Tape begins.
00:00:04
Close up of male face. Positively identified as Ray Nolan, videographer for the Coast City Weekly Informant, a tabloid newspaper. He is inspecting the camera, and cleaning a smudge off the lens.
Camera perspective moves, now showing a dirty alley between two old brick buildings, likely somewhere in the Black Hook region of Coast City. Exact location can not be determined at this time.
A figure further down turns back to camera, and asks if the camera is working. He stumbles on a pile of discarded bottles.
Second man has been identified as Dan Kirkwood, report for Weekly Informant.
Kirkwood is examining pages in a personal notebook. He looks around nervously.
00:01:12
Kirkwood: Ray?
Nolan: What is it now?
Kirkwood: Did you happen to bring your gun along? Please tell me that you brought it with you. Nothing would make me happier than to hear you say this.
Camera movment, camera is placed on floor of alley.
Kirkwood: Have I mentioned lately that you're one of my favorite people in the whole wide world?
Nolan: Then why'd you forget my birthday last month?
Kirkwood: Your status was only recently upgraded.
Nolan: I'm so touched.
Camera picked up off floor of alley, placed again on Nolan's shoulder.
Both men proceed further into Black Hook backstreets area, passing under elevated rail line, and into abandoned parking lot that has bencome a homeless encampment.
Several disheveled figures can be seen in the distance, some standing around a barrel fire. Some look towards camera briefly, but none approach.
Several minutes pass.
Nolan: So where's your snitch?
Kirkwood: Don't use that word around him, all right? He prefers 'information broker'.
Nolan: You're kidding, right?
Kirkwood: Yes, I'm famous with attorneys all over this country for my whimsical wit -what the hell do you think?
Nolan: Fine. Where's your 'information broker'?
Kirkwood: (checks watch) Should be here any minute.
Several minutes pass in silence.
00:09:01 - Kirkwood pinches the bridge of his nose.
Nolan: You getting another one of your headaches?
Kirkwood: Yeah, but I'm not going to take anything for it till we're back at the hotel.
Nolan: You sure? I've seen what you get like when one of those things hits.
Kirkwood: I'm sure.
00:12:22 - A short, unshaven man in a fedora and tattered trench coat cames around one of the corners near the back of the alley, and approaches camera.
Person remains unidentified, but is referred to later in tape as "Chaney".
Chaney: Were you followed?
Kirkwood: (sarcasm) Yes, a battalion of Khmer Rouge rebels have been chasing us since a disatrous poetry slam in Phnom Penh. Time is of the essence.
Chaney: (huffs) You bring the money?
Kirkwood: Good to see you too, Chaney.
Kirkwood hands "Chaney" one or more USD bills. Image is not sharp enough to determine how much exactly. Enhancement may reveal more, but the amount is likely not important.
00:13:51
Chaney: (jerks thumb in direction of camera) Who's the gorilla?
Kirkwood: Horatio Hornblower, my massage therapist and psychic advisor.
Chaney: Looks to me like he couldn't find his own butt with both hands.
Nolan: Charming.
Kirkwood: Two things. One, please stop talking in
film noir cliches before you give me a brain hemorage. Two, where's the woman you told me about?
Chaney: Back there. (nods further down alley, toward homeless encampment)
Camera motion. We see Nolan's hand appear and grab the back of Chaney's coat.
Nolan: Hang on there, Deep Throat.
Kirkwood: You need to make the introduction.
Chaney: No way, you hear me? No way! That bitch gives me the willies. She gives
everybody the willies lately.
Kirkwood: Be that as it may, you will point her out to us or I'll have Horatio here tie knots in your spine.
Chaney: (jerks loose from Nolans grip) Fine. Come on.
The three head toward the back of the alley. camera shows three places along their route where this alley empties into others - likely part of the maze of backstreets in Black Hook that stretches along the back of the buildings in the area. A light drizzle begins to fall. There is a distant flash of lightning.
