom Leroy had beaten bloody enough to not kill him outright, but just bloody enough to make a point. Was his nose broken? He had sure complained about it enough on the long ride over.

And Leroy, of course—a mountain of muscle and bad attitude, exuding a cosmically dark aura, yet dressed simply in a plaid jacket and dirty jeans, like he had just crawled out of the coal mines where he worked with Braylon.

“Jimmy,” said the old cook, drawling out the name with deliberate contempt. Slowly, deliberately, he started removing his rubber gloves. Even slower than that, he said, “Never a pleasure to see your dumb ass ‘round these parts. Now, to what do I owe this dishonor? Thought I had made myself clear about our… business arrangement.”

Jimmy scoffed. It almost surfaced as a laugh, cut short when Leroy shoved him, forcing him down onto his knees, where the frozen dirt crunched.

Leroy answered in his stead. “Listen up, and listen carefully. I don’t give a shit whatever the hell your old business arrangements were, ‘cause we’re here for a different kind o’ business. The business o’ gettin’ our money back, and the business o’ getting my good friend here some o’ the product he’s owed after this little rat-shit right here kept fleecin’ ‘im for the shirt on his back.”

The old cook lifted his goggles, revealing a steely, cold gaze. He studied Leroy. Then he scanned Braylon up and down, piercing his soul whenever they made eye contact, however brief.

The cook didn’t even spare Jimmy another glance.

He didn’t offer any words in answer.

Leroy squinted.

“You hear me, or are you hard o’ hearin’ in your venerable age?”

The old cook smirked, scoffed.

“Hear you loud an’ clear, stranger,” the old cook grumbled. “I can offer you product, but I can’t offer you money. Ain’t got nothin’ here. I put my money in the bank, just in case some yahoos like you show up, tryin’ to rob little ol’ me.”

Fear bubbled up in Braylon’s gut. His attention bounced back and forth between Leroy and the meth cook, losing hope in them winning whatever kind of match this was.

Leroy wiggled his nose and frowned. He shook his head.

“And by ‘bank’, you mean that mean son of a bitch over in that holler we passed on the way here, ain’t that right?”

The meth cook slowly nodded, eyes locked onto Leroy. He grunted in the affirmative.

“Tom, man, come on, man,” Jimmy started babbling. He slapped his hands together, and still being on his knees, looked like he was praying to Old Tom Reed, the meth cook, like he was praying to God alimighty. “Come on, man! Give ‘em somethin’! Give ‘em whatever they want, I’ll make it up to you, okay? You ever hear about what this guy here did? This is Leroy Morin, he—”

Leroy kicked Jimmy in the hollow of his back, sending him his knees down deeper, face-first into the dirt, where new streaks of blood soon seeped out of fresh scratches.

“Shut the fuck up, rat-shit, I ain’t in the mood. I’m only gonna say it one more time, then I’m sendin’ you to your maker.”

Leroy cocked the hammer of his revolver to underline his words.

Jimmy complied. He didn’t even dare to get up from his knees, staying there on the ground, with stray pine needles flaking with the dirt from his leather coat.

The cook slowly bunched his gloves together in a fist, pursed his lips, and nodded.

“Sure,” he said, yet he locked his gaze onto Braylon instead of the gun-toting man he was answering. “I don’t want no trouble, and I ain’t gonna seek no quarrel with y’all. My daddy ain’t raised me that way.”

It was like he could sense the disease in him. Not just the addiction, or the visible discomfort that rode in alongside the pestilent horseman of withdrawal. But the greater sickness, the one deep within, the creeping death…

Did he know?

Asked the cook, Tom Reed, with the gravity of an executioner, “You wanna sample my product, son?”

Braylon licked his lips.

Was the meth cook going to try anything funny?

It didn’t feel that way.

That stony gaze, that grave-like certainty. Tom Reed exuded a darkness even more misty and overwhelming than Leroy’s presence.

Braylon shot Leroy a glance. His friend returned a cold stare.

Leroy almost sang when he threatened the old cook. “No funny business, Tom. Give him his fix, and we talk shop. Ain’t nobody else need to get hurt today.”

Then it all happened so fast. Anticipation contracted all time, compacting it into a tiny cube. The addiction drove Braylon, carrying him atop the waves of his dreamy haze.

