THE SCREENING
THE SCREENING
by Reed Beebe
I can’t cook for shit, so I brought Popeyes to the screening. The FedEx guy leaving the elevator as I arrived got a whiff and looked at me enviously. I pressed the button and ascended.
My friend Trevor, the richest trust fund baby in film school, leased an enormous top-floor apartment and used it to host the best screenings in the city. A cineaste with deep pockets, he always had the good shit, stuff most film fanatics didn’t even know existed: Andy Warhol’s bootleg Spider-Man movie; an Orson Welles porno flick; Alfred Hitchcock’s Dracula. Trevor looked like a gleeful kid as he removed the reel from the just-arrived FedEx box, oblivious to my presence. He had about twelve people around him, who clapped as he rushed to the antique projector.
“Just in time,” said Amy, nodding towards the reel as she handed me a glass of wine. “Apparently it’s a rare treasure. He purchased it online from a dead collector’s estate in Prague.”
“What are we watching?”
Amy shrugged, but classmate Jakeem appeared to my left, holding a beer imported from Lithuania, eager to provide the details. “It’s the last film made by German director Oskar Boger, Der Albtraum.”
Now I shrugged, so Jakeem turned into a helpful Wikipedia page.
“Boger was a contemporary of Lang and Riefenstahl. He had a lot of fans in the 1920s, including Goebbels. Those two were tight, and both were members of the occult Thule Society. In 1935, Goebbels gave Boger the resources, including a large number of political prisoners to serve as slave labor, challenging him to make whatever movie he wanted, and Boger filmed Der Albtraum.”
“We’re watching a Nazi propaganda movie?”
Jakeem shook his head. “No, it was immediately banned. Goebbels ordered the film destroyed. Boger committed suicide a month later. ”
Jakeem sipped his beer. “And now we get to see what all the fuss was about.”
At Trevor’s direction, we sat in the provided folding chairs. Amy sat next to me, eating Popeyes. Trevor gave a brief recap of Boger’s career, which matched the information Jakeem had provided. The lights dimmed; the giant white words “DER ALBTRAUM” appeared on a black screen as the Wagnerian soundtrack played.
I couldn’t process what I was seeing. Black-robed men bit flesh from naked women on ancient stone altars. There was chanting that sounded like an impossible mixture of tortured wailing and alien cicadas. I became hungry and horny, embarrassed by my erection. A couple sitting in front of me started kissing as they fell to the floor.
There was a flash of light on the screen; an enormous triangular creature with numerous mouths containing huge fangs appeared. It screamed in a strange language that made me dizzy. I felt hot.
A classmate orgasmed as her boyfriend bit her cheek, and in the front row Trevor consumed Jakeem’s throat. The kissing couple in front of me ate each other’s ears.
I looked at Amy, and she looked at me. We both hungered, but not for chicken.
Fiction © Copyright Reed Beebe
Image by Haroldas Bagdisanka from Pixabay
