If movie theaters changed after the pandemic
Tommy takes off his bag, placing it for the belt to scan. He walks through the security gate as the machine beeps, “Sir, please take off any metal you have.” Tommy flicks his patient’s wrist at the ticket counter, “Oh, sorry, sir,” The machine says back. “Please proceed with your heart-rate monitor.”
Tommy steps into a plate where a computer takes his temperature. “And so we begin our post-apocalyptic adventure.”
His friend laughs, “You always say that. Did you order the popcorn from the counter?”
“Yup, I split it with your account, if that’s alright.”
“No problem, just make sure you remember who paid for it next time.”
They take the popcorn from the food gate where staff no longer stays.
“I’m telling you, every time I come to the movie, I get freaked out by the lack of staff in this place.”
“No risk of contagion.”
“I thought movies were about community.”
“Meh, I come here to see the new gyroscope screen.”
“So you’d come alone?”
“I come alone quite a lot. And if there’s no one here, it’s even better.” Tommy’s friend winks. “There are fewer faces to distrust.”
The boys get their seats at the top of the mount. The screen stretches around, blanketing the heavens with light from above.
And so the 50 seats gyrate with foamed neck support as images impose themselves onto curved-out boards.
Tommy eats from the popcorn box. But a kernel goes the wrong way; Tommy coughs.
A man straightens his back from the second row at the front.
Tommy coughs one time, and then some more. The man from the second row stands up. His seat stops angling around the gyroscope. Do you need help?” The man asks him.
Tommy shakes his head, “Thank you, though.”
But the man looks at Tommy’s foreign set of eyes. “Why don’t you leave the theatre instead?”
Tommy’s friend stands up. “Hey man, why don’t you just watch the movie and leave everyone else alone.”
Someone shushes them both. Tommy coughs again. His friend’s face goes red. “Tommy….”
The man starts heading up the platform seats. “Did no one teach you about the social good? I got my parents here, Yin Wan Hun.”
“Just let us watch the movie,” Tommy’s friend says.
“Why, because they censored out all the movies in your home?”
“Hey,” a woman stands up to defend the two boys. “I guess you are a family man, but why don’t you go back to your seat where your parents are probably thinking, ‘Jeez, son, not this again, no wonder why your wife left.’”
“My wife died.”
Tommy coughs again.
“That’s it; you’re leaving with me.”
Tommy’s friend moves in front of the man.
“Sorry, folks,” the man tells the audience. “This will just take a minute and a firm set of hands.”
The man’s elderly father stands up from the second row. “Son, please, don’t make a show.”
But at this point, all the audience is watching. There’s no place like the cinema hall.
“Chao Mein Wu, I’m counting to three until you get out of your seat.”
Tommy crunches the popcorn with his teeth.
“One-“
“It’s always people like you who make of living a worse experience.”
“Two-“
“You try to control with anger.”
“Three-“
“But it doesn’t work.” Tommy gets up, forcing a cough to get the man to back off.
“Leave.”
Tommy goes.
“Tommy, stay,“ His friend says.
But Tommy shakes his head. “This guy ruined the movie for me. Let’s watch something else at home.”
The woman from before stands up. “I’m also leaving,” she says.
Other people murmur inside the theatre room. A couple stands soon after; their daughters follow them through the doors.
“Nice going, son,” the elderly father adds. “You fit better in the womb.”
But the man still manages to shove Tommy down and spit, “Go and spread your virus to some other country, you noodle-fried-rice half-wit.”
Tommy’s nose bleeds as it smacks the edge of a seat.
Tommy’s friend punches the racist man to the floor.
Tommy and his friend leave the room with a hurried gait as the woman whispers behind them, “You did alright, boys.”
Tommy pushes the theatre’s door, only to face a screaming tide rushing through the cinema halls.
“What’s-“
“Hide!” Someone yells from the crowd as gunshots ring in the distance.
The woman pulls Tommy inside, dragging him as they rush back to the man with the angry stance.
