Hereâs a quick lil something inspired by my earlier post about borrowers living in movie theaters. I also have a pretty strong idea of where to take this one from here, so if you do like it, stay tuned for more.
Do you know how much of a mess people make at a movie theater? Bucketfuls of popcorn spilled across the aisles, scraps of barely touched food littering the floor, sometimes fully untouched water bottles left stranded in their designated seats.
It is undeniably gross, unbelievably wasteful, and so absolutely perfect. That is, to someoneâor rather, to something like Nico.
And by Nicoâs own logic, itâs not even really borrowing anymore when the foodâs already been tossed aside, right? If they werenât there, surely some exhausted, underpaid janitor wouldâve just come by and banished it to the trash bins without so much as a second thought. Truly, how ungrateful humans were, complained the number one benefactor of said ungratefulness.
Plus, the dark made a wonderful cover. About fifteen minutes or so after the final credits scene of whatever screening was scheduled last that day, so would the last of the college-aged clerks begin to close up shop, exiting the building with an affirming click of a key in a lock and a jostling of the double push-doors to make sure it was shut securely.
In the right ears, these sounds became signals. A green light, indicating to any theater-dwelling borrowers that it was their time to shine. Figuratively speaking.
Realistically, Nico would make their nightly trek alone. Limping on in silence across the darkened space, steps muted by the soft carpet floors. A cloth bag had been slung over their shoulder, the same material as their teeshirt, while the borrower made their rounds collecting any pieces of popcorn and pretzels and chips that the janitors hadnât gotten around to yet.
Only after a lifeâs worth of practice had they learned that the end-of-day cleaners tended to start on the lower floors and work their way upâso naturally, Nico started doing the opposite.
Now, with a bag almost too heavy to carry on their own, Nico was forced to make the excruciatingly long hike back to home base. The home in question was a broken cabinet drawer inside one of the second floor projector booths. They had lived on the third floor, once upon a time, but as soon as those memories resurfaced Nico would just shove them back down again. There was no third floor anymore. After the buildingâs remodel about a decade or so back, Nico wasnât even sure if their current booth linked to an active room. In all the time theyâd lived there since, not a single human had entered. Not even the cleaners.
Nico climbed up the fairly short ladder that led up from the floor into a hole in the bottom of the cabinet. The red plasticky surface of the clumsily built gaffer-tape-drinking-straw contraption gave a little under their shoes, but it was enough to stay sturdy, and thatâs really all they could ask for. Especially now that the theater had cheaped out on plastic straws in favor of the flimsy paper kind that practically dissolved upon contact with water. Talk about inconvenience.
Actually, speaking of conveniences, the lights inside the drawer flicked on once Nico entered the space, a warm welcome home. Gone were the days of using keychain flashlights to stumble their way around. Years ago an LED aisle light in theater four had broken, the glass lid that usually covered it being left unscrewed for the workers to fix it when they clocked in the next morning. Imagine their surprise when they found nothing but an empty divot in the floor, the insides having been mysteriously gutted overnight. Nico certainly liked to imagine it. They couldnât help but feel proud at having accomplished such a feat.
All it took was a few hours of carefully nudging the thing out an inch at a time, all whilst trying not to electrocute themselves in the process, until they were finally able to haul the thing out of the ground. On a bad leg, mind you. Then, after the grueling process of dragging it home, turns out all the thing needed was a few new batteries. That part went easily enough, since Nicoâs living space was located directly above the concessions stand, which in turn was right next door to the absolute treasure trove that was the maintenance closet.
All things considering, Nico counted themselves lucky to be living such a comfortable life, by borrower standards. Loneliness seemed a small price to pay for an endless supply of food as well as the optimal conditions to go and retrieve it.
They hadnât always been alone. It was the very same remodel that gave Nico this cushy place to live that had scared the others off. It wasnât like the borrowers had the construction companyâs schedule or anything, so from their point of view they might as well have been tearing the building down around them right then and there. Hell, in a way they were.
