Black Treacle Magazine (Issue 3) (4 page)

To return
finally to Robin Wood, I would argue that
Session 9
bears a
particularly interesting relation to his arguments. If one accepts
his contention that the horror film is progressive to the degree
that it a) problematizes the demonizing of the returning repressed;
and b) engages sympathy for the monster/Other, then
Session
9
, one might argue, is particularly progressive by these
standards since it explicitly addresses these very issues, and
completely erases the premise of the monster as Other. The
character who commits the monstrous acts, Gordon, is also the most
sympathetic, and thus the most tragic. Even when killing his
friends, Gordon’s face, far from being a fright mask, bears an
expression of blank yet unbearable agony; in fact, it resembles
nothing so much as the traditional image of the tragic theatre
mask. He is the character we see in pain, both physical and
emotional, stirring our sympathy long before we know what he has
done. When his repressed memory surfaces in a partial form, he
tells Phil that he hit his wife, and Peter Mullan’s remarkable
performance gives us a man consumed by self-loathing, recoiling
from the horror of his actions. Our last sight of Gordon is of him
weeping, holding a broken cell phone to his ear, pleading for
forgiveness from a phantom wife. There can be no forgiveness, of
course. We know Gordon best; we understand his stresses best. The
monster is not Other. He is us. And so the horror we feel at his
actions is a horror of our own monstrosity.

This case
would be harder to make if the horror contained in the repressed
memories came out of the blue, if Gordon or Mary were born killers.
This is not so. From the moment we see him, Gordon is clearly a man
at the end of his rope, yet he struggles to maintain a facade that
all is well. He and all the other characters are constantly
pretending, repressing as best they can the grim reality of their
lives. So Gordon’s repression of the memory of his crime should
come as no surprise: this is part and parcel of the repression he
is already engaged in, the repression that pushes him over the
edge. Thus, it is not the thing repressed that is the cause of the
horror; rather, it is the repression itself, and the socio-economic
reasons for that repression. I emphasize, once again, Simon’s
words: “I live in the weak and the wounded.” Gordon was already
weak, wounded by the rotting, unattainable dream.

Session
9
’s vision is a dark one. The film offers no way out of trap it
illustrates. But then, I would argue, the envisioning of
alternatives has never been a necessary, or even desirable,
function of the horror film. (Science fiction is perhaps better
equipped for this task.) But what horror can do, and
Session
9
does superbly, is anatomize the problem, forcing to the light
what we might otherwise wish to repress and forget ourselves.

Works Cited

Anderson, Brad and Steve Gevedon. Commentary on
Session 9
. Alliance,
2001. DVD.

Armageddon
. Dir. Michael Bay.
Touchstone, 1998. DVD.

Deep Red
. Dir. Dario Argento. Seda
Spettacoli, 1975. DVD.

King, Stephen.
The
Shining
. New York: Signet, 1977.
Print.

Session 9.
Dir. Brad Anderson.
Alliance, 2001. DVD.

Suspiria
. Dir. Dario Argento. Seda
Spettacoli, 1977. DVD.

Wood, Robin.
Hollywood from Vietnam
to Reagan
. New York: Columbia UP, 1986.
Print.

David Annandale
is the author, for
the Black Library, of the
Warhammer
40,000
books
The
Death of Antagonis
,
Yarrick: Chains of Golgotha
,
and
Mephiston: Lord of
Death
. His horror novel,
Gethsemane Hall
, was
published last year by
Dundurn
Press
and (in the UK) by
Snowbooks
. For
Turnstone Press
, he has
written a series of thrillers featuring rogue warrior
Jen Blaylock
(
Crown Fire
,
Kornukopia
, and
The
Valedictorians
). His short fiction has
appeared in a number of anthologies, including
Dead But Dreaming
and
Wild Things Live There: The Best of Northern
Frights
. David’s non-fiction has appeared
in such collections as
Roman Catholicism
in Fantastic Film: Essays on Belief, Spectacle, Ritual and
Imagery
and
The
Meaning and Culture of Grand Theft Auto
.
He writes film reviews for
The Phantom of
the Movies’ VideoScope
. He teaches film,
creative writing and literature at the
University of Manitoba
. His website
is
www.davidannandale.com
and find him on twitter
@David_Annandale

Laura-Marie
Steele

Della wiped
the outcropping of books from her brow. Damned things were
appearing more frequently. She flicked aside a copy of Jeffrey
Kline’s autobiography as small as the nail on her little finger.
She wouldn’t have minded so much if she sweated classics, but the
trash that came from her pores was just embarrassing. Worst of all,
she had no idea why it kept happening. The bin by the side of her
desk was full of the miniscule paperback tomes. Yesterday she had
wiped at least fifty copies of the chat show host’s autobiography
from her neck and under her arms. She didn’t even watch his chat
show Talking Life.

In the
supermarket, she searched the shelves for possible remedies, but,
not surprisingly, they didn’t have a shelf dedicated to curing the
sweating of trashy literature. Would paracetamol stop the fever?
Worth a try. She threw some boxes into her basket, along with
several cans of deodorant. She’d sprayed herself in the stuff
before leaving the house, and now her face itched.

She wandered
past the book aisle and blanched as she saw Jeffrey’s all too
familiar squeaky-clean face duplicated across the shelves: orange
skin, white teeth, a haircut so perfect it looked like plastic
removable hair that came with Lego characters. Flipping her middle
finger at the fixed, laughing faces, she hurried past.

At the
checkout, a burning sensation ripped along her throat. She coughed
quietly. The last thing she wanted was for people to notice what
was happening to her. She’d never be able to live down the
embarrassment. The burn turned into a fire, roaring its way up her
windpipe, eating into the soft sides of her gullet. Her eyes
watered with the pain of it. The woman in front of her turned
around, eyes wide. Della tried to cover her mouth, but a book fell
out before she could stop it, followed by a rush of others. She
spewed the books onto the floor, staring with horror at the
shining, saliva coated face of Jeffrey Kline. Eyes blinded with
tears, she rushed out of the shop.

