Scene By Obscene
By Shaun Avery
This is “Scene By Obscene” – an affectionate(ish) spoof of some horror movie cliches. It was first printed on The Daily Satire website, and has also been published in the excellent short story anthology ‘Best Baby Satires‘. Please enjoy.
‘I need a girl,’ the producer said.
His PA looked up. ‘What kind of a girl?’ he asked. ‘Blonde, brunette? Alive, dead?’
‘A virgin.’
The PA looked out of the fiftieth floor window and across the expanse of Star City, where stars were born and dreams were made, though perhaps with a little more fellatio involved than was originally planned. ‘That may be a little harder to find, sir.’
‘That’s why I pay you the big bucks, son,’ his boss replied, reaching for a cigar.
Had the PA been of a mind to do so, he could have pointed out all the payments that came late, all the personal expenses that were never reimbursed and the extra hours written off without any financial consideration. But he knew that people would kill for this job, indeed knew people that had killed for this job, so he kept his grievances to himself. And instead asked, ‘how soon do you need her?’
‘For the meeting on Thursday night.’
The PA took a deep breath. ‘For the special meeting, you mean, sir?’
The producer belched smoke. ‘That’s right.’
His orders received, the PA hit the streets. Thinking, as he did so, about the people his boss would be meeting in a few days.
Not many meetings were held late at night around here.
But then, not many meetings were held with vampires and werewolves at the other end of the table.
The PA knew a guy who knew a guy who owed someone else a favour, and so he eventually found his virgin. Her name was Sabrina, and with a hefty cheque in one hand and a waiver absolving the producer of all responsibility if she should come to harm in the other, she followed the moviemaking pair through some dark and deep woods into a brooding ancient castle.
‘Why a castle?’ the PA asked. He was lugging along the producer’s briefcase, lagging behind while the producer tried to work his charms on an indifferent Sabrina.
‘Works for both of them,’ his superior told him, looking back. ‘Vampires and werewolves both look good in a castle.’
‘Right.’ The PA made a mental note of this, for future reference. ‘So what room we meeting in?’
The producer sneered round at him. ‘You even have to ask?’
It was, of course, a dungeon, and the producer had spared no expense in making it look the part. He had borrowed a number of torture devices from the recently concluded Aargh . . .That Spike In My Eye Hurts series of movies, and stuffed the room full of them, barely giving the representatives of the lycanthrope and bloodsucking races any space to move. Secretly hoping, naturally, that any or all of that space would be used for violent confrontation.
But when he got there, he was disappointed.
He peeked through the door first, telling Sabrina and the PA to hang behind a little whilst he scoped out the situation. That was when he saw, much to his displeasure, that the vampire and the werewolf were chatting amiably away, speaking like two old friends, no animosity on display at all. And though his sources were normally impeccable, though they had promised that these two guys were the real deal and not just a couple of fame-hungry wannabes, the producer was suddenly stricken with doubt.
‘You two wait out here,’ he told his companions. Then thought better of it. ‘Wait,’ he told the PA. ‘Give me my briefcase first.’
The younger man handed it over. ‘You’re going in there alone?’
‘Yeah.’ The producer glanced back at the dungeon, where nothing of any violent note was happening. ‘I want a word with these two first.’
And with that he stepped into the darkness of the dungeon, letting the door clang shut heavily behind him.
‘Gentlemen,’ he then greeted them, shaking first the hand of the werewolf and then the vampire. ‘So glad you could make it.’ He met the gaze of the werewolf. ‘Just as well I didn’t call you here on a full moon night, huh?’
Then he laughed raucously, waiting for them to join him in his merriment.
Neither did.
Though after a brief look at each other, both smiled uneasily.
Perhaps sensing this, the producer laid down his briefcase and swept an arm around the room, indicating the many devices of torture. ‘You like the décor, guys? I laid this all out especially for you.’ He smiled. ‘Thought a couple of evil mothers like you would really appreciate it.’
The two creatures stiffened slightly.
‘I don’t really like to think of myself as evil,’ the vampire told him. ‘I’m just, you know, different.’
‘Afflicted?’ the producer asked, knowing that this analysis had been flavour of the month at the movies recently.
