It was around one in the morning the next day when Cody had finally made it back to his apartment. He was wearing an official Rip It Energy T-shirt and an expression on his face dour enough to make Droopy look like Richard Simmons.
Ambling into the kitchenette, Cody carelessly tossed his official Rip It Energy swag bag onto the counter before opening his fridge and retrieving a can of Natural Light, paying no mind to the beers lousy taste as he drank about half of it in one gulp. He’d thought going to the concert would help get his mind off things, but all it really accomplished was making him feel even worse. It was just about impossible to enjoy himself when his mind kept turning back to the bubbling flesh on Jeff’s hand and how he was pretty sure he saw one of his fingernails about to fall off.
Cody took another sip of beer and stared blankly at his shoddy apartment. When he’d first moved in about a year back, he’d been under the impression that it was just a stepping stone for him to make do with until he could move on to bigger and better things. Now though, no matter how much he wanted to deny it, it was starting to feel like this was it. Cody was either going to spend the rest of his life in this tiny, poorly built studio located in a complete cultural dead-end, or, God forbid, move back in with his mother and spend every day being subjected to her incessant nagging and babying.
Cody punched the countertop. He didn’t know why, but it just seemed to be the right thing to do. Once he’d done so, he found the sound of his fist hitting the counter seemed to momentarily drown out the stream of negative thoughts that’d been running through his mind leading him to raise it back up and slam it down on the counter again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
After about a minute of this, Cody stopped, if only because his hand was starting to hurt. He gave the countertop a cursory glance and found, to his relief, that his fists had left no mark. He didn’t know why he was like this, why he couldn’t just deal with his emotions in a healthy way. Was this unhealthy? Probably, punching things tended to be looked down on unless you’re a boxer.
Cody finished his beer and grabbed another from the fridge. He’d drank an obscene amount of Rip It at the concert, so he could only assume he’d be up until four pm the next day unless he got drunk enough to cancel the caffeine out. Cody began making his way over to the TV, before pausing and turning back to the fridge to grab four more cans of beer. He knew he wasn’t gonna want to get back up once he sat down, and if the first beer was any measure, he figured they’d probably all still be cold by the time he got to them.
Collapsing onto his sofa, Cody set the beer cans down on his coffee table before opening one up and taking a drink. Setting the can back down, Cody pawed around the table in search of the TV remote before realizing it was a few centimeters to the left of where he thought he’d left it. Cody switched the dull, silver box on and began searching for something entertaining enough to make him forget how shit his life was.
“I’m not giving you my pubic hair!”
“-as low as $14,863!”
“Suddenly, the fire accelerates.”
“She got the power in her hand, to sh-“
“-and take advantage of special pricing in every department!”
“The leading prescription can take a day or more to fully work.”
“RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TA”
The soldier on screen futilely unloaded on Jason Vorhees, who responded by wrapping a chain around his neck, choking him out. At the sight of another victim out of the room, the killer yanked on the chain, breaking the soldier’s neck as he’s pulled to the ground. “This’ll do, I suppose.” Cody thought to himself as he watched the fleeing man get cleanly impaled by Jason’s thrown machete. Cody briefly entertained the thought of taking a drink whenever Jason killed someone, but settled on drinking at his regular pace, doubtful the movie would be able to keep this momentum up for its entire runtime.
The next two hours went by in a blur of beer and bad acting, by the time the end credits had begun making their way up the screen, all five beer cans that Cody had brought were empty, as well as an additional three that Cody had brought over during an ad break. It took Cody a few moments for him to register that the film had ended, and even then, it didn’t seem to fully sink in until the credits were shifted to the side to allow the channel to run a promo for the next week’s network premiere of “Cabin Fever”.
For the most part, Cody regretted even bothering with the movie. What few good parts the movie had were far outweighed by the seemingly endless number of scenes that were dull conversation between annoying characters he didn’t care about. The only reason he hadn’t switched to something else part way through was out of a misguided belief that the last act would make up for it. In the end though, it was just more of the same, and now Cody had to deal with the fact that he just wasted two hours watching a movie he hated and didn’t even have anyone he could complain about it to.
“Well, I guess there’s someone.” Cody thought to himself as his hand brushed up against the pocket he kept his phone in. Truth be told, he had no idea whether or not Mike was asleep, but he knew he worked some pretty irregular hours, so there was a good chance he wouldn’t be.
