Father and Daughter
at the Movies
Father and young daughter walk into a movie theater and sit down. The room wasn’t very crowded. Couples, mostly, and then a few others dabbled here and there. This film that everyone here was seeing won several prestigious awards in France or Italy, or some shit. It was the only film playing after five in the afternoon in this part of town.
The lights dim and the audience becomes silent. Somewhat silent. Previews, previews, previews… the same drag - dramatic, World War II movie, the “I’m still in love with him/her” movie, “female and/or minority empowerment movie with hip-hop feel” movie - you get it.
And then the feature presentation begins, and this is when the audience really gets quiet, you know. The young girl that came in with her dad starts coughing when the “A Production By so-and-so” comes on the screen. Everyone is cool and ignores it for the first 15 seconds because, right, they’re down to earth and have a more super-understanding of the universe than most other people who aren’t even going out to see this movie. But then the girl doesn’t stop coughing and then it starts to get on people’s nerves because the film is starting and there’s an empty street in an empty neighborhood now on the screen, and there’s someone talking but they can’t hear with the coughing, right. So the young skinny couples are looking back in the dark at the coughing girl, but they don’t say anything because they think that just by looking back it drops a huge hint to the girl and whatever is making her cough will fuck off and go to hell and they’ll have their silence. Only she doesn’t stop.
She manages to tell her dad that she thinks she’s coughing up blood. He says to her that maybe they should leave the theater, and they stand up to leave. But then the young woman sitting in front of them with the young skinny boyfriend turns around and says, “Yeah, you think?” He grabs the daughter’s arm and yanks her back into her seat. He states outloud that perhaps they should just stay and watch the movie, hmm? Yes, he thinks they will do just that. And the skinny woman’s eyes enlarge in anger, her lips smash together and make their way up to her nose, and she quickly turns back to the screen.
The girl’s coughing gets worse, and she falls, coughing on her knees on the cold theater floor. More couples look back. The dad yanks the girl by her arm back up into her seat so that the skinny woman in front of them can hear her better. Someone in the audience says outloud that they think she needs a doctor, but the dad ignores them and glares at the back of the skinny woman’s skinny, carrot-shaped, carrotfuck head. A couple gets up and leaves the theater. The girl starts to cry in between convulsions as her coughing gets progressively louder and violent. Another couple gets up and leaves. The daughter begs the dad to leave but he is concentrating on making the hole in the back of the carrots head bigger.
Another couple gets up and exits the theater.