Frustratingly, though, the vampire replied, ‘not really.’ And added insult to injury by adding, ‘I like being like this.’
The producer groaned inside.
This really wasn’t going the way he’d planned it.
On the other side of the door, Sabrina sighed impatiently.
‘It’s kind of quiet in there,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you worried?’
‘No, not really.’ The PA smiled thinly. ‘The man knows what he’s doing.’
He hoped that was true.
‘What about you?’ the producer asked, looking to the werewolf. ‘How do you feel about the way you are?’
‘Okay,’ the creature replied. But there was something in his voice, the slightest trace of discontent, and the producer, utilising a skill honed by years and years of practice, immediately noticed and latched onto it.
‘It’s not really that bad,’ the werewolf said, when prompted. ‘There’s just this one little problem I have.’
‘Go on.’ The producer was getting ready to call in his PA now, certain that they were about to have the hook on which to hang a movie.
‘Well, you know,’ the werewolf said, ‘I spend a lot of money on designer clothes, and I really mean a lot.’ He sighed wistfully. ‘And turning into this big damn wolf when I’m wearing them ruins them, and that makes me really mad!’
He sounded close to tears when he reached the end of his confession, and the producer reflected: this is just what you get for meeting a wolf from Star City.
Sabrina looked up sharply. ‘What’s that sound?’
The PA had caught a glimpse through the door earlier, before his boss’s ample frame had got in the way, so he knew the answer.
‘Just one of those movie torture machines,’ he said. ‘I can imagine he’s in a hurry to try them out, make sure he got his money’s worth.’
Sabrina looked uneasy. ‘They’re just props, right?’ she asked. ‘They can’t, like, use them on him or anything, can they?’
‘Course not.’ He flashed her a smile, which she did not return. ‘They’re just props.’
‘So what I was thinking,’ the producer was saying, ‘is that one of the vamps could catch one of the werewolves – or the other way round, I’m not bigoted, I’m equal rights, know what I’m saying, homies? – and then stick ‘em in one of these babies, watch as all of their bones get broken and their skin comes off, kind of like what’s happening to this dummy here.’
The vampire looked at the open briefcase distastefully. ‘Do you always carry a fold-up women in there?’
Actually, he did. But that wasn’t important. So he ignored the question, saying instead, ‘what do you think?’
‘I don’t know.’ Incredibly, the werewolf looked squeamish.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ the producer asked, exasperated. ‘Anyone would think you’ve never tortured anyone to death before.’
The two creatures looked at each other.
Then at him.
He looked back.
Then said, ‘you haven’t tortured anyone to death before, have you?’
‘We’re not monsters,’ the vampire told him. ‘I only take blood from those that want me to.’
‘Yeah,’ the werewolf added, backing him up. ‘And I have a deal with a guy at the morgue – I only eat dead parts.’
The producer sighed inside, sensing that his attempts to hire these guys as creative consultants for the bloodiest, most true to life vampire versus werewolf epic ever made were about to go up in smoke.
But he still had an ace up his sleeve, still knew that nothing brought about rivalry between the two races like a mutual love of sweet and innocent virginal flesh. So he headed towards the door, saying, ‘okay, gentlemen, fair enough. I respect your humane stance. But before you leave, let me introduce you to a friend of mine called Sabrina.’
‘There’s a reason I’m still a virgin, you know,’ she said.
‘Oh?’ The PA certainly didn’t think it was down to her looks; she was a dark-skinned, coal-eyed beauty. ‘Why’s that?’
She looked away. ‘Humans just don’t do it for me.’
‘Right.’ The PA felt oddly disappointed.
He still felt that way a few seconds later, when the door to the dungeon swung open and the producer said, ‘here she is, boys – prime virgin beef, just the way you like it!’
‘Ooh, not me,’ the PA heard a voice protest. ‘I have a girlfriend.’
‘Me, too,’ another insisted.
But it was too late; in the few seconds his attentions had been diverted Sabrina had already shed her clothes and was now lying on the dungeon floor saying, ‘humans suck, vampire, werewolf, do me!’
The producer looked down at the open and inviting ‘V’ of her legs.
‘You sure she’s a virgin?’ he said.
