Shane Wilson | fiction | Wanted: Fourth Wall Repairman

  
  
  
Wanted: Fourth Wall Repairman


The first thing you see after you put your bag down is the peanut butter knife still resting on the counter. You asked your fiancée—whose choice to make a late-night snack had resulted in said peanut butter knife—to wash it. It was the only dirty dish, and it wouldn’t even matter that much to you if you didn’t just come home from a day full of trying to teach miserable children a bunch of bullshit they don’t need to know because a bunch of old white men in power decided on matters of curriculum despite not having been in school for nearly a literal century. It was only a single knife, and it wouldn’t bother you as much if the exact same knife didn’t find itself stuck to the counter by the dried peanut butter multiple times a week, remaining there for days until you finally washed it.

It wasn’t a big deal—not really—but you knew that it was a single symptom in a long list of symptoms indicating an illness that was developing in your relationship with the woman you asked to move in with you last year—before you knew about the peanut butter knives—the woman you will marry next month.

That’s when you hear the familiar sound of her keys in the lock. She is always home just a few minutes after you. She blows into the house, a whirlwind of energy fresh off of another long day of driving from hospital to hospital, meeting with doctors and seducing them into drugging more of their patients with the latest trends in medicine. She’s on her phone. She doesn’t look at you. She sees you, of course, but she doesn’t look at you.

“Oh my God, right?” she says as she closes herself into the bedroom you share. She’ll stay there until she decides to go out with her friends (almost always) or call it an early night (after too many nights out) or eat dinner with you (almost never). But, as it turns out, tonight is an “almost never” kind of night. She bursts out of the bedroom that you share and talks at you with the frenetic energy of the subatomic particles that gave birth to the entire goddamn universe.

While she talks, you wonder–as you often do–why you are with this woman and how you’ve managed to stay with her for so long. She probably wonders the same about you, though. You’re no peach.

Secretly, you know the answer. You know because you were there when you met her back in college, and though you may be no peach, you are certainly no idiot.

You met her on a Tuesday in class–HUM 223: A History of Sex, Drugs, and Violence in American Cinema. The class watched Psycho, and during the discussion, she spoke with passion and the same frenetic energy about Hitchcock’s use of shadow and light, how iconic the shower scene is, and how bad the 1998 remake had been. “Vince Vaughn?” she had said, laughter bubbling up in her. “That dude was a Wedding Crasher. And they expect me to believe him as Norman Bates? No way.” She leaned back in her chair, proud of herself, and you were in love.

You asked her out, and you spent all night listening to her talk about movies and how “It wasn’t Paul Rudd who ruined Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers but the synthesizer-infused soundtrack” and how “The final act of Sleepaway Camp was the greatest twist in cinematic history” and “The Sixth Sense can just fuck right off” because “Shyamalan is a one-trick pony hack.” She was fiery and passionate. You couldn’t look away, though you knew she would consume you.

You had this theory when you were in college that isn’t much different from other people’s theories at that age. None of us are all that different, right? You believed that romantic compatibility hinged on the consumption of and love for similar media. Love The Office? Don’t fall in love with someone who can’t stomach the cringe. Love horror movies? Don’t date the person with the weak stomach who can’t keep their pasta down over some corn syrup and sausage casings.

In practice, that theory doesn’t hold water, but you know that by now. You know that a burning desire for someone or something is meaningless to another person. Passion isn’t transmittable. Love isn’t a virus to be passed back and forth. It’s all mutual respect and communication–the things you thought were so boring back then.

But passion, right?

You were an idiot.

“So what’s for dinner?” she asks, bringing you back to the present.

You settle on Chinese or pizza–it doesn’t matter, does it–and sit down in front of the large flat screen in the living room.

“Did you see the trailer for that new horror flick?” she asked. “Brutilator?” You have seen that trailer, and you agree that it looks good in that “Troll 2/ Chopping Mall/ so-bad-it’s good” way. Moments later, you’re watching as the Brutilator–a serial killer in all black robes and a disfigured mask–stalks a group of college students. It’s every slasher movie ever, but you don’t watch these movies to be surprised.