Luck was far too sweet a word. It was probably fate that Nico wasnât able to flee with the rest of them. Images of rubble falling, tools breaking through walls like screeching animals hellbent on destruction; metal jaws snapping and silver blades whirring and stone crumbling in every direction. And a leg trapped beneath. And a kid crying out for help to parents who could no longer hear them over the endless droning of human-sized tools.
Like theyâd said, there was a third floor. And now there wasnât, now, there was Nico.
Nico packed the excess food into an assortment of clear earplug cases. The ones they put up for sale during the occasional surround-sound showing, just in case some human customer learned they couldnât handle the booming thunder that the average borrower lived with on a daily basis.
After that, they tried to sleep. Despite the immediate sense of relief that came with lying down after a hard nightâs work, it took no less than an hour (on a good night) for Nicoâs mind to relent and allow them a moment of peace. A crushing sense of guilt always lurked in the shadows after hours, boring into their skull like a drill on the nights they went to bed with a full stomach under a plush bundle of napkins.
Tonight was no exception. Because of this predicament, Nico often replayed movies in their head to drown everything out. Tonightâs mental rerun was of some new flick theyâd seen about a human befriending an alien. It seemed silly, yet here they were, playing it through scene by scene as they muttered lines of dialogue and laughed under their breath at all the funny bits. It had been playing in theater twelve earlier that week and when no humans had turned up well over an hour inâtypical for an early afternoon showingâthey assured themselves that it was safe enough to simply watch from the sidelines. After all, even if someone did walk in late, it would be way too dark to see beyond the beckoning glow of the projector screen.
Nico, like always, had taken diligent notes while watching it. Camera angles, perspective shots, creative choices they would pick apart for days afterward and discover a new meaning to every time the scene replayed itself in their head.
That night Nico fell asleep not counting sheep, but the amount of cuts that were made in the tense climax of the film. Their muscles finally relaxed and their tired eyes fell shut. Yet still, that knot in their stomach lingered. Something awful was going to happen. They just knew it.
It was a good life, Nico was convinced. In fact, it had almost been too good. Suspiciously so. To the borrowerâs knowledge, it was only a matter of time until the inherent unfairness of a world unfit for them would dismantle their moment of calm once again.
They just wished that it didnât have to be today.
Nevertheless, it seemed Nicoâs ten-year stroke of luck had finally run dry. As they woke up bleary-eyed the following morning and bided their time until closingâjudging by the hands of some random guyâs watch Nico had snagged off the bathroom counter ages agoâhe left home once again to discover that clean new posters had been hung up all throughout the building.
That wasnât the unusual part, the hallway posters were switched up just about every other week to keep up with the latest releases. Nico even kept some of the promotional stickers for their own decorative purposes. But what caused their heart to drop into their stomach upon seeing them was the text written in bold at the top; going wide-eyed and open-mouthed, craning their neck way back in order to better read the impossibly high wall of paper.
âStop by during Pacific Bay Theaterâs all-new midnight viewing hours: now open from 11:30 pm to 4:30 am each day!â
The exclamation mark at the end taunted from above as though it were a stereotypical movie villain, wicked smile growing as impending doom settled onto the protagonistâs shoulders. But what could they do? Without any time to borrow there would be hardly enough to eat, given that theyâd already been relying solely on scraps. And with more humans working there would be that much more danger lurking through the halls. Nicoâs mind ran a mile a minute, trying to piece together the logistics of these unfavorable new circumstances all at once, their breath quickening into shallow gasps for air.
This feeling wasnât an unfamiliar one, and with the oncoming panic came the one thing they knew would be able to ease their pain, having used it countless times before. The metaphorical projector in their head clicked on, casting imaginary floodlights over the backs of their eyelids as a flood of familiar scenes sprang to life. They continued the rest of their trek through the building in a daze.
Along the way, a quote befitting of their own thoughts was brought to mind. In the words of another fine piece of sci-fi cinemaâa genre that was quickly becoming Nicoâs favorite:
âWell, this is the end of the line for me.â
