Post by vhodka on Oct 29, 2021 11:48:32 GMT -5
The ambient lighting from the static of the television set bathes the faceless man in its technological glow as he remains a silent sentry on the couch digesting what he has just witnessed. From our vantage point behind him nothing about his features can be made out that would help us to identify him, he is merely an ink blot surrounded by the light of the screen as he slowly rises from his sitting position and ejects the VHS tape from the player.
Trepidatiously, we move closer as the man moves toward the neatly lined shelves of the far wall where he slowly replaces the tape that he has just watched, running his finger along the spine lovingly as if it were the dimpled skin of a lover's body. His hand leaves that tape, idly trailing over the rest of the tapes on the shelf before it hesitates over a certain title as if the man is debating on whether or not this is truly the tape he wishes to view. The tape is no different than any other on the shelves, its casing simple and its title “Uncanny Valley” scrawled in a childlike penmanship across the front in black marker. Our host breathes out over the plastic of the VHS tape as he removes it from its casing and slides it into the VHS player only a moment before the play button is selected.
 A GOAT, A King, A Traveler, A Tyrant , and A Sentient Bag of Halloween Candy All walk into a bar together - stop me if you’ve heard this one. As if on cue the jukebox in the corner of the room flared to life, the opening riff of “Bad Company” flowing eerily out of the speakers to fill the small space with sound as I looked down the row of assembled mixed bag badasses fanned out to my left. The trouble had all started earlier this morning as the five of us had assembled on the dock beside the cruise ship where we were to depart with a who’s who of the wrestling business for a charity cruise put on by one Tara Fenix. The idea had been to enter the boat as a united front – a many headed beast with a singular purpose, each of us an extended limb that moved in stereo with the others. Pleasantries were being exchanged when the sky suddenly flashed green and the ground began to tremble and shudder under our feet only seconds before huge meteors began raining down from the sky causing the assembled media, spectators and talent to descend into varying degrees of chaos all looking for shelter. A large chunk of the crowd was able to make it onto the ship before the ramp was taken out, though the conglomeration of Team Raven wasn’t quite so lucky. From that point forward, shit had gone from bad to worse. The people left on shore had begun to change – subtle changes at first like the color of their eyes or the size of their feet then as the day wore on the changes became more pronounced. It’s strange to look into the face of someone you know and find something else's eyes looking out at you as if they’re hiding inside your friend's body like it’s some sort of meaty UPS envelope. In the days leading up to this event we had formulated a plan though it had been intended for a wrestling match against a clearance bin of male wrestlers of varying talent and their bordello madam leader we found that the plan still applied to the situation we were in now. Stick together, trust one another, move cohesively and without hesitation against the opposition. Though, we’d added a small addendum to the plan as the day had gone sideways – don't split up. Betsy shifted on her heels in anticipation next to me, the tension singing through her body as she looked to her left at Corey Black who expressionlessly surveyed the room for potential danger to our unit. Shawn Warstein vibrated with violence as he stood at an angle beside Corey so that he could keep an eye trained on the door behind us that we had entered from. The bookend opposite of myself was a shirtless and sweat slicked James Raven who seemed to be covered in some sort of sticky looking pink fluid that no doubt rivaled whatever acidic fluid shoots out of Atara Themis neither region. The juke box abruptly slowed and distorted until it lay in silence as we stole an apprehensive glance at one another. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other not out of anxiety but because honestly, I really had to pee and was having trouble holding it at this point. I’d thought about asking if I could use the bathroom but as my eyes found Raven’s cobblestone stomach and dreamy gaze the words died in my mouth. I didn’t want James Raven to know I used the bathroom. I mean, what if he thought I was going in there to poop? I can’t let these people know I poop. A trickle of urine started threatening to make its way out so I did what any self-respecting girl does when she’s looking to dry things up down below and thought of Bert McAlroy. “Why aren’t they talking?” Betsy’s voice was like a church bell at high noon in the silence of the room as she read everyone's mind. Shawn glanced at the room quickly, then to Betsy, then back to the door we had come in. “Better question, Sister Mine. Why did no one turn to look at us when we walked in?” The air in the room shimmered in the most peculiar way as slowly each body in the bar turned towards the five of us in quiet unison. My stomach did flip flops and my skin threatened to crawl off my body as I looked at the bar full of people