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kcarreras · 3 years

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Underneath Tangerine Skies

Fandom: Outer Banks Pairing: JJ Maybank & Kiara Carerra Summary: Set after 2x10: JJ & Kie discuss the events of that day on the ship which leads to some emotional chat which naturally leads to them making out against a tree… you’re welcome.

The Pogues never had any real idea of the exact time whilst they were on the island, for obvious reasons, but on this occasion - with the sun sitting low in the sky, casting pink and orange hues out across the water - Kie’s best guess was that it was early evening. The temperature had begun to drop, humidity dissipating a little, making it easier to breathe.

She had been traipsing around the island for a while now, looking for JJ, when she cast her eyes up to the grassy embankment lined sporadically with trees ahead of her, where the solid ground of the island met the white sandy beach.

“Thank god,” she sighed in relief at the sight of him sitting at the foot of one of the bigger trees. His back was against the trunk, his knees bent and forearms resting on them, looking out across the water.

“JJ!” she called as she made her way over to him and up the sandy slope, but he didn’t seem to hear her over the sound of the lapping waves.

The waves against the shore was a sound they all seemed to find comforting - something familiar to remind them of their real island home - but JJ seemed to seek it out more often than the rest of them.

“Hellooo,” she sing-songed and JJ turned in her direction, a smile spreading out across his features as he noticed her approaching. Kie’s arms were held out either side of her to keep her balance, eyes focused on her feet as she sunk slightly into the soft sand of the slope with each step.

“What are you doing out here on your own?” Kie asked, trying desperately not to sound like an overprotective mother.

“Everyone’s looking for you. We were worried you’d been eaten by your ‘nemesis’”.

JJ raised an eyebrow, clearly confused.

“The ‘Killer Island Lizard’, who else?” Kie clarified with a roll of her eyes as she dropped down next to him with a knowing grin, pulling her knees up to her chest to mirror his position as she dusted the sand from her hands.

On their second night on the island, JJ woke everyone up, jumping around and hollering in the dark about some huge lizard-like creature that had apparently crawled into their shelter. By the time they had fumbled around in a panic in the pitch black looking for one of the last remaining flare guns from the raft to use as a light, it had ‘disappeared’.

Once John B had swiftly yet gently smacked him round the back of the head for scaring the shit out of them all in the middle of the night, they tried to explain that it was probably nothing - just a figment of his imagination or a too-real nightmare. But JJ being JJ, he refused to accept all their rational responses. He’d of course began by naming it the most basic yet ridiculous name he could think of - hence the Killer Island Lizard - and had insisted that he sit up through the night and keep watch, determined to prove it was real. Every morning since, though, the Pogues had woken up to JJ passed out asleep at his “post” with his Swiss army knife still in-hand and - unsurprisingly - no evidence. It had kind of become a running joke.

“You know, you guys can laugh all you want, but I’ve seen it, with my own two eyes,” he began, his middle and index finger forming a ‘V’ as he gestured from his eyes to Kie’s. “All scale-y and fang-y and shit,” he finished with a dramatic shudder.

“Right,” Kie drawled with a roll of her eyes, knocking her shoulder into his.

“I’m just sayin’, don’t come crying to me when this little island retreat of ours turns into a low-budget remake of Planet of the Dinosaurs.”

“Planet of the Dinosaurs? Okay, first of all JJ, that’s not even a thing,” Kie replied, her signature ‘where did I even find these boys’ expression on her face, and JJ shrugged. “Second of all, if we have to compare your ridiculous lizard scenario to a movie, it’d be more like Jurassic Park.”

“Whatever,” he said, unbothered by her correction. “Doesn’t matter anyway, ‘cause luckily for you, I owe you one. Therefore, I promise to rescue you first before I come back for the others.” He proudly assured her, as if she needed it.

“Of course… and not that I’m complaining or anything, but what exactly have I done to deserve the top spot on JJ Maybank’s rescue list?” Kie asked, feigning flattery with a hand over her chest.

“I don’t know if you remember, Kie, but you jumped off a freakin’ cargo ship into the middle of the ocean to save my ass. I think you earned the top spot,” he replied.

“Well what kinda Pogue would I be if I’d just let your ass drown like that? Especially since you took the blunt end of that machete to the head defending me,” she said, her tone light. She was still smiling, but JJ saw something akin to guilt flash across her eyes as she spoke.

“Oh, so it was all to do with you maintaining your pogue rep, and nothing to do with how miserable you’d be without me around?” he asked, knocking her knee with his.

Kie’s smile faltered at the words “without me around”, and her gaze dropped from his face to her hands, which were hugging her knees as she fidgeted with her rings. She lifted her eyes for a second, looking out to the ocean ahead of them, vast and endless, and quickly blinked in an attempt to suppress the tears that stung at the corner of her eyes.

She took a deep breath, composing herself before speaking again.

“C’mon, we better get going before everyone thinks we really have been eaten by your stupid killer-lizard,” she said with a half-hearted laugh as she moved to her feet.

She had barely left the sand when JJ’s hand reached up and took a gentle hold of her wrist, causing her to land back down on the same spot with a soft thud.

“Hey, you alright?” he asked, tipping his head forward to try and meet her eyes, but she was looking straight down into her lap.

“Kie, look at me for a second, would you?” he said, reaching across the short distance between them to tilt her chin up until her eyes met his.

She wasn’t crying, but her eyes were glassy and it looked like tears were threatening to spill. With one blink, one fell from each eye, running down her cheeks until she reached up and swiped her two hands across her face, capturing them.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, and it sounded so sincere that she was sure her heart actually cracked open a little.

“Nothing, it’s stupid,” she said, casting her eyes upwards to the sky, but she felt JJ’s gaze stay on her. “It’s just, we’ve been here, what? Like a week? And we still haven’t talked about it.”

“Talked about what?” he asked.

“About the ship, JJ. You almost died,” she said, as if he somehow wasn’t already aware.

“Yeah, I know, Kie, I was there,” he said with a humourless chuckle.

“No, JJ. You don’t get it,” she said, taking hold of one of his hands in hers. His eyes dropped down for a second in surprise to look, and her knuckles were pale with the pressure of her grip.

“When I looked over the side of that ship and you were face-down in the water, every instinct in my body told me to jump. So I did, without a second thought.” Kie said, her voice beginning to sound almost panicked, as if she was reliving it as she spoke.

“Kie, it’s okay. You don’t have to-” he tried to interrupt, but she had started and now she couldn’t stop.

“I held you up, and I tried not to panic, and I treaded that water until I felt like my lungs were going to burst.”

She was breathless, her words rushed, and JJ squeezed her hand that was still holding his.

“I don’t know how I did it, Jage. John B and Pope asked me how we didn’t go under, and I don’t know the answer. All I know is that it was never an option for me not to at least try. I mean, I can’t even imagine-”

“Hey, it’s okay.” JJ comforted her, pulling her into his side with the hand they had been holding. He sat back against the trunk of the tree, and she settled into the space beside him, her head resting where his chest met his shoulder. His arm went around her waist to hold her in place, and squeezed gently.

“You don’t have to imagine anything, alright? I’m here, you’re here, everyone’s good, Kie.”

Her hands gripped at the material of his tank, eyes closed as she tried to ground herself and slow her breath. After a few seconds, she felt the side of his head gently rest on the top of hers.

They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes, until she felt JJ shift beside her. He lifted his head and turned at the waist until his body was facing hers.

“You know, when we were on the deck, and that guy was swinging the machete around?” he began, his eyes dropping to look straight down into Kie’s, and she nodded, staring back up at him. “He was behind you, and all I knew in that moment as I was running towards him was that I didn’t care what happened to me, as long as you were okay.”

“Jay-,” Ki tried to say, but he continued anyway.

“It was never an option for me not to try, either… because God know’s, Kie, I can’t imagine-”

Before she had time to talk herself out of it, she leaned up, her hand still gripping the front of his tank as she pulled him down toward her. Her mouth collided with his, then she pushed upward, JJ’s back pressing against the tree trunk behind them. They were still for a second, their lips pressed together, eyes closed and hearts pounding in sync against each other’s chests. Almost instantly, JJ’s hands came up to take hold of her face and then they were honest to God kissing.

It could have been seconds or minutes or hours, who knows, but suddenly she didn’t feel close enough and Kie turned herself more toward him, pushing up onto her knees before straddling his lap. They eventually broke apart, out of breath and eyes bright. Kie’s hands were knotted in the front of his shirt, and JJ’s had found their way to her hips. Her forehead was resting against his, both their breathing still laboured.

“This is a bad idea, right?” he asked, eyes still closed and his mouth inches from hers.

“For sure. Maybe the worst idea either of us has ever had,” Kie replied, but her mouth fell forward to meet his again, and she felt him tighten his grip on her hips before sliding his hands up her back beneath her shirt.

“Do you- wanna- stop?” he hesitantly questioned between kisses, and she shook her head silently, her mouth still against his as she rolled her hips. His mouth fell open for a second, a startled groan escaping, and Kie couldn’t help but pull away to smile against his mouth. In response, one of his hands went straight to the back of her head, tangling in her hair as he pulled her mouth back to meet his, kissing her deeper before tugging on her bottom lip with his teeth. This time it was Kie that moaned into JJ’s mouth, and he grinned as her hand raked it’s way through his hair, pulling on it until he released her lip with a groan.

“Up,” she said, gesturing for him to raise his arms with a glassy-eyed smile. He did, and she took hold of the bottom of his tank and pulled it up over his head, throwing it down on the sand beside them. They were kissing again instantly, his hands squeezing her hips as her hands roamed over his bare chest, nails dragging and causing his skin to prickle with goosebumps. She smiled against his mouth, and he pulled back, his head resting against the tree as his hands came to rest on the smooth expanse of her thighs as she sat back on his lap.

“Fairs, fair,” he said, his eyes slowly dropping from her eyes to her chest and back again.

Kie rolled her eyes and smirked, crossing her arms over her stomach and pulling her shirt over her head, tossing it down on top of JJ’s. He smiled wide, eyes ablaze and biting his lip as he slid his hands up her thighs and back to her hips, pulling her forward so they were flush against each other.

She tried to ignore the eruption of goosebumps across her skin at the forefulness of the motion as he ran his fingers up and down the bare skin of her waist, setting her insides alight, and deflected with a question.

“You’ve seen me in a bikini a million times, what’s the big deal?” she asked, arms hooked loosely around his neck, fingers playing mindlessly with the ends of his messy hair.

“When a girl looks as hot as you in a bikini, it’s a big deal every time you see it,” he replied, leaning forward to catch her lips again but she leaned back, throwing a hand up covering his mouth, and he looked at her confused.

“Just any girl in a bikini, or…?” she asked with an exaggerated, quizzical look and he swatted her hand away pulling her to him by her wrist with a roll of his eyes, causing Kie to pull her bottom lip between her teeth to contain a laugh.

“Just you, dumbass. Now stop fishing for compliments and c’mere…” he said as he buried his face in the crook of her neck, all traces of her smile disappearing as her eyes fell closed at the sensation of his mouth against her skin. Her hips began moving against him again, and she wasn’t even aware she was doing it until his name started to fall from her mouth in breathy whispers. This only spurred JJ on, and he began pulling her hips downwards as she rolled them, increasing the pressure.

“Fuck,” she groaned, a little louder than she intended, when they hit a particularly good rhythm.

JJ had moved to the other side of her neck now, and Kie had tilted her head back to allow him more access. Her bottom lip was between her teeth in an attempt to stop any more outbursts that might get them caught.

JJ made his way back up her neck, along her jaw and to her lips, her name rolling off his tongue and into her mouth like a prayer.

Her hands, which were back in his hair at this point, pulled on a handful and he broke away from her breathless, eyes falling closed for a second before his head came to rest against the tree again.

He watched as her hands went behind her back to remove her bikini top, and he groaned, cursing under his breath and squeezing his eyes shut as he brought his hands up to stop her.

“Whoa there, hold up,” he breathed.

“Wha- what’s wrong?” Kie asked breathlessly, confusion clouding her flushed face as she tried to catch her breath, her hand running through her long, dark hair.

“Nothing. It’s just…” he said, leaning forward and looking around in every direction, just to make sure no one had wandered nearby whilst they were… distracted.

“Jay, if you wanna stop, we can stop…” she said, suddenly feeling a little on display straddled across him, inches from his face and minus half their combined clothing.

“Are you kidding?” he said with a laugh, his eyebrows raised incredulously. “Fuck no, I don’t wanna stop. It’s just, we’re gonna have to stop eventually because we can’t… y’know, here…” he said, making all sorts of expressions and gestures to get his point across. Kie hummed, one eyebrow raised as she deliberately kept her face dead-pan, enjoying watching him squirm.

“…not that I’m assuming that this was going to lead to that, but - shit. You know what I mean, right? Please tell me you know what I mean,” and a smile broke out across Kie’s face as her head fell forward with a laugh, forehead coming to rest on his gently for a second before sitting back to look at him.

“Oh, I’m glad you’re finding this so funny.” JJ said, his head falling back against the tree, eyes closed and hands dragging down his face.

“I’m sorry,” she started, pressing a hand affectionately to his chest, still laughing. “I just never imagined this scenario playing out with you being the sensible one.”

JJ lifted his head from against the tree, opening one eye curiously.

“But you have imagined it?” He replied with a grin that made him look far too pleased with himself, and Kie gave a gentle push at his chest with a light-hearted roll of her eyes.

“Yeah, well, here I am, being sensible,” he groaned, sitting up straighter against the tree. “Excellent timing as always, JJ,” he muttered under his breath to himself.

“Anyway, the point is, if you do that,” he said, gesturing to the bikini top she had been about to remove, “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna have a problem that’s a little difficult to solve with 5 other people around 24/7.”

“My bad,” she conceded, holding her hands up in surrender before leaning forward to press a kiss to his mouth. She settled back in his lap, a little further down his legs to allow him some space to… regroup. She dropped her hands into her lap with a huff as they looked at each other.

“Sooo,” she said, “What do we do now?”

