The Screen

A Story by Raschel

"Oh Michelle. Where did she go?", I think, sitting in the movie theatre. TW: very explicit gore

I sit in the movie theatre. Beside me rows of heads hover behind seats, fixated on the screen above us all. The suspense, a buzzing static which fills out the empty space in between the seats keeps all my muscles tensed. Eerily, a suggestion of a cramp crawls up and along my cold leg, like a thousand small spiders. No wonder, for they have been cramped in the small compartment created by the seats in front of me for a very long time, the pressure building up slowly.

Mere minutes ago, I had been dragging my feet along the cold marble floor �" cold and pale like Michelle’s skin. That day was the day she disappeared, like a dream after you wake up. I try to close my eyes, but even her image shines with the vagueness of a distant mirage. So foggy it might vanish if I try to touch it. We’ve been together for several months, several months of me serving her like one would usually serve a goddess, because for me she truly was divine. Her manner of looking past me as I talked to her, her rare gentle moments when she’d hold me cupped in her long and thin fingers. Careful, as if to not spill out my face. I remember it like it was now.

As beads of sweat start flowing down my forehead, crossing the valleys of my face, my hands try to push them away. I palpate my eyebags which glowed violet last time I gazed at myself in the mirror. I think it was Michelle, who, like an experienced sculptor, had molded them. Specifically, the many tears Michelle had caused. So many times, I sat in the bathroom with this unbearable longing in my chest, which in the end was never fully satisfied. Yet, being drawn to her like a moth is drawn to a fire I couldn’t ever drop this affair.

My unblinking eyes begin to hurt. How long have I been staring up to this screen? Hours? Maybe days? The anticipation, which for so long had been collecting on the base of my stiff neck starts screaming for attention in my bloodshot eyes. I wish I could blink, but what if I miss it. What exactly “it” was, I dare not ask.

It’s a funny story actually. I don’t remember how I got to the movie theatre. The only thing which my feeble mind is able to grasp is Michelle disappearing and me sitting on the cold asphalt, my fingers burning red from the frost. I had given up everything for Michelle in the hope that she would fill out the void bubbling up inside me. And everything was promising at first. Slightly though, I noticed her drifting away. Nothing serious, just a plain suspicion. At least I thought it was.

I didn’t fall asleep, nor did I wake up in the movie theatre. I naturally appeared inside its velvet audience seat and I haven’t left since. I felt a strange comfort being embraced by the seat from behind. The heads staring upwards didn’t evoke any questions. Usually when something is natural it’s stupid to ask questions.

I’d like to say that my head was filled with fog, hazy and unclear, but that would be a shameful lie. My mind was clear and sharp as a crystal, even though tainted with sorrow of losing Michelle. Even now, it is.

I feel certain disgust as I look at the ominously floating heads in front of me. Objectively, I had no obvious reason to feel the way I felt. Trying to analyze my feelings, I found myself baffled again and again by how nonsensical they were.

Too caught up in the process of gazing in the vast, my mind attempting to fish out things out of my subconscious, I choke on my own spit. My cough echoes loudly across the hall, disrupting a non-established agreement amongst us. Many shushing noises are addressed towards me. For a moment the shushing sounds like many ferocious animals prepared to attack. My cheeks glow red.

As my thorax finally stops violently contracting everything goes silent again. In this silence a feeling of loneliness overcomes me like a tsunami.

“What am I doing with my life?”, I ask myself as my fingers try to fish out a phone out of my pocket. My fingers, being moved by unknown forces, type out a message to Michelle.

“Heyyyy! How’s it going?”

No response.

“I’m at the movie theatre, so I won’t be able to text you for a while.”

Again, silence. With a glimmer of hope I wait for a “bling” or a buzzing noise. Useless.

“I’ll text you when I’m done.”

Droplets of water fall on my phone. I lick them and grimace at their saltiness. I wonder where they come from as my hands hide the phone in my pocket. Threads bound to my facial muscles pull down and tears bleed out of my eyes like a waterfall.

Sudden gasps and a feeling of a hot breeze force me to look up. The movie theatre goes dark for a second. Then it ignites in bright fiery colors. My face burns and for a moment I am blind, ornaments swimming through my vision. Then I see a divine being. She glows like the fires of hell and I instantly fear my eyes might melt, unused for such beauty. My blood warms up and my heart is in mesmerizing pain.

“Michelle!”

Her cold, blue eyes wander around the hall. Indifferent and bored, they caress the hall, unfocused on the details, not noticing the tiny splatter that is me. I have to make her look at me!

In a violent effort I free my hand and stretch my hand towards the screen, yet it is too short to reach her. I stretch it again, my muscles wailing now almost tearing apart. Again, I try to scream at the quadratic screen.

“Michelle! I’m here!”

My frantic efforts are ignored. Oh Michelle, she hadn’t changed at all.

I fight my body out of my seat, like an insect fighting its way out of its previous skin, wiggling and convulsing. Like an insect I crawl on all fours over the seats and heads before me. If only I could get closer, grab her iris so she wouldn’t be able to look away. I want her to be mesmerized, I want her to finally see me. And so, I move on all fours towards the screen my breath caught up in my lungs, my teeth shining in her bright light as a sick smile forms behind my lips.

All of a sudden, I let out a shriek of pain. My leg! I turn around only to see yellow teeth impaling my flesh. Attached to the teeth is my own contorted face. While I’m kicking off myself (?) with my free foot, more jaws rain upon me. They bite and rupture my skin, sinking into my muscles. At some point, they even get to my hands and consume my fingers with great rage, but also great delight. I feel energy leaving my body and in a last effort I turn my eyes, the only organ yet untouched by myself, towards the screen.

Euphoria replaces my blood because my idol, no, my goddess is looking back at me with the content of a well-fed cat. Blood nauseatingly gushes out of me, crimson soaking into the red carpet and the red fabric of the seats. She smiles at me. Chunks of flesh are ripped out of me and my own fingers slither closer to my abdomen. I agonizingly smile back. The shock makes my insides feel fuzzy as they are taken out one by one by my doubles. There go the intestines, there the liver, there the lungs, disappearing one by one as they are devoured. I can almost feel her fingers cupping my face, drying the dirty tears away. With the remains of my own hands, I take out my heart, still pumping blood, and direct it towards the screen. For a brief moment, my chest feels lighter, for my ribs aren’t pressing on my lungs anymore. How could they? I had no lungs after all. I want to kiss her, and I feel her leaning closer.

Then everything turns cold. The feeling of the universe abandoning me dawns on me as I lie in the puddle of my own juices under the great screen. I’m completely alone, no doubles but most importantly, no Michelle. In my last moment of consciousness, I contemplate. What did I do wrong? Why did she leave me?

To the mixture of blood and intestine fluids comes another one. They flow down my eyebags and onto the floor. My tears. Tears of excruciating pain which comes after a shock? Tears of breaking up with someone you loved so much you were blinded by her image? Perhaps even tears of being so lonely you even miss your body being actively harmed?

My last gasp becomes a drowned-out whisper.

“Michelle…”