Agreements were made, though nobody shook hands. The tiny flame of the lighter was cold, so cold, but the smoke burned so good.

Before long, the smoke from the pipe rose to join the gray mists in the Appalachian woods, as Braylon sat on Tom Reed’s porch, inhaling his favored poison, and it began to cloud, and eclipse everything. The smoke and its poison ate away at the frayed edges of time, fraying them even further—

Twilight turned brighter, the voices of the men speaking turned sharper, clearer, and that clarity all spilled, washing over into Braylon’s consciousness.

The air out here had never been fresher. Why, why did he hate his home state so much? Even between the skeletal trees in winter, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by supposed cannibals, and backwater gun-thugs, Braylon now saw beauty in everything. A fleeting insight, but a powerful one nevertheless.

Another hit. He was soaring. His mind was soaring. He felt so alive, and all the shit in his life felt so far behind him, like it had never even mattered to begin with.

Braylon even embraced the beauty in the death awaiting him. The uncertainty of it entered his consciousness—how much had he spent on the meth when he could have saved up to have a doctor find out if he really had the cancer that haunted his nightmares?—yet his mind painted it all with beautiful strokes, vague and emotional, filled with love, and self-destruction in equal parts. Ethereal, spectral, human.

Sacred dirt. Frozen, crunching underfoot. Flying high. Men and insects were all alike under God’s vast sky, Braylon reckoned.

Another hit, and he was swimming. An ocean upon an ocean, floating on the waves above darkest depths, riding a high so high that he was inches away from touching God in the heavens with his very own fingertips.

Or his brain was bleeding on the inside.

Then the demons attacked.

Winged shadows, huge, swooping down from silver skies as shadowy streaks of death, cutting through the peaceful forests with their braying cries, and their tearing claws, and beaks shaped like swords of unholy judgment.

The men screamed, scrambling inside, and the unreality of Braylon’s trip admixed with the horrible reality of their situation.

They cowered inside Tom Reed’s cabin, hidden from those hell-beasts.

And whatever clarity Braylon had imagined to perceive from the others talking all around him, he now barely grasped whatever they were saying until a new panic gripped him—all his skin slick with sweat, and dripping with the stink of his terror—and Leroy’s meaty fist gripping him by the fabric on his shoulder, shaking a shred of sense back into him.

“What the fuck,” Jimmy blubbered. “W-w-what in the ever-loving fuck are those things?”

“Demons,” breathed Braylon, firm with belief. Harbingers of doom, arriving on their leathery wings to drag him to hell.

Drag him down for all he had done, to his wife and son, to his neighbors, and even, to some extent, to his only friend left, Leroy.

Had he said that all out loud, or just thought it?

“Shut up. You’re high as a fuckin’ kite,” growled his friend. Leroy added, “You got any guns in here?”

The question wasn’t meant for him.

Tom, the old cook, shook his head in response.

“Don’t need ‘em, don’t need more risks of blowin’ my place sky-high when I got—”

Leroy snarled, “You fuckin’ kidding me? I only got this six-shooter, I don’t know how the fuck I’m supposed to take down even one o’ those things. They are gargantuan!”

Tom Reed peered out a window, hiding in the shadow of the corner nearby.

The old man kept his voice down, but failed to mask any hint of irony when he said, “I’d say ‘gargantuan’ is an exaggeration, but each of ‘em is about as big as your car, I reckon.”

By contrast, there was no exaggeration in his description. One of the two beasts had pounced on Braylon’s old Dodge, crushing the metal and blowing all windows out of their frames. The creature unfurled its massive wings to a frightening span, creating a menacing silhouette perched upon the car’s wreckage.

The other beast screeched from atop the cabin’s roof. More dust rained down when it pounded against the wood, thumping around, seeking a way inside.

“No, seriously though, what the fuck are those things?” Jimmy asked again. His voice shook like someone stuck in a powerful earthquake. “Lemme go! We can make a run for it, lemme go!”

His cheek smooshed against the dirty floors of Tom’s cabin, as Leroy kept Jimmy buried underneath him with all his weight and mass, pinning him down with his gun still leveled at Jimmy’s neck—as if he had to fear Jimmy running away more than the terrible creatures outside.