00:17:01 - camera approches a group of homeless standing around a barrel.
Chaney: That's her. You sure you wanna do this? I'm telling you, she'd bad hurt on two legs.
Camera aims at where Chaney pointed, and reveals a thin, wasted-looking young womandrssed in the tattered remains of a wedding dress. She has bruises on her face, dark circles under her eyes, and a wild head of thick red hair.
Chaney: She's called Long Red.
Kirkwood: You could have just said that. We probably could have figured it out.
Nolan: She doesn't look dangerous to me.
Chaney: Tell that to these folks. The last couple of people she hooked up with have just (snaps fingers) disappeared.
Kirkwood: You told her we were coming, right?
Chaney: Of course. You remembered to bring the... uh... (trails off)
Kirkwood reaches into a coat pocket and produces a small plastic bag filled with white-ish crystals.
Chaney: Ok. I'm gone. And don't come after me later and say I didn't warn you.
Cut in recording. Resumes at 00:20:01.
Kirkwood: Hello, Miss. I'm Dan Kirkwood from the
National Informant. Chaney said the he told you we were-
Long Red: Not here. I need you guys to... see what it wrote on the wall.
Kirkwood: It?
Long Red: (stammering) Didn't Chaney tell you?
Kirkwood: We were told that you've had contact with some sort of creatures that's been living in these alleyways.
Long Red: (shaking head) Nu uh. Not a creature, not any kind of monster.
A god.
Kirkwood: How do you know this?
Long Red: Cause it looks different to everyone that sees it.
Kirkwood: I don't understand.
Long Red: You can't unless you see it for yourself. It becomes your secret bliss.
Kirkwood: What's your 'secret bliss'?
Long Red: (looks a feet, silent a moment) I can't remember any more. But I think it will tell me, if it finds me worthy.
"Long Red" gestrues to a nearby wall. Camera moves to highlight what she has indicated, and the camera light is turned on. The words:
SOMEONE COME
are written in geometrically perfect lettering on the nearby brick. Material used to write these letters cannot be determined from tape.
Kirkwood: And you say this...
god... wrote these words?
LR: Yeah. (hugs her own shoulders and begins to shiver.) Did you, uh... bring it?
Camera shows Kirkwood's face. He grimaces, and produces the plastic bag. Closer inspection of visual suggests this baggy likely contains crystal meth. He holds the bag out, and Long Red takes it from him, putting it in her pocket.
Kirkwood: Would you tell us what kind of contact you've had with this... god?
LR: He takes me apart.
Kirkwood: Excuse me?
LR: He takes me apart. He cuts me open and takes out my parts and does stuff to em, then he puts me back together again.
Kirkwood: Could you explain that again is a bit more detail?
Long Red opens her dress where it had been ripped and stapled back together. She shows a long, pink scar from the center of the clavical to her navel. Using 3d overlay rendering analysis of the frames where the scar is visible, we have been able to ascertain that the scar is completely uniform in height, and forms a perfect straight line.
Medical experts estimate the scar is very recently healed - within the last few weeks - and are surprised at the 'evenness' of the healing.
LR: Like I said, he opens me up.
Long Red steps forward and runs a finger down Kirkwood's chest, from neck to navel.
LR: Like that. It hurts like hell. All he does is touch me with his finger and it's like someone's sticking a blade in me. He runs his finger down and peels me open. I don't bleed much because it does something that burns me real bad, ya know?
Kirkwood: Cauterization?
LR: Yeah, I guess. Makes me stink like burnt meat when he does it.
Kirkwood: Why don't you scream? Or run away?
LR: Oh, I scream. But no one ever comes to help. I can't run away, though. We he sees you, his eyes, they do something to your body, ya know? Turn you muscles to ice so you can't move - just have to stand there and let him do what he wants. And besides, if I run away, how will I remember my bliss when he chooses to show me?
Kirkwood looks towards camera / Nolan.