“Excellent question, Kie. I think we start with you putting this back on,” he said, reaching for her shirt and handing it to her. “‘Cause I’m not gonna be able to stand up until you do.”

She laughed with a shake of her head, pulling her top back on and holding her arms out in a “tah-dah” like gesture.

“Better?” she asked, removing herself from his lap altogether and standing with one foot either side of his legs. She extended her hands down to him to help him up.

“Much,” he groaned, taking hold of her outstretched hands, getting to his feet with a huff.

“Okay,” Kie said with a determined sigh. “I’ll go back first, you follow in a few minutes, got it?”

“Got it,” he said, scooping his tank up from the sand and shaking it off, before pulling it over his head.

Kie nodded, but as she turned to walk away, she felt him take hold of her wrist and pull.

“JJ!” she laughed as she stumbled back towards him.

He caught her from behind with his arms around her waist, and pressed kisses into her neck and shoulder, grazing the skin with his lips and teeth.

“Jay,” she protested weakly, tilting her head back and to the side to let him carry on up to the shell of her ear.

“What?” he questioned with fake innocence, his hands pulling at her hips as he pressed up behind her, and she half-laughed, half-groaned.

“You’re the one who wanted to stop,” she reminded him, and she turned in his arms until they were facing each other. Her arms were draped over his shoulders, nails scratching gently at the back of his neck.

“Yeah, well, maybe I changed my mind,” he backtracked as he turned them round, her back hitting the tree he’d been leaning against earlier. The bark dug into the exposed skin of her back and shoulders, and suddenly she was grateful just to have pressure against any part of her body.

“You’re unbelievable,” Kie said as his mouth came back down on hers. She tried to keep her lips pressed together in protest, but then his knee found it’s way between hers, pushing them apart as his thigh came to rest between her legs.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” he quipped against her mouth with a grin, nipping at her lip for entry.

“Not gonna happen, you had your chance,” she asserted teasingly between chaste kisses, and she felt his smile widen before he pushed his leg forward and up between hers. Her mouth fell open on instinct, a moan escaping involuntarily from the back of her throat. JJ’s tongue dipped in immediately, and suddenly they were back in a frenzy of hands and tongues and laboured breaths.

By comparison, JJ kept the movement of his leg that was still between hers steady and slow, but before long Kie’s hips were moving erratically on their own against him.

“JJ, fuck,” she groaned into his mouth, her teeth coming down around his bottom lip and he hummed in agreement.

His hands were roaming the bare skin under her shirt again, and he wished more than anything he hadn’t told her to put it back on.

He dropped a hand to her hip, then carried on down the smooth, bare skin of her thigh until he reached the back of her knee. She whimpered as he hiked it up to rest against his waist and her head fell back against the tree as the pressure he was applying between her legs hit a new spot.

“Oh my god, Jay - fuck, that feels so good,” she was practically panting, eyes squeezed shut and her grip digging into his shoulders to hold herself upright.

JJ knew he was asking for trouble with this, there was no way they could risk taking it as far as they both clearly wanted to, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop when she was begging him not to.

“Please don’t stop, JJ, please,” she pleaded breathlessly against his mouth, but to be honest she was doing most of the work, he was just along for the ride. Nevertheless, he responded by kissing her deeper, his grip on her solid and unfaltering, until…

“JJ! Kie!” John B’s voice called from down the beach, and JJ all but dropped her on her ass.

“Shit,” he mumbled under his breath, arm swooping to catch her as her feet hit the ground.

“What do we do? What do we say?” he asked in a harsh whisper.

“Just - just say we got lost?” Kie suggested, still breathless and bracing herself against the tree, with an enthusiastic nod of her head.

“Lost?” he repeated, “A half mile along the beach in a straight line?!” He whisper-shouted in response.

“Hey, don’t take it out on me!” she replied, also in a shouted whisper. “I was ready to leave five whole minutes ago, until you pulled me back,”

“Yeah, for the best 5 minutes of your life,” he countered and Kie scoffed. “You’re welcome, by the way,” he muttered just loud enough for her to hear.

Kie shot him an irritated glare before responding in an even lower tone as John B got closer.

“Well, since you’re clearly a man of so many talents, why don’t you think of an excuse for what we’re doing out here on our own?”

“JJ! Kie! Please tell me you guys are alive?” John B’s voice came again, and JJ cast his gaze upwards for a second, muttering curses under his breath, until he spotted something. His eyes dropped back to meet Kie’s with a grin.

“What?” she mouthed to him with a shrug, too scared to use actual words in case John B rumbled them.

JJ began scaling the tree they’d been sitting under, and when Kie looked up, she saw it too.

Mangos.

JJ began plucking them from the branches and tossing them down one at a time to Kie.

“Over here, bro!” JJ called out to John B, and a minute or so later he appeared.

“Where the hell have you guys been?” he asked, as JJ clambered back down from the tree.

He turned to Kie, throwing his arms up. “Kie, you left ages ago.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I couldn’t find dumbass here,” she explained, lazily throwing an arm in JJ’s direction, who was currently too busy trying to balance an obscene amount of mangos in his arms to acknowledge the insult.

“Then on the way back we saw the tree, so we thought we’d just collect some fruit for everyone.”

John B looked at her sceptically.

“Look, John B, it’s no big deal. We’re fine. Let’s just get these back to camp,” she said, gesturing to the remaining mangos scattered across the grassy embankment.

“Sure, okay. Whatever,” John B replied, holding his hands up in defeat before crouching down to collect the fruit.

The three of them made their way back to camp in comfortable conversation, and were greeted by a lot of sarcastic “oh, so they are alive” (Sarah) and “we thought you guys had decided just to swim back to the mainland” (Pope) comments directed at their unexplained absence from the group. They soon became distracted once they noticed the fruit, and before long their escapade was forgotten by the rest of the group and no one questioned it further.

As they all sat round the fire later that night having dinner (fish cooked on a stick over the fire, the usual), Kie and JJ sat together like always, only now they seemed hyper aware of each other. Everytime their knees brushed, or their shoulders bumped, they couldn’t help but steal a glance at each other.

Once everyone had settled under the make-shift shelter at the end of the night, they lay in silence, waiting for the rest to fall asleep before JJ rolled over and wrapped an arm around Kie’s waist, pulling her flush against him and burying his face in her neck.

#jade writes jiara #jj maybank x kiara carrera #jj x kiara #jj x kie #jiara #outer banks

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ivyveil · 5 years

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Truth or Drink

the one where it's worth a shot, but is it worth the truth?

A/N: Hi! This fic is based off of this video series by Cut (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auBSJIJ_C_8) . I fell in love with the idea and I thought I would do a piece on it. I hope you enjoy! 11.4k

It hadn’t seemed real until you were there.

The set was more professional than you had expected. Considering how much time you had spent with Harry’s old circle of friends, you had anticipated a low budget, maybe with the setting being a friend’s house. But it was genuinely in a production studio warehouse, with props and expensive equipment. You kept forgetting that Harry was doing much better for himself now.

They even had a snack tray, for Christ’s sake.

A sizable crew of people milled around the outskirts of the set, their shoes crinkling up the paper that cascaded down two poles, creating a white wall and floor in front of the camera. The director’s seat was empty and the camera was given a wide berth.

A wooden table had been set up in the middle of the paper floor, with three bottles of alcohol, two glasses of orange juice, and two shot glasses on top. The set-up was cute, probably ‘aesthetic’, but regardless, it sent shivers down your spine. Two chairs sat beside the table, angled out towards the expectant camera and muttering crew. Waiting for you, waiting for him.

It hadn’t seemed real until he showed up.

In a sweater colored with muted hues of greens and tans, and sunglasses pulling back his hair, Harry looked unbearably familiar. In an unsettling way, like you had watched a movie starring him at 3 am and woke up the next morning, dusty and vague memories of him coating your tongue and settling against your pillows.

It even fell down to the way he was walking, how his stance lingered more on the left than the right, and how his eyes swept the room. And how he could make you feel like the only one in the world, when his eyes landed on you and he smiled. He smiled as if you both had a secret no one else could understand, because that was partially the truth.

His boots sounded crisp on the paper. He was clipping his microphone against the collar of his shirt, ducking his head down momentarily to eyeball whether it was right. Which was a reminder of how this was all to be made public, how you two were to broadcast your conversation to countless of strangers who never asked for it, but would readily comment.

And that hadn’t seemed like something Harry would normally be willing to do, but to be fair, you hadn’t spoken to the man for almost a year.

It hadn’t seemed real until it was.

The two of you didn’t properly acknowledge each other, not in the way you would’ve if the meeting had been a casual one. Not riddled with anticipation and nerves.

Instead, you two chose to settle in the chairs and keep your attention on the objects around you. There had been smiles exchanged but the air was still thick, feeling like starch against the back of your throat. You both invented itches on your arms, a sudden interest in how your sleeves were rolled, etc, and ignored that the other was doing the same.

Harry shifted the shot glass so it was closer to him, as if anticipating the inevitable slosh of drunken choices he’d make soon. It was more likely than not, that you two – usually fairly private – would rather drink than confess anything.

“Looks like whiskey, vodka, and-” Harry opened up the third bottle, grasping onto the lid as he held up the bottle to his nose. “-maybe tequila?”

He glanced over, eyebrows raised as he tilted the bottle, presumably for you to smell as well. Perhaps there was hope in his eyes that you two could proceed with grace and without properly acknowledging the iceberg of problems between you.

The fact he could sit there and treat the situation so casually, was so frustratingly Harry that you weren’t sure how you had expected anything different. It had been a long while since you had been near him, but he still knew how to try and make you feel at ease. Like he could still read your mind as well as he had a year ago, that he could feel your discomfort and wanted to make amends.

The problem had been, and still was, that he tried to make up for whatever had gone wrong, without fully acknowledging what had actually gone wrong to begin with. His words never laid out flat what the issue was, and so you had often been left dissatisfied, searching for a resolution that he wasn’t offering.

You sniffed the bottle, because of course you did, wrinkling up your nose as you nodded. Tequila. Some strangled noise came from your throat, and Harry was clearly expecting it, for he giggled and plugged up the bottle again.

You hated tequila.

“Thanks fo’ coming, by the way. Didn’t think you’d agree to it,” he confessed, his fingers lingering on the sides of the bottle as he feigned interest in organizing them. As if a straighter line of liquor would wash away the tension, how quiet you had been, and how strangely surreal the next half hour would be.

Shifting in the seat, you crossed your legs and flexed out your foot. Getting comfortable in a situation that was anything but was not your forte by any means. It was your job as an interior designer, for Christ’s sake, to make every environment graceful and cozy.

But the tension between you two had another layer on top, which was your inherent nature of despising the something not being positioned correctly.

In this case, it was the fact you were even in the room.

“No problem. Sounded interesting. Thanks for-” you paused, unsure of what to say but feeling as though you ought to thank him back, “-thinking of me?”

Harry let out a laugh, unexpected by you, and apparently from him as well. Not that you had anticipated a change, or were even trying to notice, but his nose still wiggled when he smiled.

For the first moment since your friend had dropped you off in the parking lot ten minutes prior, you felt settled. Perhaps not confident enough to last through the list of questions without a single tear, but confident enough that you were both in the same situation. You and Harry could make it work and be alright.

It was a situation set up with the consent of each of you, after all, although that didn’t take away the nervous butterflies and worms writhing around in your chest.

Harry poured each of you a shot of whiskey, holding out the glass like a sense of a peace offering. Alcohol had never been your safe havens, but you figured it was alright to pitch a tent for a day.

You accepted it gratefully, making sure your fingers wouldn’t graze against his as you took the drink. Knocking it back felt like a rude awakening, but a necessary one, to approach what was coming.

The wall of paper rustled behind you, and the director popped his head around the corner. His name-tag read Chris, and you recognized the name as one of Harry’s newer friends, not one of the friends who would recognize you, which was a relief.

Chris was the reason Harry was doing the show, it seemed, as voluntarily airing past relationships was slightly out of character for Harry. His sense of duty towards his friends seemed to outweigh his typical cloak of privacy, and you couldn’t say you were altogether surprised. It didn’t clarify why he had asked you to be the ex on the show, though. He had a handful of others who were more likely to generate “viral content” with their outlandish drama, you knew, yet he had asked you.

“Thank you both for getting here on time. We can go ahead and get started if that’s okay,” Chris clasped his hands together, strutting past the table and towards his director’s chair. He was wearing plaid pants that swished against his legs as they moved, and that was the only noise in the room for a few seconds. Harry and you looked at each other, a bit uneasy that the moment had come upon you both so quickly. He quirked an eyebrow, as if to say there was no reason to delay it any longer. You took a deep breath and nodded.

“Okay, here’s how it’ll work. Martha will put these cards on the table. One of you will read out the question and the other will answer. If the person answering chooses not to, that person will have to take a shot. Easy enough. If you wanted to elaborate with your answers, we encourage that as well. And if you need to take a moment, let us know, but the camera stays rolling.”

It was a lot of information at once, and you found yourself nodding without comprehending as Chris rambled on. Your mind, ever the traitor, was stuck on how a week ago Harry had texted you. It was truly out of the blue, since your break up hadn’t resulted in a good, or even shaky, friendship, and you had felt certain he had deleted your number.

Hey, it’s Harry Styles. Know you probably don’t want to hear from me, but I have a favor to ask. My friend is doing a new Internet series where exes get together and talk about their relationship, and he wanted to know if I would be willing. Thought of you. Interested? Xxx.

At first, you weren’t sure. The situation seemed like a disaster waiting to happen, if you were being honest. Darkened skies and trees blowing enough to the point their trunks swayed in the wind - that sort of disaster.

There was something about seeing his face that would send you spiraling off, bubbling anger and frustration swelling up your chest when you stumbled on his Instagram those few times. And then those times when you looked him up. And then those times when you took a screenshot the particularly good photos and went back to them when you were in a pit of self-despair. But only those many few times.

“Sounds good,” Harry was saying, and you chimed in with similar agreement. Martha, presumably, moved forward and put the cards on the table. There were a sizable number of questions, enough to keep you two interested in the game and not to be tempted to drink on every one.

