..:S...P...I...D...E...R...B...I...T...E...S:..

Wednesday, August 06, 2003

A teenage kid sat atop a Panasonic color TV, grease-stained restaurant wrappers and a go-cup scattered around him, his legs dangling off the side..."
-King Suckerman



FICTION:



Spying



The movie.

Steven found a videotape in the trunk of his car. It had been hidden inside an old highway emergency kit. He bought the car used and didn’t have a reason to pop the trunk for a year. A flat tire made him go looking for the spare and he followed a trail of dust from a decaying road flare to the videotape hiding place. He decided to save it and never watch it. At least not right away. It would give him something to look forward to. He'd seen no labels or markings and immediately thought "porno". What other videotape would someone hide? All his life, every tape he ever found he would hope it was X-rated.

I’ll save it, he thought. The longer I save it, the longer I won’t be disappointed.

He kept it stashed deep in his car for awhile, even though he knew in his heart that it wasn’t important enough to keep hidden. Steven knew there was no such thing as a snuff-film, or the tooth fairy, so he decided to pretend the tape was dangerous anyway. Eventually he ended up needing the space when he was curled up in the trunk installing speakers, so he took it inside and threw it in a junk drawer. He kept it inside the remains of a plaster cast he'd saved since Jr. High.

He'd broken his wrist throwing his first punch ever. He'd tried to rationalize his weak bones and crooked throw later by saying things like, "imagine how hard my punch must have been to break my wrist..." He'd kept that cast after the doctor cut it off, and it moved when he moved, always ending up in the corner of a drawer, enough dust and plaster left around the signatures to still taunt him with: "sorry about your beating" and "don't close you fist on your thumb stupid or you'll break that too" and "pussy!" (accent on the second syllable).

Tonight he smashed the cast and shook the dust off the videotape.

He walked back out to the TV, steering wide of James on all fours in front of the goddamn dog bowl. He didn’t want to know what he was doing. Steven tried to ignore him, stabbed play and untangled a half bag of sesame seeds from the junk in his pocket. He started chewing, eyes wide in anticipation. The screen stayed blue, then there was an ominous rumble from the machine and he jump up to scramble towards it, seeds flying from his mouth. He hit eject and nothing happened and he reached out to stick his hand inside but stopped short. For no good reason he thought that whatever machinery was moving inside a VCR was as dangerous as a garbage disposal. He didn't want to try to watch a porno and eat sesame seeds with one hand and one stump. The sound finally smoothed out and he sat down on the floor. The screen flickered snow, then back to blue forever. Nothing.

Then he was outside trying to use a flare from the emergency road kit to hurt it. James walked up and looked over one shoulder then the other. It wouldn't burn, Steven only managed to round off some corners before the flare spit twice and died. James smacked him on on the back to get his attention. Steven was hiding clenched fists and teeth when he turned around. James was smiling, he said he had an idea.

"I've got shitloads of videotapes buried around here. You just take one of mine and act like you found that instead."

"What's gonna be on it?"

"Fuckhead, you found it, remember?"

James slowly pushed the first video into the slot until the machine took over and sucked it all the way inside. Steven always watched the insertion closely, as if one day it would reject one back into someone’s chest, or pull their hand inside instead.

“Hey, who said this was spying? Was that you?” James asked. “We’re not spying. We ain’t doing anything like spying. Dude, we should be ashamed of ourselves, watching someone’s movies. Real live spying should be out a window, instead of the way we’re doing it. Into a TV ‘n shit. There’s something very wrong with-”

“Dude. You already said all that shit.”

“Dude. No I didn’t.”

“Okay, then I already said it.”

“No you didn’t.”

“Then I was going to eventually.”

“Wait, then who said the thing about a TV being a window to a room in a room in a room in a room in a room?”

“Neither of us.”

“I can’t even fucking remember anymore, that’s how I know this ain’t healthy. Anyway, did I ever tell you about shitting into that bubblegum machine, my fuck off to that shit job?”

