FANZINE

1. I don’t know how else to do this so I am just going to tell it how I remember it and hope that something comes of it.

2. This opens with a light. And also darkness.

3. There’s a guy on a motorcycle. He pulls up next to a van. He walks past the van, into a ditch, and pulls a woman’s body from it. He puts her in the van.

4. Scarlett Johansson is naked in a white room filled with light. She walks up to the woman, and removes her clothes, which she then puts on.

5. Scarlett Johansson in the mall. Scarlett Johansson at the makeup counter. People in the mall sitting in chairs while other people show them ways to make their faces appear as if they were a different face altogether, with different goals, and different promises, and a purpose you could only guess at if you were the sort of person who thought it was appropriate to guess at anything at all.

6. Scarlett Johansson in a fur coat and choppy black hair in the van from earlier driving around Scotland. She asks a man for directions. She is lost. She needs to find the M8. He tries to tell her where to go. I don’t remember if he gets in the van. She drives around. She asks men for directions. She asks if they are alone. If they have any friends. If they have a girlfriend. If they have anywhere to go. We see her telling a man she has a place. It’s nearby. She says it’s very close. We follow her in. And the sounds here. I cannot even. But the sounds. And she walks. And there is that body that everyone talks about, and it is wrapped in clothes. And she walks forward. Always forward. Into a black room. And all you can see is the back of her. And she takes off her fur jacket. And she takes off her red scoop-neck shirt. And she takes off the lacey silk pink shirt under her shirt. And she peels off her jeans. And the guy is just tugging everything off like he can’t get naked fast enough. And she turns around, in a black bra and panties, and walks backwards, locking eyes with him, and as he reaches for her, he begins to sink down into the floor, deeper with each step, and then he is gone.

7. And again. And again. And she asks him Where is the post office and Do you have anywhere to be and he says Yes and there she is again and she says I can’t find the highway I am lost and he says Scottish Jibberish and she says Oh that’s sweet Do you have anywhere to be Are you alone and he says Yes and No and there she is again. There she is again. The camera is on her face in the car. It is on her face looking out the window. It is on her as she sees a man walking alone on a street and she rolls down her window as she sees him, she reaches across to the passenger side and uses those old hand lever winder rollers to roll down the window, and it jerks a bit at first, but she gets it down, and she pulls up beside him and he is busy. And again. And again.

8. Scarlett Johansson is in the van and the van is just sitting there because that is what you do at a red light when a car pulls up beside her and there is a man, or there are several men, and one of them is leaning out the window, and he is shouting at her. It is all very exciting as the car pulls away with him out the window smiling and laughing and yelling his intentions at her.

9. Scarlett Johansson pulls into a parking lot. Scarlett Johansson sees a man going into a building and follows that man when all of a sudden Scarlett Johansson is intercepted by what appears to be a bachelorette party and then Scarlett Johansson is what is known as In The Club. In the club there are many men and they are dancing but this is not what she wants. She leaves. She runs. She runs down one stair and past another and through one door and out another and there she is, downstairs, in a bar. There is the guy. He is the guy from earlier! In the car! Hanging out the window with his intentions laid bare! They talk. She tells him She has a place nearby. And she drives him there. And she walks in the door. And you can see his eyes on the door like what the fuck is this shit and then you can see his eyes on her ass like what the fuck is this shit and his eyes follow her ass and his legs follow her eyes and she and her ass with the legs attached to it, they walk. And she walks. And there is that body that everyone talks about, and it is wrapped in clothes. And she walks forward. Always forward. Into a black room. And all you can see is the back of her. And she takes off her fur jacket. And she takes off her red scoop-neck shirt. And she takes off the lacey silk pink shirt under her shirt. And she peels off her jeans. And the guy is just tugging everything off like he can’t get naked fast enough, and as he reaches for her, he begins to sink down into the floor, deeper with each step, and then he is gone.

