Content warnings

Sensory overload. Derealisation. Dissociation. Hospital.

[FADE IN]

I don’t know if you've ever seen those moving mannequins in the store windows, the ones that follow your gaze and blow kisses when you pass. Or the ones that change clothes every time you blink, or the ones pretending to keep up with the times while they wore things that no human contraption could ever wear. Well, to me, keeping up with the city felt like a zombie movie. And those mannequins were the zombies, but they were really the citizens, and they all did whatever they pleased with dystopian limbs that made no sense and they all came with instruction manuals and never bothered to infect me with one of those. 

Worst of all, they weren’t even authentic, upstanding zombies. They were just a bunch of sucky actors and actresses in stupid scenes with no thought behind their beginnings or ends. And they spoke in ~~~~~ and created things that made ~~~~~. And ~~~~~ was painful.

Behind my dressing room door: I didn’t let the silence breathe. My hands, small as they were, pressed against the holo display. And I was swimming in it. Pink, orange, purple, and pulsing; the spray of lights and breathy voices mesmerised me while actresses danced in their swishy skirts in a responsive animation. Except I could touch the projections sweeping over my limbs and little-me knew it. The plushies on my dresser who did my makeup and wore my outfits for me, knew it. And I didn’t have to, but I dressed up and performed. And the projections listened; and the plushies listened; and the movie played; and I was integrated with the scene. 

Me and The Movie; we were a quiet animation for children with a big show of colour and costumes. And we could not hear the ~~~~~ outside my dressing room door.

On days that were safe, wherever I dared go, I took the scene with me. The cast of the city couldn’t be trusted. They smelled like sanitizer and sewage and their smiles were fake. And they, more than anyone, made a lot of ~~~~~.

Sometimes, to avoid them, I’d turn my camera with its fingers-for-frames to the holo trees in front of the scraping-skies, the ones standing in holo gardens, atop graphic grass. And each blade simultaneously made me wonder how many computers its code had to pass through to be able to grow there. But if I did this for too long then even the grass would make ~~~~~. And the grass came with a battalion and Me and My Cast were outmatched. So we’d have to flee, fervently swishing our skirts the opposite direction.

See, Me and The Movie knew what we wanted to teach, but the world outside my dressing room didn’t know what messages it carried. I was supposed to pick apart its symbolisms, ad-lib style. I was supposed to throw syllables together at random and pray for coherence. And no one ever told you if you were doing it wrong.

Even in places with classroom doors instead of dressing room doors, the messages weren’t clear. If you were doing the weird thing like a sloth on a stage, cosplaying not a person, but a camera, and replaying the scenes of your audience through contemporary dance, except your robo-prof’s desk was your stage and they didn’t even give you a hat… well, if you did that, the crappy cast members wouldn’t tell you what to do differently. The camera would roll and their lines would say: ‘You're weird,’ or ‘Stop covering your ears,’ or ‘Hahahaha’. And the director wouldn’t care because they were never paid enough. And I would always stand there wondering what made people audition for this.

I was not a braindead mannequin zombie.

Not even a contemporary sloth.

That’s why I came with my own movie. 

And so did he:

“Hey.”

The boy on the jungle gym who carried his own ~~~~~ over his ears. Willingly. I knew this because I heard it like I heard the grass. But he moved one muff away to hear me.

“You good?”

His voice was soft and frail and he was my age without the bad makeup and he dressed like a rockstar with a skull on his shirt and sat alone in a park that wasn’t fake, sinking in a swamp of grey sand, surrounded by real dead trees that kept up with the times and all the dancers with their swishy skirts stopped dancing to stare.

And he stared back. With cool-dude-vibes and a nod. So I showed him some of my lines. And he laughed. But not at me. And that was nice. So I cast him in my movie.

When he received the role, he performed it with ease, throwing casual smiles that caught the light just right and I wondered how, but mainly why? Everything he did was in a different genre. I wanted to learn everything I could—so I changed my genre from animation to a nature documentary, where the film’s frame was a magnifying glass and he was the specimen of study.

