Original fic: We Expected Better from the Wolf Man

[terajk]

Title: We Expected Better from the Wolf Man
Fandom: Original
Rating: PG
Verse: Res animabvertunt
Setting: The 1940s
Characters: Charles, Trixie
Content notes: Disturbing imagery.
Word count: 557
Summary: In which the not-really Antichrist and his not-actually land-beast are not at all impressed with Of Mice and Men. Also, the morality brigade doesn't understand Latin.
Note: What? You don't remember the amusement park in Dante's Inferno?
 

They'd seen this movie four times. Today.

Under normal circumstances, they wouldn't have watched it once, Lon Chaney, Jr. or no. But, as always, they were here for the B-movie—and not just any B-movie, mind you. Dante's Inferno was the film that had captured (“strangled," his mother would say) their imaginations as children, made them determined to grow up and run a deadly amusement park. Which they had done, in a manner of speaking.

When Charles had told everyone that he and Trixie were skipping rehearsals and going to the picture show for the day, Jack had said, “Are you kidding me?” because he was awfully sensitive for the guy who played the axe-murderer. “We do a show tonight! You haven't told us where to put the sheep intestines!”

“What's to tell? They're sheep intestines. Put them wherever you want.”

“I would, except I'm not the director so it is not my job.”

“If splattering children with corn syrup and Kool-Aid is a job,” Charles had told him, “then we aren't doing it right.”

He would've invited the others to go with them, but they'd all made their feelings on Dante's Inferno quite clear. “I bet the A-movie has Ronald Reagan in it,” Amy'd said as they'd left.

Ronald Reagan would probably be an improvement, Charles realized now. Or maybe he wouldn't, since the Wolf Man himself couldn't fix this. Even worse, Trixie said it was a book.

Although this particular A-movie was practically ten years old, the theater was full of people—regular people, Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh people, achingly delicate bastards who'd probably complain to the management that he was with a Negro, or whine if he fidgeted or scratched himself. To keep them happy, he'd brought extra cigarettes.

The extra cigarettes were not helping.

“This Steinbeck fellow,” said Charles, too-loudly on purpose, “does he get called the Pied Piper of Death, too?”

“He got the Pulitzer Prize,” said Trixie, also too loudly. “And this was nominated for, oh, three Oscars.”

“This? As in...this?” He took a drag. “For what? Fake handicapped people?”

“Who get killed in the end.”

The Clark Gables and Vivien Leighs were muttering and leaving in droves, now. Playing with regular people was fun.

When most of them were gone, he said, “We kill off fake not-handicapped people all the time. All I get is called the Antichrist.”

“Well, we did call ourselves the Tenth Plague,” said Trixie.

“Which was your idea.”

“Yes. And when have the morality crusaders ever given me credit for my ideas?”

“True.” The morality crusaders didn't even give Trixie credit for her...Trixieness. They thought that all the girls who took wrong turns in their own houses and didn't see the guy with the axe right in front of them somehow involved his condition. Because itching means you think women are stupid, apparently, even though he wasn't the one who called what they did Stupid Girl Plays. (“They don't understand Latin or sarcasm,” Trixie had said).

When the Oscar shot came—finally, literally—they both sunk lower in their seats. Even though they'd seen it four times today.