“It lasts about twenty minutes,” our guide instructs us, leaving us then, both of us terrified to speak for fear of the sundry other forms that may or may not be sat on seats to our left, to our right, afore or behind us. The ears scrab at the murmur of the darkness, sifting for tell-tale sighs or wheezes, coughs or sniffs. 

“Might have the trailer for the new Rambo,” Sir Fleming whispers.

I nod, or at least assume myself to nod. In this impenetrable wash of black, a fella’s motions and gestures become as the orations of the deaf - one can never be wholly certain that what he’s doing corresponds entirely to what he thinks he’s doing.

Suddenly, the screen afore us blazes into life, charging the black with light, wringing from the colossal dark a much more manageable colossal murk. The vague shape of my hand conjured anew from nothingness fills me with calm, and whilst waiting for the picture to begin I spend a time flexing and relaxing my fingers ‘front my face, like a child discovering for the very first time the joy of a gargantuan fart in the hush of a chapel.

Aaron Fleming

Images burn across the screen, a cryptic collage of narrative fragments divorced from order. The numbing darkness of yore is undercut by a new source of light, siphoning fear hitherto running rampant, dispelling nightmare visions of a boisterous Psychlo gang rape – an inevitable fate in such a room as this.

I look to my left. The outline of the Duke is perceptible, seemingly relaxing to the bout of on-coming flickery we are being dished. I, on the other hand, remain jittery as to the unknown spectres and agents potentially seated to our rear, the voiceless entities sharing our air; what if they, through chance or iniquity, are breathing in precise unison with us? How might we then detect the threat? And just what is that object standing mid-aisle, clicking and humming and titillating the floor?

Impending doom gives way to the film. A portrait of a tale, painted with streaks glissading through this tomb, catalepsy drones ushered out of hidden speakers. A man enjoys a birthday party, exchanging kisses with loved ones, wife brokering love petals animating his life. Surges back and forth in plot leave the story unclear – a music video without a song, forging a Lynch-like air of confusion, rasping ambiguity and diffidence, stretching TV movie colours over itself like a shabby condom pulled over a crooked cock.

The Duke mumbles something, words dissolving on the journey to my ears. I fear at any moment I will turn to him to be met with a face howling in venomous rapture, an accusatory finger aimed right at me, ala Donald Sutherland in the ‘78 Invasion of the Body Snatchers. To what intense glow of subliminal imagery have we thus far been subjected? Is that my spinal cord fraying at the edges, or just wind?