The Thing , I am Legend , Wall E , Castaway , Alien ; all movies that get to me because they are about the topic that haunts me daily , isolation. Those movie titles crept into my head today while I sat alone in an Imax theater so big yet so empty that I might as well have been a log floating in an ocean.
As the screen came to life with the words “see a movie or be part of one” I pondered the thought that I am part of one already, I’m the star of my own isolation movie. Who would bother watching it, the plot is so thin.
The camera pulls back, revealing an empty coliseum of a theater, save the one lonely girl sitting in Row B, Seat 13. Continue pulling back to reveal the theater is being watched on a tv, the screen set to MUTE.
A thought of vandalism enters her mind. She takes out a pen and roughly scratches out two words on the seat in front of her. MEN and directly under it FUCK.
The movie has begun. She stares blankly.
Cutaway to a typewriter sitting on a desk in an empty room. The page in it is blank.
Zoom into and through said paper.
She is inside the same room. It is calm. Rain patters the lone window. The typewriter spills to the floor and the table slides to the far wall as the room begins to spin. She walks opposite the rotation.
The walls fall away and she is back in her seat in the theater. A man stands before her in the aisle. She recognizes him.
7/28 = 1/4
A quarter of her life she had spent with the man, standing silently before her.
She whispers his name and then follows with only one word more. SORRY she says.
He doesn’t respond. He just stares at her. Then suddenly …
She falls to her knees. forgive me
I FORGIVE YOU she hears the words but the man’s mouth did not move.
Turning away to gather herself she wipes a tear from her eye. She is so happy, but when she turns back he is gone.
On the IMAX screen we see another old boyfriend of hers who had his hands severed at the wrist , two birds hover, one on each side where fingers would have been.
The screen fades to black but her eyes see red.
She winces as if a shard was being ever so slowly sunken into her tear duct.
Sinking into the chair, a smile curling her once pursed lips, she lifts her legs and places them on the chair in front, then playfully rubs her feet together.
For no apparent reason, she looks up.
A man floats down to sit in the seat beside her. He watches her as she sits talking to herself. She pays him no mind.
WHY? he asks, pointing at invisible words as if her mumbles were fingernails scraping on a blackboard to him.
“Only myself understands me and never lies to me.” she answers.
MUMBLES of approval come from the speakers.
“I won’t lie.” he promises.
She looks around to see if anyone is watching, then gives him a kiss on the cheek.
The silent applause from empty seats is deafening.
He takes out a handkerchief and dabs at the blood on her cheek. “You’re bleeding” he says.
“You should go” she replies, pointing to a scar across her eye that magnifies her exquisite beauty.
The man walks away to the threshold of the theater’s door, pausing as if to take in the meaning of the words, then leaves.
The doors close slowly but menacingly behind.
“Once bitten, twice shy” she says to no one in particular.
Then she realizes once again just how alone she is.
Jaa2 xx
[formcrafts id=’10805′ name=’Book A Session’ align=’left’][/formcrafts]