Science Fiction/Double Feature

[whistlersmum]

'May the drive-in never die', Whistler thought to himself.

It was just past dusk, and The Blob was about to ooze itself across the outdoor screen. He'd hooked the speaker inside-out on the Impala's driver-side window, so the audio would project outward. He rested against the windshield, shoes off so as to not scuff the new paint on the hood. It'd cost him enough to get out of the impound and repaired. He wasn't about to cause any more damage.

A cooler full of beer sat on the roof of the car, an open can to his right. A jumbo bag of popcorn rested on his lap.

This took him back. The Globe in England; the Colliseum in Rome; watching Oedipus Rex in the original Greek. But nothing compared to a good old-fashioned drive-in theater.

And Steve McQueen. No one could touch him. Not even Olivier.

(Open to anyone.)

Comments

[whistlersmum]

"If they play the classics, the people would come. It--"

A familiar odor reached his olfactory senses. Whistler turned to his left. The man inside the car looked like he'd lived in it. Somebody was hungry.

"Trade you," the Agent waved a bottle towards the unshaven man.

Then back to the girl. "Why not combine resources, yeah?"

[brian_campo]

“Yeah?” Brian lifted his eyebrows. He wasn’t going to say no. “Alright.”

He pulled the key from his ignition to save the battery and got out of the car, brushing salt and crumbs off his jeans. Jeez, he looked like shit and he knew it. His black tee shirt had come straight of the laundry basket, wrinkles and all. His hair, usually gelled into a messy thatch, drooped on his forehead and kept getting stuck in his eyelashes.

He shut the door and started walking around the fender. Underneath his doc martens, the ground was hard and dry. Tiny clouds of dust puffed up and made sure everyone’s pants turned beige by the end of the night. As he reached the Impala, Brian held out the joint. He wasn’t worried about running out; he had a baggie full of weed and rolling papers in the dashboard of the Dodge.

“Brian,” he said, thinking it was generally good practice to trade names with someone you were about to smoke with. He looked at the short brunette, whose height and stature reminded him a little of Maddy, whom he hadn’t seen since the show at the Dive the other night. Brian had skipped this afternoon’s practice, and ignored the chorus of shouts on his answering machine telling him to grow a new pair of nuts and get in the car.

[tiny_dancer81]

"Theresa."

Whoa, that dude looked like he'd been yanked backwards through a knothole. Theresa frowned when she realized she recognized him. He'd been at the show the other night, playing with the Frayed Nerves. It was ironically apt, because he seemed really frayed.

The offer of pot sometimes meant that stronger drugs might be available. The vampire knew the difference between a recreational user and someone who was hooked through the bag. She looked at the burning spliff, watched the thin trail of smoke drifting upwards. If the man in the hat would pass that over here, she was willing to share.

[whistlersmum]

"Whistler. Nice to meet ya both."

The demon passed two bottles of beer before accepting the blunt. This was part of the 'new' him; less an Agent of Balance and more a person looking for balance in his life. And the first rule was finding ways to relax.

He took two puffs and held the smoke in his lungs, then passed the joint to Theresa.

[brian_campo]

Brian wrapped his shirttail around the beer cap and twisted. The resulting sigh of air mimicked his gratitude. He polished off half the bottle of dry ale in his first few sips. He kept the cap in his palm, its ragged edges making an impression. As much as he thought he wanted to be alone, Brian now realized his subconscious knew better, or else he wouldn’t have parked in a crowded lot and rolled down his windows. What he wanted was a controlled amount of strangers. No expectations, no way to disappoint.

’Indescribable… Indestructible! Nothing can stop it!’

“I haven’t seen this since I was a kid,” he said as the opening credits began. He was hyper-focused on the screen, forgetting for a moment to blink, or that his mouth was hanging open. Brian yanked himself out of the reverie. “My dad watched all this sci fi stuff. One time he took me meteor hunting.” He smiled and looked at Theresa and Whistler. “Turns out he planted the meteor beforehand. It was pretty cool.”

[tiny_dancer81]

Theresa took a conservative drag off of the joint, held the smoke in, then let it out through her nostrils. She'd been a social pot smoker before coke became her drug of choice, and although the effects of it might be psychosomatic, it was a way to fit in with the nearby sources of body heat.

"Steve McQueen was my first crush," she said in a hoarse voice as she passed the doobie back to Whistler. "My dad used to make fun of me because I thought he was so handsome in The Getaway. The good ones always die too young."

The toke had made her mouth dry, and she took a quenching swig of beer. Then a drink of Mountain, to see how that tasted in comparison. Blech. Separately they tasted just a little more than bland. Together? Gross.

[whistlersmum]

Whistler remembered that movie. The Getaway came out in 1972. That would make Theresa's first crush at around age five, or...

'Well. DUH.'

For a demon who lived thousands of years, sometimes he acted like he just fell off the back of the dung wagon.

Whistler puff-puffed and passed to Brian. He gave Theresa a sly look.

"That's amazing skin cream you use," he chortled to the girl, the smoke curling at the corners of his lips.

He wondered if Brian was more than he seemed as well.

[brian_campo]

Leaning against the fender of the Impala, Brian thought back to childhood and tried to pinpoint who his first crush had been. When it came to him, he smiled. “Jane Fonda,” he admitted, thinking back to that poster of Barbarella that hung next to his closet for years. He took a hit and blew the smoke into the space behind him. “What about you?” he asked Whistler. The man was older than him by maybe two decades, he figured, judging by the slight graying of hair around his ears.

‘Lauren Bacall’, he thought. ‘I’m calling it.’

[whistlersmum]

"Mary Pickford," came the Agent's response. It required no thought. If he could, he'd have had her poster on his wall in Berlin.

"That girl could emote. And those eyelashes. Hoo boy."

[tiny_dancer81]

Theresa had had a tiny moment of panic when Whistler gave her that look, but when Brian didn't react she drank another mouthful of beer. The last thing she need was him running off and telling Maddy that she was older than she acted.

"Who's Mary Pickford? " she asked with mild interest. Her knowledge of movies was limited to modern cinema, although she was a moderate fan of Sam Peckinpah's westerns. The final gun battle in The Wild Bunch could even make her undead heart threaten to beat.