Mask

Travelling so much took its toll. My diet mostly consisted of fast food and gas station hotdogs. I’d spent hundreds of hours driving the Cherry Red Hyundai Sonata, withering away the mobility of my arms and legs as they stayed in same position for hours. The hangovers were abominable, waking up confused where I was, needing to take multiple painkillers and Valium to face the day. I slept in motels. I slept in my car. The days were confusing, often I had no recollection what had happened before or what was to come next, my conscious would suddenly come to, panic, and then subside under the wave of chemicals I would add to my blood. There seemed to be no direction, no clear goal, or what I was supposed to do. I would drive through towns, absolutely amazed they exist, and leave within a couple of hours. Hyundai Sonata parked up on a rural road, I recline in the driver’s seat with the sunset cutting an orange line inside the car, sipping from a can of American Pale Ale, Slayer is on the radio and I’m watching a snake cross the road westward.

Droneboy had wiped out another squadron of killcels. There were also copycat killers, nicknamed Dronedrones, attacking buildings with explosives attached to drones, inspired by the dangerous vigilante. Drones had been made illegal, so the black market sold experimental, advanced drone technology, much better than what had been available at Wal Mart. It had become a TikTok trend to share schematics for 3D printing drones at home, as well as relaying instructions for making explosives out of household chemicals superimposed onto cat videos. This had also led to a certain way of speaking, what had started as censoring words like explosive to boomboom, that had made people double words for emphasis. Very good became goodgood, and so on. The overall cultural effect of this meant they were millions of teenagers speaking gibberish with specialist knowledge of domestic terrorism across the world. Droneboy himself had posted a video saying that there shouldn’t be a cult based on his actions, he just hated vigilantes. He had warned that any copycats using drone technology to attack people would personally be hunted down by him. This is, of course, how Droneboy got cancelled.

Somehow, this whole charade hadn’t captured the publics imagination as much as another ongoing event. Someone dressed as a cop had been entering people’s homes and forced them to watch some kind of video. After it had finished, he released everybody and left. The people seemed to have no recollection of what the contents of the video had been, though the experience seemed to have had a big impact on them. Entire families would appear vacant, hollowed out, all of their hair turning the same grey colour. It wasn’t clear if the man was a real cop or just wearing a uniform, and there was one other detail only I was privy to. He was wearing a mask of my face. On the news they showed footage from doorbell cameras, home surveillance systems, I watched somebody with my face enter people’s homes to show them something they couldn’t remember. They called him Video Cop.

The face of the Video Cop was my American face, the one I’d had plastic surgery for back in New York where they had peeled it off, sculpted my skull and made me a new man. I decided to call the surgeon. No answer. I lit a cigarette and went over to the hotel window, looking at the city around me. It had been a while since I had stayed somewhere nice, my body needed it. Though when I had got there and turned on Fox news, I saw the Video Cop had struck again. But this time there was something different.

Glen Elder, Kansas. This is a town where everyone knows each other, and is about as America as it gets. They serve coke the old-fashioned way, and it even has its own statue of liberty.

However, this piece of American paradise was tarnished yesterday night by a visitor from out of town. The infamous home invader called Video Cop had arrived.

“I noticed a beat up old police car cruise down North Center Street and I thought, I don’t know this fella.” Says Tim Bilroy. Tim is a 69 year old war veteran who has called Glen Elder his home for the last twenty years. When he saw the vehicle, he acted on his suspicions.

“So I called up the local sheriffs office and I says, have any of you fellas sent an officer down Glen Elder? And they says, no. So then I says, I says to ‘em, I think you better send a few guys then.” The news report then shows a re-enactment of Tim Bilroy walking to his lawn, the waistband of his trousers past his navel, and pointing to where he had seen the police car. The camera then cuts to the sheriff, a man with a very round nose.

“I’m just glad nobody got killed.” He says to the camera. The reporter then appears back on the screen and excitedly narrates a sequence of security footage:

Video Cop had knocked on the door and the family let him in, as usual. He had handcuffed them all and they were sat in the living room, as usual. That’s when the sheriff pulled up outside.