Steven sighed loudly and James ignored him. “And the bubblegum machine in question was one of those huge red. . .”

“Just play the tape and I’ll see it, dumbass. I thought his was supposed to be a surprise. Something I found, remember? I’ll see it for myself.” Steven said.

“No you won’t see it. That’s what I’m trying to explain, if you’ll let me finish. Don’t worry, we can pretend you found the next movie in your trunk if you want.”

“It was your fucking idea.” Steven said. James ignored him.

“So the bubblegum machine was this big red fireplug-looking thing, with one of those twisty slides inside the base so the kids could watch the ball race to the gate, and a huge glass dome on it like a robot, real big, big enough for anyone to comfortably sit on actually. And they got this sign hanging on it that they change once a week. Not really a sign though, just this square piece of colored construction paper to tell the kids what the ‘winning gumball of the week’ was.

Whoever gets the winner gumball gets a free dollar movie, one of the cheap old ones B-movies from the middle of the store. Thing is, we’d buy these books of colored paper to stick to the machine since the kids tore the shit out of them and we couldn’t use a sign more than once or twice. So there ended up being this growing stack of brown pages under the counter. Black and brown pages from those books that never got used. I asked the manager once, ‘how come there’s no black gumballs’ and she swore that she had a black licorice one once. So I asked, ‘how come there ain’t no brown gumballs?’ and she says all sarcastic, ‘what flavor would that be?’ as if the white gumball was an obvious indication to any kid that you were getting stuck with motherfucking mint flavor. I tried to explain that I’d witnessed several children spitting out those white gumball with my own eyes, and I was pretty sure those innocents weren’t expecting to being chewing on something that reminded them of a mouthful of toothpaste before bed when they dropped that quarter in the machine. And this bitch says, ‘what’s your point?’ and I say, ‘now my point is that brown could be any flavor because the colors aren’t consistent,’ and she goes, ‘there’s no brown candy,’ and she starts walking away from me like she’d just dismissed my ass and declared the conversation over. So I yell out, ‘Yes, there is! Brown candy usually means root-beer flavor!” and she’s getting all mad now because I won’t drop it. So I wait about three more hours into the shift and act like I was telling her an unrelated story about this exchange student I’d met and the things she hated about America. Then I told her that this exchange students biggest culture clash was that she hated root-beer and it made her sick and she couldn’t understand how we could drink it. You know why?”

“Just play the fucking movie.”

“Because all foreigners think root-beer tastes like toothpaste. True story. Ask anyone with a green card, dude.”

“I’m leaving.” Steven started to stand up and James grabbed a leg to drag him back down. Steven stumbled then strained to get his foot free.

“Hey! You think a green card is mint-flavored?” James laughed as Steven tried to kick himself loose. “Dude, settle. I’ll play your movie now, I swear.”

“Fuckin’ let go-”

“Okay okay okay, I’ll let go but you have to stay.” Steven’s shoe flew off under James’ arm and they both went tumbling. He quickly crawled back towards the TV and punched the button on the VCR with the heel of his hand.

“Moral of the story is this,” James coughed as he caught his breath and the surveillance tape finally started to play. “I decided on my last day the winning gumball color, and flavor, really would be brown. . .and it sure wouldn’t taste like root-beer.”

On screen, a flickering black and white James walked into the frame. Head down, shuffling his feet like they were shackled, shoulders up high, struggling with his belt buckle. There was a flash of silver as the zipper came loose and the fly fell open and slid down his ass as he hopped out of the corner of the frame.

“What? I can’t see shit.” Steven complained, palms up in frustration.

“That’s what I was trying to tell you.” James sighed. “See, the cameras in that store have a blind spot, right where the bubblegum mahine was rooted. I happened to notice this one day when I stopped in there off the clock to pick up my check and I stayed to look for a movie. Right then, these kids came running through the door and tore ass straight to that machine. They were there trying to steal gumballs. Like a gumball was something worth stealing. And they were fucking pros. I think they’d been doing it for years.”