She drove her
car straight to the hospital, hiccupping down hard mouthfuls of
books along the way. It was getting worse, and she didn’t know how
to stop it.

***

The nurse at
the desk rushed her straight through to the doctor’s office,
cutting through the usual crowd of head injuries, people clutching
their arms. Della would have swapped places with any of them in a
heartbeat.

The doctor’s
face turned as white as his coat when he examined her mouth. He
wiped a gobbet of books and saliva into a towel and threw it away,
and then he sat silently on his chair, frowning.

“Will I be
ok?” Della asked between vomiting.

The doctor
didn’t answer. “I’m going to take a blood sample,” he said, shakily
pushing his glasses up his nose. He fumbled about with the packets,
preparing the needle and tube. He managed to keep a professional
attitude right up until the moment when he removed the needle from
Della’s arm and took a close look at the tube containing her blood.
He jumped back, almost falling off his chair.

“What’s
wrong?” Della said.

“I need to
call in an expert.” The doctor explained as he dropped the vial and
ran from the room.

Della stared
down at the tube rolling near her feet. When she picked it up, she
could see tiny red covered autobiographies swirling in her
blood.

***

The experts
came and surrounded her bed, jabbering but unable to do anything
else. Somehow, the media caught wind of the story and camped their
camera crews around the hospital. Camera clicks echoed outside her
windows as photographers tried to catch sight of her. After the
first day, they had to move to her to a room with no windows.

“I don’t know
if you’ve seen on the news,” Della’s mother said. She sat eating
the grapes Della couldn’t keep down. “Jeffrey Kline’s publicist has
been contacted by the press and by the hospital but they’ve denied
having anything to do with your...illness.”

Della shifted
onto her side. She didn’t care about publicists or anything else.
She just wanted to be able to sleep again. She couldn’t even shut
her eyes without that perfect, mocking face swimming at her out of
the darkness behind her own eyelids.

“Perhaps you
should read it?” her mother suggested, moving aside another bowl of
glossy new paperbacks. “I’ve read a bit. It’s not too bad.”

Della turned
her head away. Reading it was the last thing she wanted to do. She
wanted to burn every last copy. She opened her mouth to say this.
“When I indulged in alcohol, I initiated my own decline.” She
snapped her mouth shut. Where had that come from?

“What did you
say?” her mum approached the bed.

Della shook
her head and opened her mouth again. “Talking Life has been the
hardest, most rewarding part of my life to date.” None of the words
were her own. They wrenched themselves from her voicebox.
Scrabbling at her table, she scribbled down what’s happening to
me?

“I think...I
think you’re saying lines from his autobiography,” her mother
whispered.

It was the
last straw. Della stuffed the corner of her bed sheet into her
mouth and refused to move until her mother had left. Then, ripping
out her cannula, pouring little red covered book droplets along the
hospital corridor, she called a taxi and had it drive her to
Westgrange Studios.

She waited,
shivering in the cold hedges in the thin hospital gown. He would
have to pass her at some point. She’d make him stop whatever he was
doing to her. Hours passed. Hours spent forcing out hard, cuboid
tears. Alien thoughts drifted inside her head like clouds of smog,
dashing away her own memories, replacing them with strange
conversations she’d never had. Images of audiences bombarded her,
jeering, laughing. Her head filled with their faces, their cruel
staring.

Finally,
Jeffrey Kline appeared from the revolving doors, jogged down the
steps and fumbled in his trouser pockets for his car keys. He
looked just like he did on all those books: fake, unreal.

“What have you
done to me?” she said, stumbling out of the bush. Her voice was
back, but it sounded sharp, out of control.

Jeffrey Kline,
his smart grey suit jacket tossed casually over one arm, backed up
against the door of his car. To the right, two security guards
raced down the steps, but she waved the knife at them and they
stopped, pacing on the edges of her vision.

Books fell one
after the other onto the floor with greater frequency, their pages
blowing open in the wind. “Look at me!” She said words, any words,
as long as they were her own. The knife point drew back to Jeffrey,
hovering near his neck.

His eyes were
blue, creased around the edges, open wide but never so wide that
books would fall out. “There’s no need to do this. Whatever problem
you’re having, we can talk about it.” His voice was sickly smooth,
full of himself, full of his own words.

She screamed
and plunged the knife into his neck.

***

Mark raised
his hand for a high-five. “Awesome, I never thought science could
be so much fun. You’re great, babe.”

Lisa slapped
his hand impatiently then focused back on the slide under her
microscope. It was important she finish up with her samples, the
work she should have been doing for the past month instead of
indulging Mark in his revenge. If she didn’t get her work in on
time, the lab was going to get suspicious and start asking
questions.

She had no
idea why she’d agreed to do it in the first place. Mark wasn’t even
that attractive. She glanced at his stupid, grinning face. She’d
only met him two months ago, and the advertising virus she’d been
working on seemed like the perfect line to impress him with when
he’d been moaning about his appearance on the chat show.

“My girlfriend
– ex-girlfriend now, thanks to that bastard – made me go on the
show. I took a lie detector test. They must be rigged or something,
because I swear I never cheated on her.” Mark had complained,
scowling at his drink and clenching his hand round it as if it were
a neck.

“How awful,”
Lisa remembered saying as she sipped on her drink and eyed up
Mark’s burnished arm muscles.

The night was
all a bit fuzzy after that. She recalled undoing her top button,
leaning in towards him, winking.“I work in a lab. I’m developing an
oxyvendo complex.”