“He’s hot,” she says at some point during the movie. She’s not even talking to you, but she’s looking at the hunky football player, which is surprising. You are nothing like the hunky football player.

You notice some discoloring in the bottom corner of the screen, but you don’t think much of it. The TV is new. You just bought it.

“Can we pause?” she asks. “I want to make a snack.” She moves to the kitchen, and you follow her. You watch her make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She put the new peanut butter knife next to the one from last night. She looks at you, dead in the eyes, and says, “Ready?” She doesn’t put the knife in the sink. She doesn’t even look at the sink.

“Sure,” you say with a smile. You feel like you could run through the wall.

On the way, you think to ask about the peanut butter knife, but this is when your night takes a turn because when you get back to the living room, you see that there is a strange man standing in front of the television–his back turned to you. He is tall and muscular. His jaw could cut steel. He’s wearing a letterman jacket. He’s holding his hands out in front of his face like he’s seeing them for the first time.

The screen in front of the man flashes. You move toward the television, trying not to provoke the man standing in your living room. The discoloration from earlier has spread and the bottom corner of the screen–which is just two incredibly thin pieces of glass–has cracked and shattered across the floor.

You look up at the man and call out to him, which seems to startle him. He turns to face you, and that’s when you see it for certain. The man in your living room is the football player from the movie.

“How did I get here?” he asks.

“I think you must have leaked out whenever the screen cracked,” you say, walking to the closet to retrieve a broom and dustpan.

“Leaked out?” he asks, understandably confused.

“Of the movie,” you respond. “You were inside the TV. Well, you were inside of a movie that was happening inside of the TV. You were being stalked by this guy in a creepy mask.”

“Oh yeah,” he said–a hint of recognition flashing across his eyes. “That creepy-mask guy killed my girlfriend.” You’re busy sweeping up the mess on the floor, but you can hear the football player talking behind you. “I couldn’t believe it,” he continues. “We had just hooked up for the first time. She told me I was her first.”

“It’s okay, baby. Come here.” This is your fiancée’s voice, suddenly softer and less spastic than you’ve heard it since the night she ate too many marijuana brownies at a her best friend’s New Year’s Eve party. You turn to watch your fiancée wrap the man up in her arms—her hands finding the creases in his back and down his arms.

You rise up from the floor, a dustpan full of fragments from the television.

“I’m going to call someone,” you say, but neither your fiancée nor the man she is hugging who fell out of a movie seem to hear you.

You go to the yellow pages, and dial the first number under “television repair.”

“Prescott Repairs,” a voice responds after two rings. “What’s the trouble?”

“Yes, hi—I, uh—my television. It, uh, sprung a leak?”

“Sprung a leak, yeah? How many got out?”

“How many got out?”

“Characters, sir. How many characters spilled out?”

“Oh—one guy is out.”

“Mhmmm . . . And what were you watching?”

“We were watching that new horror movie, Brutilator.”
“Mhmm . . . mhmmm—alright, sir. I’m a little backed up right now, but I can probably get over there sometime tomorrow.”

“Is that really the best you can do?”

“Yessir. It’s a weird time. Lots of leaky TVs out there. Lots of characters crossing over. Gotta try to plug ‘em up sooner than later, ya know? Can’t have the lines between here and there any blurrier than they already are. I’ll see ya tomorrow, sir.” And he hangs up.

You walk back to the living room to give the news, but the room is empty. You hear giggling coming from the back of the house—the room that you share. You move down the hallway and see your wife rubbing the bare shoulders of the football player. You stand still for a moment, expecting your blood to boil over, but it doesn’t. Instead, you feel something in you break—like two thin sheets of glass—but the only thing leaking out of you will be the final vestiges of a relationship you no longer believe in.

You clear your throat, and the two of them look up at you.

“The, uh—the repairman will be here tomorrow,” you say. You aren’t sure what you
expect them to say, but they don’t respond to you at all.

That night, you sleep on the sofa. The TV is still on. The scene is the same as it was earlier. The only thing missing is a quarterback. Periodically, chunks of grass spill out into the living room floor.