“I knew that something was wrong as soon as I got there.” We cut to the sheriff finishing his sentence, looking down. There’s a chime. The camera cuts again, quickly zooms in. Bodycam footage approaching the house. Through venetian blinds we can see the outline of the Video Cop in the living room.

“That’s when I pulled my gun.” Said the sheriff. We cut back to him. We cut back to the body cam. We cut to the doorbell camera filming the sheriff approach the house with his revolver drawn. We cut to the reporter standing in the living room. The family who live there are sitting on two different couches.

“I am standing where the home invader was yesterday evening. Can you explain to me what had happened?” said the reporter. There’s a boom mic in the shot, there are harsh shadows thrown from the furniture, coming from an extremely bright light just behind the camera.

“Like I said, there was this cop here and we heard the sheriff and the cop left out of that back door.” Said the father, motioning sideways. The camera then rushes through the house and out of the back door as the image fades to white. We go back to sheriff.

“He got away.” He says sadly. There’s a wide angle shot of the house in the daylight.

“But what didn’t get away was his car. The FBI are now in custody of Video Cop’s vehicle, a second hand police cruiser.” The reporter said as the camera panned to the 1978 Plymouth Fury, modified into a patrol car.

“Authorities say they have discovered several clues about Video Cop, and have launched a nationwide manhunt to track him down.”

“We know more about the suspect than we have before, this is a big break in the case. I’d say to him, if he’s watching, turn yourself in.” said an FBI agent in a press conference earlier that day. The camera cuts to a commercial for chewable steroids. I light a cigarette and pace around the room. I see myself in the mirror through the bathroom door. Though I’ve put on a significant amount of weight, I still looked like Video Cop. He looks like me.

A few hours later there is a knock at the door and I look through the peephole.

“Express Express Delivery.” They say. I open the door, accepting the package with one hand and hiding my face with the other.

“Here.” I say, throwing money through the door before slamming it shut. I go over to the table by the window, ripping the cardboard open. Inside it there is a normal man mask. After removing its clear plastic wrapping, I pull the mask over my head and look around. Latex smell. Its hard to see, but I no longer look suspicious. Sitting on the bed, practicing breathing in the mask, I begin to meditate. All will be well. All will be well, will be well, will be well.

Florence Pugh And The Machine

Florence Pugh is an oddball. Her career ranges from arthouse horror to multimillion dollar popcornbait, and the newest addition to her filmography adds even more variety to Pugh’s archive. Thunderbolts* is the new smash hit film from Marvel Studios, starring Florence Pugh as the enigmatic Yelena Belova.

The movie star sits opposite me, drinking a can of sugar free Monster and smoking a Marlboro red. Anytime that she looks at me I immediately start blushing, and so to try and calm myself I slouch low in the chair and look at the ceiling. It is cut into oblong sections with orange pipes, contrasting against the concrete gray of the rest of the ceiling.

“Do you have any questions?” she asks. I glance down.

The pipes must transport some form of gas or liquid. Yet there are so many pipes, could they all transport the same thing? I could just make out the sound of pumping, it must be coming from another room.

“Florence. What’s the deal with your dad’s café making a £900,000 loss? Does he not know how to make a cup of tea?”

“I’m not talking about that. Do you ask other people about their fathers businesses?”

“Well, yeah, but look – I’m sorry. I’m a bit nervous.” I say. I notice there’s a pipe against one of the far walls that is insulated. Would this be to keep the contents of the pipe warm or cold? I guessed it was heat due to the placement of the pipe as if it was meant to be kept cool it would be placed at the bottom of the wall, maybe even beneath our feet. I wondered if there were other pipes beneath where we sat. Where does it all go?

“Florence, have you seen Hot Ones?”

“Yes, I’ve been on Hot Ones.” she says impatiently. I look back at her.

“We’re going to try doing our own activity as part of this interview. Its to add a bit of flair, relax yourself, gives the interviewer something to riff off. How does that sound?”