Which had been your plan.

“Alright, just introduce yourselves to the camera and then go ahead,” Chris gestured outwards, smiling, before settling back in his seat.

Chris’ facial expression shifted into something more serious, the friendly facade morphing into a professional stare, which made you feel incredibly aware of how awfully slouched you were. You felt like you were in front of your parents, or a teacher, like you were a kid again and had to present yourself well.

Sitting up, you turned towards the camera. It was a large, black pit of emotionless indifference. It was going to record everything and wouldn’t have the decency to look away, if tears were to fall or if blood were to be shed.

Which didn’t feel too melodramatic, if you were being honest.

Harry introduced himself as Harry, an art teacher, and gave a gentle wave paired with one of his charming smiles. You followed suit, opting to just fold your arms against the table, as you introduced yourself as an interior designer.

The truth extended a bit beyond that for the both of you, with Harry also owning a popular photography Instagram working to introduce inner-city kids to film tech. And you were working with the local homeless shelters in the area to improve structural efficiency, as well as beginning your line of eco-friendly furniture.

But the two of you had become wrapped in the other’s threads of intimacy when you were merely an art teacher and an interior designer, and it would be easier to hark back a year ago if you were no longer attached to today’s version of yourselves.

Perhaps it was a hope for the past to emerge once more.

“How long did you two date?” Chris prompted.

“Two and a half years,” Harry answered.

“And how long ago was that?”

Harry looked over at you, raising his eyebrows silently asking you to be the one to answer. You knew he knew, that the wounds were still fresh and it wasn’t some ex-relationship lost in the foggy realm of his mind. So, you obliged, replying steadily and only taking your eyes away from Harry’s for a brief moment.

“About a year ago.”

And then, abruptly, it was simply you and Harry.

The crew faded away, when you two settled in against the backs of the seats and looked at each other. Harry seemed to be toying with some type of smile, probably more out of discomfort than genuinely finding humor in the situation.

“Should I go first?” Harry offered, reaching over towards the pile.

“Yeah, go for it.”

You shifted your legs once more, crossing them so the other was on top. Your fingers rested on the edge of the table, curling against the wood and waiting for Harry to speak.

“Describe how you feel about me right now.”

Harry began chewing on his lip, not harshly, but enough for you to pick up on his nerves. His eyes shot over to the bottles, thinking you’d immediately cop out, but you began to respond.

“I feel like...” you sighed, dropping your gaze from his inquisitive eyes as you collected your thoughts, “I feel like you’re an ex. And that’s not saying a lot but that’s the best way to describe it.”

You nodded, satisfied with your answer.

“Is that a bad thing?” Harry asked.

You shrugged.

“It just is. Feels like an ending brought back up.”

And it did. You had grown a lot since you two had left the other as a broken shell, and meeting up again felt like a continuation that wasn’t supposed to be. Unnatural was a word to describe how your eyes settled on the small parts of him, deciphering what was different now, yet there was a thread of normalcy in how you two could understand the other like an instinct buried deep away.

“Ah, it’s the bad sequel,” he mused, with a grin that deepened against his cheeks when you laughed. With a smirk to himself, he put down the card in the discard pile.

It felt a bit easier than you had expected, to sit across from him. The bitter words you two had left stewing in the other’s mind had apparently evaporated for the time being. Texting Harry back your confirmation while drunk and alone on a Friday night could maybe be chalked down as a good life decision, if the goodwill carried on throughout the video.

“What about you?” you prompted. You weren’t sure if that was allowed, if the game permitted for you to turn the question onto him. But you were intrigued by the ability to ask him whatever, to find out the depths of Harry you never thought you’d be privy to again, under the guise of something that could be easily excused.

“Me?” he asked, needlessly, for there was no one else you could be asking.

“I feel kinda the same,” he spoke as if it were a question, but continued on with building confidence, “I dunno much about yeh life anymore. Remember how we’d go out on the fire escape ‘n just talked-” you smiled at that, because it was one of those things that couldn’t be remembered without being cherished “-but I also remember how we fought. Especially on tha’ last night. But it doesn’t feel bad to be here. Not wha’ I expected.”

You nodded as he spoke, already feeling the analysis of his word choice kick into gear in the depths of your brain. Nothing he said rose red flags, though, and to a sad extent, you understood him. It hadn’t been as painful as your friends had tried to convince you it would be when you were leaving the apartment that morning.

“Alright, my turn?” you looked over to Chris, who nodded towards the pile. It seemed a bit ominous, with Harry being the one to potentially answer now. Because you had control over what was said a moment ago but now it was truly up to him. It made you nervous

“Did you ever have the chance to cheat on me, and did you?”

Time almost seemed to stop, an unbearable delicacy in the way your eyes held contact with his own. An impressive acknowledgment that whatever he said, and especially the moves his body would make, held the potential of ripping a shred into the both of you.

“I had a chance.” Harry nodded slowly, and his fingers began to twist around themselves on the table. “With...with a mutual friend.”

You nodded, not even needing him to go on further. You knew who it was.

Melanie.

You valued female support and girl love for one another, but Melanie was just a straight up bitch. In the ways that men never could see, because the complexities of female language would twist around the way she eyed women up, the way her lips would curl around each false compliment, as if snapping its neck. Her words had a double meaning that only girls could decode, a simple system that carved knives down their back as she manipulated situations to her fancy.

She was in a ‘game’ no one else was playing, but she was in it for blood.

Perhaps insecurities could be an excuse, maybe there were lingering traumas in her childhood that had morphed her into the beast she was today. But it was easier for you to shut down those ideas and accept her in the monstrosity she had become, one way or another, and keep your hand firmly in Harry’s whenever you all were out together.

She had a thing for Harry.

She would sidle up next to him in the booth, when the lights were low enough to mask her demon-slit eyes and let him be blind to the venom-soaked tongue that flicked out of her mouth with two prongs.

(You were being dramatic, but that’s neither here nor there).

She would be cuddly with him, and Harry would insist to you that they were just friends. When his phone went off with her name splashed on it for the fifth time in ten minutes, he’d make up excuses. Say she was interested in his record collection, that she had sent him a link to some obscure new photography magazine that Celtic porn stars had created downtown. It was nothing incriminating but Melanie had her code, and it seemed only you knew how to read it. He was protective over her, almost, and it had bugged you to no end.

You never called him out with direct accusations, though, because you had never thought of him as the cheating type.

You’d always assumed Melanie was in it for the attention and would stop before any buttons could slip out of their hold.

It seemed you had assumed wrong.

“When was it?” you found yourself asking, the question bursting through before you could have enough time to address whether you wanted to know.

“A week before we broke up.” Harry had the decency to look unsettled, clearing his throat and glancing around the room. “I was taking her home after that night out, the one when we went to tha’ bar and we fought so yeh left early-” you nodded, so he cut to the chase, almost gratefully “-and she wanted me to kiss her when we reached the door.”

“Did you?”

Harry shook his head, his lips pursing together as he swallowed.

“No, didn’t.”

You nodded, feeling a swoosh of satisfaction dipping into your lungs. Even though you couldn’t call him yours anymore, the fact that you both had stayed honest made you feel better.

Made you realize that even though your break up felt like exposed film, negatives that could never be altered into something bursting of color, you two still had the foundation of respect. The pictures were still beautiful, even if you couldn’t see what they were.

“You?”

Glancing up from the card to Harry, you noticed his head was tilted down, his eyes up. He was the one who was unsure, now. The delicacy remained and your head tilted to the side as you replied evenly.

“No, never.”

“Ever had the chance?”

You paused, letting the question sink in.

“I guess from random guys at bars ‘n stuff, but I always said I was with you.”

Harry nodded, leaning back somewhat, as if the answer had lightened some burden.

“Was never sure about Shawn, to be honest. Thought he had a thing for you,” Harry confessed with a shrug, a light smile on his lips. His eyes were still honest, still serious, still had the heaviness that you felt in your soul.

You weren’t sure what to say, with the bright lights and the rolling camera, so you just put the card down and nodded up at him.

It was his turn now.

Another card drawn.

“What do you miss the most about us?”

“Our friendship.” Your answer was immediate, no thinking required. “We had so much respect for each other. I remember feeling so in awe about how persistent you were - like the time you crashed the governor’s party to debate school board funding?”

Harry grinned at that, his eyes crinkling more than usual at the memory, as you continued.

“We knew everything about each other, always had the other’s back, and now we just...”

Your hand waved off towards the crew, although it was meant more as a general ‘nothingness’ gesture, but Harry nodded. He almost looked relieved. A more permanent smile was on his lips, and you knew there was one on yours. It was impossible not to look back on that aspect without a consuming sense of fondness, an adoration for what had been.

“Feels weird tha’ I see still yeh face everywhere now, but like...I don’t even know how your family is doing,” Harry said and he glanced up at you, a slant to his eyebrows that spoke more than he could on camera.

“He’s fine,” you murmured, and Harry’s eyes glimmered somewhat. You could tell he was happy for you and you wondered if it were your imagination misleading you when he readjusted on the seat, and his hand went out on the table. Not close enough to be against yours, but it was possible he was trying.

“Did tha’ fucker kick you out?” Greg yelled towards the street, as if Harry were lurking behind a streetlamp watching you shuffle on the doorstep. The street echoed quietly back Greg’s words, without a reply, not even an indignant shout from the neighbors.

“No,” you sniffled, and Greg’s attention was brought back to you. He opened his door wider so you could step out of the rain, looking once more up and down the street, as if still unsure of Harry’s location. Then, he stepped inside as well.

“I just needed someplace to go. C-can’t stay at the apartment. Everything’s j-just a mess right now, y’know?”

Your eyes had kept on the floor, but Greg lifted up your chin with his fingers. He was staring at you in some odd type of way.

Somehow comforting, you supposed, but not having spoken to Greg in forever, you weren’t particularly sure if it was judgment or sympathy he was feeling towards the situation. He hadn’t seemed to approve of Harry the one time they met, but the entire evening hadn’t gone well for your family, so it was impossible to tell.

“I understand. Stay as long as you need, ‘kay?” His answer surprised you and also didn’t. You knew he wouldn’t have let you past his doorstep if he was still angry.

It seemed the pain left by Harry was enough to forgive the harsh dispute that had cracked open your ribcage first, the fighting that had stirred up your temper to high enough levels to really go at it with your boyfriend. Or ex, now, it seemed.

“I’m sor-”

“Don’t.” Greg’s voice cracked at the end, and you blinked in surprise. “We’re family. Beyond the blood or marriages or what-fuckin’-ever, that’s what we are. I love you, and that’s not going to change. All that shit doesn’t matter right now, ‘kay?” You nodded.

And that was the first conversation you had with Greg in all twenty-five years of your life, that didn’t end with screaming. It was the first time since you could remember that your half-brother hugged you and told you he loved you.

It was the first step the both of you took towards healing.

“And I have no clue how your pet fish is getting on,” you replied, as if your drama with your half-sibling would appropriately compare to Harry’s fish episodes.

You two had bought a pet fish, about a year and a half ago, for one of Harry’s projects – back when he was paying for all of the supplies but was still determined to get the kids what they needed – but Goldie kept dying, and every one of Goldie’s descendants died, as well, none lasting a month and most not seeing it through a week.

Harry laughed.

“No more fish, actually. Decided to stop trying,” he explained, and your lips formed some sort of tight smile. At least, you hoped they had succeeded in doing that, and there wasn’t some sort of disfigured grimace that would be captured on camera.

A feeling of something close to comfort draped over your shoulders as you moved to pick up the next card. The questions had been easy, almost too easy, and you were falling into a lull of belief that you could take on all the twists and turns of the segment. Being honest wasn’t feeling hard.

But it seemed like God suddenly had a call to take, or the Goddess of the Moon had her attention elsewhere, for the easy questions came to an end.

“Do I ever pop up in your head when you masturbate?”

Several of the crew laughed at your reaction. Your jaw had dropped slightly, eyebrows furrowed at the card as if the ink could apologize and scramble into a more appropriate question. You hadn’t expected that at all.

Nor did you expect the familiar swooping feeling in your stomach, because you had the all-too-vivid memories of being with Harry. Knowing his moans, the grip he prefers, the words that, when murmured against his throat at the right second, could send him over the edge.

Harry didn’t seem to mind too much, only looking like a deer in headlights for a moment, before he reached out towards the bottle of tequila, an unsure chuckle mixed with a light hysteria coming from his lips.

“Gonna need to take a few shots for that one,” he joked, shaking his head, before drawing his hand back in. Your heart started thumping rapidly.

Inhale. Exhale. You could feel your cheeks burn, even if the red wasn’t noticeable it was still felt, and the light-headed spin within your mind increased.

But it was going to be alright, you weren’t going to die, despite feeling it in your heart that it could possibly happen, once your friends saw the video in a few weeks time. Telling it to yourself over and over, you blinked at Harry and your face squinted together, in a ‘hell, you gotta answer’ type of way.

Harry was looking at you, his eyes a shade more serious than before. A flicker of confusion registered within the green, as if he weren’t accustomed to seeing you calm down so quickly (despite your anxieties not being apparent to the rest of the room, it seemed as though Harry hadn’t lost his knack for picking up on it) but he persisted on.

Fuck. You realized he was actually going to answer.

It wasn’t that you minded. The thought of him using the memories of you two wasn’t a slap in the face by any means. But it was more the confrontation of it that you were struggling to break through, escaping the ocean waves of wanting to know, while definitely not wanting to know. The waves were lapping up against the sides of your neck as you looked around, but no land was in sight.

You two were there, and the threat of drowning was imminent.

“I mean, yeah. Together almost three years, we had some good times.” His voice quietened by a fraction, as if the words would remain private. A cheeky grin still dug into his lips, a flush sort of pink dusting his cheekbones as he shrugged. But you know what he meant, beyond the clothes draped against half-done canvases and wallpaper samples.

You both knew how it felt.

