“They got there early, and they got really good seats.”

October 28, 2016

Hey boy howdy I wrote something weird this time when I really should be sleeping! I hope you enjoy this little random-sentence adventure!

.

.

They got there early, and they got really good seats. Maria stood in front of her chair and began unbundling from her coat, hat, and scarf, as Frank unzipped his leather jacket and not-so-subtly started pulling out the food he’d stuffed down the front.

“This is gonna be great,” he said.

Maria rolled her eyes. “Frankie, you’ve seen this movie, like, six hundred times.”

“I know. So I know, it’s gonna be great.” He peeled the paper back and took a very large bite of a hot dog.

She sighed and tossed her coat on the adjacent chair, flipping her curly hair over her shoulder and crossing her arms.

“You gonna sit like that the whole time?” He asked, mouth stuffed full.

“I’m gonna sit however I want right now cause the show ain’t even on for another thirty-five minutes.”

“Yeah, but these seats’re really great, right? And besides, we’ll be done eating and won’t have to miss too much of the action.”

She mouthed, ‘the action’ and rolled her eyes again.

He continued to eat, taking a slurp from the soda in the armrest, for several moments. Then he nudged her arm gently, and when she looked, he was offering the bag of cheese-stuffed jalapenos.

Her favorite. A little smile lifted the corners of her mouth, and though neither of them spoke, she accepted the bag and began to eat, and Frankie knew things were always much better when she wasn’t hungry.

Ten minutes passed before anyone else started wandering into the theater, and they took seats in the back. Neither of them took any note of the fact that no one else came to join their row, or the ones in front; it wasn’t everyone who liked to sit as close to the screen, after all. Twenty minutes went by and they were sharing the onion rings, Maria tucked up under Frankie’s arm with her hand laying on his chest.

It was a good bit before he said, “Why aren’t they showin’ any previews or anything?”

“I dunno.” She wasn’t worried, although it was certainly odd.

“Hope the damn projector’s not broken.”

“Do they even still use projectors?” She wondered.

“Of course they do. What else would they use? They gotta get the picture on this giant screen, right?”

“I guess.” She looked back over her shoulder a little, and then frowned as she fell back against him. “Is this some kind of special show?”

“Well, they never played the movie here before,” he said. “It’s too gorey, and…”

“No, I mean, there’re people dressed up like weirdos. Were we s’posed to wear costumes?”

“Weirdos?” He echoed, and twisted to look back. She did, too, sitting up more to do so.

Three rows back was a group of four people, and all of them were wearing black top hats and bronze-colored masks like birds, with weird goggles on where the eyes went, so the beaks protruded beneath opaque black lenses. “Maybe…” he started, and she pulled away to turn fully around, her heart suddenly jumping a dozen beats at once.

“No,” she said, cutting him off immediately. In the fifth row, slightly to the right, were three more people, and they were all wearing the same thing; handfuls more were further back, and all of them were staring. Right. At. Her.

“Frankie, let’s get out of here,” she whispered.

At the same moment, a jangly piano song burst out of the speakers above them, making both of them jump. The masked people were unmoved. “Frankie,” she said again, grabbing his arm and starting to stand.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” boomed a man’s voice. Frankie whirled around to see the screen, but it was still dark, the whole theater was getting dim as the lights began to fade. “Welcome to our special celebration of the evening! We are very glad to be in Hartford tonight, for the very first time! Let’s all give a big round of applause to our hosts!”

The other people all leaned their heads back and made cawing bird sounds, raising their arms and waving them madly in the air. Frankie was frozen in shock, but Maria grabbed her coat with one hand, and his elbow with the other, and started pulling toward the door.

“It is with great pleasure that we welcome our new recruits! Mister Franklin Howard Luciano and Miss Maria Angelica Guillermo! Please give them our very warmest welcome tonight as we prepare to enjoy this cult classic film from the 1960s!”

Frank squeaked a little but neither of them could really hear the other over the abrasive piano tune behind the announcer. Maria tried to pull him faster, but her feet weren’t wanting to move quite right.

The bird-people waved their arms so hard that feathers were coming out, floating in the aisles around them, making their awful screeching sounds the whole time. Maria looked down angrily and realized her foot was sinking into the floor.

“No!” She screamed, awash with inexplicable rage.

“Oh ho!” The announcer laughed. “Our little bird has quite a temper! Let’s help her learn that walking isn’t the way we do things here!”

The four people who were closest were waving so much that feathers were starting to drift toward them. One landed on her coat and twitched wildly, burrowing the point of its shaft into the material. She screamed, and Frank snapped out of his horrified trance.