It was another few weeks before the producer contemplated treading the horror path once more – he needed to get over the pain of having his porky fingers burnt.
Still, at least Sabrina came out of it happy – certainly a lot happier than the girlfriends of the vampire and werewolf had been when pictures of that little orgy hit the Internet.
The PA had to make back his expenses money somehow.
With that incident done and dusted, he thought that things were getting back to normal. But then the producer swivelled around in his chair to face him and said, ‘you know what there aren’t enough movies about?’
Dreading the answer, which in itself would be pretty dreadful, the PA replied, ‘what?’
‘Houses built on Indian burial grounds.’
He could have rattled off a few hundred, but the PA knew better than that. So he said, ‘did you have an idea for one?’
‘I certainly have.’ The producer reached for the cigar that always heralded the arrival of a new scheme. ‘Here’s what I want you to do.’
A bar at the dark and seedy side of Star City was the PA’s destination a few nights later, a bar where he had a meeting pencilled in with a couple of shady characters – characters that would become his ‘crew.’
Yes, he rather liked the sound of that. His crew. As if he was the leader in the kind of heist movie his boss had once made.
Of course, he thought as he headed towards the duo, in reality he was nothing of the sort. Like always, he was on an errand for the producer, and though past missions had seen him occasionally skirt on the wrong side of the law, they had never been quite as dangerous as this one.
Hence the crew.
‘Mac and John?’ he asked, reaching them.
‘Yeah,’ came the reply.
‘Good.’
The PA took a seat.
And told them what he needed.
After drinks, he took them out to the van he’d hired.
Showed them the shovels and pickaxes they’d be using.
Having heard what was required, Mac went home and got his own crowbar.
They made little small talk on the way, and as they grew closer to their destination the PA began to grow increasingly uneasy in the driver seat, acutely aware that these were huge and dangerous men who could do anything to him. Normally he would like that, maybe even pay for it, but Mac and John didn’t look like the kind of people that would pay much attention to safety words. He was suddenly glad that he’d only given them half of the money upfront, had promised the rest later.
‘We’re here,’ John told him, and the shattering of the silence made him jump.
‘So we are,’ the PA replied, trying to force his heart back down his throat.
Mac was already out of the van and heading for the back, wanting to get this over with. Not bothering to wait for orders, Mac readied his crowbar and headed for the cemetery gates.
Behind him, lagging a little, the PA looked at the list his boss had given him.
A list of names, and their locations within the cemetery.
It hadn’t been hard for the producer to get this information, and after finding out there were no houses built on Indian burial grounds that he could use to make the ultimate ghost movie, it had taken him but a second to come up with a Plan B. ‘I’ve got it,’ he’d said. ‘We’ll just make our own burial ground!’
But a burial ground needed bodies.
Which was where Mac and John came in.
‘Here,’ the PA said, pointing out the location of the first name on the list. ‘Let’s get digging.’
They did, all three of them, the PA not being the type of guy who liked to stand around doing nothing when people on his payroll got busy, and inch by painful, bleeding inch they grew closer to the object of their mission, to a body buried deep below. And though the PA didn’t really believe in restless spirits and vengeful poltergeists, there was something about being here, in this cemetery, in the middle of the night, that could make a person change his mind about things, and it was soon pretty easy to believe that their shovels would unearth a skeletal hand that would come rushing up towards them . . .
‘Damn,’ Mac said, cutting into his thoughts.
The PA looked up, nervous. ‘What?’
‘Thought I heard something.’
‘I didn’t,’ the PA said. But now that Mac had mentioned it, he wasn’t quite sure if he had or not.
Undeterred, acting as if they hadn’t spoke, John dug on.
Until eventually he hit something.
‘Nice coffin,’ he said.
‘Give me the pickaxe,’ Mac ordered.
The PA obeyed. Then stood back, gasping.
Watching as Mac swung.
Swung the axe again and again, casting up splinters of wood, sending up layers of dirt and dust that clung to the PA’s clothes and skin, striking away at the coffin until a large portion caved in.
Nobody spoke.
Nobody dared even breathe.
Nobody did a thing until Mac reached into the coffin, plucked out a skinless skull and tossed it out to the PA.
‘Jesus,’ John said, looking at the grisly relic over the PA’s shoulder. ‘How long’s he been dead for?’