“An apartment...all to ourselves,” Harry whispered, his fingertips stretching up against the bare mattress towards its edge. The sheets lay, arranged as if by a Greek sculpture, around your legs and Harry’s waist. His arm was around you, his palm laying on the small of your back to cuddle you in closer. He felt warm, smelled like coconuts. His chest rose slow, his breath evening out.

The empty space was now, indeed, yours. Your mind had been whirling ever since you first saw the structure with ideas for patio design and kitchen layout, but Harry had managed to distract you for a quick “house-warming party for two, love, gotta do it right” that had lasted all afternoon.

The sun was dipping lazily against the skyline, streaming golden and orange rays down into the home. Because it was a home now, with Harry and you in it.

“You still awake, love?” Harry tapped his fingers against your back, and you lifted your head sleepily. It felt like a thousand pounds, with your eyes fluttering closed while your mind was trying to open them. Harry chuckled.

“Tired yeh out?” he teased, and you managed to peep your eyes open enough to roll them properly, before propping your head up on his chest.

“Just sleepy. Had a long day moving in boxes. And then again tomorrow...but you’ve got work, yeah?”

Harry made an affirmative noise, soft and gentle as he looked down

His hair had just grown long enough for him to be satisfied; curls caressing his collarbones and laying against the mattress like an angel’s halo. You didn’t have to open your eyes to see it, the image was painted across the skies of your eyelids after a year of admiring him.

“Gonna be another long day tomorrow,” you mumbled around the upcoming yawn, and you felt Harry brushing your hair back. His fingers got caught, at times, against the messier curls, and he would untangle them. You’d do the same for him, if the positions were reversed, but your eyes only felt real when they were closed. Like the genuine rest would start when you weren’t looking around the room, wild ideas forming upon the walls.

You and Harry spent the rest of your first night in your first apartment cuddled. He didn’t even bring out his camera when the sun hit your cheeks just right, instead feeling in his heart like the moment was best at the time it was happening. Never to be seen again, never to happen again, it was yours, and you were his.

“Had some good times,” you agreed, gesturing for Harry to pick up the next card. It sent your heart racing once more, the thought of Harry turning the question on you. The words were in his eyes, anyway, and it went beyond crude nights spent alone with lube and memories, and into something deeper. Something about whether you treasured those times still, whether they had been tarnished by an ending.

The truth was, you did. On the romantic nights when your bed felt empty, an ocean of sheets and cold pillowcases, with that itch of needing something to bring you higher, that you recalled the good times. It felt like in public eye, you had to maintain the appearance that you and Harry weren’t compatible, that something tragic had occurred, something was wrong within the relationship, and it was irreparable. And perhaps that was true, but your feelings had a nasty tendency to not align with the truth. Contradictions galore, your mind would go to Harry and feel something deeper than an ending.

Harry gave a short nod, cleared his throat, and picked up the next card. The opportunity of waiting allowed for you to glance around the room, making eye contact with one sounds-person who seemed particularly apologetic in the way they smiled.

“How long did it take for you to get over me?”

Before you could even think, he put the card down and shook his head.

“I know this,” he claimed, and your eyebrows rose in surprise, “You hooked up with Shawn two months after we broke up.”

It was what you had been trying to avoid in the conversation earlier, how the topic of Shawn had elicited jealousy and concern from Harry, and it was not entirely unfounded. You and Shawn had ‘hooked up’, but not to the extent Harry was perhaps expecting. Shawn had kissed you after a particularly rowdy rendition of Love Shack during karaoke night. It had ended there, because the guilt welling up in your throat felt like bile and you needed some air immediately.

It still felt wrong, even when the person you thought was ‘right’ was across the city, wanting nothing to do with you.

Harry finding out about that night wasn’t a surprise, since your friend group was still, a year later, overlapped in a few areas. What was a surprise was how Harry had taken that one kiss as a sign of you officially Moving On, as if a Facebook relationship status change and a quick peck could alter almost 3 years of passion and commitment.

Three months ago.

The night had begun with dark purples and blues around your figure, the way your curtains draped against empty windows and the pillows were untouched on one side of the bed. Your friends were blowing up your phone, rattling against the side table persistently, trying to call you out of the depressing apartment and into the club life they were thriving within.

You had already decided to join them but didn’t have the fancy of responding yet. The outfit needed to be perfect, you wanted to feel like you were alive through someone else’s light for the night, before making it official. It was a process of shedding who you had been the week prior and stepping into the greasy, sweaty club as if it were an ocean of opportunity.

Through this endeavor, you found yourself deeper in your closet than you typically were. And that’s where it was, a small brown case with a white tag in the corner, gold stitching around the edges. The tag read “Harry” and your heart made a distant noise, six stories below, as it crashed through the floor.

The moment quickly altered itself, adapting a more serious tone, and the thoughts to color-coordination drifted off like smoke from your mind as you crouched down. Picked off the lid. Looked inside.

There were Polaroids. Dozens of them, stacked against each other and looped together with multi-colored rubber bands.

Photos of you, photos of him, photos of the two of you together. Some were dirtier than others, some made you blush as you fingered through the stack, but others made you pause. Like the one where you were snuggled against Harry’s neck, with Harry’s smug smile peeking out in the corner. It was taken on your first anniversary with him, when the two of you were so broke you had to spend the celebration cooking each other mac’n’cheese with flowers from the Dollar General out on the table.

Or the one where Harry was laid out on the bed, his hair curling against the pillows, shirtless and sleepily looking into the lens. You remembered taking the photo, standing up with your feet on either side of his hips, his hands wrapped around your ankles to hold you steady. You had taken your time getting the position right, making sure the light fell across Harry’s chest like cage stripes along the butterfly. Harry seemed absolutely smitten that you wanted to take a photo of him, cheekily asking, “Lookin’ good, hm?” in between shots.

You cried that night.

More than you had in months, you cried over what was lost. Even the happy moments made you cry because of their fleeting nature, how quickly they had become distant. You cried because you felt like you were mourning all over again, with the box of photos you had forgotten about in the back of your closet.

Your heels were kicked off, your dress was splotched with mascara from wiping at your eyes, and you sat against the closet wall, your knees brought up to your chest.

Within the tears held the question of what it all meant, why you hadn’t felt cried out over the entire situation. Why there were wracking sobs echoing against the walls, why the apartment suddenly seemed like a graveyard and you were a tombstone.

And within the tears held the question of whether you had let go at all.

“I’ll take the shot,” you gestured towards the vodka bottle, and Harry’s body stilled, somewhat unnaturally, somewhat in shock. He was obviously stunned at whether that was confirmation of you genuinely having gotten over him within two months, which he had said more as an accusation than a sure fact. But you couldn’t find it in you to confirm or deny. It just was, and no matter what the truth had been or was still, you weren’t going to touch on it.

“Alright,” he muttered, and with how his head was turned away as he kindly poured you what would be your second shot, you couldn’t distinguish whether he was still shocked or had made the leap to upset. And you weren’t sure which you wanted him to be.

It was bitter going down, searing your throat a bit, and you shook your head immediately, feeling the racks of shudders going down your spine as you powered on through the shot. Several of the crew members laughed at that, and your head tilted up, leaning back into your neck as you cringed.

“Fuckin’ hate that,” you whispered, eyes squeezed shut, and you heard Harry chuckle quietly.

“Alright, your turn, love,” he gestured towards the stack, and on came the next question.

“Is there anything you want to apologize for?”

The silence extended beyond the two of you, into the scope of the room and surrounding the walls like a thin layer of lace. The itchy kind.

“I didn’t know how to talk to yeh. About what I was feeling, ‘n stuff. Figured we’d be okay, no matter what.” He took a deep breath in and his eyes settled on a particularly dark knot in the wood of the table, eyebrows furrowed as her continued. “I’m sorry for tha’. Shouldn’t have assumed yeh knew.”

“Knew what?”

“How much I loved yeh. How much I wished I could’ve solved things, early on before they got to be too much.” He was choking up at the end, nodding quickly and blinking his eyes. It took a moment before you realized he was close to tears, at the memories and at the loss.

You couldn’t say you felt any different, with your own throat closing up around your words.

“We tried our best,” you said, feeling your lips wobble around the smile as if unsure. Harry shrugged, like he didn’t quite feel the same but wasn’t going to argue. The emotions ebbed upon you both quickly and remained, a wave over your heads that didn’t return back to the ocean like it should’ve.

The final fight between you two could have been avoided. It was the cumulative frustration over months of miscommunication, of Harry always being at work, of him putting his school kids first, of you needing someone there with you, of you never knowing how to speak the words of that question, of both of you deciding to be stubborn instead of empathetic. It was a disaster, a war zone marked by scowls and hot tears and rattling doors.

“You can’t take one day off to fix this?” Your voice was shattered, glass shards etching themselves into the walls. It was quiet, as it always was when Harry had something to say but refused to get the words out. He’d just shut down again, seethe in his frustration, never confess to being pissed off, as if denial in itself could create a false reality where you were Okay.

“I’ve got work,” he said it pained, as if he were powerless.

Perhaps you’d been privy to too much of his loveliness, saw too much of his bright sun, because you no longer believed in that. You knew he could do so much, that perseverance was nothing compared to his willpower, and yet you were never on the receiving end of his dedication and work, just an observer.

It was watching him fight for everything but you that sealed the deal, in the end. You had enough empty spots in your heart from people who had left without a second thought about commitment, who took your love for granted and assumed it would last for miles (and it had, which was the worst bit). You couldn’t allow for Harry to make his mark like that. He didn’t have that power over you like he had for others, you had decided.

Which was why you moved in with your brother the next day. Which was why Harry showed up the next night, still in his work clothes, with his teacher’s briefcase in one hand and your apartment key in the other.

“The fuck is this?” he spat, once you had stepped out onto the porch. The streets were slick with rain, the tree branches were weighed heavily upon one another, and Harry’s eyes were the scorched lightning setting it all ablaze.

“I’m done.”

“What yeh mean, done? Done with wha’? Done with us?”

A stunned silence.

“I said we’d work it out.”

He was trying to speak patiently now, talk down as if you had simply forgotten the way he had made you feel cozy and warm again, with promises and soft smiles, before leaving you once more.

“I asked for you to stay.”

“When have yeh ever needed someone to stay?”

It was blunt, harshly spoken, his eyes unfocusing as he furiously blinked the rainwater from his vision. You didn’t move back, you never invited him beyond the porch gate, somewhat afraid of what you’d do if he came closer.

“In the past two years, not once have yeh ever asked for me. Never asked for my advice, n-never told me yeh needed me. What the fuck ‘m I supp’sed to do with that? Know magically that this one time is when you’re actually gonna open up, genuinely gonna talk things out? Not just take whatever path yeh want, without thinkin’ of me?”

“I asked for you to-”

“Stay. Yeah. You asked for me to stay.” He sighed and whipped his head to the side, attempting to sniffle discreetly. You knew that his hay fever was acting up, and you knew he was trying to pretend it wasn’t. A sub-drama within the original, a dialogue stupidly unspoken.

“And you didn’t.”

“What would I be stayin’ for?” It was a serious question,

“For us? To make it work, to talk about what we haven’t-”

“Okay, fuckin’ fine. Talk. Tell me what yeh want me to know.”

You opened your mouth and closed it several times, unable to know what to say. It was a contradiction of overwhelming emotions and the realization that you had no idea. Everything had piled up on each other and digging through the past had no effect on the future, at that point, and you felt as though you had made your mind up the moment you left your key out on the dining table, a night bag stuffed with your everyday things, and your mind blank, to stop yourself from surrendering to him once more.

You’d never forget how he looked, at that moment. In his loose button-up and jeans, with paint on his knuckles and his hair piled in a bun, he looked helpless.

“I’m waiting.”

After a few more moments, he shook his head.

“I’ll move in with Liam next week.” It was a shuddered statement, as if he had come up with that plan on the way over. And that was the way you two ended, because the cliff had been seen for miles and neither one of you pulled the damn car over.

He paused, his body shifted back towards the gate. His hands were by his side, limp, already having given up far before his mind had, your apartment key loosely between two of his fingers.

A minute later, you were back inside. Sliding down the back of the front door, letting your hands immediately rack through your hair, your vision blurry with the loss and the lack of focus, now that he was gone. Because you were gone, and everything was right, but it felt like devastation.

“Our best,” Harry repeated, but that didn’t even sound like enough.

The studio was silent.

“Kiss on the mouth or take a shot each.”

Approximately thirty seconds later, two shot glasses hit the table. You had downed your third of the day, as Harry scrunched his face as he got down his second. Neither of you had hesitated, both realizing that it would bring the level of discomfort to excessive levels. Perhaps if you two were at a friend’s house, wine bottles being passed around in front of the fire, a brief kiss wouldn’t have been seen as much of anything. But not for a camera. Not for the Internet.

The crew was amused how the two of you were on similar tracks of mind, and if you were sober you wouldn’t have found it as funny. But when Harry had his face all squishy like a boy who just ate a lemon, you couldn’t help the giggles that manifested themselves against your lips.

“Okay,” Chris interjected, and it was the river of smooth liquor that kept you two from jumping at the interruption. You had almost forgotten about where you were.

“Just a quick question,” Chris continued, “One we’re asking all the couples.” He paused for dramatic effect, perhaps waiting for the right camera shot, before asking, “Do you feel you have closure?”

The director was bent forward, as if he were brought to the edge of his seat by something that wasn’t surprising in the slightest. Of course neither of you felt you had closure, and of course neither of you would confess to that. Whether the lack of a proper good-bye still haunted your bedposts was another ordeal, one you didn’t feel particularly keen to jump into.

“Uh,” Harry spoke with the stumbling eloquence you had somewhat missed, “Um-well, I-” his eyes flashed over to yours, and then to the side of the table, “Drink. I’m gonna drink.” You gestured with your hand to the bottles, as if inviting him to it, not quite expecting anything less.

His cheeks were flushed as he poured himself another shot, obviously quite upset that he had to further his count. He was an embarrassing lightweight, which you knew, and Chris most likely knew as well.

