The Movie is Real!

The rain is relentless, pounding with angry fists on the roof and slashing demandingly on the windows of the old house, ruined and shabby. How it is still standing, no one knew, but with its rusty red and green door and roof and sides patched up from constant repair, one would have thought it would have collapsed long ago. Maybe, it is held up with the astounding willpower from the three beings inside it who depended on it for life and death.

A whining, high- pitched caterwauling of a young child can be heard over the storm as it sings along with an old movie from the 2070s to entertain itself. The mother, a hard working, strong willed woman stands anxiously by the window, her fingers clasped in a desperate prayer to anyone who was listening, which happened to be the mangy golden retriever with the lame leg that whined constantly in the corner of the room from hunger and upset.

The little boy’s movie ends with the flashing names of actors long gone on a small, old fashioned screen as he stares, unable to read the rolling list of letters. He starts to get upset, turning to his mother as tears begin to roll down his face while bright white letters blaze demandingly behind him, begging for his attention. The mother notices immediately, trying to make a barrier with her small body between the innocent boy and the awful rain outside, and the rotting corpses lying piled against the door, nails broken from scratching at the door until they finally died after their agonizing death. She rushes over to him, wrapping herself around his frail form and whispering in his ear and covering his eyes.

“It’s alright, sweetie, just wait one moment and I can get another film for you, how does that sound?”

The boy, like every time she says the same words, questions why he can’t look away from his screen, and like every time, she tells him in a soothing voice that the real world isn't important and that he should work on his ‘social skills’ with the characters on TV. He then asks, as routine, why they won't answer him, and she responds with a believable tale to make him understand that he actually is there, but he just has to imagine it strongly enough. So he settles down with another movie, eyes glued to the screen, and his chocolate brown eyes never look away, not once, as the mother heads back to the window, holding back the rising vomit in her throat.

She can't stop staring at them; the bodies, some of which were missing limbs or heads, but all of them melted and sizzled with acid eating away at the remaining pieces. Heaps of them, lying against the door, pleading fingers still raised and pressed against the metal door, the anguish from their last moments still imprinted on their ruined faces, for those who still had a face. The mother tortured herself day and night with the anguished decision she had made to lock them out so her child would be safe and protected from the horrors of the real world. She waits, pain inscribed permanently on her face like a brand, for the acid rain to stop falling so she can dig the shallow graves like many others she already had to give these poor suffering souls some peace.

The dog continues to whine, just a tiny bit quieter than the TV so it's unrecognizable as something that's real, and it curls up into a tiny ball in the corner to soothe itself to sleep.

When the rain finally stops later that evening, the mother wearily picks up her old boots and cautiously steps outside the door with her handmade shovel in hand, and is surprised and relieved to see that the rain has melted the bodies into a puddle of red with the occasional bone sticking out here and there. She begins scraping the mess off the porch like it were leaves on a pleasant autumn day, lips pursed as she tries not to think about what she is doing while also listening to the TV inside just in case the boy's movie ended. There is a clinking sound that scrapes against her little shovel, and she curiously bends down, holding her breath so as not to breath in the foul stench of the dead, and sees something glittering.

It is a locket, heart- shaped, rusty, and may have been a shiny silver colour in its younger days, that lies like a phoenix in the ashes. She has not seen something so beautiful for so long that she heedlessly picks it up without thinking of whose dead hand she is taking it from, and cleans it off on her torn pant leg. There is nothing inside it, which she is glad of, because it would have been a reminder that it was special to someone else. She carries the treasure inside, cradling it to her chest and smiling as she changes the boy’s movie. The dog picks itself up from the floor after weeks of lying prone on the rotted floor, and sniffs excitedly at the theatre. The mother just sighs heavily and fastens it around the dog’s scruffy neck, and it trots away, going to lie down again with its new possession.

While she had been occupied, she hadn't noticed the child turning around, even though his movie was still playing, and for the first time seeing the world as it was without the protection of the screen. Before the mother can stop him, he goes bounding to the window on unsteady legs and gazes out at the gore before him. The mother cries out, anguished and horrified at her mistake as she runs to her child, reaching out to grab him. But he has already seen it; seen the horror, the guts, the bodies, the bloated and bleeding sky that should have made him scarred for the rest of his life. He turns to his mother, wide eyes and round face glowing with awe and joy, as he cries out,

“Look Mommy, it’s real like you always told me! The movie is real!”

-Olivia Gyuran