Braylon himself, he couldn’t make any sense of it. He curled up into a fetal position underneath a table, as if that would help anybody.

“Christ, man,” Leroy snarled, “get a grip.”

Time had stopped contracting. Now, it expanded, stretching thin, reaching into a dark infinity. Was this death? A different death than he had always envisioned for himself, a quiet darkness instead of the beeping devices all around him while he rested on a hospital bed?

Even so, Braylon had not seen how Leroy got up, releasing Jimmy, or how they had argued, screaming at each other, while more dust rained from the ceiling, because the beast trampled upon the roof, flapping its furious wings.

When the tears had started streaming, and clouding Braylon’s vision, he would never be able to say with certainty, for he screwed his eyes shut more than once in despair, clouding his sight entirely, turning everything into the senseless blur and cosmic joke that reality had descended into.

Jimmy ran from the cabin’s front door after their screaming match, panting in panic as he ran towards the trees, hoping to evade the winged beasts by seeking other cover.

“Idiot,” Leroy had muttered, peering outside after his lost hostage, mere seconds before the carnage.

The beast that had trashed Braylon’s car pounced on Jimmy—he didn’t even make it halfway to the trees. Claws shredded him, and a long, blade-like beak picked away at his insides. Thrashing human limbs turned limp. Mighty wings flapped; once, twice, always beating like thunderclaps, as the flying monster lifted off again, carrying Jimmy’s mangled corpse into the misty air.

Blood still splattered to the ground with red chunks before the creature disappeared with him.

“That’s a dinosaur,” Tom Reed muttered, wagging a finger at the foggy window, and taking fearful steps back away from it.

“Bull-shit,” Leroy drawled out in a snarl.

His eyes flashed with horror. The horror of helplessness, of not knowing what to do, or how to escape their predicament. They were under siege by these two beasts.

The pistol in his hand never looked tinier.

His eyes also flashed with knowing, with recognition. A glance he shot Tom’s way only confirmed that he believed what the meth cook had just said, even if he claimed the opposite. Even if he repeated it.

Tom didn’t bother disagreeing. He kept his eyes on the space outside.

The stretch to his old pickup truck. Short enough to make the run, but so far away that the creature on the rooftop could snatch any of them like the other had taken Jimmy.

Then more dust rained from the ceiling, and the wood of it began to groan and crack. The silhouette of that sword-beaked beast painted itself against the gloomy gray sky where its claws tore open a hole to the outside, and it screeched—

A screech so blood-curdling, so high-pitched, it made Braylon’s blood boil. He burned with dread, and he grew wings, wings to carry him away.

The haze never helped him, it never truly had. Like all other addicts, it was more convenient to believe the contrary, though. He always ran from his troubles, soared higher above the highs that he inhaled from his meth pipe, thinking that those troubles all looked so small and insignificant from the loftiest of heights.

His wings, they carried him outside. The high made him feel faster, stronger, luckier. Happier. Maybe if he just believed hard enough, the imagination would become a truth.

He remembered his son’s smile as he ran from Tom’s cabin. Braylon ran despite Leroy’s shouts, despite his only friend trying to stop him from running out into the woods.

Alone.

Some part of Braylon understood everything, but the high eclipsed the low. It was almost like he could see himself from the outside, a little man, a loser running away, running for his life. Pathetic, yet capable of survival.

He ran like hell and he made it. Unlike that little rat Jimmy, Braylon made it to the trees. And beyond.

The last he saw of Tom’s cabin was a glimpse of that winged hell-beast, rampaging on the cabin’s rooftop, shredding wood and sending splinters flying in every direction. The firecracker’s clap of Leroy shooting at the beast from inside the cabin. And the creature, high on its own bloodlust, perhaps distracted by a bullet, didn’t even notice Braylon running away.

And the silhouette of the other, carrying Jimmy’s corpse into misty hell, was long gone. Had he imagined it? Was all of this just a nightmare he was about to wake up from?

Braylon’s lungs screamed at him.

How long had he been running? Moments, minutes, or hours? His sides hurt, his feet barked, and fresh blood coated his hands wherever he had scratched and scraped his leathery palms on the dry, cold wood of the infinity of trees around him.

The woods spun in endless circles, and dizziness set in.