K: What does he do once he's taken you apart?
LR: He fixes me.
K: Fixes you?
LR: At first it was my stomach, right? I'd been pukin' blood for a couple of days before I seen him the first time. I was back here, trying to find a place to lay down and wait for the pain to go away, and all of a sudden it - he - was just there, you know? Just standin' over me. He reached down and cut me open then he just pulled my stomach out. I was laying there thinking I was gonna die but I wasn't bleeding very much. and it... he held my stomach up to his face and looked at it. I could see where teh hole was, I could see the blood dripping out and pieces of food and stuff.
LR: He just held his hand over the hole for a second and everything sorta glowed, right? then he pulls his hand away and mny stomach's good as new.
K: This was the first time?
LR: (nods)Uh huh. After that, it was like I
needed for him to fix me. After a while, he was takin' everything from inside me. He would fix, like, my lungs, and other parts, only instead of putting everything back inside me right away, he'd lay my parts on the ground and stare at them. Like he was trying to memorize the way everything was put together inside me.
K: Did you ever.... did you ever bring anyone else to meet this god? People who maybe needed to be fixed?
LR: (looks away) Yeah. There was Mousey. He was teh last person I brung to him. He had some problem with his heart. The god took out Mousey's heart and fixed it, then put it back inside and left. But Mousey, he turns to me and says, "I ain't never gonna go through that again! I can't stand the pain!" But he was back here just like clockwork the next night, said he needed to be fixed again. But I could see in his eyes that he didn't
want to be fixed, didn't want to need it.
He don't fix everybody, though. Some he just kills. Like Jimmy. Jimmy was drunk when I brung him to him, and he laughed in his face and spit on him.
K: What did it do?
LR: It... he just reached inside and pulled all of Jimmy's guts out. Jimmy had just enough time to look down at all his insides slopped over the ground and scream, then he dropped dead.
K: What happened to Jimmy's body?
LR: The thing sopped it up like a sponge. he does that sometimes, when he runs into someone he don't like or thinks ain't deserving of his help. He just opens them up, lets their insides drop out, then soaks up the mess.
K: Is that what happened to Mousey the second time?
LR: No. He fixed Mousey's eyes that night. (shudders)
LR: I never heard nobody scream the way Mousey did. But no one came to help. After ge left us alone that night, Mousey found a bottle of drain cleaner and drank it down. All his guts bubbgled up through his mouth, and he died. And Mousey, he wasn't the first person who did that. I brung maybe three, four people to him, and all of them ended up killing themselves. It's horrible. It feels horrible and it hurts and you're so damn
scared all the time... (begins to cry)
Kirkwood: Why haven't you tried to kill yourself?
LR: I have. (wipes at tears) I tried everything I could think of, but nothing works.
Long Red pulls back the sleeve of her dress, revealing track marks from intervenous drug use, as well as fresh deep, vertical scars.
LR: I wish I could die. I don't wanna need to be opened up like this anymore.
Kirkwood: Why do you think you din't die?
LR: Because I was the first, ya know? I think it did something to me, it... he... I dunno... he fixed it so that I can't die. If I open my veins, the wounds they (snaps fingers) seal right back up. If I take any pills, I throw em back up right away. I even threw myself in front of a car. It hit me real hard and broke a bunch of my bones, but before the ambulance could get there my guts and bones... they fixed themselves. God it hurt almost as bad as opening me up does. I keep hoping that maybe... I keep hoping that maybe somebody will kill me. Maybe they can do what I can't.
LR: But the worst thing is the things I see when he's taking me apart.
Kirkwood: What do you see?
LR: I think it's the way he talked to people. He puts these pictures in their heads. I think maybe he shows me the things he's seen, his memories and stuff.
LR: (shakes her head) I've never seen anything like what he shows me. the pictures, they're like... like... you know how they say that if you're drowning, your whole life flashes before your eyes?
Kirkwood: I've heard that, yes.