before me. Their faces... they were... off. I don’t mean that literally but in that they looked human enough but I knew as sure as I knew how to spell the names of liquors that these were not humans – they were other. Upon each face was a protruding red nose like the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae left out in the heat, their hair rivaled that of the furry body of Bruce McCleod and was done in grotesque technicolor madness. I heard someone gasp and realized a moment later that it had been me. Have you ever heard of the phenomenon of the uncanny valley? It’s when something looks almost human but is just enough off that it provokes feelings of revulsion and fear in people who are faced with these humanoid imposters. It’s something that had been on my mind in the days leading up to the cruise as I researched the assorted offerings of Team Atara. Each profile I pulled up, each video I watched of the competitors that we were due to face set me on edge just a little bit more. For the most part they looked like your everyday professional wrestlers, there was nothing too offensive or exciting about any one of them on their own and perhaps had I not had the press videos to go by I may have not pieced it together until we stepped foot in the ring with them. They were off. They looked like us, talked like us, walked like us. But they weren't genuine articles. At best apart they were imitations of wrestlers, together they were imitations of a team. At worst, I feared they were imitations of humans. Some of them had been telling us of their otherness all along. Atara Themis insisted on her status as a goddess which we all just shrugged and ignored because in this business everyone is a goddess or royalty but what if she had been hinting all along? What if what was happening now was somehow tied to her and the others? “WOOP WOOP THEY’RE DOWN WITH THE CLOWN! Let’s get the fuck out of here!” As if they were all being controlled by one brain the room full of clowns stood and raised their hands, each holding a pie of various size and flavor as their gigantic glossy eyes all blinked in unison. The movie predator flashed into my mind as the thought that perhaps their eyes see more than we were realizing pushed to the forefront of my thoughts. Shawn and Corey were yanking on the door we had entered through as Betsy, Raven and myself faced down the pie handed killer klowns from outer space watching as they stood still with their weapons raised in our direction. The jukebox flared to life again to the tune of “Let’s Stay Together” by Al Green as the clowns all at once tilted their heads in our direction. Without warning one of the clowns reared back and lobbed a pie in our general direction. Sweet dreamy sweat slicked Raven was the first to act picking up a discarded tray from the table closest to him and holding it up in front of us. The pie sizzled against the tray as whatever had been used to concoct it ate through the material like acid. Betsy and I turned wide eyed to Raven who was already back to staring at the army of clowns before us. “MOVE!” Corey Black’s voice boomed over the music as we all fell backward out the door while the assembled clowns before us screeched in an eerie high-pitched wail and lobbed their pies exactly where we had been standing. Raven and Shawn slammed the door behind us with a thud, using a found piece of rebar to barricade the door and keep the murder of Bozo’s from following. “That was close.” Night had fallen in the brief time that we were in the bar and the world looked like an apocalyptic nightmare in the harsh yellow glow of the street lights. Everywhere you looked were wrecked and overturned cars, sticky pink fluid that had been shot from comically sized guns covered most of the damage making the world look much too cheery for the decimated state that it was in. Silently, Shawn raised a finger in the opposite direction and we all turned to face what calamity would befall us next. “That’s her.” The words were flat, emotionless. We began to move through the destruction towards the form of a gigantic winged clown wearing a crown of popcorn upon her blue and white tufted hair. She stands alone before the Putt Putt Mini Golf course the clowns had been using as a headquarters. A giant pirate ship is a sad reminder of where we should have been and who we had to get through if we ever hoped to get back there. HONK HONK. The sound rang out ominously through the night as the Goddess reached white gloved hands up to squeeze her minivan sized breasts in signal to the others. From the left a small polka dotted Volkswagen roared to life, slowly driving toward the Goddess and stopping only when she once more honked her behemoth bosom. The door to the tiny car swings open and out first is a very modestly dressed clown that looks like a cross between a lab rat too stupid to find the cheese and an alter boy. No, seriously, he seems to have been crossbred with rodent DNA as he twitches his big red nose and scents the air before scurrying off into the night on all fours. The next out of the car is the exact same clown that lobbed the first pie inside the bar, though logically I know it cannot be the same clown. Perhaps this clown just has a very popular face that looks a lot like at least twelve other clowns we’ve seen today. Maybe they’re all related? He