LAST MEALS

ENDINGS

Jesse flipped through the records in the clearance rack at Second Spin, one of the many stores down on Main Street. He had recently gotten into older music, and further, collecting it on vinyl. There was something mysterious about vinyl records that Jesse found intriguing, precisely because the end of the record era pre-dated Jesse’s birth by thirty years, give or take. He spent much of his free time searching through the many vinyl crates in Second Spin. Every record he pulled out and examined was like a treasure—forgotten for years until he came along to discover it.

While on one of his routine searches, he pulled out a record that had an interesting design. Its entirely black cardboard folder was in pretty flawed condition, as if it had been in many homes over the years. There was no title on the front, and when he flipped it over, he saw the record contained only three songs:

  

1. Demon of Darkness

2. Invoke

3. Endings

  

Jesse was annoyed by the lack of information on the album, such as the record company that had produced it, or even the name of the band that had recorded it...but there was something about it that compelled him to bring it home. The vinyl at Second Spin was cheap, so he decided to take the risk and give it a try.

After getting home, Jesse nudged the front door open with his shoulder – a daily necessity – and made his way into the cluttered house he shared with his father. Jesse’s mom was no longer in the picture, and a true bachelor pad their household had become. If the pizza boxes sitting on the couch were only a week old, then they considered the place to be squeaky-clean.

He threw his backpack on the floor and ran up to his room with his newest acquisition. He slid the record out of the folder and held it up under the light. The entire record was black, and there was no label. He plopped the record on the spindle of his record player, dropped the needle in place, and impatiently waited. It began playing so he lay down on his bed, listening to the music slowly pouring through his crackling speakers.

Not bad, Jesse thought to himself as the first song ended and the next began. And it wasn’t. It didn’t bring the house down, but it wasn’t entirely incompetent like some of the other stuff he’d brought home before. And each song sounded pretty different from the one previous.

It was good. Not great.

Jesse had the feeling he had bought yet another record that would end up in his trade-in box—a hazard of being a collector. He sat up in bed to retrieve the record from the player when the last track began—the one called ‘Endings.’

Jesse had never heard anything like it, and he sat very still, as if moving even an inch would interrupt this strange feeling that had come over him. Then, very slowly, as the song continued to play, Jesse stood up, went over to his desk, and opened the drawer. He rifled through the drawer until he found what he was looking for. He leaned his head back and drew the scissors’ blade over the taut flesh of his throat. Blood dribbled immediately down the front of his shirt, and the flesh of his neck tore open with ease, widening quickly in a muddy, red smile. Jesse even made it as far as slicing another gash through his throat before he fell back onto the floor, blood gushing out of his wounds with such intensity that it splattered the ceiling above. As Jesse lost consciousness, and as the final song faded to a close, his own blood dripped down on him from the ceiling, splotching him and the floor around him with crimson dots.

* * *

Shelly excitedly tore the wrapping paper from her newest gift as her grandparents looked on. Her gift had an odd shape: big and square, but very thin, like a giant cracker. She had no idea what it could have been. She ripped off the last of the paper and held her gift in her hand. And she still had no idea what it was.

Her grandfather chuckled. “Now that you’ve seen the gift, it’s time for a history lesson,” he said.

“Oh, no. No stories, grandpa,” Shelly said, pouting.

“We didn’t have CDs in my day—back when horses pulled carts and we communicated by tapping rocks together,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “We listened to these—they’re called records.”

“Well, how do I listen to it?” Shelly asked. She took the record out of the folder and held it up. “It looks like a tire,” she said.

“They’re not all that different from the CDs you listen to these days,” said Shelly’s grandmother. “They were just bigger, that’s all.”

“You’ll need what’s called a turntable to play it, honey,” Shelly’s grandfather said.

“So I gotta spend money to use one of my own birthday gifts?” Shelly asked. “That’s stupid!”

