A well known horror film actress—The Queen of the Scream—whose real name I should not mention here, is dead at 75. She died last week. And now the terror of lawlessness has arrived in my nightmares, played by her, screaming nightly since her demise, merging with my own screams.
My streetwalker pal shakes me at the scream’s climax and says, “Isaac, WAKE UP, it’s almost time for the movie,” and then soothes me without solicitation; a morning affair in exchange for chips and a 6 year old expired med. She tells me, “You can’t afford my fee, not now, Isaac. Chips and the sugar pill are good enough, and I’ll share.”
The local flick is 24/7 until further notice. Of all things, “Death Wish” is playing this week. The movie moguls chose 70s style vigilantism, playing it coast to coast, from now until whenever. Street justice making its return via entertainment, per order of the new guy running things again—priming the pump of civil disobedience. “Get them in a fighting spirit!” he said in a recent interview. “Rage is good! Rage against them! Rage against the system!”
Maybe he’s really raging against Mom, Dad, an abusive superego, God?
Sparse audiences are attending the theaters; psychos assaulting patrons according to news reports, leaving us street people with premium seating for almost nothing: tickets are a quarter of the regular price; popcorn and soda discounted to pennies on the dollar, totaled by weight, until sold out.
“The theaters will close once the last kernel is popped, get ready for the apocalypse,” so it says, somewhere on the remains of social media.
© 2024 David M. Rubin. All rights reserved.
Notes from David 