I'm shouting
I don't need to shout
but I'm shouting
my voice is electronically amplified across a people sea of extras in stylized ancient times garb-a mishmash of European RenFair medievalism and Dungeons and Dragons and the Roman dudes in metal skirts and post-apocalyptic barbarians tricked out in animal hides'n'sports padding
-post-apocalypse can be grouped in with ancient times stuff, right? hey, cliches just feel ancient, don't they? I think so
I'm shouting at clusterfuck chaos
trying to yell my way into order
and, y'know, there's some movement on the margins,
I think that's what that is,
so I scan with binoculars
but the binoculars are some kind of teleportation device
and I'm just right there in the swirling mess
my extras are chanting and clanging their weapons
horses rearing up
I flinch at hooves that narrowly miss coming down on my head
people are playfighting
but there's this tendency of the really ambitious ones
to wound themselves
just a little
to hardsell the action
Mr. Director Man'll take notice, remember our devotion, give us a come up on the next show, an extra gets promoted to a supporting actor, one day summit into a lead,
and I'm like, "Hell, I had a few overly ambitious supporting players straight-up disembowel themselves on my last picture-you earn a hard passage on my ship-!"
-woowoowoowoooooo
-and right as it's all gettin' good to me
the air's thick with decapitated heads;
folks're only too damn eager to get tangled up in barbed wire and dosed with mustard gas and glazed with napalm
-woowoowoowoooooo
-and right as it's gettin' good to me
this brindle pitbull comes bounding up to me, wooing like crazy,
stepping on my feet
like some toddler dancing with a grandparent
eyes at full puppy
-woowoowoowoooooo
-blood showers us-me and the dog-from several neck stumps
always a favorite bit
tho' admittedly I'm not usually in the thick of it like this
-blood from several neck stumps showers me and the dog
and now the pittie is licking its lips compulsively
flavor is in the air
pittie licks some gore from my hand
and that's when a mighty Valkyrie wanders over, says, "Who's the most perfect puppy? It's you!"
and she's using her sinewy hands to massage and scritch and scratch the pittie's short-haired body
a freshly decapitated post-apocalypse bandit squats down to offer his shredded neck stump as a chewy treat
soon enough
swordsmen and wizards and gladiators and radioactive biker gangs are all crowding towards the pittie,
offering pets and scratchies and belly rubs
and severed digits'n'limbs'n'coils of intestines as treats
and this great assemblage of cosplayers is suffused with a magnificent golden light
and I'm like,
"What, precisely, the fuck is happening?!"
but I'm being crowded away from the True Center
back beyond the periphery
I hold the binoculars up to my eyes
hoping to teleport
but all that happens now
is that the binoculars are now functioning merely as binoculars
allowing me a distant view of what looks like
uhhh
like a giant outdoor concert
like Woodstock or something
they've even converted the materials of several siege engines into a kind of stage
upon which that brindled pittie is wooing its little heart out
while all my extras are dancing with wild abandon
tearing their limbs outta sockets
twisting their heads around backwards
skeletons jumping outta bodies to jitter and gyrate wildly, flinging off muscle and guts;
blades and motorcycles mystically merge essences into new kinds of food processing apparatus consisting of whirling-vrooming sharpnesses that grind everybody up into premium canine chow
which the pittie gobbles with abandon
growing huge with its feasting
gnawing every last bone down to the oh-so-suckable marrow
-did you notice that it's wearing a new sweater that someone knitted for it,so cute-
the pittie just grows and swells
wooing ecstatic joyous gluttony
'til it, too, explodes
loosing a hot meaty wind
that scours the flesh from my bones
my agony is so supreme
that the gods simply discharge all spiritual duties and burdens and fast track me through hell
back into the world of the living
where I spend six months fighting being locked out of the editing suite by the producers
-and then I just let it go
'cause movies are a pain in the ass
and I'm lucky to have any ass left