“Who said you had to spend money?” her grandfather said, bending down and lifting a turntable – decorated with a single colorful bow – onto the table.

Shelly looked at it, utterly confused. “How does it work?”

Her grandfather chuckled and took the album from her, laying it carefully down on the player and placing the needle at the record’s very edge. The music began to play out of the modestly sized speakers that were hooked into the back of the player.

“See that?” he asked. “Neat, huh?”

“I guess...” she said, her disappointment in the gift more than obvious.

“Well, it won’t hurt you to experience a little culture,” he said, upset by his granddaughter’s attitude. He slid out his chair with a screech and stood up to make his way into the kitchen. “I’m getting some more coffee.”

“Did I make him mad?” Shelly asked her grandmother, frowning.

“No, of course not, honey,” her grandmother lied. “He just gets frustrated sometimes because things are so different now than they used to be.”

Shelly lowered her chin to the tabletop so her eyes were level with the needle’s point. The second song had ended and the third was just beginning.

“What band is this?” Shelly asked.

“We don’t know, actually,” her grandmother answered. We found the player in a pawn shop and this was the only record the man had.”

“Why did you buy it if you didn’t know who the band was?” Shelly asked, confused.

“Well, your real gift was the player, sweetie. Not the record. We both saw it one day and thought you would really get a ki—” The words droned to a halt in the old woman’s mouth and she began staring off in the distance, as if immediately stuck in a trance.

“Grandma?” Shelly asked.

Shelly’s grandmother turned her head and stared at her granddaughter for a moment before picking up the empty cake dish in front of her and smashing it into several sharp pieces, one of which she then drove into the young girl’s right eye. Shelly shrieked in pain, but her cries were cut short by another slash with the shard, this time across her temple. The gash left behind was deep. The C-shaped flap of skin hung down over her ear, revealing a patch of her light-brown-colored skull, which was barely visible through the thin membrane surrounding it. Her blood flowed like a river, and soon she became limp in her grandmother’s arms. Shelley’s grandmother dropped her small body fall to the ground with a hard, sickening thud before walking into the kitchen. Her husband was in the process of rushing out to see what had happened when he stopped in his tracks, seeing the blood on his wife’s white sweater and the blank look on her face.

“What is it?” he demanded. “Is Shelly hurt?”

She didn’t respond, but instead pushed him roughly back against the kitchen pantry door and grabbed the large cake knife from the empty platter on the kitchen table, which she stabbed with great force into his throat. The blade easily plunged through the man’s skin, muscles, and bone before splintering the wooden cabinet behind him. She let go of the knife, which easily supported the weight of her husband, and held his face in her hands. A single tear fell from his left eye as his last breath left his body. She left the kitchen and walked into the bathroom where she turned on the bathtub faucet at full blast. She lowered herself into the tub until she was flat on her back. She then waited patiently for the water in the tub to rise—to invade her body and take her away.

And in the dining room where the family had convened to share the joy of Shelly’s tenth birthday, the last track on the album ended, and the needle fell into the last groove – the gutter – emitting nothing but static...letting any listeners know that there was nothing more to come.

* * *

Kirby walked in, wearing his tacky, punk-rock jacket, smiled a suspicious smile, and tossed the record at Sarah.

“Oomph,” she said, catching the record without trying to spill the coffee that was on the desk next to her computer. “Thanks for that,” she said finally.

Kirby smiled again and sat down next to her, kissing her once on the cheek. “Got you a present.”

Sarah held up the album and looked at it questioningly.

“Song list is on the back,” he told her.

Sarah flipped over the album and read off some of the titles. “What band?” she asked.

“No idea,” Kirby said, shrugging.

“Where’d you get it?” Sarah asked, taking the record out of the folder. She turned it around in her hands to search for a label and found none.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said, grinning devilishly.

“I’ll believe anything you tell me because you’re crazy enough to do anything,” Sarah replied.