Mac pulled himself up and out of the grave, placing the pickaxe on the ground. ‘From the smell of him, I’d say quite a while.’
Ignoring their conversation, the PA said breathlessly, ‘incredible.’
Mac looked at him. ‘What?’
‘He looks so normal,’ the PA replied, staring at the skull. ‘Just like one of us.’
‘Why wouldn’t he?’ John countered. ‘The guy was an Indian –’
‘Native American,’ Mac cut in.
‘Okay, whatever.’ John waved a hand around dismissively. ‘I’m just saying, the guy wasn’t an alien or something.’
‘No.’ The PA cradled the skull beneath his arm and crossed the name off the list. ‘Quite right.’
Looking up, he saw that Mac seemed nervous again. ‘Hear something?’
‘Yeah. Keep hearing something. Like someone’s out there watching us.’ He looked at his two companions. ‘Don’t you feel it?’
‘No,’ the PA told him, wanting to get back to business. ‘And I don’t have time to worry about ghosts right now.’
‘Maybe not,’ John replied, alarm in his voice. ‘But maybe we should worry about him.’
And then he pointed.
Towards the night watchman who was running towards them.
A gun in his hand.
Shouting at them to stop.
After that, it all happened in high-speed.
Mac went for the pickaxe, the gun went off, his brains exited his head at a painful angle, the PA screamed, John turned and ran, the gun went off again, hitting him in the back, and the watchmen aimed at the PA, lost in battle fever, his big gun filling the whole world, and the PA’s life flashed before his eyes, a life spent pretty much in servitude to the man who had sent him here tonight, sent him here to die, and from somewhere deep inside he found the energy to survive, the drive to fight, and he threw the skull, threw it hard, watching as it smashed into the other man’s face, and the watchman fell, the shot going high, whizzing high into the hard, and then he sprawled completely, vanishing from sight.
Falling into the grave.
Landing roughly on the headless corpse.
Thinking of the trouble he’d be in for messing this up, the PA momentarily wanted to join him.
‘Okay,’ the producer was saying, ‘things look bad right now. But I’ve got a new idea, and this one absolutely can’t fail!’
And he went to light up, to complete his usual ritual.
At which point a passing nurse told him, ‘Sir, you can’t smoke in here.’
‘What?’ he barked back at her. ‘Don’t you know who I am?’
She didn’t.
So he told her.
Loudly, and with perhaps a few more expletives than were necessary.
Whilst the PA tried to crawl back into his bed.
This particular exchange was taking place in a hospital room, where the PA had found himself after picking up some kind of virus from all that dust and dirt that had come out of the excavated grave; seemed the dead would have their revenge, after all.
Though not, alas, in the blockbuster movie the producer had planned – after what had happened at the cemetery, it had been pointed out to the producer that such a movie might be considered slightly tasteless. Luckily, there was nothing to link him or the PA to the unfortunate Mac and John, and a lengthy visit from some well-dressed people with big cheques in their hands had helped persuade the night watchman that there had only been two grave robbers, not three.
This was all in a day’s work for the producer, who now reluctantly acquiesced to hospital rules and put away his beloved cigar.
Almost as reluctantly, the PA asked, ‘what’s this idea?’
‘Ah, the great outdoors,’ the producer said a few days later, leading him towards another newly hired van. ‘A chance to get away from the city. This’ll do us both the world of good, son!’
The PA hoped so. If nothing else, that little scene at the hospital the other day had proven just how far the producer’s star had waned. When he had shouted out his name to the nurse, the PA had watched her face – there’d been not the slightest trace of recognition there, no knowledge of his identity at all.
Which was maybe true of most producers, who tended to be faceless men in suits. But the producer had donned many other hats in his time, had done some directing and some acting, too; his face had once been well known. No longer was that the case, though, which was why he needed his Hit movie with a capital ‘H.’ Hence his attempts to make his new horror movie more real and raw than anybody else’s – he really needed to make a splash.
Which was an ironic choice of words, given their destination.
‘Just you and me this time, son,’ the producer said, ambling into the passenger seat whilst his protégé belted up at the wheel. ‘See, that’s where we’ve gone wrong all those other times, inviting in all those strangers.’ He jiggled around until his ample posterior was comfortable. ‘They cause nothing but misery, am I right?’