I learned that whatever his genre was, it started with this concept called confidence. 

Not the kind of confidence that created an audience and made their eyes widen and their hands clap; it was the kind of confidence that made him sit on top of the world alone in a dead park, or lie reclined in the middle of a road and cause annoyed hover-cars to dodge him even though it didn’t make much sense for them to dodge. Confidence that let him invite me outside the film to have rainbow popcorn and angel-puff ice cream and enough fun to rock the stars. 

And the muffs over his ears were always on. But he’d always lift one side off to listen to me.

One day, I broke the fourth wall and asked about them.

[FADE IN]

EXT. BENEATH A BUSY BRIDGE BESIDE A DESERTED CANAL – EVENING 8

___ ME ___

(to specimen)

Why do you put that thing over your head?

___ THE BOY ___

(to the canal)

For music, mainly.

___ ME ___

It creates ~~~~~?

___ THE BOY ___

No. The opposite.

___ ME ___

(Visibly doesn’t understand)

What is it?

___ THE BOY ___

(Has a telepathic conversation with the horizon before responding)

My IV, I guess.

AWARD-WINNING SHOT OF BRIDGE, CANAL, AND HORIZON

What they really were, were headphones. I deduced this in the historical section of a library where there was a tolerable amount of ~~~~~. An IV was something else, but it was unclear if he knew this. 

The boy couldn’t be found behind classroom doors—though he was my age. He was the type to go with the wind flow. And leap out abandoned windows. And seek out a medium-low simmer of trouble.

He just kinda… lived; a rarity I’d only ever seen in movies. And according to the zombies, those weren’t real.

So each day when I rolled the film, studying his many habitats, I was completely and hopelessly captivated. Becoming less of a director and more of a devoted fan. Maybe even a student.

The ’rental figures didn’t know I’d switched classes, but they did eventually find out.

Back behind my dressing room door I plucked at my hair to dampen the effects of their ~~~~~. I was never necessarily the target of fire, but I was always the cannon fodder. There were so many casualties of me confined behind that dressing room door. And I learned it wasn’t really silence that lurked outside. It was the space between the ~~~~~ called anticipation. Silence was something else, and it never entered this setting. It was unclear if I even knew what silence was. But if I plucked my hair at a consistent tempo then the anticipation, at least, couldn’t breathe. And the people that put me here could bang cupboards and scream all they wanted.

[CUT TO:]

“You okay?”

His sudden attention rattled me as it did every time he broke the fourth wall. We were on the duorail a touch too close to rush hour and it was tougher to get through today than most days. He’d caught me rocking back and forth at a different beat than the duotrain’s, his hand hovering just over my shoulder because he knew I didn’t like being touched because it sometimes translated the same way as ~~~~~ and he knew ~~~~~ was painful for me too.

I was looking for holo-grass, or dead trees, or something that wasn’t moving, or talking, or staring, or attacking, but all I could see were the mannequins and that’s all they were doing on a duotrain that just kept going and the tunnels kept blocking my shot of the sky and it was like I was behind my dressing room door, stuck in anticipation and separated from my movie and nobody could see or hear me–

“Is it too ~~~~y? We’re almost there. It’ll be okay.”

And he reminded me I could be heard. I was not a holo. I was still there. Integrated with the documentary. 

But the duorail was against this. And for no reason, it started SCREAMING. And the mannequins started SCREAMING. And I was hurtled into the boy and all the prickles and particles of his shirt and body against mine were auto-translated as ~O~SE and the ~~~SE was SHRIEKING in Times New Roman like tangible text scraping through my fingers and down my ears. 

I whimpered and pushed off of him and stood, and paced on the spot because there was no room to make paces elsewhere and all the zombies became authentic, because their panic was real. There was no exit. There was an announcement. There was a scratchy script spilling words like ‘panic’ and ‘emergency’ and ‘stop’. 

I pounded against my ears to stop.