Had he truly gotten away, or just slipped into another purgatory, descending ever closer to hell?

The high was gone. Reality kicked him in the back, and the stomach, and the teeth.

Braylon was hurting all over, and his lungs would not permit him to run any farther. Guilt gripped him, and wind cut like a knife against the cold sweat on his forehead, all squeezing him down to his heart—

He had abandoned his only friend. He had abandoned Leroy.

As much as the world spun around him, he spun around in the opposite direction, lost in the woods, recognizing nothing, oblivious as to where to go.

He wanted to run back, to Tom’s cabin, to find and help Leroy, so they could both get the hell out of there. Or was he just selfish again? Knowing he couldn’t make it on his own?

How the hell could he have left him behind like that? What kind of monster was he?

“The pathetic kind,” he muttered to himself, in the middle of nowhere, crashing down onto his knees, sorrier than ever before in his sorry life.

More moments or minutes passed, and clarity crystallized with the same cutting coldness as the wintry winds howling all around him.

That’s when the chittering and scuttling sounds began. The shuffling, the squeaking, the chirping.

Buzzing.

Wings, far tinier than those of the pterodactyls that had attacked Tom’s cabin.

Swarms of them.

The forest grounds teemed with strange life. Insects the size of dogs covered those frozen grounds, swarming, chittering, chirping, and closing in on Braylon. From every side.

They vaguely reminded him of locusts with their sleek green limbs, but also of wasps for their slender, and deadly-looking shapes. Sticking to the ground, they scuttled and swarmed towards him.

And in that moment, Braylon felt no more panic. Only resignation. He knew deep down his time had come.

Still dizzy, he spun around, seeking for another way to run, and quickly giving up, surrendering to the bleak reality of his situation. The inevitability of it engulfed him.

It was almost liberating. With no decisions left to make, he only tasted his own sickness, and accepted defeat. He still hurt all over, and there was no way he could fight and win against these… things. There were so many of them.

He would try— just like a final gasp escapes the dying lungs—he would thrash and fight back, powered by the same animal instinct that drives any creature under the sun to fight back in the face of their impending doom. Future and past melted into present, coalescing with growing clarity.

Before the inevitable fight to delay his death, he saw no escape. The swarm of these huge locusts was all around him, offering nowhere to run to, no possibility of getting past the living flood of buzzing wings and snapping mandibles.

They were so fast as they scuttled towards him. He never could have outrun them, not even in the wildest dreams that came with his highs.

“I’m so sorry,” was the last thing he managed to utter.

Braylon wasn’t even sure whom it was meant for.

Everybody, probably.

Then the swarm converged on him and buried him alive. Started eating him alive. Snapping mandibles tore at flesh. The buzzing drowned out everything but the screams.

His own screams eclipsed his every thought for the next few minutes until he could scream no longer, and only echoes remained, coupled with the burning sensations of pain that accompanied him in the final moments of his gruesome death.

Echoes through time.

[theversevoyager]

Upon her return, secrets unraveled like petals of truth, revealing mysteries long forgotten. A family shattered by suspicion and doubt, now pieced back together with the glue of revelation. The past wove its way through hidden hallways, as whispers turned to screams in the quiet night. An ancient legacy, uncovered like bones beneath the earth, exposed the truth that changed everything. In 100 words or less, a tale of family, mystery, and suspense unfolded.

[elshells]

Agent Ace || Table of Contents

**For those of you who use Wattpad or AO3 as your preferred reading platform!**

Blurb and Author's Note Content Warnings Bonus Content ⬗

Chapter 1 || SOPHIA —‌Sophia Colbo, an agent of the Watch investigating the disappearance of a teenage boy, answers an anonymous tip in the dead of night.

Chapter 2 || HARLEY —‌Harley Manalis, a nineteen-year-old amateur inventor, returns to the city after six months of living with her eccentric uncle. But her homecoming takes an unexpected turn when she hears a stranger's voice in her head on the train, and after receiving more disturbing news from her best friend, she realizes that Harmont has changed in her absence, marking the beginning of her troubles.

Chapter 3 || SOPHIA —‌Sophia and Jet reunite, now imprisoned as hostages of the vigilantes. While Sophia begins to plot their escape, Jet reveals the cryptic information he has gained on their new enemy.