But Harry must’ve felt more comfortable with risking himself getting drunk on camera, than answering the question, or else he would’ve just confessed that you never let him have the opportunity for closure. And he had treated you similarly, it was a relationship destroyed like frayed clothing, feathering off near the end and getting caught in every sort of mechanism known to mankind.

You never quite understood metaphors.

Harry took the drink in one swoop, without a second thought, and despite you hoping he’d be the one to pour you a shot again, he was obviously needing a moment or two to adjust. So, you poured your own, saluted Chris with it, and drank.

Another truth avoided, and you were feeling like the haze of life had descended upon you. Warmed up and ready to strike.

It hadn’t occurred to you much, at the time, how drinking could speak volumes louder than an answer, one you could elaborate on. But no man ever said vodka brought him sense, so you continued on with the game, under the assumption that the shot glasses would be there for you if all else failed.

“Your turn,” Harry reminded you gently, nudging the cards closer.

You drew.

“Would you be with me again?”

There were flecks of gold in his irises, which felt cliche and overrated, but you were struggling to find anything else in his eyes. There they were, gold and glistening, and the gold was shifting around as Harry glanced away.

It didn’t quite sink in, the implication of his stance, how heavy the air became to everyone sober in the room. Harry nodded slowly at the question, more in the process of thinking over his answer than the nod genuinely being a response.

He started biting his lip again.

“I’m gonna have t’ drink.”

Particles of the air shifted in that fraction of a second. They turned on their sides and pierced the nothingness surrounding them until there was an invisible knife pricking against your chest. It felt hot and unwelcome, and under the gaze of the entire crew, you were speechless for a few seconds.

“I can get why not,” you mumbled after a while, your fingers fixing your hair, the collar of your shirt, anything but how tightly wound the rope was around your neck. “If it didn’t work once, probably wouldn’t work again.”

“Just don’t know who you are, now.” Harry was nice enough to cover his true intentions as he poured the shot. The glasses clinked as they were rearranged and you noticed they were no longer in a straight line. Perhaps Harry was done with easing your tension, maybe this was it. The real pair, the couple of exes with nothing but honesty, a year too late.

“I’ve changed a lot,” you agreed. “Us ending definitely showed me where I needed to work on myself. Took a while, definitely took a while, but I’m getting better.”

Harry, his lips still pursed and his eyes squeezed shut from the nasty aftershock of the shot, managed to nod. When he was able to focus again, he spoke.

“Exactly. I think what was important for the two ‘f us to learn was tha’ we had areas to work on. And we did do tha’ work, but we can’t relive the past. No take twos.”

His words had become a touch more slurred, his head was nodding more from a gradual lack of balance than a genuine agreement. But Harry’s lips were still poised in a smile, in the dopey way his heart would grow whenever he was pleasantly warm.

You couldn’t say you were feeling that sort of happy high, tipsy warmth and giddy love, but you certainly were trying to keep yourself more put together than he was.

“I’ll go, then.” Harry’s hand reached out for the card, accidentally knocking one out of place. Shuffling them back, he drew up the top one again.

“What should I change about myself for future relationships?”

You were shaking your head before Harry was even finished with the question. Which wasn’t altogether impressively fast, because his speech was slower than normal. And he seemed confused by the words - perhaps more apprehensive - and each vowel was elongated.

There was no way you felt you had a right to answer. It had been too long since the break-up. If it were six months ago, maybe, you would’ve jumped through rings of fire to be able to tell Harry what you thought about him. But the truth was, you felt like you were a million miles away from how you both had coexisted a year ago. It was likely life had done Harry the same justice, and any advice you had that wasn’t founded in bitter resentment would simply be irrelevant.

In addition, if the question had been the other way around, there would’ve been no way Harry would’ve answered. There was a possibility you would’ve just died on the spot if he did - it would’ve been hurtful, to hear what he found was such a fundamental flaw within your character that it simply had to be changed in order to make anything work with another person. Some self-problems were designed to be discovered by the individual, not by their angry exes.

“Why not answer?” Chris spoke up.

“Can’t tell him what to do, he’s perfectly fine. Was both of us that made it not work, y’know?” your words felt like syrup in the way they glided from your tongue.

“Yeh gotta drink,” Harry reminded you, a sloppier grin appearing on his face. He leaned forward, resting an elbow on the table and putting his forefinger and thumb around his lip. Sparks of fire ignited in your chest, from his eyes and how they consumed you. Once more, you were reminded how Harry could make you feel like the only person in the room, and how addictive feeling special could be.

“Know I do, Haz.”

You readied the glass and popped back open the bottle, feeling like that noise would forever be associated with this video, with your heart racing and your fingers moving restlessly.

“Called me Haz, just then.”

You simply nodded at his observation, not bothering to look up at see his reaction. A momentary slip of tongue, but it didn’t mean much. A nickname was all, and you refused to think about it for longer than that.

You drank and then quickly picked up the orange juice. Harry, at the same moment, seemed to realize there was a chaser next to the bottles, and picked up his own glass. There was a momentary break so you both could ease down a little, not feel the punch of alcohol and postpone the gentle sway of future regret and public restroom vomit.

“You ready to continue? Just a few more questions,” Chris gestured towards the last two cards on the table, and you nodded, bleating out a question.

“Who’s turn is it?”

“Yours,” Harry answered, pushing a hand down and moving the cards towards you. You snapped finger guns at him, humming with your lips to indicate that you were impressed by his memory.

It all felt smooth. A gradient of emotions, piled on top of another until the feeling was general existence. And it was nice, sitting across from Harry, seeing him after so long, knowing he was doing okay and he had been trying to improve. The harsh feelings were still there, but they were concealed by the concern of catching up, with the hopes of appearing fine on the camera would translate into actuality.

“Do you think I’d be a good wife?”

Harry’s head dropped down to his hands, his palms supporting his forehead as he moaned something unintelligible. It was a quick change of atmosphere but nothing grossly out of place for two drunk people, as the alcohol had a way of gliding over the rough patches.

You weren’t sure about marriage, in how/if it would come into your life. The topic had come up now and again during your relationship with Harry, especially when he had proposed the idea of moving in together. But the conversation was usually vague on both sides, more in the tone of possibility than probability. It simply wasn’t a major point within the way you two interacted, there was no planning or waiting for a one-knee-kneel and velvet box.

“’F course yeh would,” Harry moaned, and your eyes scanned his face, but the majority of his head was still tucked away.

“Fuck, thought yeh’d be mine, didn’t I?”

Silence.

A blank silence, a blanket of nothing cloaked your mind and your tongue. The thought had never crossed your mind, that he would be planning on proposing. He had never seemed the type to want to settle down quickly. Sure, in the deepest corners of your mind, you had thought what it would be like to take on his last name, or to have him take on yours, and to hold a ceremony to make your love ‘officially’ public, to have the societal relationship cemented by expectation and the ring to physically prove it. But it hadn’t felt realistic.

But there he was, sitting across the table from you, drunkenly confessing he had planned on making you his wife.

And all you could feel was the wet clothes on your skin again, the heavy rain that drowned away your relationship, the sopping weight of an apartment key left behind, the hollow carcass of an apartment that became too empty too soon, the rough edges of Polaroids with scratched handwriting left behind.

Near the end, you had started to think he wasn’t fully committed to the idea of your relationship. That there was a chance he was still looking - not actively, not by any means - but looking in the sense that if someone were to stumble along, someone who made his heart feel like it were floating a million miles in the sky, he would leave. Like he wasn’t completely tied down to you, because he simply was never there. That sense of loss before it had even manifested had brought you towards the edge of neediness, shoving you into desperation without knowing the language of asking for reassurance.

It felt logical at the time. If he wasn’t going to work at the relationship, if there weren’t signs of him planning in the future to cement your love more firmly, that meant he was losing interest. That he would leave, like so many others had, and you were going to be lost in another forest with dense trees of ‘not enough’. So you had lashed out before he could, you had burned the bridge before he had even set foot on it.

Your fear had brought you further away, until the crumpled bedsheets and pillowtalks had faded into sullen silences and avoidance, all while he had thought everything was going to be okay.

Harry lifted his head and dropped his hands onto the table. He looked at you warily, sensing the silence had extended beyond what could be a good thing. His hair was disheveled. His eyes were wet and the golden flecks were magnified.

“Oh.” It was all you could think to say.

Harry sniffled, his eyes batting away briefly as he raised a hand to wipe under them. A curl of hair shifted around the edge of his sunglasses as he moved, falling against his cheek. He brushed it behind his ear.

You were sitting as more an observer than an active member of the moment. It still felt surreal, amplified by the sensation of being drunk and feeling like nothing had a consequence, yet understanding at the core of yourself that this very much had a consequence.

“I’m gonna pick the next one,” Harry whispered, as if the microphone wouldn’t pick it up. You felt a flash of anger at how this moment would be exploited, because you knew it would, and his tears would become a part of the Internet. Floating between particles would be his confession, his vulnerability you hadn’t seen before.

He picked up the last card. You held your breath.

“Do you still love me?”

Despite the studio not having made any noise, a deadly quiet resettled itself into the air like a thick dust, gripping away the oxygen from your lungs. It seemed to affect Harry too, for when he was reading, his voice broke at the end. As if cut off by something other than his choice. His eyes went up to the ceiling, praying for you to not answer.

Your hands were in your lap, your fingers curling around the other nervously as you continued to sit through the worst drinking game of your life. Nothing could’ve saved that moment and it seemed the crew knew that as well. Many of them looked away, others couldn’t tear their eyes off of your quivering lip and wide eyes.

Any response seemed it had the potential to break him, but you couldn’t have him not know. He must’ve known anyway. People can’t wash away their first love like a stain, those kinds of relationships were never meant to fully end.

“Don’t think I’d ever stop. Just who we are.”

Harry’s eyes moved from the ceiling to meet yours. Underneath his eyes was a fine shade of pink, as he was trying to hold back the onslaught of hot tears, and after a moment you realized your eyes must have been the same.

The edges of your vision were clouded, the bottles on the side of the table had been washed out with a visible slur.

He looked at you silently, his lips moving without making a noise. It was clear he was trying to ask you again for confirmation with his own words and not the ones written on a card.

But he was still Harry and the words didn’t come out.

Do you love me?

“We grew up together, y’know? In all the adult ways,” your voice wobbled and a few tears slipped out, painting a fine line down your cheeks. “Can’t not love that. You’re a part of those moments, cherish them and I’m cherishing you.”

Harry made an odd light noise, somewhere between a whine and a noise of agreement. He was clearly caught between lines of emotion, unable to lift his intoxicated head above the waves. The drowning had begun.

You had accepted your fate a while back in the game, but it seemed it was only now that Harry realized the long-term impacts these questions could have. His hands were still on the table, palms down, the card between his fingers. You gently reached forward and plucked the card, placing it on the stack. As if that would help ease his pain.

And it was painful, there was no way around it. The immense loss you two had suffered, alone and unable to grieve with the other, irreparable slashes down your hearts caused equally by yourselves as by the other. It had just been a fuckery. The endings always were.

“Do you love me still?” you whispered, the whole spectrum of concentration you had left in your veins solely resting on the slope of his brow, how his eyes gazed into yours, and settled somewhat. Like it was comforting for him to see you.

Your head tilted to the side as you waited, and in the fog of your mind, you realized you had started holding his hand at some moment. Your fingers were wrapped around his outer palm, but he slowly turned his hand over. Threaded your fingers together. Moved his thumb against the side of your hand in slow, small movements.

His heartbeat could be felt through his hand, a steady rhythm like a song you used to play on repeat for days. You had forgotten what it felt like to dance to it, but your heart remembered the tempo.

“I thought I didn’t, but now,” he paused, a sudden hilt in his throat stopping him from continuing momentarily, “Now I’m not sure.”

No one spoke.

No one moved.

His eyes scanned your face. His lips were slightly pursed, in thought, and his eyebrows were low. His thumb continued moving against your skin, as if it would be a comfort to you, but you knew it was mostly for him.

Chris cleared his throat softly, and whispered something to one of his assistants.

“Okay, you two,” he spoke louder to the two of you, but you were the only one to look over. Harry’s eyes stayed on your face, before dropping to the table. Harry’s thumb moved against your skin once more, slowly but with enough pressure that it was clear he had done it consciously.

“I think we’re good, that’s a wrap. Gonna run through some clips, check audio and lighting, but then you’re free to go.”

You nodded, swallowing against the sudden lump in your throat, trying to snap back into reality.

His thumb stopped moving.

You looked over at your hands clasped together, wondering what it would feel like to no longer be holding onto Harry, now that the video was over.

The camera turned its ugly head away, the red light on the edge powering off like a suction of tension being lifted from the room. Chris and a few other of the crew started talking at normal volume, perhaps writing over the moment the best they could by avoiding looking at you two.

Harry sat back and cleared his throat, reaching his free hand up to wipe away at the growing collection of tears within his eyes. His hand began to untangle from yours, as you readied yourself to move on, to get over him again, to feel the impending loss with each step towards lot where your friends would pick you up.

It almost hurt more, losing him a second time.

Perhaps that was why you did it. Maybe it was the instinctive reaction to not ache again, to protect yourself by removing the hurt.

His fingers were barely in your palm when you reacted, leaning forward again to lock your fingers around his. Firmly, with your eyes flashing up to him, a question in your eyes but not yet on your tongue. Harry looked at you, confused but more wary than anything else, before his gaze settled back on your joined hands.

“I would like it if we could go somewhere and talk.”

You hadn’t been able to ask him to settle down to have a serious talk for the past three and a half years, but the words slipped out as naturally as if you were asking him for the time of day. Harry’s confusion deepened before he realized that yes, you had spoken and yes, you had asked for him. Asked for him, after being so vulnerable and stripping away your false sense of brutal independence in order to get together with him for a half hour.

His soft smile indicated his answer was yes, but he accompanied it with a verbal confirmation, a nudge that he was headed in the right direction. Harry was hardly ever shy, but the rosy flush on his cheeks was only partially from the drink, and mostly because of your smile back at him.