James hit fast-forward and static and jagged heartbeats ran up and down the screen. After scanning a few more feet of tape, he frowned, scratched his head, ejected that video and inserted another with the speed and skill of a Vegas dealer. For the first time, Steven noticed a pile of videotapes against the wall He never realized they were there, although he recognized the framework of the house he’d absentmindedly built with the videos once during an especially long prank phone call.

“I got just one more thing to show ya. . .” James whispered.

“Why didn’t they move the bubblegum machine so the camera could see it?” Steven asked as he reached out and collapsed a wall on the house of tapes.

“They can’t. Some sort of rule about where all the shelves and displays and shit always goes, no matter what. Something about not interfering with the ‘power aisle’ or whatever the fuck they call it. The bubblegum machine has to go on the red carpet square by the kids section or apparently people would crash into it, or get lost forever, or all hell would break loose or something.”

James stabbed another button with his thumb and a small boy could be seen on the screen, walking slow, looking around suspiciously, hands buried deep in his pockets.

Then the boy stopped and started pulling his hands out so slowly that Steven expected to see long bunches of flowers to be clenched in each fist like magician. Instead, the boy spread all ten of his fingers and started to lick them.

He dragged his tongue deep into the webbing of his hands, opening and closing his mouth to gather more saliva with each stroke, slathering every joint and knuckle with ropes of spit that reflected the glow from the fluorescent lights overhead and seemed to turn the boy’s skin plastic.

“What the-”

The boy was now running his flickering tongue down the length of his arms, all the way to his elbows. Once both arms were glistening, he walked to the corner of the screen and vanished as James had.

“How much spit does that little fucker have?” James laughed. “He should be working in a factory taste-testing crackers. Hey! Did you know it’s impossible to eat five crackers in one minute because you run out of spit? Remember that. It’s a good bar bet.”

“Why the hell did he just do that?” Steven asked.

“Think dude.” James kicked a videotape in irritation. “That’s how they do it. That’s how they get their sneaky little claws up in there. They grease their own arms with spit to squeeze them up the shute to snatch those free gumballs. And even if they don’t get their sticky little fingers on one, they get to lick all the sugar off their arms so they don’t even care. That’s why they deserve what I did.”

“I thought you did it to your job. Or your boss.”

“Whatever. I did it though. I swear.”

“I didn’t see jack on either of those tapes. Except the kid licking his arm. That’s the only thing I believe. That’s the only new thing I saw, and the only new thing that I learned today: not to ever touch a gumball machine again. And that’s because of the children. Not because of you. You didn’t do jack shit.”

“I swear I shit in that machine.”

“You’re lying.”

“Okay, what if I said I made a cat shit in it? Held it up and squeeze it. Like a furry tube of toothpaste! Would you believe that instead?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know. Not now.”

“I’m just saying, shit is shit. Why believe the cat story and not mine.”

“I don’t believe either shit story.” Steven started to stand up again.

“Okay, listen.” James held up a hand. “I confess that I didn’t shit in it. However, I did drop a pinball in there so some kid would choke, or at least chip a tooth. Then I felt bad about what I’d done so I lied about the dog shit.”

“You just said cat shit.”

“I said my shit.”

“Bullshit.”

“Dude. You’re not making any sense!” James laughed. “Where would I get bullshit? This ain’t Pamplona motherfucker! There’s no ‘Running of the Bullshit’ here, boy!”

Steven kicked off his other shoe and moved fast for the door. James yelled after him.

“You know what? I tell that story to anyone else and they believe it. You know why? ‘Cause only liars think everyone is lying to them. Just like fags think everyone is a fag. . .”

“That was fun.” Steven announced sarcastically. He wiped his hands together to signal an end to the evening. “Gotta run and do anything else but this!”

He took a step and James ran around to stand in his way. Steven’s neck tensed and his defenses brought his shoulders up to his ears. James held out his arms and something was rattling and Steven saw two more videotapes from the dogpile of movies in each of his outstretched hands.

