AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

 

The three segments below make up roughly ten percent of what there is thus far of There Was Electricity. If my math is correct, they will ultimately take up about five percent in its final and hopefully more realized form. What is perhaps missed most in publishing only various segments (and the very reason I can do any kind of math with the least bit of confidence) is the opening Contents, a four-page prose poem which provided me with a road map, a guide from which to proceed. I didn't know it at the time, but that was to become the catalyst for the form and sequence the larger piece takes, and ultimately each segment. Without it, the engine would have invariably stalled much earlier, if it would have even turned at all. But with it, not only did it seem to turn, but it provided a kind of headlight. 
Chew off as much fat as one humanly can. If screenwriting taught me anything, it was this. In a screenplay, I suspect we rarely find the word "then". The then is that which is cut, either because it's unimportant, or it's too costly to film. It is the filmmaker's job (on a good day) to lead us into that next scene, to imply this then, knowing full well that with each cut, our suspension of disbelief precariously hangs in the balance. 
        And so, perhaps what is most missed is this then, a then that I hoped the opeing Contents somehow provided. In the meantime, I hope that this might provide a kind of headlight, A then for the interim.

– Jason Michael Bacasa

FROM THERE WAS ELECTRICITY

CEILING FAN

Giving the seven shoes to his mother seemed to make her remarkably happy, as if they were the very things she wanted most from this life. But her face changed when his father walked in the door, frozen to death.

Arthur gripped his father’s arm tighter the higher they climbed. At the crest of the hill, hundreds of children came into view in the form of colored dots. 

Their faces were broadcasted to the entire park. The rest of the day, the line for the Thunderbolt wrapped around the Potato Patch all the way to the admission gate.   

Arthur stood upon his mattress and pulled the cord to his ceiling fan three times, sticking his nose between the frosted glass flowers. When he lay back down, he could hardly breathe.

CEREAL

The box of cereal caught fire on the dining room table.

Arthur and the rest of the family watched the smoke blend into the atmosphere from their neighbor’s lawn. The firetruck eventually showed up.  The men jumped down from the truck dressed in helmets, but otherwise in the attire of cavemen.

“I didn’t know that an axe could put out a fire. Mom?”  
“It’s just precautions, honey.”

Everything seemed to come in couples. There were the bites on his knuckles and the two times his father left the house in the middle of the night, slamming the door.

Thriller spun on the phonograph in the dining room. Arthur put on his penny loafers and danced like a zombie. He had been dead now for more than a week.

On the living room television, the  former Playboy centerfold  screamed at the top of her lungs as his nails began to curl out of  his skin.
               Arthur ran back into the dining room. He couldn’t believe it. The record was still spinning.  
Vincent Price’s laugh sent chills up his spine.

Arthur took Kenny’s varsity letter jacket from the closet. During lunch, he asked several girls to go steady. Before any of them could answer, he was on the ground convulsing. The Creature From The Black Lagoon was his favorite.

“What the hell did you do to my jacket, Arthur?”
            “Nothing.”
            On the leather sleeve of his jacket, red food coloring was caked near the cuff.
            “I can’t control when I become a monster. It’s something that just happens.”

CHESTNUT TREE

The project was simple. It entailed his father’s Super 8 camera, its screen and projector, and a roll of film which contained nothing more than one, continuous shot of his favorite house down the block.

Arthur’s father clipped the branches and leaves from the right side of the tree. He hammered a nail into the bark from where he hung the screen.
             “It needs to be higher. Dad?”
Arthur turned off  the  light  in  his  room  and  turned  on  the  projector.

Arthur gave Kenny the other tin can. From inside Kenny’s closet, he spoke into the open end.   
“Kenny? Kenny? Are you sleeping?”  
“No.”  
“Can you breathe okay?”  
“Yeah.”

Kenny looked out the window. The glowing tree lit his face.

“Mom, someone’s at the door? Mom?”  
Arthur opened the door. His neighbor stood there, half-smiling.  
“Are you okay?”  
“Yeah, I was just talking to my brother.”  
Arthur took the tissue from his cheek. It was spotted like the cuff of his brother’s jacket.

“She said that she didn’t move to the suburbs for this, and if she wanted to live next to a drive-in theater, she would have done so in the first place.”  
Arthur’s father took another beer from the refrigerator.  
“I’ve always said that she was an asshole.”  
Kenny smiled.  
Outside, Arthur buried the film in a hole he had dug by the tree.

Jason Bacasa is a writer and musician currently living in New York. His screenplay Paperback was recently shortlisted for the Sundance Labs and selected as part of IFP’s Emerging Narrative. He performs music under the moniker Tan or Boil. His debut release is slated to appear later this year on Australia's Preservation Records.