Chapter 4 || HARLEY —‌In light of her conversation with Jade, Harley discovers that a rogue vigilante has recently gained notoriety for a number of violent crimes done in the aftermath of Max's disappearance. Worse still, she learns that Sophia, her sister and the Watch agent assigned to track down the vigilante, has become unresponsive in the field.

Chapter 5 || SOPHIA —‌Sophia has a visitor who offers her an explanation, but at a price.

Chapter 6 || HARLEY -1- —‌Harley receives an urgent phone call from Sophia early in the morning. Her warning stirs her to action, but nothing could prepare her for what she would encounter once she stepped foot out of the house.

Chapter 7 || HARLEY -2- —‌Now caught in the fray, Harley is questioned about the incident at Jade's apartment. While she attempts to clear herself of any involvement in the crime, she comes to a realization with horrifying implications.

Chapter 8 || SOPHIA -1- —‌After giving in to Mulciber's threat, Sophia meets a familiar face that is just as eager to escape the vigilantes as she is.

Chapter 9 || SOPHIA -2- —‌If Sophia and Max hope to make it out of the vigilante complex alive, they'll need to take a leap of faith.

Chapter 10 || HARLEY —‌Jade is cleared from the medical ward, returning home three days after Harley's interrogation. Harley pays her a visit and discovers that Jade has a surprise waiting in store.

Chapter 11 || SOPHIA —‌Following their rescue by the Guard, Sophia and Max are placed under the Watch's care. Two days later, Sophia has a private meeting with the director of the Watch, but little does she know that she is unprepared for what he has to say.

Chapter 12 || HARLEY -1- —‌After a heartfelt moment in the city, Harley and Jade return home, unaware of the danger that awaits them there.

⬗

To be continued...

TAG LIST: @writernopal, @mysticstarlightduck, @livums, @wotchergiorgia Message me to be added or removed!

[blogmollylane]

Currently reading: The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

[driveintheaterofthemind]

5 Random Pulps

[amoebaforce]

SURPRISE!

Cat/Mouse is now on Wattpad!

After a string of bold thefts rocks the Edenite art scene, veteran hunter Nadine picks up the bounty of a lifetime. Fifty thousand credits, just to capture the elusive thief and bring her in alive. It should be an easy job... but one look at her mark tells Nadine she might have bitten off more than she can chew. On a space station full of secret dealings, dirty money, and luxurious lies, it seems even the simplest contracts are prone to complication.

**** Sapphic yearning meets futuristic noir as a seasoned bounty hunter tracks down the quadrant's most mysterious art thief. Updated every week until the story is over! TWs for violence, blood, alcohol consumption, mentions of death, and implied abuse. SFW but rated mature for language and themes.

Read it here!

[kevinsreviewcatalogue]

Review: Dark City (1998)

Dark City (1998)

Rated R for violent images and some sexuality

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2023/04/review-dark-city-1998.html>

Score: 4 out of 5

Dark City is a film that failed at the box office in its time and, despite a critical reevaluation as one of the hidden science fiction gems of the '90s, still gets overlooked quite often nowadays, for one simple reason: despite its mind-bending plot and creative visual design homaging classic '40s/'50s film noir, it had the misfortune of coming out just a year before The Matrix, a sci-fi masterpiece with very similar themes about what we think of as reality being just an illusion designed to control us. This film was a much more cerebral thriller whose effects shots, while no less visually impressive, were a lot less punchy and action-packed, instead feeling like if the first half-hour of The Matrix got stretched to feature length, given a retro gloss, and focused mainly on Keanu Reeves slowly peeling away the layers of his world, saving the big action sequence for the very end. It's a moody, foreboding film that built up to a great reveal while slowly imbuing the viewer with a paranoid suspicion that their own world may not be "right", and while the finale wrapped things up a bit too neatly and conventionally for my tastes with a rather silly-looking confrontation, the meat of the film was still a slick and highly effective tale that I won't forget anytime soon -- ironic, given what the villains here like to do to people.