“My brother came across it at work and gave it to me...” Kirby said, coyly looking down at the desk, along which he absent-mindedly dragged his finger.

“No way, really?” Sarah asked, looking at the album again, as if its lineage would now be more obvious. “Won’t he get in trouble for that?”

“Nah, are you kidding? That’s been sitting in the evidence room for years and years. No one’s going to notice it’s missing.” He grinned again. “So...are you going to play it?”

“I can’t play it if I don’t even know who recorded the thing,” Sarah said, pretending to dismiss the record altogether.

Kirby flashed Sarah the smile that made her fall in love in the first place.

“I’ll think about it,” Sarah said, smiling scornfully.

Kirby laughed. He bent over her desk for a quick kiss. “I’ll see you tonight.”

Sarah watched Kirby walk out the door before turning her attention back to her computer screen. After another hour’s worth of typing, she printed her work and then walked out of her office with the mystery album tucked under her arm. She nodded hello to the radio DJ as he made his way out of the studio after having finished his set. She slipped through the door, took her seat, and lifted the headphones onto her face after the commercial break was through. She slid Kirby’s record into one of the station’s many players and prepped it for broadcast.

“I have a special gift for you, boys and girls,” Sarah said into the college station’s bright red microphone. “A mysterious record hit my desk tonight. I know nothing about it—not even the band that recorded it. Three songs total...and here they come.” She dropped the needle slowly in place to play the album. As the record began spinning, she leaned into the microphone one more time.

“Let’s hope this brings the house down.”

 

Image source.

TALES # 9

 

Tales #9

© Tara Marynowsky

COME TO DADDY

HOLY SHIT!

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SUICIDE

Though suicide is a common element in tales of lost love and heartbreak, the subject usually ends it all because of a lover’s death or betrayal. However, there are exceptions. A tortured young woman said to haunt New York City’s Empire State Building took her life for an entirely different reason.

On May 1, 1947, 23-year-old Evelyn McHale leapt from the top of the Empire State Building. Her body landed on a United Nations limousine over a thousand feet below, obliterating the roof of the car and horrifying pedestrians passing by the iconic landmark.

The commotion drew photography student Robert Wiles who snapped a photo of McHale just minutes after her death. Though Evelyn plummeted 86 stories, or 1,050 feet, Wiles’ photo reveals a calm, beautiful corpse, eyes closed, fingers still clutching a pearl necklace. Though McHale looks as if she could be sleeping, the limousine’s mangled roof and shattered glass tell a different story.

Wiles’ shocking photo ran in the May 12 issue of Life magazine with a caption that read “At the bottom of the Empire State Building, the body of Evelyn McHale reposes calmly in grotesque bier, her falling body punched into the top of a car.” Evelyn’s desperate act came to be known as “the most beautiful suicide” and newspapers around the world published the haunting image. The photo even inspired Andy Warhol’s Suicide (Fallen Body) serigraph, part of his Death and Disaster series.

So why did McHale leap to her death? She apparently didn’t think she was fit to be a wife. “He is much better off without me,” Evelyn wrote in a suicide note discovered at the scene. “I don’t think I would make a good wife for anybody." The “he” in the note was Barry Rhodes, an ex-GI studying in Lafayette, PA. McHale and Rhodes had planned to marry the following month and the two had just celebrated Rhodes’ 24th birthday.

Though one might think Barry would have noticed something off about his young bride-to-be, he was as shocked as anyone, telling reporters “when I kissed her goodbye she was happy and as normal as any girl about to be married.” It seems McHale’s motives will forever remain a mystery.

Story and image source.

WNUF HALLOWEEN SPECIAL (2013)

 

A package awaited me on the porch as I approached my front door. The return address didn't look immediately familiar, and inside the package was nothing but a single VHS tape.

No typical accompanying press release. No pre-sale ad. No tear sheet. Just that lone, ominous VHS tape with the hand-scrawled label:

WNUF Halloween Special.

