Christ Fuck

Nebraska, © Alexander Payne, 2013

You know the drill by now. Dan Mader's Unemployed Imagination, his weekly flash fiction feature and yeah, here we go. I got tangled up in some real life webstrosity this weekend, so I couldn't participate on Friday, but still, I try every week to come up with a collection of words worthy enough to add to this increasingly literate collection, and I found some time tonight instead, a couple days late, and added them anyway, worthy or not.

I hope I don't offend anyone with the title, but it's the exact right title for this piece, and you can't fight right, you just can't.

As with many of my recent short pieces, they seem to be haunted by that atmospheric, moody tenor I've been so steeped in lately, especially in films like the recent Joe, films full of ambience, love, and violence. Honestly, there are some compelling movies coming out of America these days. Ain't Them Bodies Saints, Shotgun Stories, Prince Avalanche, Nebraska, Take Shelter, Mud, Blue Ruin and now Joe. All so steeped in that rural blue-collar loneliness that stretches from Montana to Minnesota on down to Louisiana, a swathe of bleak, moody, riverbank angst, gravid with a gauche type of need. But now I'll shut the hell up and here's my latest story.

Christ Fuck

Road weary and trembling with pent hysteria, we make it at last into this Nebraska town, this South Dakota town, this Iowa town, bleeding from our raw stigmata.

These are settlements filled to the gills with dust. Boxy, squat. Wide main streets with angled parking, like nobody ever had to worry 'bout space. Tire companies. Two-pump gas stations, rusted and flake-leaded with ancient paint. Corner bars risking fever-glimpse neon signs, two or three patrons at any one time, no matter when. Hardware stores. Pawn shops. Silent chapels. The scent of oil. Weeds erupting from sidewalk cracks. But mainly a shitload of space and even more dust.

"Holler if ya need something." That's Marcie, runs the only good diner in town, fine American cuisine, and I surely ain't bein' facetious, no sir.

We spend our entire lives goin' in and out of buildings. See if that ain't true. Argue with me, if you like. 

Watch times change, watch.

"What does a smile smell of?"

I ain't answering that. I ain't crazy.

Dead lots waiting years for something different, something better or at least newer, hunched SUVs scurrying scarab trails, chain link and rail cars under a dull lead sky over straight horizons. We're choking here. Choking on decent air, neglect, and pure sexless melancholy.

"My head is a cage." Your pretty brown eyes look panicky to me.

"Yeah. We oughta leave." Keep heading west. Makes damn sense. Go until the ocean stops us. Go until the end, until we can spring the cages. 

But all of this—all of this—pales in the firefly glow of brand new love and the Christ-fuck flash of lightning over the endless traveling midway.

Nebraska © Alexander Payne 2013

20. to 17. Ice and Quiet to Disquieting Skies

17. Take Shelter  

Okay, another movie many would not classify as horror, but for me, what is more horrifying than having to choose between accepting your mental health is slowly disintegrating and acknowledging the possibility the world might be approaching apocalypse? Add to that an incredible performance by Michael Shannon, more than ably supported by the lovely Jessica Chastain, an eerie and haunting score, and atmosphere to spare—loveliness, loneliness, and dread braiding like the skeins of birds that dance in these bleak midwestern skies—and I've just talked myself into watching it again. These are ordinary blue collar people we can relate to, an important aspect of why this film is so effective. For that and more, Jeff Nichols is someone else to keep an eye on; his direction lends this film a powerful sense of quiet unease worthy of Lynch while splicing it seamlessly with a Malick-like lyricism. Given my own tastes, and everything mentioned above, that combination is damn near unassailable. I'm already regretting having this too low on my list.

18. Kill List  

Ah, England again. Ben Wheatley: watch out for him. There's little I can say that won't spoil it, so yeah, just find this gem and watch it. Unflinching is a word that leaps to mind. Unpredictable, too. Really, like many films on my list it's a hybrid—a pagan horror mystery thriller road movie. Yeah, just watch it. Be warned, though: it doesn't pull its punches. Thoughtfully brutal. 

19. Alien  

In light of my last choice, highly predictable, no doubt. But still. Pretty much everything I said about The Thing applies equally here. If anything, it's even more claustrophobic, has a slightly more iconic gross-out moment, asks questions about artificial intelligence many straightforward sci-fi films often flub, and there's a little more Yin to The Thing's Yang. As in Sigourney. Yes, it's hardly original of me, but I compare the two films in the darkened movie theatre of my head often enough for it to be unhealthy, and I love them both, and perhaps because it came first I rate Alien a tiny notch higher. As great as the XY ensemble in a whiteout was, the extra X in a black void just edges it. Oh, did I forget to tell you how goddamn terrifying it is? In space, no one... etc. 

20. The Thing  

John Carpenter's version, from 1982. Once again, the borders are blurry, but whether this is sci-fi, horror, or horror/sci-fi doesn't really matter when you sit down to watch it and realise far too late you're trapped in scary-as-hell world, except it's not hell, unless hell froze over, because this is Antarctica and your choice is: stay and fight (or hide from) whatever appallingly wrong thing has invaded your camp and taken over your friends' bodies or walk out into the ice and die. This film is relentless. And beyond the relentlessness, there's a purity, too. Just watch the clip. It's an incredible opening scene. Gorgeous, expansive, somehow lonely. But after this, everything closes in and becomes chillingly, hermetically sealed. (Highest resolution and full screen recommended.)