“Give me one more chance. Pick a hand. Please? That means it counts this time. Just like I said. That’ll make it like you wanted. You pick one and we’ll say that’s the one. It will be the videotape you found in your trunk.”

Steven started to protest, then his shoulders slowly came down in defeat.

The movie slid into the machine like a greased finger (that's ‘cause James is doing it and it never made that noise with James, those teeth and gears and heads inside always turned smooth with James) and after a creak and groan of machinery, the second movie started. The screen showed a hand and a book. Even though it kept pulsing in and out of focus, Steven saw the moving fingers fill the scene, pinching the corner of the book. They flipped through the pages only at the corner.

Then they flipped through again. Then again.

The screen finally focused on the image. It was one of those book-corner cartoons that kids fill the margins of library books with. Steven remembered trying to do one in a bible once but the pages were too thin.

This book-corner cartoon seemed to be the story of one tiny stick figure fucking another. The fingers flipped through the story again, then again. Steven leaned as close as he could, nose crackling through the static fuzz over the glass. He saw that there was something more.

"What the..."

"Just watch. I mean, what the hell is this?" James laughed.

The cartoon showed a tiny girl with her legs spread. A tiny man walked over, rabbit-fucked her and walked off. The tiny girl never moved. Then the tiny girl's stomach grew round and swelled up like a gum bubble. And just before the fingers ran out of pages, a child crawled out and scurried up into the text of the page and disappeared. The fingers flipped through the story again. . .

"Creepy." Steven muttered sitting back on his legs. The phone rang and neither even flinched. It rang nine times and stopped.

"Shhh. There's probably more. Where did you find this video again?"

The screen showed a girl now. The fingers and the hand were gone. A real live girl walking naked into the scene. She stopped and the camera pulled back to reveal her stretching out and lying back on a gray table in a white room. Knees up. Then a real live boy walked into the frame with a green hockey mask over his head, erection leading the way.

"Oh, it is a porno," Steven announced, as if the appearance of an erection on a screen explained everything and anything that came before it.

"Damn. Look at that fuckin' goalie dive right in.” James said. “Dude, now is a good time to tell you, never bring a girl over here, or if you do, don't let her touch anything. I've jerked-off in so many corners that a girl could get knocked-up just using a glass. Damn! Look at that!”

“Nice.” Steven said in disgust. “So where'd you find this?"

"You found it." James shot back.

"Look at that," Steven said, putting the rest of his weight back onto his legs, muttering almost to himself. "No foreplay, no pre-game nonsense. That's what I hate about pornos, the way that they eat up the clock, the way they waste my time. You know what's the worst? When the girl spits on it too much, all hateful. Spits so hard you know she's full of spite. That kind of spit? The kind you spit when you’re mad? I’ll bet it burns. Whoa, what the. . ."

The boy backed off and walked out of the frame, both heads hanging. The girl never moved. Steven stared at the spot that was glistening, drying, then suddenly an invisible hand seemed to be shaking her. When her stomach rounded out and started to swell, Steven realized that he was watching time-lapse film. When the stomach was at the bursting point, he started to squint, scared to watch. He found his eyes wandering over to corner of the gray table she was on, wishing there was a time-lapse bowl of fruit there rotting instead.

Then there was the flash of something on the screen. Something that Steven told himself must be a mistake. Something he was sure was not supposed to be there. Then a flash of the boy with the hockey mask, struggling to pull the girl back to the table, then an argument, the blur of a short struggle, then some static, then slowly the lens focused again. Steven’s hand moved toward his eyes. For the first time, Steven was watching a videotape and he was scared of what he was going to see.

A river of blood was running down her leg. James leaned forward and Steven leaned back. There was a tiny hand reaching from the girl. It grew from between her legs, a red claw reaching from the vanishing point, like a bloody sunset clearing the horizon on the highway.

