🎭 Last Picture Show 🎭

I had died, there in my bed, just as I'd wished to on so many hopelessly empty nights. This dark cold winter night it had come to pass. On a night where I'd wished to be ripped from my body, to be free from the torment of my own sick mind and filthy soul, to a place where I could escape all the pain.

I had been drinking all day and hadn't eaten a thing. I'd been in and out of consciousness, awake and aware enough several times in between. Only to pour myself another drink of oblivion.

Fearing I'd wake in the night to more memories of the man I hadn't loved enough to keep, and to face the man I had become without him, I slipped three Seroquel between my lips. I was a hopelessly empty and cold man, barely clinging to the bits of soul I still had left.

I was floating above my bed, my back and buttocks bumping into the ceiling behind me. The streetlights outside the window cut through the blinds, casting lines across my sheets and the silhouette of my body. I drifted down, coming face to face with me. There I lay, still, frozen and quietly serene, yet lifeless. Not a breath, not a stir, not a sound. I was dead.

My soul left the room and then I was ushered into a dark theater, where a mysterious usherette seated me dead center in the house. The curtains parted and a projector whirled above somewhere, casting bright white light upon the screen.

A sanitary white and pastel pink hospital room came into focus. A small boy screamed in pain as his mother rocked him to and fro, helpless to comfort him. A father stood by, but left the room after whispering to her that he just couldn't listen to the screams of pain anymore.

The scene quickly shifted to a doctor's office, where the same small boy, older now, wore a pair of head phones. He sat in a small black room, behind glass, listening to tones, raising his tiny hand when he heard them. When he was done he was allowed to play with an orange and black toy car upon the red and green checked carpet.

Next, the same boy burst upon the screen, smiling with delight, wearing only tight white underwear and bright red cowboy boots. He jumped and strutted and danced around a small room, bounding up upon a bed with royal blue plush blankets. He placed his small clenched fists upon his hips and proclaimed himself Superman.

Then the screen went dark, and the same boy called out in the night, as smoke filled the room. A fire had broke out in the chimney across the house and he was terrified. The window to the outside slid open with a blast of freezing air, and a pair of young strong arms pulled him out, into the winter night, then into the safety of his mother's arms.

Again the scene changed. This time the boy peddled his bike with fiendish delight and squeals of glee as his older brother chased him. Faster and faster the wheels spun as he was pursued. Then, the bike and the boy smashed headlong into the grate of a parked truck, leaving the boy bleeding from a gash along the bridge of his nose. His father scooped him up, leaving blood spurts all down his shirt and sleeves, into a truck and off down the street.

Then appeared a deep, dark gushing river raging under a railroad bridge, as the boy turned almost man, clung to the railing, churning dangerous thoughts of jumping. He'd been spurned by his heart's first true and pure love, a girl he had done the impossible for, only to be crucified by her. He'd lost a giant chunk of his heart to her, never to get back, never to fully trust again. He foolishly thought that the pain of drowning in the river would be much less painful than the pain left crippling his young, tender heart.

Scene after scene, memory after memory, fade in and fade out, times gone by, people and places all left in the past, the projector whirled on and on. Memories once forgotten were now being cast so surreal upon the screen. I watched without blinking, without tiring, without distraction. From time to time I'd notice other seats in the theater became occupied, by persons somehow familiar yet unrecognizable.

Then came the empty darkness again, after the screen had gone black and the curtains had closed. There was a disturbing silence for what felt like a millenia, after which a warm hand clenched mine. A woman's gentle voice came into my ear, familiar and fresh, yet stunning and sultry.

"Your film isn't in the can yet, my boy. There is still too much to be done, you've simply got to go back. All those beautiful people out there in the dark are waiting for you, you mustn't disappoint them. You have so many more scenes to play, so many more memories to make, so many more people to love, who are also waiting to love you..."

With an excruciating jolt of pain and terror I was slammed back into my body, there upon the sheets where the streetlights streaked. I lay paralyzed, soaking in sweat, cold as hell, staring up at the cracked plaster on the ceiling. I felt burning sensations in shifting places all over my body. All the pains that I wished to escape only multiplied now. I was alive again, back from the beyond, where I very well could have watched and played in my last picture show.