Naturally I was intrigued. Who wouldn't be?

I was hesitant to pop in the tape, halfway expecting to see shaky, nightime footage of myself asleep in my bed, unaware of my image being captured by my phantom visitor. Also, Bill Pullman might be playing fusion jazz saxophone right behind me. (Lost Highway reference, for the win!)

After a bit of research, I found this:

Recently discovered VHS videocassettes of the infamous and terrifying Local-TV Halloween Show broadcast-gone-bad. Only 300 in existence!

Taped off of WNUF TV-28 on Halloween Night, 1987, this strange broadcast follows local news personality Frank Stewart and a team of paranormal researchers as they set out to prove that the abandoned Webber House – the site of ghastly murders – is actually haunted, through a fascinating live on-air program featuring shocking EVP recordings and one-of-a-kind Call-In seance.

Thoughts of the BBC's Ghostwatch popped into my brain and my excitement grew. Needless to say, my Halloween-loving fires were stoked. I popped in the VHS and awaited my adventure in live TV gone wrong.

The Weber house: Twenty years earlier the scene of a double-murder, where a young son named Donald decapitated both of his parents with an axe. The legend states that young Donald was found sitting on the curb in front of his house, mumbling "demons made me do it." He was later executed for his crimes. And it is this very same house where local television station WNUF will be filming their Halloween special, featuring anchorman Frank Stewart, husband-and-wife paranormal investigators Louis and Claire Berger, and Father Joseph Matheson. Frank will lead his team into the Weber house for the first time since it was sealed following the murders in an effort to put to bed the rumors that the house is haunted — including the rumor concerning the headless specter that was often spotted in the house and on the grounds. Almost immediately upon entering they hear noises in far off rooms. Then some unseen force destroys their equipment. Are the legends true? Is the Weber house haunted? Or was young Donny framed and the real killer still stalks the grounds?

Frank et al. will find out...whether they want to or not.

Can I just say flat-out that I fucking loved the WNUF Halloween Special? As I hit play on my VCR (which I literally had to dig out of storage strictly for this occasion), I'll admit to expecting something other than what I got. What I found, however, was something I adored not five minutes in. 

I don't think I am ruining anything when I say this is not "recently discovered" video of "an actual television broadcast." Sure, it's a fun way to promote a film, I get that, but I'd like to think that the distributors know that we know better. And I bring this up not because I want to spoil the fun, but I kind of have to if I am going to successfully applaud co-writer/director Chris LaMartina for his flawless recreation of an extremely realistic 1980s television program. This may not sound like a big deal to some, but these some have certainly not seen the film for themselves. To a tee, LaMartina and his crew have created an uncanny homage to this gone-but-not-forgotten decade, not just of television, but of pop culture, fashion, and even the political landscape. 

The WNUF Halloween Special (which is the film's actual title) is a painstaking recreation of the following: a news broadcast, broken up by commercial breaks, which then leads into the actual "live" special, which is also broken up by commercial breaks. It looks as if someone literally hit "record" midway through a news broadcast and let the tape capture everything that followed. From the actors playing the news anchors to those taking part in the special, everyone (for the most part, anyway) comes across as perfectly genuine. The news anchors, after highlighting a typical schmaltzy human interest story about a local dentist instituting a "Halloween candy buy-back program" to lower the risk of cavities, even spit out insufferable cornball exchanges because that's just what they did in the '80s.

I like to think that LaMartina is a super-fan of the genre, because that would mean all the easter eggs I grinned at like a schmoe weren't coincidental. I think it's safe to assume that the "Weber murders" actually refer to the DeFeo murders, which took place in Amityville, New York, and inspired an infamous book and film series. And I think it's safe to assume that Louis and Claire Berger are based on Ed and Lorraine Warren (of recent dramatized fame in James Wan's The Conjuring) who investigated the Amityville house. But when it comes to Louis' on-screen look, am I going out on a limb when I see a purposeful recreation of legendary writer (and Halloween enthusiast) Ray Bradbury?

