#the endless parade of horrors for god and money

[wingedd20]

https://youtu.be/nSf3268tAbg

[mur-art]

For the music prompt: 10

I got the song "Gilded Lily" by Cults.

Did I stretch my interpretation of this song as an excuse to write angst about Hollywood!Cali? ...Maybe a bit.

Anyway, heavy angst ahead and TW for fun stuff like alcoholism, drugs, disordered eating, flashbacks, religious trauma, and possible implied body horror? idk. This fic goes to dark places so don't proceed if you're not cool with that.

Every city's got a graveyard

The service bought and paid for

Now I'm sleeping in the backyard

Passing out as night turns into day

Haven't I given enough, given enough?

Haven't I given enough, given enough?

The newspapers rave about the mysterious and alluring Cal Fremont, Hollywood's golden boy. He's got the power and charm to sway audiences. He's got a hypnotizing gaze that sells out theaters. He's in film after film– sometimes front and center, other times in the background, but he always steals the show. The years go by and his youthful beauty doesn’t fade. (It’s almost unnerving.) 

His life is an endless parade of agents and studios. They say he's "perfect," but never hesitate to tell him how much more perfect he could be. 

But by now, he's used to it. 

You have to behave yourself, the “holy” men said. You’re supposed to set a good example. You’ve been chosen by God for a higher purpose. Give up your sinful ways and follow our rules. Work hard. Keep your head down. Don’t fight back. 

The studio makes him sign a “morality” clause. Cal makes a long list of promises that he has no intention of keeping. He plays the perfect “boy next door” by day, whenever the cameras are on. It’s never enough to shut the rumors down. Cal has never been one to keep quiet and play by the rules. How can he, when the ones enforcing the rules have always been the ones who harm him the most?

It was exciting at first. People were coming from all over the world because he had something valuable: gold. But soon the excitement turned to fear. How far would they go to get what they wanted? Would they ever listen if he told them how much it hurt? Or would they forget about him the second they found something better? 

“He’s our most profitable star this year,” they say. He’s bringing the studio millions of dollars. They’re working him to the bone with long days, hot lights, and toxic makeup.  He’s given them all of himself, but they still demand more. How much more can he possibly give without giving up everything?

The rivers stopped flowing to the ocean. They were rerouted, dammed up for agriculture, channeled into aqueducts, their natural banks replaced with cold concrete. 

Some tabloid makes a snide comment about Cal's weight. He stops eating in front of people, replacing his cravings for food with a habit of binge drinking. No one cares. They just tell him how much better he looks now. They can’t see that he’s wasting away slowly. Even if they could, they wouldn’t care as long he was making them money. 

Vast fields of mustard bloom yellow every spring. It's beautiful, but it doesn't belong there. It's an invasive species, choking out the vibrance of the native flowers. 

Cal dyes his hair blonde to look the part. His agents tell him that it makes him look more "all-American." Every time he walks by a mirror, he checks the roots obsessively for any signs of his natural dark hair growing back. That would ruin the illusion, as they say. He tells himself he looks better this way anyway. Maybe if he repeats it often enough, he’ll actually believe it. 

The logging companies cut the redwoods. The beauty of the forests meant nothing to them; they saw the trees as profit, and nothing more. Sure, they might grow back, but will it ever be the same? 

They decide that his nose is "too wide," whatever that means. They give him some pills to take, and he wakes up days later in a daze with bandages on his face. When the swelling goes down, he looks at his face in the mirror and barely recognizes himself. They say he’s even more beautiful now. 

But no matter how beautiful he is, no matter how much he gives, no matter how he acts… he’ll never be good enough. They’ll always want

More

More

MORE.

But he has nothing more to give. 

Cal Fremont causes one last stir in Hollywood when he disappears under mysterious circumstances. The tabloids have a field day. Some say he overdosed; others say he died by his own hand. Others swear they’ve seen him in the decades since, seemingly having never aged a day.

[thejaha]

Early Microflix Story Proposals

Microflix story proposals:

Comedy horror film focussed on the relationship of the servo, cashier and the customer and their hierarchy of power

Customer subservient to cashier but servo being a god-like, eldritch agency that the cashier is attached to/ controlled by.

Cashier being a stereotypical scrawny, wispy-looking awkward teen and the contrast between how they view themselves (god-like in holding commodities from customers and wasting their time) and the reality of the situation (being controlled by the servo and berated by customers)

Main sequence: Cashier serving customer and tensions rising as the interaction goes poorly. Climax peaks and cuts to the underwhelming aftermath of the fight.

E.g. numbers ticking up, lights flicking, world warps around them, someone drops the gas pump (clunk as climax) and then cut to a far-away shot of a silhouette dragging someone through the back door of servo.

Other thoughts/Ideas

Story about little moments can lead to bigger unprecedented events (idea of being unaware of the endless alternate universes there are that can occur due to something as small as picking up a dollar from the ground)

Deity residing in a shitty, run-down gas station/corner store that parades around as a meek teenager.

Makes deals with people subconsciously either through:

Stealing possibilities, alternate universes to make something out of them or in exchange for a bigger catalytic event later (watches this on CCTV camera as a soap opera show – voyeuristic)

Food, gas supplies as instant serotonin boosts or has wisdom and advice imbued into it. Trades for money/time (would be fun if deity had their own issues to address)

E.g. Deity who gives advice but is unaware of their superiority/hero complex they have through giving what is essentially ‘armchair advice’ or hoarding habits of money and supplies in such a compressed space.