10. And then the camera drops down under with him and we see her walk away. And we see him, skinny and naked, and completely confused. Across from him is a body, bloated with rot. Or what may be rot. It is bloated, the body. It is across from him. He drifts a bit towards it like a body in a space it is unaccustomed to. And he touches the hand of the body across from him. And we hear a SNAP or a BANG or something VERY VERY LOUD and everything inside the body is sucked out of it, imploded and gone, and there is just the skin, floating there, and the skinny guy’s eyes go wide with what we could call terror.

11. She drives into a crowd. It is a European Soccer match that they call football or whatever. There are crowds everywhere. She drives to a beach. She sees a man there in the water. Is this a good place to surf she asks. I don’t surf he says in his wet suit. She says You’re not from around here. He says I am from the Czech Republic. She says What are you doing out here. He says something and then we see a family on the beach, and there is a dog in the water, and a woman is running into the water. She is running to get her dog. And then a man, who was with her on the beach, he runs to get her. The dog is definitely dead. There are waves and patterns in the water. It is rough going. The man from the Czech Republic dives in. The woman is gone. She’s dead because she was worried about her dog. The man from the Czech Republic drags the other man back to shore, so he can live. On the beach is the baby of the two people and the baby is screaming. The man from the Czech Republic is face down in the sand as the man who is probably the father of that baby leaves his screaming baby on the beach to go after the woman who is probably the mother of that baby, and Scarlett Johansson goes up to the man from the Czech Republic, and she picks up a rock, and she bashes his head in. Then she drags his body back to the van past the baby who is still screaming.

12. Later the man on the motorcycle comes down to the beach, later, at night. The baby is still there. The baby is still screaming.

13. And again. And again. And she asks him Where is the post office and Do you have anywhere to be and he says Yes and there she is again and she says I can’t find the highway I am lost and there is a boy across from her, out her window. He is just standing there. And then there are 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 of them, with bats, mobbing her van, and shaking it, and hitting at it, and her eyes make shapes we haven’t seen them make yet, and she drives off.

14. And again. And she says Hello. She says I am lost. He says I am going to Tesco’s. He lives alone. He is just going to Tesco’s. Can I give you a lift asks Scarlett Johansson and Yes ok. And they drive. And she says Hello. And he says Hello. And he is wearing a black hoodie. And his face looks like what is called neurofibromatosis. And she says You have nice hands. And he says Thanks. And she says They are very handsome hands. And he says nothing. And she says Do you have a girlfriend? And he says No. And she says Have you ever had a girlfriend? And he says No. And she says Don’t you ever think about it? And he says What and she says Being with a woman. And she takes his hand, and she brushes it against her face. She says was that nice? He says yes. And I have never gotten hard at someone touching someone’s face before and I don’t care what kind of admission this is, but when she says Do you want to do that again it is like a victory. And he says Yes. And she tells him she has a place nearby. And she drives him there. And she walks in the door. And you can see his eyes on the door like what the fuck is this shit and then you can see his eyes on her ass like what the fuck is this shit and his eyes follow her ass and his legs follow her eyes and she and her ass with the legs attached to it, they walk. And she walks. And there is that body that everyone talks about, and it is wrapped in clothes. And she walks forward. Always forward. Into a black room. And all you can see is the back of her. And she takes off her fur jacket. And she takes off her red scoop-neck shirt. And she takes off the lacey silk pink shirt under her shirt. And she peels off her jeans. And the guy is taking his clothes off. First with great skepticism. Like he can’t believe this. But by the time she has her shirts of he is stripping faster and faster. He gets caught at some point. The humanness of this is overwhelming, of these moments, these gestures, the ways in which each person attempts to remove things from themselves, to get closer to this thing, this other. And she turns around. And she walks backwards. And he isn’t sinking yet. He is walking towards her, and starts to reach out, and she is staring right at him, and then down he goes.

15. Then he is by the ditch from the beginning. He is naked. He is running through the field towards some idea of home.

16. The man on the motorcycle is on his motorcycle. He walks towards a house. Out the yard comes the man with the face and its shapes. The man on the motorcycle hits him over the head, breaks the window of a car, pops the trunk, dumps the body in the trunk, makes very steady and purposeful eye contact with the woman in the window watching it all, and drives the fuck off.