“There’s a shooting!” The woman screams.
The theatre screen turns pink. The shooting alert pops up. “Everyone, head below the platform,” a robotic voice instructs. “It will lock itself and let you out only when the police come.”
The couple grabs hold of its daughters. The man ushers his parents inside. Fifty people head beneath the platform. But the man stands guard. “Not you,” he says to Tommy. “We don’t need to die because of this.”
No one speaks out.
Tommy looks at his friend. Close the platform, and I’ll hide.
Tommy nods to the man.
“Okay, lock yourselves without me.”
The platform closes as the shots ring louder. But the elderly man steps out.
“Dad, get the hell back in.”
The elderly man spits at his son. “I’ve had it with you and your intolerant ways.”
“Dad-“
The elderly man puts his arm around the boy.
“Dad-“
“Your wife didn’t die because of a person or a country, and you’re gonna kill this boy if you are as selfish with safety as you are with money.”
The man steps aside, and Tommy rushes in, hugging his friend as three more shots sweep the scene.
The room is dark as fifty people lock themselves up like repackaged meat.
“Anyone claustrophobic?” the woman asks.
Someone shushes her, “The shooter will know we’re here.”
“Fucking Al-Qaeda,” the man rants through his teeth.
Tommy forces another cough. “Sorry, my lung decided to cough to stupidity.”
“You little-“ The man shouts, struggling to find a way through the dark.
“Hey,” one of the daughters yells. “You’re groping me.”
“Who did?” Cries her mom.
“The one that’s angry.”
“How’d you know it was me?”
“You’re the only one moving,” says the woman who spoke out the first time around.
“No, he’s hunting,” Tommy friend whispers.
“Everyone, shut up.”
A couple shots ring out.
The audience stays put: mouthing no words and coughing no insults.
Someone knocks on the door.
“Please, the shooter killed my son,” cries a woman. “I need you to open up.”
The audience moves to open the door.
“There’s a switch on the inside. It’s always there if no help arrives,” the woman outside explains. “They say these doors remain locked, but they lie.”
“Where’s the-“
“Don’t. It’s a trap.”
“But she’s a woman.”
“I can hear you!” The outside voice screams. “Please, open up. He’s going to kill me.”
“If everyone agrees?”
Tommy forces another cough.
The door remains locked as the female shooter moves on.
“Now what?” Tommy asks.
“We stay here,” his friend says.
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
“Boys, quiet down.”
“Where’s the angry man?” Tommy’s friend asks.
“Here,” the man says behind Tommy’s back. Tommy feels the end of a pocket knife. “Let’s not talk anymore, alright?”
The room is quiet save for the rhythmic sound of nail to skin. The man breaths heavily as he holds onto Tommy’s chin.
“Tommy, are you okay?”
“WHAT DID WE SAY? NO TALKING.” The man shouts.
“I’m okay,” Tommy reassures his friend through gritted teeth.
Blade goes over skin, ever so lightly. The man is seething.
“What is going on?” The woman asks beside them.
No one says anything. Tommy reaches for his friend’s hand. He holds him.
“Tommy, you’re wet.”
“I’m alright,” Tommy says, whimpering.
No one says anything.
Skin comes to blade, ever so lightly. But there’s a rhythm, a sound of nail to skin. Tommy presses his friend’s hand tighter.
“Tommy-“
Tiny drops crash to the floor. They fall rhythmically, dense. The sound of nail to skin, coming from skin to blade, falls some more.
The man’s father starts moving across the crowd. “Son,” he says.
But no one replies.
“Stop.”
But no one says anything.
“Where are you?” The father asks.
But the dense drops and the skin scrapes lose themselves in the echoes of the small, darkened room.
People stifle cries. But no says a thing.
A body falls on the ground. A hand unclasps a hold.
“Tommy?” His friend asks with a trembling voice.
But he only hears the sound of silence and the breath of a man with a knife beneath a gyroscope.
