He looked away from her.
As did I.
I lit a match.
I woke up late the next day, to the insistent ringing of the phone.
I picked it up and rested my back against the wall.
It was the lady from the Cineteca Nacional. She said she had that information about that Italian film I had been looking for. It was called Nero’s Last Days. They had a print in the vault.
On March 24, 1982, a great fire destroyed 99 percent of the film archives of the Cineteca Nacional. One of the vaults alone kept 2,000 prints made out of nitrocellulose. It took the firemen sixteen hours to put the whole thing out.
As for El Tabu, I already told you about it: they made the site into condos after twenty years of the empty, charred lot sitting there.
You are wondering why. I’ll tell you why. It was the sound recording. The tape had caught what my ears could not hear: the real audio track of the movie. The voice track.
It’s hard to describe.
The sound was yellow. A bright, noxious yellow.
Festering yellow. The sound of withered teeth scraping against flesh. Of pustules bursting open. Diseased. Hungry.
The voice, yellow, speaking to the audience. Telling it things. Asking for things. Yellow limbs and yellow lips, and the yellow maw, the voracious voice that should never have spoken at all.
The things it asked for.
Insatiable. Yellow.
Warning signs are yellow.
I paid attention to the warning.
I did get that job at the arts and culture magazine. I’ve been associate editor for five years now, but some things never change. I carry my bag pack everywhere, never been a briefcase man. I still smoke a pack a day. Same brand. Still use matches.
Anyway, I’ve got a very important screening. The Cineteca Nacional is doing a retrospective of 1970s cinema. They have some great Mexican movies. Also some obscure European flicks. There’s a rare print that was just discovered a few months ago; part of the film collection of Enrique Zozoya’s widow, who was an avid collector of European movies. It was thought lost years ago.
It’s called Nero’s Last Days.
Since 1982, the Cineteca Nacional has gotten more high-tech, with neat features like its temperature controlled vaults. But since 1982 I’ve learned a thing or two about chemistry.
It’ll take the firemen more than sixteen hours to put it out.
KV Taylor
TRANSFIGURED NIGHT
Always wondered what Jason was writing in this journal. All musicians are sensitive artistes, I guess, I just never knew he wrote poetry. Anyhow, I’m commandeering the thing since wherever the hell he is, he doesn’t need it any more.
Jesus, I can’t believe he’s gone. I wish I’d told him.
This is the kind of shit you see in movies. Guy goes out for a day-trip with his friend, storm picks up, beats the hell out of them, guy gets knocked out by a falling piece of the boat. Guy wakes up in open water, GPS fried, his friend staring blankly –like he’s the one with the head injury.
He kept talking about faces in the water. Jesus.
Goddammit, why did I go to sleep? Why didn’t I stay awake and watch him?
I’m probably going to burn this fucking diary when I get home — well, my parts at least. But I need something to do or I’ll go crazy. I’m washed up on this rock, Jason disappeared overboard (or into thin air, I guess) three days ago, and there’s still no rescue.
Weird, but that’s not a complaint. I don’t want one. Not after I let him down like that.
Ran around the edge of the island today — the thing is small as hell, and nothing in any direction.
Fuck, why can’t I cry?
I’d say it’s like “Lost”, but I never watched that show. More like “Castaway”, since I’m alone. When I start talking to a damn volleyball, I guess I’ll know I have issues. More issues. Whatever.
Finally rigged up a tent. They say when you’re stranded on a desert island you need shelter — but this isn’t much of a desert. There are streams all over this sandy fucking rock, and half a forest in the middle. Probably should have paid more attention to that Bear Grylls guy, but I’d drop dead before I ate bug guts. Anyhow, there’s some of the boat left, and there’s astronaut food.
People don’t stay lost for long in this day and age, do they? Goddamn shame.
You grow up on the ocean and you start to take it for granted. But now I stand here in the dark at night — I mean, I have the flashlight and the emergency candles, but the bugs are the size of seagulls — and look out at it and it’s so fucking black. It’s hot and sticky and nothing like paradise, and I sit here and shiver just staring at it. Thinking of how it swallowed him up.
If it wanted him, really wanted him, I couldn’t have stopped it. But I could have at least died trying, you know?
It’s been over a week since we left St. Augustine. I can’t be that far from civilization. Just a matter of time til I have to go back and explain myself. Go on with life.
Tomorrow I guess I’ll explore. Maybe the trees are nicer than the water, around here.
Fuck, that was weird.
It’s so quiet once you get past the tree line. I don’t know if it’s the loneliness or what, but it’s intense. Tropical trees so green they’re almost black. And there are no birds, no nothing. Just this pure, perfect silence, like before god got bored enough to create animals. Not even any of those big ass mosquitoes in there.
Heavy is the word. I was wandering around with my shoulders slumped, you know?
It’s the worst right around the middle of the island, where there’s a sort of jutting rock — volcanic, too, most of it is shiny like obsidian, but too dirty to be really impressive. And there’s vines and shit growing all over it, like strangling it. Maybe it’s because the sun hardly came out today, but it was just dark over there.
Or maybe I’m imagining shit because of what I found.
It was a man. Well, sort of — probably about my age, somewhere between 20 and 25. He was just sitting there with his back to the rock, his legs out in front of him, staring straight ahead. I nearly fucking choked on my heart when I saw him there. I just froze. I stood there for maybe 10 minutes just watching, but he never even blinked.
I wanted to come back here to the beach. I mean, the air got so heavy I could hardly breathe, but the thing is, even if I did leave, he’d still be there.
I didn’t even notice that he was looking kind of gray until I got within five feet. He was dark — not like Polynesian, but maybe Greek or Italian — and he should have been olive-skinned. But it wasn’t even gray, sort of a waterlogged blue undertone. He wore kind of raggedy old school trousers and nothing else, he had curly dark hair, and these big black eyes that stared straight ahead.
He was beautiful, too. I’ve never seen a guy, except on TV, that I could honestly call beautiful, and he is — was. No, he still is, even dead, he’s beautiful, whoever the fuck he is. Like something out of a Classicist’s wet dream.
I don’t know, there was just something about him. I forgot everything else and just hit my knees and started bawling like a baby. I mean choking sobbing, head in hands, can’t stand on my own two feet bawling. I couldn’t even see, but I felt like something was watching me — not the dead guy, something from the trees or that big goddamn rock — just waiting for -