  

And what about the name of the priest, Father Matheson (as in Richard)? And am I really reaching when I recognize a reference to Shadowbrook Road, aka the location of the mansion in which Dracula and his monsters dwelled in The Monster Squad (which was also released in 1987)?

I'm not sure what makes me a bigger geek — either recognizing the references before me, or seeing connections that are strictly happy accidents. Either way, I don't really care, because this thing was a hell of a lot of fun.

Speaking of fun, that's actually something I should emphasize. Despite the film's marketing campaign, the WNUF Halloween Special is actually pretty hilarious. And it's supposed to be. If you've seen any of Christopher Guest's mockumentaries (Best in Show or Waiting for Guffman), then you're familiar with his dry style and his ensemble of oddball characters. LaMartina takes this style and weaves it through a fairly typical (at least at first) television special, including interviews with slack-jawed gawkers who shouldn't be anywhere near a microphone. Not every gag is knocked out of the park, but it's a safe bet that at least all of them will have you smiling.

My personal favorite aspect of the film is probably the bleakest, and might also very well be the most under-the-surface and easily missed — and this would be the world of 1987 versus the world of today. LaMartina isn't content with simply pointing his finger and laughing at bad '80s culture. He's quick to remind you that the world — and our country, specifically — has changed. This comes across in the commercial that depicts an airline offering wide and comfortable seats and gourmet meals, which ends with a stock shot of the New York skyline pre-9/11. Because this is a thing of the past. With soaring gas prices and a suffering airline industry, all the old airline perks have been tossed; seats were condensed, and forget gourmet meals — if you want a cold tuna sandwich and an apple, it's gonna cost you big time. And this goes with the oil company commercial, too, which pledges to do its best to contend with "unavoidable and accidental" spills. And don't even get me started on the commercial for the shooting range, stressing "fun for the whole family" and the importance of exercising your "second amendment rights." It's not my intention to bring down the mood, but it's clear the world was incredibly different 25 years ago, and while the film makes this obvious in the lighter and more comedic moments, it also wants to state the same thing in a more somber yet less confrontational way. It's in no way political, but present all the same. I think it's safe to say it's the last thing I expected in what is essentially a low budget horror film majorly assembled by stock footage.

As a film in and of itself, the WNUF Halloween Special is mostly successful. For the most part, the acting never feels forced or disingenuous. The humor works like gangbusters, but the horrific aspects are slightly less successful. Earlier I mentioned Ghostwatch, a legitimately frightening scripted narrative also masquerading as a live on-air special. The WNUF Halloween Special comes nowhere close to matching that film's level of intensity, but it doesn't want to, either. That's not its goal. What it wants to do is recall a time in our not-so-historic history where things seemed purer — when people bought heavy metal compilation CDs or took in-store lessons on how to use "floppy discs" — and this forgotten time also includes Halloween, as our society simply doesn't seem to care as much about October 31st as it once did. And this super legitimate approach to maintaining the "recorded off television during the actual 1987 events" vibe might turn off some viewers who want an uninterrupted experience; the commercial breaks, especially, may start to annoy some. But I purposely left this point last because what I really want to stress is this: whatever level of success the WNUF Halloween Special attains as a film, it is a flawless and impressive recreation of 90 television minutes from 1987. The VHS tape on which this special was recorded is appropriately degraded and fuzzy, as if it were a copy of a copy of a copy — something shared amongst the curious like so many bootleg films from another era without proper distribution. And from the corny news broadcast to the commercials to the live broadcast, it captures late-'80s television in its essence and during a time in which people were hopeful about the future, and who only had a haunted house in their neighborhood to worry about. In that regard, the WNUF Halloween Special is perfect.

WNUF Halloween Special is now available for purchase on extremely limited edition VHS. I cannot encourage you enough to grab yourself a copy.