Ronnie was becoming increasingly upset. “Calvin, what’s wrong with you? You’ve been acting strange all day.”
She was peeved and it was evident in the way she called him by his full name whereas she normally addressed him as Cal. That was one of those little things you picked up on after being with someone long enough to pop the question.
Calvin looked her in the eyes, the façade of people in the restaurant appearing normal from the corner of his eye, the old dead woman suddenly alive and leaving with her husband (equally aged, but evidently not as close to death). Ronnie was worried about him, it was there in her eyes, eyes that were so tender and caring, eyes that had grown to love him.
He wanted to say, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Help me, Ronnie,” but couldn’t bring himself to do so. There was something wrong, no doubt about it. What was right about witnessing the final moments of so many people around him? How could he explain that to her? Shit, he couldn’t even explain it to himself.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I guess I’m just out of whack because of this job I have to do tonight.”
He dipped back into that one again. There was a little truth in it considering where he was actually going that night, but the job bit was getting old.
As they finished dinner and headed to the movie theater—Images of the old and unhealthy, dead in their seats like corpses propped up for a final meal before crossing the river Styx—the fear of what lay ahead that night began plaguing Calvin.
His mind writhed with little maggots of paranoia. Everywhere he looked people were dead or dying in a multitude of ways. Some were suicides and others murder victims, and many more were withered away from one form of cancer or another. Some of them even looked at Calvin as if they knew he could see the vision of their death, and that was perhaps the worst thing of all.
The visions had to be tied to Death’s Door, but how could a video place images into his mind like this?
Obsessive-compulsive viewing?
The movie they decided to see was a romantic comedy—well, Ronnie decided to see it. After the way Calvin had been acting, he wasn’t about to protest and suggest they see the Tim Burton movie they had talked about last night.
He had been successfully ignoring the death-visions. Fresh air and hours away from his apartment was good for him. As the night went on and they sat in the movie theater with a bag of popcorn and a large soda, he began to realize how warped he had become. He finally began to loosen up. Things seemed normal for a minute there.
The lights went out. Popcorn, chocolate and gooey nachos mingled into a uniquely movie theater fragrance. A flickering beam of light blasted from the little booth above the audience and onto the screen creating a series of images that turned into a good twenty minutes of previews and then the feature film. The actors on screen were alive and well, playing out fake roles in imaginary lives. Calvin couldn’t help but wonder about their deaths. The images his mind created were frightening. He could see these people keeling over and vomiting their insides out or getting run over by a bus, grasping their chests in cardiac arrest or suffering from spontaneous gun blasts that blew away generous chunks of life like strawberry rhubarb pie filling.
He closed his eyes for a moment. Why was it he couldn’t enjoy anything anymore without fantasizing about death? It was enough already, and yet it seemed he couldn’t do anything about it. He opened his eyes to see that his mental issues were hitting a new low that almost caused him to scream in the movie theater like a little girl discovering a spider ascending the hem of her dress.
Calvin found himself in the midst of a body pit. The walls of the theater transformed from a nicely painted structure to crumbling dirt. All around the patrons sat haphazard in their seats, wrapped in black bags, some of them heaped on others like useless refuse. Small fires created eerie flickering light that caused mysterious dancing shadows.
Calvin had seen pits like this one on the Death’s Door video going all the way back to his days patronizing the Museum of Death. It was something common in Middle Eastern countries and during Hitler’s Nazi rule, and here Calvin was, caught in the middle of one. He could smell acrid burning plastic mixing with decay and expelled bowels, an awful mélange of rancid odors that threatened a gag reflex.
He scanned his surroundings, looking for a chip in the ghastly veneer, but everything was authentic right down to the dirt-smudged black plastic wrapped body next to him that was Ronnie.
He gasped and drew a quick breath as his eyes caught her wrapped shape beside him, and then the body bag moved, as if facing him. She said, in a whisper, “What’s wrong?”
That seemed to be the question of the day. Calvin couldn’t answer to a talking body bag, yet he knew it had to be some sort of wicked hallucination. His voice caught in his throat. He swallowed hard and said, “Nothing. I thought I saw someone I know.”
Yes, it sounded lame, as did many of Calvin’s follow up remarks to his temporary insanity, but what else could he do?
Ronnie gave him a strange look before redirecting her attention to the screen. It was one of those movies with Jennifer Aniston and some up and coming male lead who were just married and dealing with the troubles concerning one another’s in-laws. An overused plot that has been beat to a pulp after its eminent death, but movies such as this one still brought in the young date crowds, some of them necking with animalistic fury, although through Calvin’s eyes they more represented visions of people clutching one another as they became covered in rubble and mummified in a lover’s embrace.
Closing his eyes, he focused on the movie and hoped that it would bring him back to reality. He grabbed Ronnie’s hand, happy that it was not sheathed in plastic or cold and rot-gooey.
Ronnie giggled with the crowd. Something funny on the screen. The sound of laughter brought Calvin back to reality. The dead don’t laugh.
Calvin opened his eyes, confident the grim visions would be gone. He was relieved to see a movie theater with couples watching a rehashed romantic comedy, to smell popcorn.
There was no further incident during the rest of the movie or during the ride home.
Ronnie and Calvin sat in her car in front of his apartment. “So, what are you doing tomorrow?” she asked.
“If you want to come over we can get a pizza and hang out and my place. I’ll be tired anyway from working a night shift. Not used to that.”
“Alright, that sounds good.”
He smiled. “I promise I won’t show you any videos of kick boxers breaking their legs.”
“Deal.”
They kissed. It was a rather long kiss that, were Calvin not going to work, would have led to his bedroom. Perhaps it was a precursor for tomorrow night. Calvin hadn’t thought about sex much in the past few days. Hadn’t thought about much other than…
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Ronnie said. “What time do you want me to come over?”
“Fiveish?”
Ronnie nodded. Calvin opened his door and stepped out of the car into the steady and familiar din of Madison Avenue.
“Have fun at work.”
“I’ll try.”
Calvin waved goodbye as he approached the gate. Ronnie blew him a kiss that he comically grabbed out of the air and slapped on his mouth, which put a smile on her face.