Maybe you two wouldn’t talk things out and find that elusive ‘resolution’ nestled between the vast gap where closure was supposed to take root. Maybe you two would flare up in old arguments again and end up storming out, thunder and lighting booming again in your hearts and bitter resentment welling up in your throats.

But at that moment, Harry squeezed his hand around yours, and you felt your chest slowly rise up, the butterflies, forgotten but not gone, stretching out their wings.

Maybe you two could not let go, this time.

A/N: I hope you enjoyed! This has definitely been a dear piece to me. Let me know your thoughts here, and check out the rest of my works if you’d like!

#harry styles fanfic #harry styles fanfiction #archive of our own #mine #one direction fanfic #one direction fanfiction #one direction fic #harry styles fluff #harry styles drabble #harry styles blurb #harry styles fic #truth or drink #tod #truth or drink harry #tod harry

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johnnymundano · 5 years

Text

Paganini Horror (1989)

Directed by Luigi Cozzi

Screenplay by Luigi Cozzi and Daria Nicolodi

Music by Vince Tempera

Country: Italy

Running time: 82 minutes

CAST

Daria Nicolodi as Sylvia Hackett

Jasmine Maimone as Kate

Pascal Persiano as Daniel

Maria Cristina Mastrangeli as Lavinia

Michel Klippstein as Elena

Pietro Genuardi as Mark Singer

Luana Ravegnini as Rita

Giada Cozzi as Sylvia (child)

Elena Pompei as Sylvia's mother

Donald Pleasence as Mr. Pickett

Paganini Horror is a terrible 1989 Italian horror movie set in a decrepit Venetian villa where a terrible (mostly) girl pop group film a terrible video for a terrible song based on the terrible idea of using cursed music by Paganini. The aural nonsense these tinsel wits conjure summons the cranky spirit of the deceased composer to dispatch them one by one in imaginative, but seriously underfunded ways. And probably to stop them screaming, because, hoo boy, do these ladies scream. If you are a massive fan of women screaming Paganini Horror is the movie for you, my unusual friend. Much of the running time of Paganini Horror involves neither Paganini nor horror but rather women running around what seems like one corridor and three rooms screaming. Occasionally they all meet up and scream at each other in the same room, or that one bloody corridor. I swear at some points they bounce up and down and flap their hands while screaming like overwrought teenagers at a pop concert.

Which is ironic since they are a pop group themselves. They are the kind of fantastically talented (mostly) girl band who do the female cause no favours at all; the kind who play their guitars by keeping their fingers immobile and flat on the strings while provocatively moving their hips about while pulling faces which suggest they are experiencing a sexy form of menstrual cramp. The singer, Kate (Jasmine Maimone), doesn’t have an instrument because she is too busy prancing about, trying to see which she can open wider, her eyes or her mouth. The token bloke, Daniel (Pascal Persiano), is stuck behind the drums because no one wants to see his exposed belly button. I think they sing Bon Jovi’s terrible “You Give Love a Bad Name” but it’s kind of hard to tell. Anyway, they are so bad the movie doesn’t give the band a name (I think; I don’t really care), so we’ll call them The Chilblains. Whatever song The Chilblains are excreting, it isn’t good enough for their producer Lavinia (Maria Cristina Mastrangeli) whose ears apparently work, so Kate and Lavinia shout at each other, and things get so heated that Kate almost pushes a stool over but Lavinia arrests its fall just in time. Rock and roll Babylon! The Chilblains need new material to get them another million seller, and fast!

Daniel, the male drummer, sources some groovy material which will get the band back on track by, apropos of nothing, meeting a twitchy Donald Pleasence in a disused warehouse and purchasing a lost Paganini composition. Apparently, actually writing some decent music fails to occur to Daniel. The girls go wild for the fab synthed up sounds of groovy Paganini, and Lavinia books them into a spooky old house Paganini once passed water in, now owned by Daria Nicolodi’s Sylvia Hackett. The idea is to get top horror director Mark Singer (Pietro Genuardi) to make a smashing pop vid and get The Chilblains back shifting millions again. Unfortunately the video is shit. Even more unfortunately the restless spirit of Paganini is so upset by his music being co-opted by talentless chancers that it starts knocking them off in unintentionally amusing ways. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a woman burned alive in a poorly constructed giant violin case, baby.

Niccolò Paganini (b.1782) was a real person who probably didn’t live to see a woman burned alive in a poorly constructed giant violin case, but he was a legendarily amazeballs Genoan violinist. While Paganini Horror is hardly a fit cinematic tribute, he is a good choice for a spooky killer. Much like Cher, he is purported to have consorted with the devil, selling his soul in return for prodigious talent. Back then, see, there were no video games or movies for unimaginative reactionaries to blame everything on, so in desperation bits of wood that could make sounds such as the violin were considered the “devil’s instrument”, indicative of poor moral character and likely to cause an excess of excitement. And so extravagant was Paganini’s talent that it was thought only a satanic source could explain it. Or, y’know, he was talented and practiced a lot. Your call. Paganini died in 1840, possibly from mercury poisoning from being treated for syphilis. Maybe from tuberculosis. I don’t know, what am I, a historian? Paganini’s spookiness survived after his death to the extent that he wasn’t laid to rest until 1876, when priests finished debating what they should do with him. Priests apparently had a lot of time on their hands back then. None of that matters since all Paganini Horror is bothered about is Paganini was very musical and a little bit eerie.

Unfortunately looking up Niccolò Paganini on The Internet turns out to be a lot more exciting than watching Paganini Horror. Particularly finding out that all his teeth fell out from his syphilis treatment. But if you are inclined towards terrible Italian horror movies Paganini Horror has the odd slender wisp of a delight. There’s the ever twinkly Donald Pleasence, being all sinister and stuff; and you get quite a bit more of him than I was expecting, which is nice. Unsatisfactory Italian horror movies form a magical late stage in Pleasence’s career, where he basically rocks up acting in a movie which exists only in his head, and ends up being the most interesting thing in the movie outside of his head. Although genre legend (and co-scripter) Daria Nicolodi is intermittently to be seen acting, mostly she just goes with the whole screaming thing. Michel Klippstein as Elena is the best thing in the movie, but not for her acting. Unfortunately it’s because for the bulk of the movie she wears a nasty green lycra jump suit studded with a nonsensical pattern of holes. It’s kind of fascinating in a wholly abysmal way. Paganini Horror isn’t always terribly interesting so you may often find your mind wandering, wondering just how sweaty Michel Klippstein’s get-up got. I bet they had to burn that outfit once the filming stopped. Ew! In the interests of decorum I shall draw a discreet veil of “mostly adequate” over the other performances.

About on a par with the less than impressive acting is Luigi Cozzi’s relentlessly apathetic direction which exacerbates rather than disguises the clearly near lethal budgetary constraints. But would any more money have helped a horror movie helmed by someone so determined to so cluelessley fart away every death scene? Probably not. Make no mistake, Paganini Horror is not only terrible but, worse, it is often quite boring. This is quite a feat since the killer wears a gold mask and looks like a low budget musketeer prancing about and, as comically awesome as it is regrettably underutilised, there is also a gold violin with a spring loaded blade in the base. It’s like Cozzi has accepted a bet to make everything as tedious as humanly possible. In theory Paganini Horror has some clever ideas and creative slaughter, in practice however it is a drearily slow crawl punctuated by tedious screaming and hilariously cheap-shit SFX shenanigans. The best (i.e. worst) example is “The Invisible Barrier” which elicits some fantastic (i.e. rubbish) mime action as our cast pretend to be pushing against something that isn’t there, it also has a car crash into it but…off-screen! and a character is crushed to death by it, which just means the crew press a sheet of glass onto her face to distort it. Eyerolling never had it so good.

Be warned, sensation seekers of all ages, sure, Paganini Horror all sounds very camp and cheesetastic, but it is neither campy nor cheesy enough. It takes some weird anti-talent to render dull a movie which has a record producer who can identify a fungus by sight as being one used in the 18th century to give Stradivarius violins their unique sound. (I believe Kanye West has the same ability.) Don’t be fooled if any of that sounds fun; Paganini Horror is fun, but not fun enough by far. This Italian mis-fire is fit only for masochistic die-hards like myself rather than your average horror punter up for a good time. Ultimately then, not so much a case of Paganini Horror, but rather Paganini Torpor.

#Paganini Horror #Movies #Horror #Italy #The 1980s #1989 #Luigi Cozzi #Donald Pleasence #Daria Nicolodi

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weneverlearn · 7 years

Video

vimeo

GARAGE PUNK DOC IN THE WORKS!

Wherein Italian trash rock lifers dust off their old VHS concert tapes and pick up a new camera to document the 1990s garage rock scene.

About the last week of November, a trailer of sorts (above) was making the trash rock rounds. It’s cool clips and odd editing of some of the best garage bands of the 1990s piqued lots of interest and fevered sharings, garnering excited queries of “What?” “When?” “Who?” Gaaaaaggghh!!”

Well it turns out I had a clue, as this in-the-works documentary of the end-of-the-century garage rock scene (ala the one covered in my book) is being scrummed up by Italian uber-fans, Massimo Scocca and Gisella Albertini. They not only started booking great bands from all over the wold in their town of Torino and beyond northern Italy back in the early ‘90s, but they had their own great trash trio, Two Bo’s Maniacs. And yes, @newbombturks have been pals with them since they first booked us in 1993, and are one of many interview subjects planned for the film.

Since the chances of 20th Century Fox coming along to bankroll a doc on the 1990s garage punk scene is probably out of the realm of possibility, here’s hoping Massimo and Gisella get all the help and funding they need to finish the project.

We Never Learn checked in with Gisella for some more details on the project.

So, what is the name of the documentary, and why is it named that?

We needed a working title that could pretty much summarize what it is about, and not just cool sounding: Live The Life You Sing About - Tales of Low Budget and Desperate Rock’n’Roll.

We started wondering how bands that sound so different from one another are often perceived as part of the same category or “genre.” When someone asks us to define it, we end up with a long series of terms: garage, punk, rock’n’roll; sometimes with an extra “sixties” or “lo-fi” or “low-budget” in all possible combinations because they’re not not necessarily all true at the same time. Maybe the one thing they have in common is attitude. Something like: play, sing, do what you think is right, no matter what other people think or say. This often comes along with struggle, frustration, and the feeling of being on a different planet, so we threw in an extra “desperate.” It also happens to be the title of an old song that a band brought back to the present, which is another common theme here. However, it might still change, if we come up with a better idea.

Who started the idea to do the documentary, and why?

We came across a box of Video 8 and cassette tapes, forgotten in a closet for years, and something clicked: “We should do something with this!”

From time to time we happen to meet kids who were just babies or very young children in the 90’s, but are very much into this kind of music. Usually when they hear the names of the bands we saw play live, they look at us with amazement and envy. That reminds us of when we talked to people who had seen maybe like Bo Diddley and the Rolling Stones in the ‘60s in just one night. Ok, it means that we’re getting older, but at the same time, we feel lucky and grateful that someone worked hard to allow all that to happen. Now, it’s our chance to save someone “from the misery of being a Taylor Swift fan and do something good for the world” ( - Tim Warren). Ha ha ha!!!

Gisella (far right); Massimo (middle) - Photographer unknown

Is there a kind of timeframe to the bands in the movie?

I guess you know exactly what it means having to choose what to include and what to cut. So many stories that should be told, so little pages...or minutes. It’s just an impossible task. So, we somehow arbitrarily put some boundaries. We decided to focus on whatever happened between 1990 and 1999. Last decade of the millennium. Pretty epic, you know. The era of transition towards new technologies that deeply changed the way of doing many things, but at the same time, at least in this kind of music, strongly rooted in the previous decades of the century.

Oh sure, it’s not that a flying saucer with all these bands landed on Earth on January 1, 1990 and left on December, 1999. We will have flashbacks and references to the present as well. But since the documentary is mostly based on our own archive, it’s also necessarily influenced by the fact that we met some people and not others, and we saw, filmed, and photographed some bands more than others.

Tell me about what your backgrounds are -- in music or life in general.

Oh well, the main people [working on the doc] currently is the two of us -- with the precious help of a few people who could not devote themselves to the project until it’s completed, but worked with us and supported us in many ways.

When we came up with the idea, we had two main options: putting together a professional-looking proposal, sending it around and just wait, hoping some producer would notice its great potential and decide to invest thousands of dollars on it. Or, just jump in and start somehow and figure everything else out in the process. We chose the latter -- it’s more punk! There’s no fame and fortune guaranteed with this project. You do it just because you want to and no matter what.

I mean, we expected a bunch of dedicated fans and collectors would love to see a documentary like this. But being realistic, that’s a relatively small niche. We tried to figure what people know about this. in Italy, the closest they can usually get to this kind of music is what here is called the “Po-po-po-po-po-po-poo World Cup chant.” Real title: “Seven Nation Army” by the White Stripes. Not even something we plan to mention.

Next, a bunch of bands of the late 90’s-early 2000s, still quite a bit out of our range. Then numbers get lower and lower, down to the most obscure ones that only few geeks have ever heard of.

Anyway, if all goes well, we’ve finally found a stable technical crew. Also, we’re working on a few ways of funding the project, besides our own bank account, and including crowdfunding later. Plus a few other ideas, but nothing defined yet so I prefer not to say more, until we’re settled.

1995 7″

Torino newspaper clipping, 10/93. - “Shitty local bands get the main title, while they (A-Bones) only appear to deserve a "tough (?) garage rockers from NY.” - Gisella

How far along are you in finishing it, and when do you think it will be done?

We already did a lot of work on the archive and the structure that will help speed up the editing process. However, we still have quite a few interviews to make, presumably in the summer, and post-production that will involve quite a lot of work on sound especially. Sorry guys, sit down and relax, at least until late 2018. But we’ll keep everybody updated on our page.

Who have you talked to so far, and who do you hope to talk to when you come to the States?