Stand-off scenario between one servo and another 

Based on research between eyes being more attracted to white points at night vs black points in the day

‘servo’ as a more abstract/divine place. 

Servo being its own divine entity and a focus on power imbalance

Cashier being a benevolent god and servo not needing him (cashier being disposable) but the system working in this way.

Servo as an island moving boxes to ship

Cashier carrying servo as a backpack to carry things

Servo as an eldritch being 

Cashier being part of the servo and being attached/moulded into it

Servo as a big machine, cashier being controlled and tied to it.

Character dynamic of teenager holding power over customers and this being why they tolerate the abuse of customers, higher-ups and the low wage

Cashier being in danger due to the fact he works in a servo

Servo as a pitstop -> fuels power dynamic (this one stop being the only thing around for the next three hours)

Not meant to be a slow process (time as currency)

Ignoring/slowing down and people getting food and supplies

Cashier being a god but being subservient to the servo -> Being attached to servo to show subservience

Idea of fossil fuels being in everything we own (traces of it in the process of making chips, packaging etc)

Gas runs almost everything -> the cashier feels power in restricting access to this commodity

Bleak and brutalist message 

Everything in the store being made of petrol, leaking and sludging around (cashier moving exceptionally slowly)

Idea of ‘Kings and the court’ and the ‘jester’ (scrawny cashier) manipulating the customers/servo from behind the scene

‘king’ figure (manager/servo equivalent) wasting away while a pimpled teen enacts vengeance

Servo as a shrine for a god 

Building religious artefacts out of snacks and crumpled bills/grotty coins

Cute miniature servo model that has little changes 

E.g. car appears in parking lot of model after one appeared in real life

[7r0773r]

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry

I would have to say it was lovely how the town composed itself to welcome us. They had set banners all along their little street and they lit lanterns they had made from old packing paper, the candles burning in them like souls. The padre made a huge prayer out in the open and the whole town went down on its knees, right there, and praised the Lord. This was the section of humanity favoured in that place, the Indians had no place no more there. Their tickets of passage were rescinded and the bailiffs of God had took back the papers for their souls. I did feel a seeping tincture of sadness for them. I did feel some strange toiling seeping sadness for them. Seven hours off buried in their pits, the redwoods towering, the silence pitted by birds and passing creatures. The solemn awfulness of it maybe. There weren’t no padre praying in exultation for them. They were the boys with the losing hand. Then niceties all done, the town rose and cheered wildly, and then it was a maelstrom of meat eating and keg broaching, and all the usual mayhem. We were dancing, we were clapping backs, we were telling old stories. Men were listening with their ears cocked, till they judged when they could let loose the laughter. Time was not something then we thought of as an item that possessed an ending, but something that would go on forever, all rested and stopped in that moment. Hard to say what I mean by that. You look back at all the endless years when you never had that thought. I am doing that now as I write these words in Tennessee. I am thinking of the days without end of my life. And it is not like that now. I am wondering what words we said so carelessly that night, what vigorous nonsense we spoke, what drunken shouts we shouted, what stupid joy there was in that, and how John Cole was only young then and as handsome as any person that has ever lived. Young, and there would never be a change for that. The heart rising, and the soul singing. Fully alive in life and content as the house-martins under the eaves of the house. (pp. 38-39)

***

Our sorrow spiralling to heaven. Our courage spiralling to heaven. Our disgrace entangled in it like sorrow and courage was so much briars. (p. 85)

***

When he first come into the hotel room Mr Noone had bowed to [Winona] and took her hand and shook it gently and said how do. I do well, she said, in her best Boston English learned off Mrs Neale. Just a moment of something that didn’t mean nothing. It gave me heart to see. Things that give you heart are rare enough, better note them in your head when you find them and not forget. This is John’s daughter, I say, without thinking much on it, and never having had that thought before exactly in words I knew about. John Cole didn’t talk against that. He beamed. Well, says Titus Noone, I guess her mother was a beauty, and bowed his head as if to intimate sorrow at her possible passing, and he ain’t going to ask about that unless we say something more. So we leave it there like the last note of a ballad. (pp. 104-05)

***

Why should a man help another man? No need, the world don’t care about that. World is just a passing parade of cruel moments and long drear stretches where nothing going on but chicory drinking and whisky and cards. No requirement for nothing else tucked in there. We’re strange people, soldiers stuck out in wars. We ain’t saying no laws in Washington. We ain’t walking on yon great lawns. Storms kill us, and battles, and the earth closes over and no one need say a word and I don’t believe we mind. Happy to breathe because we seen terror and horror and then for a while they ain’t in dominion. Bibles weren’t wrote for us nor any books. We ain’t maybe what people do call human since we ain’t partaking of that bread of heaven. But if God was trying to make an excuse for us He might point at that strange love between us. Like when you fumbling about in the darkness and you light a lamp and the light come up and rescue things. Objects in a room and the face of the man who seem a dug-up treasure to you. John Cole. Seems a food. Bread of earth. The lamplight touching his eyes and another light answering. (pp. 150-51)

***

Oh, a person sure may need a deal of nonsense in his head to make way in a life. (pp. 187-88)

***

In my exultation I forget I ain’t got a bean of money but it don’t concern me and I know I can rely on the kindness of folk along the way. The ones that don’t try to rob me will feed me. That how it is in America. (p.258)