The PA suspected that this was not strictly the case for Sabrina, whose inter-species gang-bang had made her something of an overnight Star City starlet . . .but Mac and John may have had different opinions, so he let the point pass.
‘Of course,’ the producer added, ‘we might not be alone all that long.’
‘Really? How come?’
The producer began to unfurl a road map. ‘People still go there all the time – it’s a hot spot for lovers.’
‘Despite all the murders?’
‘So they say, son.’ He folded the map back up; was seemingly confident that he knew where they were going, which way they were headed. ‘That’s what they say.’
‘Right.’
They settled into silence then, and it was another few hours before they admitted that they were lost.
The PA bit back an angry comment, but he was painfully aware that it was becoming increasingly difficult to do so. He had been patient to the point of sainthood in the past, but little recent events like catching a virus from a dead guy and almost being shot could greatly reduce a person’s tolerance levels. Could make a person think, too, about the fact that no one knew they were both out here; that barely anyone even knew who the producer was anymore . . .
But he couldn’t let himself think like that.
He still had his boundaries.
For now.
So instead he looked at the map, trying to work out where they were. And when that didn’t help, he stopped to ask an old, grizzled man in a beat-down, miles from anywhere shop for directions.
‘Don’t tell me,’ the producer said when the younger man returned to the van. ‘I’ve seen all the movies and then some. He warned you away from the place, didn’t he? Told us we’d suffer a slow and bloody death if we visited the old campsite.’
‘Nope,’ the PA told him. ‘When I told him we worked in movies, he was only too happy to tell us where to go.’
They reached the site by nightfall.
None of the lovebirds the producer had predicted were about – a fact which disappointed the PA greatly.
The producer got their flashlights from the back of the van, the night closing in all around him.
The younger man waited around the front, trying to dispel murderous thoughts.
As he did so, a voice said behind him, ‘hey.’
He turned.
And was looking, once more, down the barrel of a gun.
‘Neat, huh?’
The PA took the weapon. ‘Is it real?’
‘Nah, I got it from the Aargh . . .That Spike In My Eye Hurts guys.’
‘You didn’t think a real gun would help?’
They began to walk towards the main house where all of the camp counsellors had stayed before the tragedy. ‘Nah,’ the producer replied. ‘No point, anyway. According to the legend, the guy’s been shot tons of times already.’ He looked towards his companion, mimicking a terrified face. ‘Bullets don’t work on him.’
That was indeed how the legend went – the legend of a troubled boy who had been brought as a girl by an abusive mother and then accidentally drowned at this campsite before coming back as a crazed killer. They had both done their research on him, and had both been suitably sceptical. But once again, rational belief and behaviour went out of the window in a dark and blood-soaked place like this.
Pushing open the door of the house, the PA asked, ‘so if bullets don’t work, how are you going to stop him taking a machete to your head?’
‘Easy,’ the elder man replied. ‘I’m going to make him a star.’
The PA snapped on a light, casting a sickly glow across the large front room. He glanced at the windows, which had been boarded up from the inside to keep the killer out, or so the story told. ‘Come again?’
‘I’m going to find him, and cast him as the killer in our new movie.’
‘You’re going to cast a potentially real, possibly un-dead, and probably indestructible killer in a movie?’
‘In our movie, son,’ he said, stressing the second word. Then he laid a hand on the PA’s shoulder, adding, ‘for all your hard work, I was thinking of giving you a small share of the profits.’
They looked at each other.
Seemingly sharing a moment.
The younger man didn’t know quite what to say.
But it all became academic a few seconds later, when the lights went out and a huge, hulking shape filled the doorway.
Bringing death with him.
‘Upstairs!’ the PA cried. ‘Out the window! I have an idea!’
But the producer just stood there.
As if enraptured.
For a man who’d spent most of his career making people believe the impossible, it was amazing to see the unreal become real so prominently. For everything about the monster coming towards him screamed ‘fake’ – from the famous mask across his disfigured transgender face to the bullet holes dotted across his huge body.
Yet here he was.
Walking slowly forwards.
Murder in his eyes unseen.