17. Scarlett Johansson looks startled. She is running. She is on a bus, on a train. She orders a slice of cake. She sits down to eat it. She moves her mouth and teeth around it and works a bite down her throat.

18. The she spits it up, gagging. People stare or they don’t. She leaves. In a hurry. She walks past a man waiting for the bus. She left her jacket with the bite of cake. The man follows her onto the bus. The bus driver asks her all sorts of questions. The man, the quiet man, asks her if she is alright. The bus driver eyes him, warily, through his mirrors.

19. The man seems ok. He takes her shopping. He buys some food. He cooks them dinner. He does the dishes. His trembling hands bring her a cup of tea, and he says goodnight, and closes the door.

20. She stands in front of the space heater, naked. She looks at herself in the mirror, naked. She takes her hands and moves them across her body as though she is reminding herself that this is the skin she is inside of.

21. Have you ever done this? Have you ever had a moment where you realize we are all just meet and blood wrapped in skin propped up by bones? Have you ever wondered where any of this comes from? Of the feeling of skin? Of what touch really feels like? We are at times all aliens in our own bodies. I can’t think of another way to say this right now, but it feels, to me, incredibly real.

22. She and the quiet man on a hike. She and the quiet man in a castle, smiling, stealing a kiss. She and the quiet man in bed. His dick out and in his hand, like he needs to aim it, like he wants to make sure it gets where it is going. His eyes are on hers and asking her eyes if this is really real, if this is ok, if this is yes, and she pulls him to her, and they go at it, awkwardly, and we realize we have no idea if she has ever done anything like this before. It has been her walking. Just walking with her legs that are connected to her ass which moves in ways that inspire men to sink into a black pit that sucks from them everything there is and leavies only their sack of skin, floating.

23. And something is wrong. Her face says No and Stop and Hold the fuck on here bro, and she pushes him away. She goes to the edge of the bed, and knocks the cover off a lamp, and holds the bulb to her vagina. She looks at it like What the fuck is this. She drops the lamp. She looks away.

24. The man on the motorcycle with three other men on three other motorcycles, riding.

25. She is running. She is in the woods. She is walking in the woods that look like the woods from earlier. There is a man like a logger. These woods are great he says. They are so quiet! They are just great for being alone, and quiet. She says Yes and goes away from him. She finds a shelter. She lays down. We see the man on the motorcycle on a road. We see her eyes closing and lights and darkness opening and closing on each other. We see a hand grab at her vagina with serious intentions and her eyes open and her eyes are screaming and she knocks the hand away and runs and runs and runs and runs and runs and she is fucking terrified. She has been in this body and she does not actually know what it is for. Nobody told her these things. She has walked around in this body and with it, because of it, she has done whatever it was that her job was. And something happened. And here she is, with this body, and because of it some fucker is chasing her in the woods so he can stick his dick in or around her because she has a vagina, and he is going to fuck that vagina, because I guess that is what happens in this world. And she finds a truck. She gets in the truck and looks for the keys frantically trying to find the keys and get the fuck out of there. She honks the horn for help. It is the logger. From earlier, with the quiet woods, and the hand snatching with a desperate hunger at everything private she has. He chases her and he chases her and he knocks her down, face down, in the mud. He tears her clothes off, and his eyes go wide, and he runs. We see her back, and the skin he has peeled away, revealing only blackness. She peels off the rest, and her face, which she holds in her hands, while she blinks at it.

26. The logger douses her in kerosene and sets her on fire because of course he does because of course when you try to rape a woman while she’s asleep and she runs and you catch her and you try to rape her again and her skin peels off because she’s an alien, setting her on fire is the only reasonable thing a man could do to that body. She runs, burning, to the snow. The smoke from her body mingles with the clouds, and then that’s it. She’s gone.