“Okay, what are we doing?”

“We’re going to find out what the deal is with all these pipes.” I say.

 

We begin walking through the facility with flashlights, following the pipes running along the ceiling.

“So in this new movie, Thunderbolts, you jump off the world’s second tallest building. Was the world’s first tallest building not good enough?”

“No it actually fits in the story, if you watch the movie you’ll find out.”

“Do you have any funny stories?”

“Like what happened on set?”

“Okay.” I say. We go through a set of double doors and up some stairs. This section of the facility appeared entirely abandoned, though the pumping sound was much louder.

“Right, one day we were shooting this chase scene, I was with Sebastian and Wyatt and Jake, the director, he yells action. But we all had our airpods in and couldn’t hear him.”

“Do you think these pipes are carrying a gas or a liquid?”

“Maybe a solid.”

“It won’t be a solid.” I say.

“Why not?”

“How does a solid pass through a pipe?”

“Maybe it doesn’t need to pass through, maybe it needs to be solid.” she says. I stop.

“You know what, you may be onto something. Rather than being a way of transporting something…”

“The pipes act as a structure which a solid can exist throughout a larger structure.” she says, looking at me. I examine her eyebrows. These eyebrows have won awards. Each hair on each eyebrow is perfect. These are the eyebrows sent from heaven.

“We better keep moving.” I say, getting flustered. We follow the corridor to where the pumping is coming from.

 

We enter a room so big that we couldn’t see to the other side. It went on and on into blackness. The beams from our lights cut across thousands of pipes, they streamed out of the wall behind us and towards a central mass.

“What is it?” I whisper. We walk towards it, seeing the pipes connect, becoming larger and larger, wrapping around a core. The pumping noise was slow, repetitive, a percussive clunking then a hiss. Florence and I crawl along the floor beneath the nest of pipes, condensation speckled across the orange metal tubes that now surround us. In front of us was a huge pumping device, a metal neck connecting to a shaft of chrome, slowly moving up and down. We watch the machine pumping.

“Have you played Balatro then?”

“Us celebrities already have Balatro 2. We’re much more technologically advanced than your average human.”

“Can I have a go?”

“No.” she says. We both look up at the machine.

 

Thunderbolts is in cinemas now! When getting your ticket use the promo code 'PILE20' to receive 20 free tickets. Enjoy!

Generation Y or Gem her a shun why?

Teenagers these days are different to the teenagers of the past. They listen to different music, use technology and dress differently. They also act differently. I took to the streets to interview them.

"These days we do things differently than in the past. I feel almost like I didn't do the exact same things as my parents did." says Adam. He is studying a creative subject in a town in the Midlands to give you the impression that he is somewhat of a nieve idealist. We look at out a street I would describe with bland adjectives and perhaps mention the juxtaposition between an advertisement and what is happening nearby.
"Why is it do you think we have subcultures? And why is it they change so much?"
"I'm not entirely sure so I will give a slightly nihilistic yet self-aware response as I lack the confidence to truly say what I think due to the question being mostly unimportant." he says, checking the end of an object one associates with being symbolic of that sub-culture. A group of teenage men and women are walking down the street across from us, although these are dressed differently to Adam.
"Is that a different sub-culture, perhaps one that somehow rivals yours?"
"Correct. The shared beliefs in which each subculture values can differ in importance. Although this brings up the question of if people belong to subcultures based on their beliefs or does the subculture shape the beliefs of the person to which it belongs. I propose it is less of a chicken and egg scenario and more akin to the Portuguese man o' war, a single being made up of several different creatures or in this case, concepts." says Adam, gesticulating in the fog rolling in around us. I thank him and cross the road into a café in which the other teenagers have just entered.