Steven peered from between his fingers and saw that the hand wasn’t moving, it wiggled with the spasms of her body, hanging limp after her long pauses between exhales and crying.

The boy came back stumbling back into the frame, hockey mask pushed back off his face as he crashed into something and the camera jerked sideways, then static, then black. Steven lowered his hand from his face. The screen had turned blue.

"That's not what I found." Steven finally said.

"Freaky ain't it?” James shrugged. “The way I figure it, they must have planned on filming everything all stop-motion or time-lapse or whatever, like one of those crazy New Age births where they drop the baby in a pool and swim around with it still attached to the cord. Then she has this mutant or a stillbirth dripping out one morning and the dude didn’t realize it and thinks it’s natural and makes her finish the movie anyway. Or maybe he knew and just
couldn’t face wasting all that film and all that time. Can you blame him though? How long would that take to do a movie like that? Nasty though. Hey, don’t look at me like that. I didn’t make the fucking thing. We’re just watching it. And hey! You found it, remember!” Steven stared at James until he looked away and picked at a burn mark on the floor, still muttering.

“So. . .where did you say you found it?” James asked unconvincingly. “In your car?"

Steven got up quick and hooked his keys off the TV on his way out the door. The phone rang once as he walked past it and in one smooth movement he picked up the receiver and slammed it back down.

"Hold on." James ejected the tape and was up after him. "Dude. . .okay, my brother gave me this thing. . .don't get all weird. . .it's not me in the mask, or anyone I know, if that's what you're thinking. . .I thought you always said you wanted to find something like this. Fuckin’ pussy. . ."

“It’s not the tape,” Steven said as his hand hovered near the doorknob. “I just need to go somewhere.”

“Wait!” James crouched like he was going to run for something. “Don’t go yet. I have another tape I want you to see.”

Steven’s fingers touched the door and James grabbed a handful of his shirtsleeve. Steven shrugged it away.

“Get the fuck off me, dude. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“You want to spy. I got one last movie I want you to see. Please? I said the baby tape was spying and I admit I was wrong ‘cause they were filming themselves. This other videotape though, you know what it is?”

“What?”

“It’s me. From the videostore.”

“I don’t care. We watched that crap already.”

“No seriously, check this out. Remember the videostore I worked at?”

“No.”

“Right, well remember I got fired for taking a shit in the bubblegum machine?”

“No.”

“You’re right, that isn’t exactly true. I got fired for being videotaped taking a shit in the bubblegum machine. Big difference. See what I’m saying? Now that I think about it, I should sue their asses for spying on me.”

“No, I don’t. The only ‘big difference’ I’m thinking of is how you keep babbling about ‘spying’ because you have these videotapes. If someone was on the other end of the camera when you were doing it, then they were spying. Once it’s on tape, it’s not spying anymore. It’s a videotape. It’s as dead as a twenty year-old diary entry, buried in someone’s back yard, telling the same story.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? We already covered all this, remember?”

“Listen to me, this is the shit I said I’d be telling you later. You’re not spying on anyone by watching an old tape. They were spying on someone if they were watching them while they filmed it, which they weren’t because those cameras were just aimed and left to record. And your videostore tape is the same thing. You didn’t get caught from someone watching you do it, you got caught from someone watching the camera watching you do it. It’s not the same thing.”

“That’s exactly why I got fired asshole, I got caught taking a shit in a bubblegum-”

“You did not get caught, you got taped-well actually you didn’t get taped doing anything, we already saw that so-okay. Just listen. You ever get a feeling in your stomach when you angle your head around a corner or put your ear in a glass or peek through a crack. You know, that moment when your eye gets close to enough to the hole and the whole room lights up and you know that no one can see you? That feeling in your gut, or getting away with something? That’s the difference.”

“I still have no idea what-” James said.

“Try this. Go up to a concrete wall and punch it. Punch harder and harder, as hard as you can without breaking your knuckles. You’ll get the same feeling, the same charge in your body when you do that. I don’t know why, I don’t know what the connection is. I just know that, when you punch a wall, knowing that if you punched it any harder the bones in your hand would splinter, the same electricity goes through your body.”