also seems to be recently unemployed sporting classic clown hobo chic attire. How do you even get fired from being a clown? Don't they have unions? Anyway, this clown pulls out a tiny motorcycle from the backseat and giggles manically as he rides away. There is a pregnant pause as the next clown stumbles out of the car looking very confused about his general existence and also his current location. This clown is hunched with age and heavily wrinkled, the grease paint settling into his crevices and grooves like ketchup in a meatloaf. His body is adorned in what can only be described as heavily used leather daddy gear from a Rob Halford garage sale. He is also uncomfortably hairy. The clown stumbles a round a moment before turning back around and trying to return to the small confines of the backseat. “Charity? The grandchildren are here. Help me find my nipples, love.” The clown's voice is shaky and heavily accented as he yells into the darkness of the Volkswagen. Chiseled clown arms extend from the darkness, pushing the seasoned saint Clown back out onto the asphalt as the sexiest clown I have ever seen in my entire life finally emerges last. The Handsome Squidward Clown takes the arm of Dementia Clown and leads him away into the darkness. The five of us turned to look at one another wordlessly nodding before Corey peeled off in the direction Lab Rat Boy Scout Clown had gone while Shawn and Betsy followed after Dementia Clown and GQ Clown respectively. James Raven gazed at me longingly. Okay, it probably wasn’t longingly but I want to pretend it was so just shut up and let me have this one, alright? His hair danced in the cool autumn air and a single drop of Bod Man body oil cascaded down those washboard abs trailing right into his... NO. No dickstractions! I shook my head, saying five 2Pac Hail Mary’s and thought of my sweet wonderful husband floating in an ocean unaware of the clown crisis on land. The circus must fall. For Vincent, for James Raven, for charity, for us all. “Do you think you can handle her?” James looked at me with a weary eye like he was second guessing his decision to bring me in on this particular mission. I nodded my head solemnly. “I will beat box her asshole with my fist in the name of humanity and also probably charity.” James' face contorted into disgust at the mental image provided as he instinctually recoiled away from me. “What? No! Jesus. Okay, so what if you take Pink Slip Pogo instead?” I moved towards James, taking his supple delicate but rugged hands into my own and looking seriously into his eyes. “Captain Raven I will hollow out his eye sockets with a melon baller and skull fuck him with another mans dick in your honor.” James awkwardly patted my shoulder, turning me in the direction Pink Slip Pogo had gone in. “Sure. Great. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.” My feet pounded the pavement as I ran through the night looking for my mark. I could hear the sounds of the Goddess and Raven heading into battle but I couldn’t waste a moment to look back. I had to trust that my team could do this, that whether together or apart the sum of our parts were more than those of our opponents. It wasn’t entirely unlike the Cruise we had set out for this morning. Sure, these were bloodthirsty alien clowns from outer space and not b-list hastily thrown together romance novel models recruited into some sort of weird Greek human trafficking situation. But is there really that much difference between the two? We had people out there depending on us, the very fate of the world was in our hands. We would not fail, we could not. First the killer klowns from outer space, then the Cruise where we would prove once and for all who the real team was. There is more to a team than just throwing together a group and hoping it sticks. It’s about trust, it’s about knowing your teammates as well as you know yourself. Their weaknesses become your own, your strengths the same. If this whole catastrophe had taught us anything it was about what each of the others were made of. I knew them and I knew together we would not fail here, now or ever. It didn’t matter how we had been formed as a team, only that now we were something deeper. These clowns couldn’t touch what we had. The pain was immediate and I roared my displeasure seconds before my head snapped down toward my ankle and the pink balloon animal dog that had set its teeth in. Little fucker. I’m usually an animal lover but this was no real animal, I mean, maybe on its planet it was but here on earth in the great US of A this was a hostile bogie. The balloon dog yelped as I curb stopped it onto a pile of deflated latex, no doubt resigning myself to at least six months of therapy for this later in life. “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” Pink Slip Pogo came from nowhere, his comically oversized shoes squeaking with each step he took towards me. I stared at his greasy blonde hair, my eyes traveling down to the rainbow striped leather vest, making sure my face showed just how little I thought of him. He looked like a bitch. “In the words of the great Al Bundy… Let’s Rock.” |
The television screen abruptly cuts out and into an episode of The Jerry Springer show someone has obviously taped over the original film. The faceless man sighs heavily before pressing the eject button.