I sit down nearby and after eavesdropping for ten minutes or so can't help but mention that I am a journalist on a website and if it would be possible to interview them.
"What do you want to interview about?" says one baby-faced youth.
"What is it like being a teenager in 2014? I mean, I know I look young but I'm not a teenager." I say, laughing to myself.
"We are undergoing a severe biological transformation and this causes a certain amount of ennui." says a tall girl.
"Yeah, it's like in our culture being a teenager is a thing you do between being a child and being an adult. But the way in which it happens is totally unhealthy." says the baby-faced youth, drinking a can of pop that didn't exist five years ago and is mocked slightly by people it isn't marketed to. The other people sitting at the table nod their heads.
"So you think there's an alternative?" I ask, pulling a microphone out of my trouser pocket and letting its foamy tip rest on the table.
"I think it'd be more fluid if teenagers left their homes once they show the first signs of puberty. They would gather in special camps out in the wilderness where they would learn about themselves and the world around them. The community is encouraged to experiment and build on interpersonal skills whilst undergoing an education and learning the basics of self-sufficency. I believe that this would lead to general feelings of well-being and happiness that would have a trickle down effect through the generations until we achieve a kind of...utopia."
"Well I'll get right on that." I say, laughing. "Next you'll be saying we should cut funding for the police and armed forces and put it into education and welfare."
"Well now you mention it..." says a pimple-faced miscreant. Like Jesus cleansing the temple of merchants, I flipped the table over and started throwing plates around.

Six hours later I am stood on a cliff next to a woman about to jump. I look down at the rocks and the surf below, listening to the wind carrying the call of gulls which fly around.
"Don't try and stop me." she says, breathing heavily, face wet with tears.
"I'm not." I say, kneeling down on the grass and flipping my legs over the edge.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm climbing." I say, letting my body slip as I clutch onto handfuls of grass. One of my boots catches a rock and I begin to rest my weight onto it. Gradually I begin to clamber down, sometimes a foothold gives way beneath and I slip a few feet.
"Stop it! It's dangerous!" she shouts down at me.
"If you jump I will catch you." I shout back up. I climb down for a while longer, rubbing the sweat from my eyes with the sleeve of my tweed jacket. I glance back up and she is still there, watching me. There comes a point in which there are no more places to put my feet or my hands. I can't go back up as most of my previous holds have crumbled away and fallen into the sea beneath me. I am stuck.
"Excuse me. Can you call mountain rescue?" I shout up. But she has disappeared. One of my hands begin to cramp as I hold myself against the cliff face. "Shit."

Fifty Shades Of Grey Movie Discussion And Dinner

“The problem is, both actors are blonde. In the book they're brunettes. This movie's gonna flop big time.” she said. I nod nonchalantly. She continues; “And another thing, Charlie Hunnam just isn't Christian Grey, the guy looks like a total cretin. I mean hello, he's in that awful Sons of Anarchy show, always has cuts and bruises on him. It should have been Robert Pattinson or Ian Somerhalder.”
“And Anastasia Steele?”
“Kristen Stewart.”
“Of course. Hold on a second.” I say, taking off my sock and shoe.
“What are you doing?”
“I'm taking a picture of my foot. I've noticed it's been changing shape recently, I need to make a proper record of it.” I say, snapping a foot picture with my instagram. I am sat in a restaurant across from Sabby, the main blogger on ohfifty.com, the #1 Fifty Shades Of Grey fan-site. We are discussing the upcoming Fifty Shades Of Grey film to be released in August next year. I put my sock back on, though the heel section is now at my instep. I swear under my breath, angry at myself for misaligning the sock.
“Is everything alright?”
“Yes, yes. Everything's fine. It's just...I put my sock on wrong.” I say. Our gaze meets across the table, there is a certain electricity in the air I can't help but feel amidst the aroma of the two huge portions of white veal I have ordered. The waiter arrives with another bottle of champagne and pours out two glasses.
“Merci, garcon.” I say to him as he walks away.
“Do you speak French?” she says.
“Oui. Est-ce que ca vous plait? Tes yeux sont comme des fosses." I murmur. She giggles.
"What does that mean?"
"I'll tell you later. First, I want to hear more about the movie."

