Blockbuster

[WP] One lonely night, you buy a ticket at the movie theater for a film you've heard nothing about. The film opens with stories from your childhood and carries to the near future- with your death. Now you MUST find the director.

******

Most people went to bars on Friday nights. Most single people anyway. A few couples that went there were either very free with each other, or they were swingers. I didn't like bars because I didn't like crowds. Crowds of people I would never get to associate with.

I was just too shy to talk to people, and it was sickening, but that was life for me.

The cinema was also another place to be - not everyone came here, except maybe couples, whom I desperately tried to avoid. But my therapist did say going out once in a while would do me a lot of good, so here I was at a cinema, paying for a ticket to a movie that I had heard nothing about whatsoever.

Below Average.

The name sounded like the story of my life, and I didn't think a lot of people would be going to see it, so I chose it. There was a much lower risk of having to sit next to a couple who would go all xoxo right next to me. That sh!t always made me think about my nonexistent love life and how I was so unlucky in life.

The movie started with the birth of a child - Ron Ford. A weird name, but I guess the movie was named 'Below-Average' for a reason. Ron was not a very bright kid, and it showed in the fact that he learned the alphabet way later than he should have.

Just like me.

Then I watched bullies dump his hot soup his mom had given him for lunch into his boxers and force him to walk around with it.

That was oddly familiar - it was something that had happened to me.

He wrote a letter to his crush in the third grade - and she rejected him right in front of a class that was roaring with laughter - reading the words of the love letter before tearing it. That was the final straw.

The words were exactly the ones I used during my experience. Where Lorraine Mckenzie thoroughly killed my spirit right in front of the whole class.

I looked up towards the projection room, and a shadowy figure receded from my field of view.

This had to be a damn prank of sorts.

I sat down in my seat, sweating. There were only ten people in that theater apart from me, and I was the only one visibly shaken.

I watched as I ignored my father's calls while my mother was in the hospital - I didn't know she was there, suffering from cancer. I hated my father, but mom always made things a lot more bearable. I never answered until she died of a brain tumor.

I cried as my character cried in the movie - over and over again, cursing myself for not answering.

I watched my first suicide attempt when I failed to get a job three years after graduation. I saw my neighbor, Nicole, burst into the room and drag me out of the fire I had started myself before she put it out.

I watched us get close and marry. I watched her baby bump rise.

I watched her die in a gas explosion that occurred just as I was getting out of my car after a bad day at work. A day in which I was sacked. I saw her body, burned beyond recognition.

It was a continuous roller coaster of emotions I watched. Everything I'd experienced - all the feels, all over again. I could barely get a grip as I watched as I was evicted from my house two weeks after her death; as I got another job with a very toxic boss...

As I entered the cinema today.

At this point I was at the edge of my seat... would this movie dare to predict what my future would be like? Would it dare to show me that there was light at the end of the tunnel, or that I was cursed to wallow in this perpetual darkness for the rest of my life?

I watched myself leave the cinema, get home, and sleep. And then somehow, I awoke the next morning with a smile and went about my job cheerfully. How I bought a lottery ticket and made a selection.

40 5 67 1 23 5

How my ticket was the winner.

How the store owner who sold me the ticket snuck into my house at night, strangled me, and took my ticket.

******

It was the most demystifying experience ever. But I didn't understand how possible it was. Was I dreaming? Was it all a prank?

I went to sleep with these strange thoughts in my mind, and when I awoke the next day, the only thing I could think about was the lottery. I smiled to myself and skipped around, agreeing to be delusional today. To believe in this fantasy and to hope that would all work out.

I went to work, smiling to my sh!tty boss all through, and during my break, I snuck off to the store and got my lottery ticket and filled in the numbers. The numbers that won in the movie of the previous day. I chose to believe, and when I was done, I remembered something.

I was supposed to die.

I dashed back to the cinema and asked for the director of the movie.

"Below Average?"

"Yes..."

"Ah, that piece-of-crap movie? Do you actually like that sh!t? Well, for someone who dresses like that, I really shouldn't b surprised," the gum-chewing ticket retailer said scornfully.

"I will punch right through that glass and carve my name on your forehead with the shards if you f*ck with me, lady. Answer the damn question." I said emptily.

She froze, then apologized.

"It was a Friday night special - we choose the best movie from an up-and-coming anonymous director and post. Below Average was sent to us about a month ago, and we thought it was just the kinda thing that suited the current climate - pandemic and all. Might I ask who you are, so I can message the director and tell them who's asking?"

"Michael Kane..."

"You're joking right?"

"I'm serious. It's Michael Kane. What happened?"

She rummaged under the drawer.

"Well, this came in the mail alongside the disk drive that contained the movie. It was for you. The nutjob who sent it said they knew you'd come to pick it, even though I didn't think it was possible. He says the safebox number is your day of birth and the month."

I collected the key, a wave of emotions flooding my mind. What the hell was going on? Who sent it? How did he or she know I would come?

I arrived at the Safe Deposit office and opened the box, unsure of what to find. There was a box, well wrapped and containing a light object. And a letter. Taking a deep breath, I opened the letter tentatively.

Dear Michael,

I want you to promise you won't hate me after reading this.

I'm psychic ;)

I didn't tell you because I didn't want you worried about your future and asking me stuff all the time. That's how I knew to save you from committing suicide. You were too precious o me so I couldn't allow you t die.

I wish things could have ended differently, for us, for our kid. But I knew the path you were headed for if we still remained alive, and I had to make a difficult choice. There was no use saving you from suicide if I would watch you go on to that fate. So even though I knew there was going to be an explosion that day, I did nothing to save myself.

I kissed you goodbye that morning, but I knew I'd always be with you. I knew about the lottery, and I foresaw your death at the hands of the salesman even when I gave up my own life. That's why I had to send in that movie. I already knew all possible outcomes from the start, and this was the ultimate sacrifice required.

The parcel contains a 36,000-volt electric taser. By the time you're done here and you reach your home, you'll find him crawling through the window, Do what you need to do.

Remember that I will we will always love you.

Love, Nicole.

It was all for me.

Below Average me.

I didn't know whether to believe, but I sat on the ground, crying and hitting my head on the wall. The receptionist came to my aid and remembering that it was a woman who came to deposit the letter, comforted me.

She must have seen things like this before - maybe she thought I was reading the final letter of a wife who committed suicide or something.

Thirty minutes later I picked myself up, unwrapped the taser, and drove to my house. Nicole's final legacy must be preserved - her final act would not be in vain.

******

@Leo_kitti, @Hanzell must be that ninja cutting onions, because I definitely cried a little.