Then the anticipation was breathing but I was not. I gasped and moaned. The camera rolled. But air did not follow.

___ THE BOY ___

(shaken but standing)

(he slides his headphones over my head)

And it didn’t let the NOISE in.

Melodies carried me off on a boat in the sky. I got to breathe in clouds, and sip at rainbows, and caress a halo made of stars. From ten seconds of song: I was transcended. He was right. This wasn’t NOISE, it was the opposite. It saved me from it. His hands, brushing against the sides of my head, weren’t so prickly when they came with a harmony. Hypnotized, we stood there with closed eyes for mere minutes.

And in that time there came a transition. 

The title of my movie changed genres again. This time, I thought, it was a musical. But when I opened my eyes, it was slice of life, cutting deeper than the shovels over my gravestones. One hand, then the other, like he lost hold of his bones, slid from my face as he collapsed.

His silence was loud.

[CUT TO]

EXT. ANYWHERE ELSE – NOW

I wanted to, but the scene wouldn’t budge. He was stuck

(visibly in pain)

and crumpled by my feet. There was a skull on his shirt and one waiting behind his eyes. And he didn’t let the air in.

“That’s not nice,” I whispered, but he was screaming in SILENCE. His IV was strapped over me, and his precious horizon lay in my hands, but I didn’t move. I didn’t know what to do. I was a contemporary zombie and the world was ~~~~y and cruel. I thought this was a musical with a number or two but the cast and crew were– 

They were helping him… 

They were helping him. Helping me. 

The zombaic actors and actresses turned authentic like I’d never seen, and they bowed their ears to his head and took on nursing roles. They patted my back, my shoulder, but they also let go, and carried him to a stretcher and hovered us to a hospital and they acted nice, like the boy had been to me, and told me it would be okay. Their noise 

No.

Their music created this concept called encouragement. 

Such a delicate, quiet piece sailing fragments of peace into my mind.

And this time I listened.

Behind the hospital room door, I sat alone for hours without intermissions or trailers waiting for his movie to start back up again. I’d given him back his IV. But the music he’d given me still echoed. I breathed it in.

[FADE IN]

INT. BRIGHT HOSPITAL ROOM – DAY

___ THE BOY ___

(opens his eyes, sees me and smiles)

Hey.

(he moves one ear muff away)

___ ME ___

(shaken, I stand, upset)

Why’d you do that?

___ THE BOY ___

Wanna go watch a movie?

___ ME ___

(more upset, grabbing at music notes in the air)

No. Why’d you do that?

___ THE BOY ___

(he sits up with some strain)

Why do people make movies? I dunno, you looked like you needed it. Maybe I needed you to hear it? Who cares? Let’s go watch one.

___ ME ___

(trying not to pull hair)

No. You don’t get it. I’m a zombie already. My mind is broken. You were gonna die and I couldn’t do anything.

___ THE BOY ___

(relaxed)

Just because you’re a zombie doesn’t mean you’re broken.

___ ME ___

(screaming)

I am broken!

___ THE BOY ___

(scoffs)

So what? You think your brain is broken; doctors think my heart is broken. But we’re still standing, aren’t we?

(Silence)

Broken but standing is a beautiful thing.

Legendary even.

BREATHE IN

___ ME ___

(walks up to The Boy’s bed, flops his blanket off his feet)

You’re not standing.

___ THE BOY ___

(smiles and raises a finger-framed camera. He targets his shot diagonally on my frown, then moves his lens to the window. To the city. To the horizon)

Maybe you can’t see it…

POV MOVES THROUGH THE BOY’S FINGER FRAMES

But I’m on top of the world.

♪ THE END ♪

Taija Sensei

Taija Sensei is just your everyday ninja obsessed with a perfectly healthy number of fandoms. She spends work days administering Spider-Man poses at children, and writing chaos like this. She has work featured in Shoegaze Literary Magazine, (soon) The Poet Heroic, and has a Certificate for Creative Writing from UofT.