The Fifty Shades Of Grey trilogy written by E.L James has been one of the best selling books of the century. The plot involves a billionaire seducing his secretary, having sex with her and eventually they both fall in love and get married. As one flicked through the pages of this grumble book you could almost hear movie execs in Los Angeles scramble to secure the film rights. But what would this film look like? On almost every page there is a lewd sex act taking place, whether it's Anastasia being tied down and whipped across the chest or Christian ejaculating into a cup and drinking it, the sex isn't just a straight forward bit of how's your father but intricately designed BDSM conquests that spiral into abstraction as the books progress.
"How do you think they'll handle the sex element in the films? I can't remember when I last saw a dick or a bit of vag in mainstream cinema since maybe...Basic Instinct."
"Exactly. Any moment Anastasia's Inner Goddess is revealed the camera isn't going to show it. The blowjobs, the dildos, the fisting."
"I'm curious to see how they're going to show that bit where Christian presses his cock and balls between those two panes of glass. Or the infamous shit eating scene."
"A significant section of the fans were hoping that the film would be picked up by a porn studio, but do it tastefully, you know? Stay true to the source material."
"I don't see any problem with a porn film being released in mainstream theaters. Have they forgotten how successful Deep Throat was? Behind the Green Door?" I say. I can feel my foot changing shape inside my shoe.
"Don't get me wrong, it's not just the naughty bits that I like in the books. I like the romance too." she says.
"Of course." I say.
"Like the part where Christian announces his love for Anastasia? After they have sex in that public toilet?"
"Or that bit where he hires a new secretary and she's like, a total bitch. But he still loves Anastasia...right?" I say.
"Yeah...I think so." she says.

The meal continues, course after course is brought out. Braised beef, deep fried prawns, sweet breads with tomato chutney, tandoori chicken and pilau rice. The conversation switches from film adaptations to other kinds of adaptations.
"Do you think if they gave a dolphin legs it would be better than a horse?" I ask.
"You mean to ride or just...better?"
"Mostly better, but also to ride."
"Well dolphins are quite noble creatures. How would they breathe though?"
"Just stick some water bottles over it's gills." I say.
"Dolphins don't have gills, they breathe through that blow hole at the top."
"Really? Even better then. A tube filled with water can be fitted more easily." I suggest. The desserts are brought out, savoury ice cream served on a bed of cake crumbs.
"What about the legs?" she asks me, playing with her spoon.
"Robots." I reply angrily. We eat the rest of the dessert in silence.

"Well it was lovely to meet you." says Sabby. We are standing outside the restaurant.
"It was good to meet you to. Maybe we should go for drinks sometime...maybe brainstorm a petition to get the film cast right."
"Yeah, yeah, that'd be good. The studios will have to listen to the fans." she says. I stand there with my hands in my pockets, unsure of what to do. Do we embrace? Kiss? Or do I just walk away? "Well, I'm going now."
"Goodbye." I say, watching her flag down a taxi and step in. She waves at me through the glass and I am left alone outside the restaurant, wondering what to do next. Then all of a sudden I get an idea.

A few hours later I am sat between two computer monitors, editing together my own version of Fifty Shades Of Grey. I'm using footage from Twilight, Secretary, Water For Elephants, Cosmopolis and six or so different hardcore porn films. The Fifty Shades books are scattered around me, I read out the dialogue and dub it over the newly edited film.
"Because I’m fifty shades of fucked-up, Anastasia." I read in my best Robert Pattinson impression. I relight a cigarette from the overflowing ashtray.
"Because I’m fifty shades of fucked-up, Anastasia." I repeat. I cut out a section of Leather Teen Angels 2 in which an actress has a speculum inserted, splicing it between the baseball scene from Twilight. Over the actresses head I've placed Kristen Stewart. It doesn't look too realistic but I'm hoping to enhance it with CGI later. I check my foot again. It is now swollen to almost twice it's usual size.
“I want your world to begin and end with me." I say in my Pattinson voice. I cough as both monitors show huge stretched out versions of Robert Pattinson's head.