The Y-Box

Content warning: rape, homophobic language

He was too nervous to do it while other people were in the theater. Now that they're alone though, it's a different story. He keeps his eyes on the black mega-screen as he reaches over.

"Reese!" Natalia says.

"Wh-a-a-t?" Now he looks over. "It was your idea. C'mon. The theater's empty. We have like, five minutes and a hundred fucking trailers until the next movie."

The theater is dark. Reese's face is dark. All Natalia can see of it are the metal rivets in his nose and lips. They bite into the dark like stars, constellations mapping his invisible face. The piercings raise. She can tell he's smiling. Unseeing, she remembers his smile, and her decision that this smile was good enough to go the places she would go with him. She sinks deep into her chair. The cushions envelop her body. She's sinking deeper than her chair allows. She's going deep into herself.

Five minutes pass and the trailers don't come on.

"What was with that ticket guy?" Natalia murmurs.

Reese's fingers pause. He shakes his head and his piercings jitter in the dark. "I dunno. If he wants to dress like some Japanese anime queer at his day job, that's his fucking problem."

"What's that mask from, though? It didn't have anything on it. What character has a mask that's completely blank?"

"I dunno." Reese's tone is impatient. Tiny convulsions twitch his fingers. It's like he's charged with electricity. None of it transmits to Natalia. She's insulated inside herself. Her body is rubber. She is ground.

"Hey," Reese says.

Natalia turns her eyes from the black screen.

"What the fuck," he says.

"Sorry," Natalia says.

"Are you even paying attention?" His voice rises. He's upset. He's been working hard and he's been planning, scheming, for a while. He didn't do it all for nothing, Natalia knows.

"Sorry," Natalia says.

She doesn't want to speak anymore, so she takes his head and cups his cheek and molds her face into his lips. They taste like old nickels.

"God," he hisses. "I can't believe we're doing this."

Reese crams himself into Natalia's chair, and they begin to tussle with one another's clothes.

They are no longer paying any attention to the movie screen; Reese is focused on ascertaining the exchange with his own hands. He is counting the moments like folds of dollar bills. Natalia isn't focused on anything. She has sunk deep inside her impassive body. Behind them, the movie screen becomes a lively bright square. Pixels heat and change color into a myriad sandstorm. The sandstorm blurs and spins and rearranges, and then it begins to settle, leaving only a couple hundred sands trickling down an image. Then they too are a part of the uniform image.

The image depicted on the screen is a room with white floors, white walls, and a white ceiling. Even if it were not a two-dimensional image projected onto a flat screen, the room's white brightness would give it the illusion of depthlessness. It looks clean. Fluorescent light thoroughly sanitizes every surface. There is a white door at the back of the room. It opens. A man in a dark blue three-piece suit emerges. His frame is large. He also wears a white oval mask on his face. The mask is featureless. He walks until he is very close to the front of the room, where there is a movie screen instead of a wall. His mask nearly fills the screen. His head is tilted down slightly, as though he is observing the events unfolding on the outside. He raises a white-gloved hand and strokes his chin.

Outside, Reese's motions are deliberate. He takes Natalia and stores her as a collateral loan for his time and effort. The theater is lit by the white room. The man watches. After a couple of minutes, he turns and exits the room.

He returns, nudging the door open with one loafer. Both of his arms strain with a box. The box appears heavy even for such a big man. Dark blue fabric tautens at his massive shoulders. He drops the box in the middle of the room, and there is an audible thud. He kneels next to it and takes a switchblade from his pocket, then uses it to cut the tape from the top of the box. He peels excess tape with his gloved fingers and opens the flaps of the top. Again he struggles, removing a device that resembles a car battery. He rests it on the floor next to the box. There is an outlet on the left wall. The masked man uncoils a slender cord from the device. The cord is affixed to the device by two magnetic knobs on the side. He takes the cord and plugs it into the wall socket. The device now whirs and purrs like a modulated recording of a cat.

The man kneels beside the device. He takes one last look through his wall, into the theater outside. He puts a white paw over a button on the device. He presses it, hard.

The screen clicks black. Darkness rams down on the theater.

Natalia is jolted by a sudden thunderous force. Spastic lightning shakes her limbs. Blue sparks twirl and flail in her vision.

"Stop," she says.

"What?" Reese pants.

"Stop. Get off me."

"Nat--"

She shoves him.

"Nat--"

She kicks at him.

"What the fuck--?!"

She wrenches herself away, peels him from every part of her, and repossesses herself, regaining ownership of her body.

"I said stop."

"This was YOUR idea! Jesus Christ, at least wait'll I put it in before you change your mind!"

"No it wasn't."

"Yes it was! You said you'd do it! You said you'd fucking do it!"

"No I didn't."

"What?! Why not?"

Natalia pulls herself away and gets up from the chair. "There is no why," she tells him. "Sorry."

She leaves the theater. Reese sits in the chair. He stews in his own denial, and squints angrily when the lights go on at last.