We did long interviews with Tim Warren and Ben Wallers at their homes. Then we have eleven more, collected at gigs of the bands that happened to be touring Europe: opportunities that we couldn’t waste. Many interviews were between sound check and dinner, or even after the gig, and we might decide -- with the interviewees -- to use only part of them, or not at all, then do more while we’re in the U.S.A. Oh, I almost forgot to mention 30 audio-only interviews we had made for our zine in the ‘90’s that will be partially edited in as well. Who do we hope to talk to in the States? Hey, we’re Italian and superstitious, we don’t reveal names in advance!

Torino newspaper clipping, 1994.

Tell us about when you first started seeing these kind of garage punk bands. And what was an early show you saw that really made you get into this music?

Gisella: Sixties music has been my favorite since I was 4 or 5, when I found my mom’s Beatles records -- two 45’s -- in a cupboard. From there, you know, Kinks, Them, Animals, Pretty Things, and then Pebbles, Back From the Grave, and the bands more or less inspired by that. So when my friends and I heard that the guy from the Prisoners would play in town with his new band the Prime Movers, we all went, of course. There, we discovered the opening band would be the Wylde Mammoths. Great night, and a first glimpse of things to come. But it was really the Gories and Thee Headcoats records I came across at a local record store that blew my mind and had me say “Oh THIS is what I really want to hear!.” Everything else followed.

Massimo: Well I’m older than Gisella you know, and I saw some awesome bands during the ‘80s like Suicide, Gun Club, etc. I used to collect a lot of garage compilations, early blues records, r&b, soul, and all the good stuff. But the event that attracted me strongly into this music happened in 1990. I was in NYC, checking the Village Voice and saw that the Gories and the Raunch Hands would play that night. So I went there, and man, that gig was unbelievable! Totally different from anything you could hear at that time, and so shocking that it definitely changed my life forever.

I guess there will be a lot of old film footage in the movie. Can you tell us about one or two old videos you have that you are particularly excited about putting in the movie?

The first one we ever shot. it’s 1995, Micha [Warren, Crypt Records] tells us the Oblivians will be touring Europe. The 10” on Sympathy was awesome and the Country Teasers will be playing too, so we decide to follow them around for a week. Right before leaving, I remember a friend of mine had a Video 8 camera from the late 80s, ask him if we can borrow it, and he says yes. Great, off we go in our ‘70s orange, rusty Ford Transit that we can also sleep in. We get to Stuttgart, Germany. The venue is a sort of long narrow basement, really packed, hot wild atmosphere. Camera battery is fully charged, everything ready, we’re thrilled at the idea of filming such an event. Except... five minutes later, the camera’s dead! The battery was fucked up. What do we do? We can’t miss something like this. Between the sets, we ask if I can keep the camera plugged to the only socket around, at the back of the stage, and they say ok. So for the whole gig I’m there in a corner, trying not to pull my 3′ cord too much, horrified at the thought of blacking out amps and P.A., making the band and the crowd mad at me forever. Luckily, I didn’t. And we came home with some real crazy footage!

Was there any band so far that said NO to an interview for the film?

Considering that in most cases we basically popped up at sound-check asking for an interview for a basically nonexistent documentary, we’re really grateful that they all said yes in that moment, despite the often dire circumstances. It gave us the confidence to persist.

As for the future, we haven’t contacted 100% of those we’d like to interview yet. Until now there was only one who said, “Maybe, it depends.” But I already sort of expected this could happen, and in fact I contacted him way before all the others, in order to have time to figure out my countermoves. Not all hope is lost, ha!

Tell us anything else you want about the movie.

We want our documentary to reflect what we think was the feel of that era -- no bullshit, fun, crazy, and not too high tech!

Follow the film’s progress here!!

#livethelifedocumentary #cryptrecords #gories #theeheadcoats #twobosmaniacs #backfromthegrave #garagepunk #trashrock #garagerock #weneverlearn #we never learn

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themastercylinder · 5 years

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United Home Video (VCI Entertainment)

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Bill Blair started in the business as United Films, supplier of 16mm prints for schools and civic organizations, but was quick to see the potential of a new market when the Sony Corporation introduced its first Betamax VCRs to American consumers. Gradually Blair began to shift his interest from film rentals to video tape distribution, adopting the corporate name of Video Communications, Inc. With the cable television industry just beginning to stir national interest and the home video recorder still a toy for rich kids, VCI was able to secure the nontheatrical rights (including video release) to many films at a moderate cost.

By the time the early ’80s rolled around, Blair had also gotten in on the burgeoning cable television market, using his movies to provide all the programming for a local cable channel. Working with him on the production end was Linda Lewis, promotions director for Tulsa radio station KRAV. Because her position involved getting publicity for new features coming to Tulsa theaters, she was doing a lot of face-to-face interviews with movie stars, and videotaped versions of those sit-downs were the perfect thing to play between Blair’s pictures on the cable station.

“When I started being invited on the interview junkets, I went to Bill Blair and said, ‘I have this footage. Would it be something we could work with?’” remembered Lewis recently. “He said, ‘If you can learn to edit, you can do whatever you want with it.’ So I was working in his back room on his old three-fourth-inch editing machine, putting together these fifteen-minute Intermission with Linda Lewis shows.”

Blair knew this, of course. And when his pipeline for new video releases began to shut down, thanks to more and more companies— including major studios—getting into the home video act, it was probably only natural for him to start thinking about making his own picture.

Lewis’s idea was to shoot a feature film like a TV soap opera. He’d gotten the idea from his sister, actress Judy Lewis, who had produced some episodes of the daytime drama Texas in the early ’80s. “I knew they taped an hour long show every day, and I thought if we used videotape instead of film, and edited it ourselves, we could do it,” remembered Lewis. “Then, if we used the crew from [the KOTV show] PM Magazine, and we all took our week-off vacation at the same time, with the weekend we’d have nine days to shoot.”

Although the film ended up costing a couple thousand dollars more than Lewis estimated, and a few pickup shots had to be done after the nine days were over, director Christopher and producer Linda were right in the ballpark with both their estimates. “We had to be right about the shooting schedule,” said Christopher. “We all had to be back at our jobs on Monday.”

Although Blood Cult—as the movie was ultimately titled—was a local production in every sense of the word, its cast featured one actor who had a handful of theatrical-feature credits—Julie Andelman was her name. A former Tulsan, her resume included the 1980 horror picture The Silent Scream. In Andelman was top-billed as Tina, the daughter of the local sheriff who gets involved in a series of killings on campus that point to a dog-worshiping cult.

Blood Cult (1985)

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The plot of BLOOD CULT is centered on a series of co-ed murders that suddenly disturb the back-to-school routine of a small Midwestern university town. The victims are horribly mutilated … an arm gone here, a head gone there, but the killer evidences a strong sense of fair play by leaving a gold amulet, bearing the likeness of a hound, in exchange. The investigation by Sheriff Ron Wilbois is complicated by the political pressures of an upcoming election. With the help of his perky daughter and her dorky boyfriend, Wilbois finds the amulet’s design was once used by a group of New World witches who worshipped a devil-dog called Caninus. They performed ceremonies of power using a mannequin pieced together from the body parts of people who offended the cult in some way.

BLOOD CULT, estimated to have cost as much as $30,000, may not be a classic, but it is slick and well-produced. UEP put all their money up on the screen and learned a lot in the process. BLOOD CULT was written by Dr. Stuart Rosenthal and producer Bill Blair several years ago with the late Buster Crabb in mind for the pivotal role of Sheriff Wilbois. Crabb and Blair had met and become friends as a result of United Films’ re-release of some early serials in which Crabb had starred. Though the project was never realized, Blair was left with a script handy when he and partners Christopher and Linda Lewis (a Tulsa-based husband wife media team) began to think seriously about mounting a production of their own.

Charles Ellis, retired manager of the Tulsa Civic Ballet, was cast as Sheriff Wilbois. Oklahoma playwright James Vance plays the boyfriend of Tina, the sheriff’s daughter, portrayed by former Tulsan Julie Andleman, who has appeared in character roles on film and television. Andelman was featured in the low-budget thriller SILENT SCREAM, done-in amongst a load of dirty laundry. Other roles were filled by local stage and broadcasting talent.

Paul MacFarlane was hired to photograph BLOOD CULT using a Beta news camera (jokingly referred to as the “shaky cam” because of the great care they had to exercise to create fluid camera movements). Christopher Lewis, who studied filmmaking at USC and is the son of producer Tom Lewis and actress Loretta Young, directed. And Rod Slane of Star Track Recording Studios provided the original score.

Normally, of course, a feature is shot on 35mm for 16mm film and transferred to videotape later for television and home-video release. Many pictures, especially horror movies, end up getting only video distribution, but that’s not intentional. They just fail to land the theatrical deal they are looking for. The producers of Blood Cult, however, have no designs on the theatrical market. They shot their feature (on a nine-day shooting schedule) using Sony Beta Cam high-speed half-inch video recorders, for release directly to video. Cast and crew were all local, except for star Julie Andelman, a Los Angeles-based actress who graduated from a Tulsa high school and post-production work was also done in Tulsa.

“What we’d like to do,” says Bill Blair, president of United Entertainment, “is start a whole new breed of movies made strictly for videocassette. We did horror first because you can always expect to make money on a horror film-horror always sells. We’ll do more horror, and some of our others down the line will probably be science-fiction, since we can do a lot of computer special effects now, and we’ve got lots of stock footage in our library to work with.”

United Entertainment may be an unfamiliar name to home video fans, but Video Communications Inc. (VCI) isn’t. United Entertainment grew out of VCI, a videotape company with over 300 titles in release to the home market and other 100 packaged for television. Among VCI’s films are such sleazoid favorites as Twisted Brain, Scream Bloody Murder, Blood of Dracula’s Castle and the Herschell Gordon Lewis epic, Monster A Go-Go (the latter one of a dozen pictures in VCI’s “Le Bad Cinema” series). The company also co-financed Don Dohler’s The Galaxy Invader (“It came from a galaxy far, far away, an alien explorer-its mission… TO KILL.”), which Blair says went directly to home video via VCI.

For years, Blair had been talking about making a movie with Christopher and Linda Lewis, two local media personalities. He dusted off a script he and a Tulsa neurologist had written several years before called The Sorority House Murders and took it to the Lewis’s. They agreed it could be done on a very low budget and had a chance of turning a profit in the home-video market, so they threw in with Blair. They brought in the feature, with the new title of Blood Cult, for what Lewis calls “a real low budget,” but Blair insists that the quality is high.

United Entertainment’s next film, which should be in the can by the time you read this, is also a horror feature and also takes place on a campus. Lewis calls it a “modern-day Jack the Ripper story with a twist. Once they get rolling, Blair and the Lewis’s expect to be getting out a movie a month, all headed straight for United Entertainment could become the video equivalent of PRC, the legendary 40’s B studio that cranked them out as fast as it took to stand George Zucco before a camera.

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Blood Cult and the new idea it represents have already attracted national attention from other video distributors and filmmakers. Los Angeles’ Joe Wolf, a former vice-chairman of Media Home Entertainment (when Mediaco financed Nightmare on Elm Street, Wolf was the Co-producer) says, “We’re all aware out here of what Bill Blair’s doing. The way I see it, though, is that there’s a problem with publicity. You’ve got to have publicity to put the movies out, the sort of publicity that comes with a theatrical release. The way it is now, you can make money, but you won’t get your big pictures, your Halloweens. He could break even on what? Eight thousand copies?”

Wolf, who also co-produced the Halloween films and Hell Night, believes, however, that made-for-video movies could be the wave of the not-too-distant future. I think it’ll definitely work in the future,” he says. “Maybe two or three years from now, you’ll have the video market that’s big enough to support a Halloween.”

One filmmaker who thinks that that future is here now-at least for independent producers-is Jeff Hogue, whose Majestic International Pictures, based in Jonesboro, Arkansas, has given the world Invasion of the Girl Snatchers, Curse of the Alpha Stone and Doctor Gore’s Body Shop, to name a few of the dozen or more Majestic releases. VCI has home rights to his films. “An independent producer doesn’t have the kind of capital base you need to make a major theatrical release,” he says. “To really compete with the Nightmare on Elm Streets out there, $350,000 is about as cheap as you can go. But you can make a quality video for about $30,000. At one time, people would’ve said you were crazy to do a movie just for the video market, because that theatrical revenue was so crucial. Now, the way things have progressed, it’s the smartest way for an independent producer to go. I’d sure do it.”

Jeff Hogue, whose pictures get theatrical play dates, still calls the home video market his “life blood.” “I’ve found the video market to have taken over the drive-in market,” he says. “Your low-budget material, your exploitation material, was seen at the drive-in because the walk-ins didn’t want to deal with it. With exploitation films, you don’t really sell the steak anyway, you sell the sizzle, so the ads for the movies were always great-just like the ads for the videos are now. Also, people didn’t know what they were going to see until they got in. They just wanted to sit back with their girlfriend or their wife and drink a beer and watch a couple of exploitation movies, and they can do that at home now. The clientele the drive-ins catered to are home, watching the same kinds of films on home video.”

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Whether or not Blood Cult kicks off a new wave of low-budget horror and exploitation movies aimed solely for the home market remains to be seen. The odds, though, look good, especially to independent filmmakers with limited resources who realize how much the home-video market-and the television market-has grown. As Bill Blair said, “There are three markets left for filmmakers that command big, big dollars: home video, theatrical and television. When you can hit two out of three, you’re doing pretty well.”

Grassroots Makeup FX Here’s something to think about. Suppose you’re, oh, let’s say a 23-year-old horror movie fan, who idolizes Tom Savini, Rick Baker, Dick Smith and all the rest. You’d love to work on a film, to break into the business, but you live in the middle of the country where such things are about as likely as George Steinbrenner being satisfied with the New York Yankees. So you do makeup work wherever you can, winning some contests here and there-and then, all of a sudden someone from a new film production company calls up and says, “Hey, how’d you like to do the effects for this horror movie we’re making?”

Well, it happens. It happened not once but twice-to Dave Powell and Robert Brewer, roommates who work as graphic artists for Tulsa’s Newspaper Printing Corporation-when Blood Cult co-producer Linda Lewis put out a call at a local magic shop for “someone who could work with latex.” The store’s proprietor recommended Powell and Brewer, and before you can say Craig Reardon, the two were hooked up with United Entertainment.