Cody clumsily removed his phone from his pants pocket, opened it, and began navigating to his contacts list with some difficulty. He was compelled to bitch about the movie to someone while it was still fresh in his head, and out of all the people whose numbers he had saved, Mike seemed like the least likely to be upset at a 3 AM phone call. Having finally reached his name, he pressed the call button and put the phone to his ear, his attention partially slipping over to the “Twilight Zone” rerun that had started playing as he listened to the dull ringing of the phone.
“Picture of a woman looking at a picture. Movie great of another time, once-brilliant star in a firmament no longer a part of the sky, eclipsed by the movement of earth and time. Barbara Jean Trenton, whose world is a projection room, whose dreams are made out of celluloid. Barbara Jean Trenton, struck down by hit-and-run years and lying on the unhappy pavement, trying desperately to get the license number of fleeting fame.”
The phone’s ringing stopped. “Whaddup, You've reached Mike P. Leave a message and I'll see if I can get back to you... Unless you're a chick, in which case I'll definitely get back to y-“The sharp beep of the voicemail system cut Mike off mid word, unexpectedly putting Cody on the spot. He took a moment to gather his thoughts, before speaking up.
“Hey... ‘s- ‘s me. I was gonnask if ya...like, wanted to ‘ang out or go toabar or something, but, looks like I'm guessing you'reasleepor some shit.” Cody leaned back into the sofa cushions. He hadn’t really planned on asking him to hang out, but it occurred to him as the phone was ringing that calling solely to talk about a movie he’d watched might come off as weird, so he figured he should at provide an excuse for calling, however flimsy it may be.
“Iwasuh...Th-they were jus’ playing that fuckin'..."Jason in Space" or whatever ’s called on the Sci-Fi channel.” Cody lightly chuckled to himself, the film’s mere existence proving more entertaining than its contents. He continued. “...jus’ a fuggin dogshit film. I mean, I mean, ‘s-'sajokeofa movie, like, 's something you'd come up with as a joke, except, fuckin'...they made it real. They fuckin'...freeze Jason, In like, fuckin' 2010, but like… I don't know when this was made, but I fuckin'...”
Cody paused, struggling to articulate the point he was trying to make. After a brief search through his mental, alcohol-induced fog, he was able to find a verbal foothold. “I know i's too new for them to be saying we'll be doin' that shit in 2010, like...is can't be more than 10 years old. But...they fuckin'...freezeim for like a thousand years and...then a buncha space people show up and bringim on their spaceship. Aney.. just leaveimout on a table unmonitored cause... I-I guess one of thems a scientist, who- who needs to do testsonim since he needs more money from his space grant or somethin’. So...Jason gets unfroze and kills a buncha people, right? They try to...ditch im at some space station but they just crasintoit and blow it up. So...”
Cody paused and leaned forward again, rubbing his temple as he struggled to remember the character’s name. Part of him wanted to say it was Sauron, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t right. Ultimately, he decided his name didn’t matter and continued his spiel. “So Th-The nerd character...like, teaches is sex robot ‘owta fight. And she fights im, in like a...a sexy leather jumpsuit, like some Matrix shit, but it's noreally that ‘ot since heraircut is fuckin’ awful. Anyway... she shoots him into like, a pool of science goo, and everyone sees this, and they just go..."Yeah, e's probably dead. Wecan jus’ leave him ere."”
At this point, a deep incredulity had begun creeping through from behind the curtain of alcohol that was covering Cody’s words. “So...Jason gets powered up...By the science goo, and it makes ‘im look like a big action figure. And this gives ‘im the strength...to punch the robot's ‘ead off. So then they try to...to blow him out of the ship, but...e jusshows up again and punches is way back into the ship, so they get...”
Cody smiled; He couldn’t say exactly why he found this so funny, but putting it into words just seemed to heighten the absurdity of it all to an egregious level. “They gethe black guy to grab Jason and jepack the two of em into the atmosphere and they burn up.” Cody let out a dry, rattish chuckle at his own words. “And that’s it. Fuckin’… terrible fuckin’ movie.”
As his amusement subsided, Cody suddenly realized just how long he’d been talking for. For a moment, he worried the recording may have run out, but a quick glace at the phone’s screen told him otherwise. Still, it was probably best for him to try and start wrapping things up. “So...yeah. I'll see you round then.” Cody moved his finger over the button to end the recording, but hesitated a moment, before adding, “Tacare.”
With a quiet click, Cody stopped the recording and sent it to Mike. Lightly tossing the phone onto the coffee table, Cody leaned back and began letting the words of long-dead actors lull him to sleep.
“I know it was 1934. What are you now, Daniel, Father Time?”