You try to convince yourself that you’re sleeping on the couch because you want to make sure no one else escapes from the movie before the repairman can come tomorrow, but you know it’s because you are finished with the woman at the back of the house who is sharing your bed with the chiseled quarterback from a straight-to-streaming horror movie. You’ll leave her after this is over—one way or the other.

You can’t help but wonder what you could have done differently. Maybe you could have saved it, but you aren’t sure where things went wrong. This, like nearly every death when seen from a certain perspective, was slow and gradual. Everything is movie conversations and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches one day, and before you know it, you’re standing over the corpse of your dead relationship and the counter is littered with dirty knives.

Your fiancée laughs loudly from the back of the house—from the room you no longer share with her. You hear the deep rumble of the quarterback’s voice in response. You try for sleep, but you know you’ll never be able to sleep through whatever is happening at the back of the house.

You notice a new figure on the television screen—the Brutilator. Even though the scene has remained paused, little bits of movie have been leaking out for hours. He must have been there all along, just out of frame, waiting for the quarterback in the darkness.

“Oh, fuck, baby—“

You hear voices crawl under the bedroom door and down the hallway to your ears, and you know immediately that your fiancée is fucking the quarterback. You’ve heard her talk and moan like that before, but it’s been years—another symptom of the impending death. Somehow, you fall asleep to the incessant sound of the old bed‘s springs creaking and the old headboard banging the wall.

***

The next morning, the sun pushes through the windows and reflects off the remaining television screen into your eyes. You blink. As your eyes adjust, you see that the Brutilator has shifted across the screen during the night. He’s almost made it to the leak.

You make coffee, and at some point, you hear your fiancée giggle through the bedroom door. She won’t be going to work today. You may never see her again.

At noon, the repairman rings the bell, and moments later, he is taking a look at the television.

“So, this is a little tricky,” he says. “The tear here is small, but I have to replace the full wall.” You nod. “That means we are probably going to have a second escapee.” He taps the screen where the Brutilator stands, paused and sliding toward reality.

In the end, the operation is simple—a thin razor slides around the wall holding the movies inside the television and pops it loose. The floor is filthy with dirt and grass that tumbles out when it’s gone, and in that dirt and grass are footprints made by large boots. In the end, their owner isn’t interested in you or the television repairman.

“Alright, sir—I’m going to go ahead and slide the new wall into place. Once you get the floor cleaned up and get these characters out of your house, it will be like nothing happened.”

He lifted the thin replacement glass up to the television, and suddenly you hear the headboard banging and the springs creaking through the door at the back of the house that led to a room that wasn’t even really your bedroom anymore. You can hear her moaning. “Oh, quarterback,” she screams.

He was uncredited.

“Wait,” you say. “Does the opening go both ways?”

“Well, yeah, technically it does, but usually when they get out, it’s hard to put them back in.”

And that’s when you know you’re going.

“I wasn’t asking for them.” You take a step toward the opening in the television. “Seal it up as soon as I’m in,” you say.

“What about payment?” asks the repairman.

“The woman in the back bedroom will take care of it,” you respond.

Then, you're climbing inside the glowing rectangle hanging above your fireplace. Your journey inside is clumsy—you have to climb, after all—but eventually you are inside of blue-filter night, a new immigrant into the virtual world. You turn to look back, and for a moment you can still see through the fourth wall into your old life—still hear the sounds from your bedroom where your fiancée is having the best sex of her life in a bed you once shared with a man that fell out of a movie. You know she will be alright without you–better off, even. The two of you have nothing remaining for each other, and that’s fine. You know that you’ve made the right choice.

You watch the repairman, with his glue gun and glass, replace the wall to seal you inside. And just behind him, a shape—a grotesque vinyl face framed in black gives way to the flowing dark robes of the killer. You know then that the world out there will always only get harder, lonelier, and uglier. It’s so much easier to live here—in the funhouse mirror, the high-contrast world of the golden hour, the heightened reality of televised fiction. Soon, everyone out there will be begging to come in, and by then, you’ll have it all sorted.