“They came to us a week before they started shooting and said they needed a severed finger, a severed torso, a severed head and a severed hand,” says Powell. “It was the chance of a lifetime.”

The two continued working at their day jobs, going home in the evenings and building body parts and mixing blood. They ended up working a lot of 16-hour days, and doing a lot of improvisation. “The schedule was so tight that it was hard to get what we needed from out in California, so we had no foam latex,” said Brewer. “We did it all with liquid latex, slush molding, and the help of a lot of patient friends.” The film was a learning experience for everyone involved, especially when it came to some of the effects used in the picture.

“They had a store mannequin head, and they asked us, ‘Can you make this look real?” Powell recalls with a grin. “We took a death mask from a friend of mine instead. I redid that head about five times, and it just didn’t look right. On the day of the shoot, I came home from work and I was sitting there looking at it, and I felt like something still wasn’t right, so I finally cut the mouth open and cast the teeth, and it worked.”

The two also ran into trouble with a severed arm that looked too stiff and with their blood mixture, which Brewer describes as “your standard Dick Smith recipe, with Karo syrup and food coloring and all that.”

“The blood came out looking like strawberry syrup at first, Powell says.”Robert ran out and got a can of Coke and poured it in. Then it looked good, and it was delicious.” Working on a budget of only a couple of hundred dollars, Powell and Brewer created their effects with liquid latex, beeswax, cow bones, foam rubber (from pillow cushions bought at the local K-Mart) and mortician’s wax. For bladder devices, they used Baggies.

“The biggest complaint we got from our work on Blood Cult is that two people had to get up and walk out while they were looking at dailies,” says Powell. Adds Brewer, “We must be doing something right”

According to Christopher Lewis, “It cost $27,000 to make. VCI spent $100,000 promoting it. But on the opening day of its release, because cassettes were selling at that time for sixty bucks a shot, it made $400,000.” The direct-to-video feature ended up grossing well over a million dollars and is still available from VCI.

They did more than pretty well with Blood Cult. They changed the face of the industry forever. The release of Blood Cult in August 1985 represents nothing less than the line of demarcation between the old definition of a movie and the new one, which continues to evolve even as these words are being written.

The Ripper (1985)

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Their follow-up production, THE RIPPER, indicates they have already come a long way in a short time. THE RIPPER’s shooting schedule and budget were almost twice that of BLOOD CULT, and it shows. The film features an appearance by makeup master Tom Savini and a script rife with horror movie references.

“Well,” explains Savini, “Chris Lewis called me and said, ‘Hey, you want to play Jack the Ripper?’ and I said, ‘Sure!”

Now, along comes The Ripper, described in advance publicity as a “modern-day Jack the Ripper story.” Once again the whole thing was shot on videotape for release directly to the home video market. Because of the larger budget for The Ripper, Lewis was given the comparative luxury of a 14-day shooting schedule (Blood Cult was shot in nine days) and was also able to get Savini.

When The Ripper was in pre-production, Blair and the Lewises decided they wanted someone to act in the feature who would be a recognizable name to their target audience-the horror homevideo fans. Savini, it seemed, fit the bill perfectly. His footage in The Ripper was shot in a 14-hour dusk-to-morning session at a downtown Tulsa warehouse.

“He was a real professional, “says makeup man Robert Brewer. “He brought his own costume, but he didn’t do very much in the way of makeup. I think all he brought were the contact lenses and a goatee.”

Brewer and Dave Powell did the special makeup effects for Blood Cult, and were allowed to write in their own effects scenes for The Ripper. Both of them were impressed with Savini, long an idol of theirs.

“He brought along the eyes he used for Fluffy and for Stephen King in Creepshow,” Brewer says. “He also showed us a better way to do squibs, where you don’t have to have a license for them. They work off an electrical charge, and they’re like match-heads dipped in wax. We called ’em Savinis. Put a little blood and chicken liver in there, and you’ve got it!

The lenses Savini uses in The Ripper may give his fans a little of the old deja vu. “They’re the same lenses I used in an episode of Tales from the Darkside called ‘Halloween Candy,” he says, “and also in the film I made in Hong Kong, Scared to Death. They were also used in my book (Grande Illusions, later reissued as Bizarro!) to illustrate what you could do with contact lenses.”

After completing his work on the Ripper, Savini returned home to ponder film offers, which are coming in with alarming regularity these days.

Could one of these offers advance the career of Savini the actor? Savini says that he presently has a chance to star in a film called Recoil, which he describes as a “Vietnam revenge” picture, but he also has several directing offers as well. According to local rumor, Tulsa may even draw him back to either act in or direct another United Entertainment horror film.

Actor/director/makeup man Savini says, “I’ve got lots of trouble juggling everything right now. There are five or six projects happening at about the same time, and I’ve got to make up my mind what to take on.”

Revenge (1986)

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To get to the outdoor set where United Entertainment’s newest made-for video horror feature, Revenge, is being shot, one has to drive out of Tulsa, Oklahoma, toward a country road near the town of Okmulgee. On one side of a clearing is a large pond, and at its edge stands an ominous-looking altar, studded with dog’s heads, a location bustling with activity.

A young, attractive woman steps away from the group around the altar. “We’re getting all this ready to do the scene with the monks tonight,” she explains. “Actually, it’s the confrontation scene, leading up to the surprise ending.”

The young woman is Jill Clark, who, despite her tender years, has worked on several films shot in and around Tulsa, including Rumble Fish. She has been with United Entertainment from the beginning, working as associate producer on the company’s first two pictures, Blood Cult and The Ripper. On this, UE’s third movie, she is assistant director as well.

Clark’s involvement with all three films is by no means unique. Most of Revenge’s crew also worked on the first two movies, and five of the actors from Blood Cult reprise their roles in Revenge.

Revenge, however, isn’t a sequel to Blood Cult, according to director Christopher Lewis, who has helmed all three of UE’s releases. “Instead of calling it Blood Cult II in the title, we’ll probably call it something like ‘Part Two in the Blood Cult saga,’” says Lewis, taking a breather in one of the motor homes nestled under the trees. “The reason we’re not emphasizing Blood Cult is that we don’t believe Blood Cult is indicative of our work now, inasmuch as it was shot on video and the budget was real low. It was an experiment that worked-it got us into the home video market and showed that there was a market for made-for-video product-but the production values aren’t indicative of what we’re doing now. The budget is drastically different and the script was written to stand on its own.”

Revenge has a 14 day shooting schedule, two recognizable names in the cast-Patrick Wayne and John Carradine and a budget in excess of $150,000, still very low by East and West Coast standards but pretty good in Tulsa.

“We changed our concept a lot,” maintains Lewis. “On Blood Cult, we went in and shot it like a TV show, with videotape and two cameras. The second one, The Ripper, we did with tape and one camera. Now, we’re using 16mm film and, basically, one camera. We’ve gone for a more theatrical approach.

“The Ripper was very, very gory, while Revenge is more subtle, more of a murder mystery, although there are some good gore effects in it. It’s just not as gory as The Ripper. It’s different subject matter, so it doesn’t need to be.

“Besides,” Lewis adds with a smile, “Savini was in The Ripper, so we had to make it gory. But there are still gore effects here and a surprise ending. It’s about a country woman and a city man who try to find out why one’s husband and the other’s brother were killed. The trail leads to a dog-worshiping cult.”

The city man is played by Patrick Wayne (whose fantasy films include Beyond Atlantis, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger and The People That Time Forgot), who won’t be on the set until early morning. The country woman is played by Tulsa actress Bennie Lee McGowan, re-creating her role from Blood Cult. McGowan was also in The Ripper.

Nearby, McGowan stands talking with James Vance, who wrote Revenge and who starred in and provided additional dialogue for Blood Cult. Originally, Vance was to play his own brother in Revenge, but the decision was made to instead fill that role with a name actor. So Vance, a local stage veteran, stepped aside in favor of Wayne.

Later, a man passes, his face smeared with dark makeup, his body clothed in a brown, hooded garment. He stops to visit a moment, and then excuses himself and goes on past, to an area where others garbed like him congregate, moving in the shadows. Later, in a climactic scene with John Carradine, they will be before the cameras as the monk-like members of the cult of Caninus.

Further down the path, Robert Brewer sits atop the slope leading down to the clearing, watching as the crew sets up a shot. Brewer, as many Fango readers will recall, was-with David Powell-a founding member of the special FX team that came together to work on Blood Cult last year. Then, it was only Powell and Brewer; three films later, the team has grown into a seven person studio called DFX, Inc.

“David Powell and Doug Edwards are handling the big effect tonight,” reveals Brewer. “I worked on the murders that lead up to it. We killed the girl in the hot tub Tuesday evening and the reporter in the alley Saturday night.”

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Just what is the big effect? Its exact nature is tied into the film’s surprise ending, and is therefore being kept under wraps, but Powell, unloading makeup paraphernalia from his car, supplies some information. “What we’re doing tonight is a demon mask on Stephanie (actress Stephanie R. Knopke). It’s basically a one piece appliance. We’ll put that on her, plug it all in, Karo Syrup her hair down and make the mask gooey and drippy. Then, we’ll put a burn appliance on top of it. We planned to do two piece ripaway appliances, but we had to simplify that because we ran out of time.”

As the crew works, a dark Silverado truck appears, winding around the road at the pond’s far end and slowly driving across to the cluster of trucks and motor homes. The truck’s back door opens, and John Carradine-the man who was once known as “half a profile because of his thinness-is helped out and into a motor home, where makeup people wait. After a moment, the motor home door opens again, and Carradine’s manager carries in a stack of large white cardboard sheets to be used as cue cards.

After being made up, Carradine sits erectly at a table in the motor home, talking with visitors. He may be over 80 years old, his hands may be twisted cruelly by arthritis, and he may occasionally sound like someone’s grandfather when he talks, but John Carradine still projects the unmistakable aura of class and elegance, of a Hollywood gone by, a Hollywood when that name was, truly, magic. Among the other people in the motor home are his manager, a man who goes by the single name of Byron, and Bennie Lee McGowan. It turns out that McGowan’s college Shakespeare teacher, a man named B. Iden Payne, was a good friend of Carradine’s.

It also turns out that Revenge is a landmark for Carradine. “This is my 500th film,” Carradine insists. “My first picture was Tol’able David, a talkie remake of a picture Richard Barthelmess had done.” Five hundred features is a remarkable total, and there are those who maintain that Carradine’s total is actually a few films short of that number. Still, when one considers how long and often he has worked, 500 films doesn’t sound impossible. It’s widely known that Carradine considers his horror work only a small part of his career. He says he’s no fan of current horror films, but he talks a bit about some of his ’40s genre pictures, throwing out titles like Return of the Ape Man, House of Dracula and Bluebeard.

“John was offered the part of the monster in the original Frankenstein,” says Byron, as Carradine nods his agreement. “But he turned it down because it wasn’t a speaking part.”

Says Bennie Lee McGowan, “It would’ve been a shame for that wonderful voice to have been wasted.” At that statement, Carradine arches an eyebrow and a flicker of a smile plays across his face. “My dear,” he says, “it has been wasted a lot.”

Outside the motor home, Byron ticks off a list of Carradine’s accomplishments. He has recently been made a life member of the Players Club in New York, becoming one of only four people so honored. He has acted in 180 separate plays, which Byron believes is another record. He has been named celebrity spokesman for the “Save the Eagle” campaign. And he and Byron, along with a third partner named Susan Flahive, who has also come along to Tulsa, have started a production company. On their slate of projects is a remake of the film (and stage play) Tobacco Road, as well as a movie the three wrote called Captain Willoughby and several documentaries, including one concerning Bigfoot that Carradine intends to narrate. Byron and Carradine are also opening an antique store in Sans Diego, where they both live. Called Umbrella Jack’s, after the TV movie that won Carradine an Emmy, it will include “many of the things from his monster movies,” including the original scripts from his ’40s Monogram features, Byron says.

Back on the set, Tulsa actor Josef Hardt, who worked as a TV horror show host for a time in the 1960s, runs through his lines as the crew begins testing fog machines. Hardt is re-creating his role as the high priest of Caninus, the dog-god, and tonight he is ringed by hooded monks in pale blue makeup, some holding dobermans on leashes. A fire blazes and crackles in the background, bathing the scene in orange light that’s almost as bright as the white lights of the crew.

The Silverado drives down, as close as it can get to the clearing. Several people help Carradine out of the truck’s cab, leading him down to the set where Christopher Lewis and the film crew wait. As he passes, people fall silent, watching a man who is a link to the very beginning of the talkies, who once consorted with the likes of John Barrymore.

Carradine looks a bit unsteady and feeble as he is led to the set, but he grins, and his voice is strong. As two crew members drape a white robe over him, Lewis explains the scene and asks for a run-through. Carradine nods, and in a moment, he begins to speak the lines in that familiar, compelling voice, and it’s as if a sudden chill snaps through the crowd. All eyes are riveted on him as he speaks. No one stirs.

When he finishes, Byron, on the edge of the crowd, whispers, “I’ve managed Yvonne DeCarlo, Sterling Hayden, Steve McQueen … I’ve worked with many stars. But John has a quality in his voice not many have.”

Lewis calls for a take, and the camera rolls. Carradine draws himself up and looks directly into the camera. “I am time itself …” he begins, and, standing at rapt attention in the crowd, Jim Vance strains forward a little and then closes his eyes, listening to John Carradine say the words he wrote. Slowly, his face splits into a wide grin, which stays there even after Carradine is finished and the take is in the can.

SOURCE MATERIAL

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Shot in Oklahoma: A Century Of Sooner State Cinema by John Wooley, courtesy University of Oklahoma Press.

United Home Video (VCI Entertainment) Terror in Tulsa United Home Video (VCI Entertainment) Bill Blair started in the business as United Films, supplier of 16mm prints for schools and civic organizations, but was quick to see the potential of a new market when the Sony Corporation introduced its first Betamax VCRs to American consumers. 5,212 more words

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