LR: That's what the pictures are like. They're the end of everything.
Kirkwood scribbles a few notes. Long Red hands him back the methampheatamine.
LR: Here. I don't want em. Wait, I
do want em, want em real bad, but maybe if I do't use em, I'll get so sick that he can't keep me from dying.
Kirkwood takes the rocks back. He is no longer making eye contact with LR when he speaks.
Kirkwood: Thank you for your time, miss. I reall appreciate your-
LR: You don't believe me, do you?
Kirkwood: That doesn't matter. Our job-
LR: Don't you even want to see him?
Conversation pauses. Kirkwood looks to camera/Nolan.
Kirkwood: Ok. Take us to see him.
LR: Don't have to.
Kirkwood: How's that, again?
00:27:15 Long Red points towards and past the camera, behind Kirkwood and Nolan. Camera whirls 180 degrees.
Unknown Entity is between 8'2" and 8'5", based on measurements from still frames. It's 'skin' is as clear as glass. No organs are visible. Torso is filled with a roiling, brownish plasma substance. Occasionally bits of human bone and organ can be seen floating within.
Head is roughly diamond shaped, with a small forehead that widens at the 'jaw' before tapering back off at the neck. It appears to have two eyes, but they are difficult to see on account of the bright blueish purple glowing orb where it's brain would be. It has no chin. It opens its mouth to reveal no teeth, only a black pit. Small twinkles of light, resembling stars, can be seen in the mouth.
LR: (teeth chattering off screen) Oh god... p-p-please s-s-show me my b-b-bliss thi- this...
00:27:23Entity approaches the group rapidly. It moves past Kirkwood and Nolan, and grabs Long Red. It begins to trace a line down her sternum with its finger. Long Red's dress, flesh, and bones peel away from its glowing fingertip. Smoke curls away from the wounded area.
Long Red moves as if screaming, but no sound comes from her.
She looks towards Nolan. She mouthes the words "Help me". Camera is placed on the floor. We see a boot, Nolan's, appear in frame. A gunshot is heard - based on muzzle flash in frame, we can determine Nolan is holding the weapon. We see the bullet hit the Entity, and lodge into it's flank, like a shot fired into ballistics gel.
Nolan: Jesus Christ!
00:27:45 Nolan steps forward, fires three more times. All three rounds hit the Entity's head, with the same effect as before. Entity turns its head, and its free hand moves incredibly fast, grabbing Nolan by the head.
Nolan: (screaming)
Kirkwood runs over the Nolan, who is being held several feet in the air. He grabs Nolan's feet, and tries to pull him down, away from Entity.
A number of people from the camp appear, but do not approach out of fear.
Entity's mouth opens wider than facial structure would have suggested possible, and it screams.
People in frame put their hands over the ears. Vagrants begin to pick up bottles, boards, pipes. Nolan drops his gun. Kirkwood picks it up, falling to his hands and knees.
Unknown Man A: Get it!
Unkown Woman: Fuck it up!
Unknown Man B: Kill it!
Crowd of vagrants surges forward, attackign Entity. Where they hit it with a weapon, the weapon - and the person holding it, is sucked inside the Entity - seeming to disolve into the brownish plasmic mass at its core. Entity's hand is still sawing open Long Red.
Crowd: (unitelligable screams)
00:28:13 - Kirkwood, on his back, aims Nolan's gun at creature... then changes targets and shoots Long Red in the head. Entity yanks its hand away from Long Red in shock. Glowing "eye" turns red, and it moves towards Kirkwood. Entity's movement is unimpeded by several hundred - perhaps well over a thousand - pounds of people sticking off of it as they are absorbed. Bones are heard breaking as it drags along the individuals stuck to it. It picks up speed. Kirkwood gets to his feet, and runs out of frame. Entity follows, howling.
00:29:23 - Howling, distant, followed by 5 rapid gunshots.
00:29:54 - More howling, even more distant.
00:30:00 - Tape ends.
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