“Weren’t you on your way out.”

“Come to think of it, it’s the same zap you get when you’re taking a piss, the one that gives you that violent shiver over the toilet for no apparent reason.” Steven said, staring at James until he blinked first.

“Please.” James said. “One more movie, then you can go.”

Steven looked back up at his face after the “please,” he couldn’t remember hearing that word from James before today. And today he’d used it at least three times and Steven suddenly felt the urge to grab a dictionary, convinced that there was some darker definition he wasn’t aware of. He sighed in submission and James tore off to find the tape. Steven sat down with his back against the door.

The last movie wasn’t much to look at. Another fuzzy black and white security image, the shapes on the screen moving with a strobe-light stutter.

“Not these fucking shoplifter tapes again,” Steven said, fingers drumming the doorknob behind him. “And, for the record, I won’t believe you shit in a bubblegun machine until I see it.”

“Don’t say ‘for the record.’ You don’t mean anything when you say a phrase like that. Wait a minute. Did you just say ‘bubble gun?’ What the fuck is a ‘bubble gun’ machine?” James snickered. “Are you stupid or something? Does that make bubble guns?”

“Shut up. Fast forward this bullshit so we can get this over with.”

The last movie was short. The security tape showed four angles of the videostore this time. In the upper right hand corner James walked into the frame and waved. Then he dropped his pants and squeezed his dick and stretched it out as far as he could. His image froze. Then another James walked into the frame in the upper right hand corner. This James grinned and offered two middle fingers at arm’s length, then jumped high in the air. Before he hit the ground, James froze. A third James walked into the square in the bottom left corner, dropped his short again and began slapping his own white ass, again the image froze in mid-slap. A fourth James took the stage in the bottom left and just stood there. After a second he shrugged and froze too.

“Ain’t that great?” James giggled. “You can freeze the image on any of the cameras. I used to leave little Monday morning surprises for the managers after they’d fuck me with a shit weekend schedule.”

Steven said nothing, instead shrugging and holding his shoulders up high to imitate the fourth James frozen on the screen.

“I know, that last one was a waste,” James said. I ran out of shit to do after the first three freeze-frames. Is there anything else though? I couldn’t think of any. I was trying real hard . . .”

Steven held the shrug high on his shoulders as he walked out the door. The shrug felt good, like protection from any punch or glare thrown at his back. James voice finally faded as Steven stepped outside into the dark and out of cathode rays. He relaxed his shoulders and took a deep breath of night air and things started to clear. It was hot and thick but it was quiet. Then suddenly James was behind him again. His voice like a finger flicking his ear in a classroom.

"Okay Steve, you go drive some more.” James saw something behind the car and ran off after it. “Hey, I'll have a surprise for you when you get back. Can you bring me some gum? And some black shoestring. Yeah, five, no six, packs of gum and shoestrings. Actually, they ain’t got shoestrings at the gas station, just get the gum."

Steven slammed the car door and rolled up his window as fast as he could.

“Hey! Don’t come back with a ‘gun’ instead of ‘gum,’ I know that shit gets confusing!”

Steven sparked the engine and muscled the car into gear.

"Steve! One more thing! Don't turn on the lights, or the TV, when you get back, I'm going to have a surprise for you.” Steven glanced in his rearview mirror and saw James with his hands out in front of his body, fingers slowly closing around a tiny yellow flashing light. “I’ve been working on a new handshake."

Steven's car backed out, crunching gravel and throwing out fishtails of stones.

"C'mon, you found it, remember!" James yelled, rolling out of the way as Steven straightened out the car and tore off like a getaway driver starting the third-act chase. Steven leaned over to crank up the other window, unable to cut off his best friend’s voice.

"It's summer brother, what else is there to do except watch movies?"



-© 2003 david james keaton

::: david - 3:25 AM [+] :::
...