The film takes place in an unnamed city with vaguely mid-20th-century technology, aesthetics, and feel, specifically the kind lifted out of a Raymond Chandler novel, a place where the streets are always cloaked in shadows even during what feels like it should be the daytime -- and hey, while you may have childhood memories of sunny days, when's the last time you saw the sun, anyway? We start with a man who wakes up in a hotel room with no memory, only figuring out that his name is John Murdoch from the ID in his wallet, surrounded by the corpses of dead prostitutes that he probably killed, which is not a situation that most of us would want to stick around for so they can calmly explain everything to the police. On the run from the law and searching for both Emma, a cabaret singer who he finds out was his wife, and Dr. Daniel Schreber, who he finds out used to be his psychiatrist, John gets pulled into a twisted web as he's pursued by the Strangers, mysterious, inhumanly pale-skinned men in hats and trenchcoats who he soon finds aren't entirely human, and who seem to control the city from the shadows and regard him as a threat to their plans. Meanwhile, Inspector Frank Bumstead sets out hot on the tail of the suspected murderer, not knowing exactly what he's getting himself into.

I can't really go into much more detail about the plot. Like a lot of old-fashioned mysteries, this is a movie where part of the fun is piecing the puzzle together yourself and then the film revealing how close you came to the truth, albeit one that puts a sci-fi twist on the usual noir story. I can, however, speak to the production values and writer/director Alex Proyas' sense of style, and on that front, I was at once pulled into the film's world and wondering what awful truths lay outside it. The city is the kind of seedy place you'd set a hardboiled detective story, exaggerated to the point where it feels like a warped parody thereof and creating an unsettling feel that this place should not be. Some of the supporting cast members having spotty American accents (this was shot in Australia), something I'd normally ding a film for, only lent to the uncanny valley feel of the city, as did countless other little quirks that made the place feel like somebody trying to draw a picture of a mid-century East Coast metropolis without any reference points as to what that would look like beyond old movies. And that's before you get to the Strangers who are after John, who wear conspicuous trenchcoats and have names like "Mr. Book", "Mr. Hand", and "Mr. Sleep" that sound like somebody tried to come up with ordinary-sounding "John Smith" names to blend in and... didn't pull it off, on top of their general weirdness and stilted manner of speaking calling to mind the G-Man from Half-Life. While it takes a while to get to the "why" of the titular dark city, the film lets you know rather quickly that this is not a normal city, and even before we get to the big special effects shots, Proyas did a great job right off the bat heightening its artifice and pale imitation of humanity. More than anything, it felt like I was watching the darkest possible film adaptation of The Sims, predating the first game by a couple of years but otherwise, without spoiling anything, taking some of the series' central concepts and playing them for paranoid horror.

The cast also did great in making this world feel just the right mix of real and artificial. Rufus Sewell as John, Jennifer Connelly as Emma, and William Hurt as Bumstead all felt like they could've been lifted out of a real 1940s film noir, while Kiefer Sutherland played Schreber as a character wholly unlike the take-charge heroes he's been coded as since 24, a dweebish doctor who serves as the main characters' bridge between the world they know and what's really going on through his exposition. The special effects were not the focus, but they were astonishing to watch for a fairly low-budgeted '90s film, especially a key sequence where we witness the city's buildings shifting around as the Strangers' true power over the city is made clear. Only at the very end did it feel like Proyas ran out of ideas, as John's final confrontation with the Strangers after unlocking his true power ended with them shooting beams of light at each other with their minds while buildings crumbled around them. It all felt pretty goofy, like they needed to find a way to wrap this up and have the hero prevail, even though if I was writing this, there are some seriously dark directions I could've taken the story. The ending, I feel, underlines the big reason why The Matrix was the big late '90s sci-fi movie about reality being a lie that everybody remembers; when it did similar battles between the good guys and bad guys, they came in the form of epic shootouts and martial arts sequences straight out of Hong Kong.

The Bottom Line

Dark City is a film that doesn't get talked up nearly enough, even if I can't really say much more in a non-spoiler review. Ending aside, it makes a great companion to The Matrix as a more cerebral and noir-tinged take on very similar concepts, one that will, at the very least, make it very difficult for you to play The Sims the same way again. A big thank you to Popcorn Frights for screening it last week. Check it out.

[readestory]

[clemsfilmdiary]

Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel / 'Hukkunud Alpinisti' hotell (1979, Grigori Kromanov)

2/8/23