“Ge’offa her!” He cried, grabbing her coat and flinging it away. It landed on two chairs and more feathers fell, like they were aiming for it, like they were moving on their own. The air was filled with the screeching sound and the wing-arms flapped so hard a wind was pushing feathers all around. Frank pushed Maria harder toward the aisle and felt his foot slipping out of his untied sneaker, which was stuck to the floor.

She stumbled and grabbed one of the chairs as she could only get one of her two feet to move. “There’s no need for a fuss!” The announcer said merrily. “We all have a lot to learn from one another, here at the nest!”

“Fuck this!” Frank cried, batting a group of three feathers away from Maria’s hair. “Honey, we’re gettin’ outta here!”

Enraged and adrenaline-pumped, he let his feet slide out of his shoes and barreled into her like a football tackle, one arm around her waist, both lifting and propelling them forward. They made it into the aisle, where the carpet was just carpet and wasn’t sticky, and the bird people dropped their arms, starting to their feet in one mechanical motion, surprised into a stark silence.

“Come on, Frankie!” Maria shrieked, darting up the aisle toward the exit. He kept ahold of her and could hardly tell if she was pulling him or he was pushing her to go faster. They burst out the door into the theater hallway, and a group of twelve masked people stood in a half-circle, facing them. The same black goggles and beaks all sat above identical black coats and beneath identical black hats.

“Hey, you better let us out of here!” He yelled, emboldened by his anger. “I ain’t playing!”

“This is no time for jokes!” The announcer’s voice had somehow followed them. The bird people moved and revealed a man from behind. He was short, with a huge head that gleamed like plastic and moved just as little, parted hair and vacant eyes, mouth holding an enormous grin that didn’t change a bit as his voice echoed out. One hand clutched a microphone beneath his immobile face. “This is a time for celebration! We have new hatchlings here in our nest!”

“Fuck that!” Frankie shouted.

“We are all going to be very good friends!” The voice cried enthusiastically. “Please show our new colleagues the way we do things here!”

Neither one of them had a real plan, but they moved as one and darted to the left. There was an emergency exit door at the end of the hallway, and the old movies always played on the last screen. The two of them broke away from the ring, Frank so close that the black cloak of the nearest one fluttered and threw more feathers out. They flew at him like knives, but the leather jacket was too thick for the points to pierce.

“Come on!” He said, and they made it to the door. Maria’s body was flattened against the handle in their rush to escape. The emergency alarm started, and the small man’s large voice sounded much less friendly as he shouted behind them:

“Stop them!”

Frank didn’t have to look back to know that they weren’t all standing there staring anymore. They raced down the alley toward the main street, where cars and streetlights could be seen, where other people were, where the hallucinations had to stop and reality had to set in.

A huge black shape rose out of the ground before the alley’s end, and they skidded to a stop, Frank’s sock slipping in something moist. The form of a dozen black-robed creatures had consolidated into something else, some other large, shapeless black mass that blocked the way forward. Its body shifted with a feathery rustling sound, and the black goggles now gleamed like the eyes of a huge spider.

“I ain’t letting you touch my Maria!” Frank shouted. He pulled out his belt knife, flipped the blade out, and chucked it at the monster, hard.

The point pierced the mass of black and let out a terrible squeal, like a pig being slaughtered and the air slipping out of a giant balloon. The shape collapsed inward toward the knife and Frank took the moment, though Maria was frozen, mouth agape.

“Fuck this crazy fuck, come on!” He shouted, grabbing her hand. She squeezed his and they ran together, toward the edge where the black form no longer reached to the building’s wall.

They leapt a bag of trash and found themselves in the street on the other side. All the normal sounds of the city were suddenly there, back again. There was no more black creature behind them.

Maria shrieked, and Frank realized a black feather was trying to worm its way over her shoulder toward the skin of her arm. He grabbed it and impulsively snapped it in his hands, throwing it to the ground, where it lay still.

They both simultaneously realized a figure stood before them. It was no masked monster, but a gaunt, pale man in a trench coat who looked barely out of puberty. “You went into the show?” He whispered, wide eyed. “Did you see the birds?”

“Y-yes,” Maria stammered.

“They didn’t get you, did they? With the feathers?”

“No, I – I don’t think so, she said, and Frank had a sudden fear, pushing her thick curly hair aside to make sure none were buried underneath it.

“Good. That’s good. We need to get out of here before the announcer comes.”

“The little guy with the giant head?” Frank asked, glancing over his shoulder again; the alley was still empty. When he looked back, the boy had grown even more pale.

“You saw him? Both of you?”

“Let’s get out of here!” Maria wailed, starting to cry.

“You tell me what the fuck’s going on,” Frankie said, shoving toward the stranger. “And what’s your name?”

“My name is Peter, and they turned my girlfriend into one of them, back in Newark. I have to burn the place down.”

“Well… well, that seems like a pretty all right way to do it,” Frankie said. “But I gotta get some new shoes.”