A much-used blade within his hands.
One that he raised to the sky, preparing for a killing stroke.
Upstairs, the PA looked out of the window.
A distant location in his eyes.
A plan forming in his mind.
He took one look at the glass, thought about the fall, then considered the death he’d face at the hands of the monster below.
He knew which one he’d prefer.
So he closed his eyes.
And jumped.
Hearing the crash and clash of broken glass, the monster turned
around.
Struggling to catch his breath, bleeding in too many places to count, the PA nonetheless got to his feet. And shouted to the killer, ‘hey, ugly! Come and get me!’
Then ran.
The monster followed, leaving the producer behind.
Where some ideas that had been lurking in his head for a while suddenly began to form themselves into a plan.
The monster’s first death, before he came back as an unstoppable killing machine, had happened in this lake, leaving him with a potent – and terribly convenient for those trying to escape him – fear of water. The PA planned to exploit this now.
He was running fast, running hard, completely focussed on the edge of the small bridge where he would make his stand. His attention so fixed in one direction that it had not yet occurred to him to wonder where his companion was.
The producer had left a few goodies in the back of the van, placing them in a secret compartment so that his travelling buddy would not know they were there. He grabbed them now, and headed back to the campsite.
Towards confrontation.
The monster took a step towards the PA.
Stopped.
Then raged in frustration.
‘Come on,’ his foe urged, standing at the very edge of the bridge. ‘You’re not scared, are you?’
But he could see that it was. Though it was impossible to see the monster’s eyes, the train of thought that had made it stop still was all too plain to see. Sure, it was strong, and sure, it was ruthless. But if they got into a fight that close to the edge, so near the hated water, it would only take one little push, one false move, to topple it over into its doom.
And yet it chose to stay and makes its killing ground a fairly aqua-heavy campsite.
No working out the logic of movie monsters, the PA supposed.
He had been hoping some cavalry would have arrived by now, but there was still no sign of the producer. So, knowing that this stalemate could not go on forever, he considered his options.
There were only two, really – into the water or try to run back along the bridge, past the killer.
The latter was an instant no-go; as for the former . . .
He turned his head slightly, looking at the water.
For a second, he almost understood why the monster was scared of it – why anyone would be scared of it.
The lake was a chemical mess, filled with toxins and pollutants from a thousand nearby dead seas. If he jumped into that, the PA didn’t much rate his chances of swimming out the other end – not without an extra head or a couple of less noticeable but no less deadly tumours, at least.
He looked back as he thought this, and saw, over the monster’s shoulder, the producer appearing at the other end of the bridge.
A small camera in one hand, a pistol in the other, and, perhaps most worryingly of all, the cigar in his mouth.
Even from this distance, the PA could tell that something was wrong.
Could see that this gun was not the movie prop he’d seen before.
But if the weapon was real, then why wasn’t he shooting the monster? Yeah, bullets might not have been able to kill it, but they could surely put it down long enough for them to get out of here.
‘What are you waiting for?’ the PA shouted. ‘Shoot it!’
The producer stopped where he was.
Said, ‘I don’t think so.’
‘What?’
The producer trained the small handheld camera on his young friend’s face, trying to catch in all of his emotion. ‘See, I’ve had a new idea for a movie these last couple of days, since you were in the hospital. That’s why I brought you out here.’
‘To feed me to this?’ The PA motioned towards the monster, which was watching them both in confusion.
‘That’s right. I came up here alone last week, to make sure the killer was real.’ He paused. ‘That was how I knew about all the lovebirds coming here.’ And smiled. ‘That was fun to watch.’
‘You’ve been here before? Then why all that crap about getting lost along the way?’
The producer had considered this too. ‘Call it second thoughts,’ he said. ‘Even I feel guilty sometimes.’
But now was not going to be such a time.
‘I’m going to shoot you now,’ he shouted to his young friend. ‘Not to kill you, just to wound you, so you can’t fight our friend here. Then he won’t have to worry about you pulling him into the water.’ He grinned. ‘And I can shoot the torture gore splatter movie to end them all.’
He laughed and smoked.
Aimed and fired.
And shot.
Read More great stories like this in the ‘Best Baby Satires‘ anthology!
