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It was an unwritten rule that each club member had their own turn picking out a movie for ‘movie night.’
Even so, Pete would constantly be out voted when it came time for his movie choice. In terms of media interest, comic franchises always had a sci-fi flare, sci-fi was just space fantasy, and fantasy had a lot of tropes and values similar to every do-good superhero.
Horror was the outlier.
Sure there are horror sci-fi films, but Josh didn't have much interest in them, not more than the movies he'd bring. Oddly enough, the only club member who seemed the most interested was Bill, but he wasn't into hammer horror and didn't have a grasp on the deep psychological analysis of the collective unconscious within horror mythos.
Pete wouldn't take another shrug off, they were all gonna sit down and watch his movie no matter what! They all had to sit through Jerry's stupid two-hour animated Lord of the Rings movie, so no one better flake when Pete finally puts his foot down and demands they watch what he brought. Besides, Pete finally picked out a movie he knew everyone would have an interest in.
“Nobody wants to watch a snuff film, Pete.”
“Snuff film?! Who do you think I am, I can't get my hands on the real thing! Nah, I got that top tier grindhouse shit! Uncensored breasticles and closeups on the unsavory bits! I'm talkin’ full frontal female nudity!”
The gang's interest piqued at the words ‘full frontal female nudity.’
Bill adjusted the frames of his glasses to appear professional. “Synopsis?"
“Alright.” Pete set the VHS on the table, pushing it forward as if all bets were in. “Italian film. Reporter that's a total babe. She's investigatin’ a cult of hippie zombies. Bangs a dude any time she needs somethin’. Needs private insider information? BOOM, bangs ‘em! In trouble with her life on the line? BOOM, bangs ‘em! There's more schlop and tit shots in this than anything you guys ever seen.”
Josh and Jerry smiled excitedly at each other, but the final verdict was Bill’s. He feigned deep thought before swiping the tape. “You better not’ve oversold yourself, Pete!” Bill’s attention then divided amongst the three. “Alright gentleman! Let's get some snacks and watch this video!”
The group lept out of their seats like rabid gremlins ready to take apart an airplane engine.
The movie began like how you'd expect a typical 70s exploitative film: lots of exploitation. There were giddy giggles passed around with chip bags. Pete brought in some high quality garbage and they were eating it up.
Suddenly, a tonal shift made everyone but Pete fall silent. Okay, you'd expect some onscreen deaths and gore for this kind of movie, but there was something so much more disturbing going on.
Was that real? It looked real. Oh, that's a guy's stomach being ripped open… oh wow, a boob shot, but that's boobs on a undead hippie while she's tearing the entrails out of a random hiker.
“Pete… I don't really like where this movie’s going.” Jerry was the most uncomfortable, so he was the first to speak up.
“Shush! What are you, gay? It's gettin’ to the good part!” Pete smiled devilishly back at the television screen.
The three kept quiet and kept watching the movie. They didn't want to look like pussies who couldn't handle a little bit of… erm… human organ eating. But, Pete said it was getting to the good part, so maybe this was just a fluke.
However, the ‘good part’ never came.
Jerry covered his eyes by this point and Josh kept mumbling under his breath about how grossed out he was.
Bill stayed stoic, but the crease by his nose was getting deeper. “It is good stuff…” He mumbled as he continued his thought, shifting around the couch uncomfortably till his back rested against the arm of it. “... But it's a little much.” He noticed Pete suddenly looked away. Why'd he look away?
Bill glanced at the screen at that exact moment to see some guy being held up by his ankles get hacked from groin to throat. A collective gasp leapt out of Josh, Jerry, and Bill. Pete snickered at their reactions.
“Bill?” Jerry turned towards his comic comrade pleadingly, the little color he had left in his pale face completely drained. His arms stayed tightly fastened around himself, hugging his stomach like he was about to hurl. “Bill, can I use your bathroom?”
The bathroom in the basement was repurposed into another comic book storage room, so the only option was in the “Forbidden Zone”, aka, none of Bill's friends were allowed upstairs. But, Jerry did look like he was about to lose his lunch…
“Uh. Sure.”
Not a moment to lose, Jerry sprang off the couch and ran up the basement steps.
Bill watched him leave and looked forward to the TV again. Fuck it. Bill got up and ejected the tape.
Pete lunged forward to block him from taking the tape completely out.
“HEY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”
“No one likes your movie Pete, it sucks!’
“What do you mean?!” Pete looked around, he didn't even notice when Jerry left. “Where’d Jer go?!”
“Barfing his brains out.” Bill replied bluntly.
Pete snorted a laugh.
“No Pete, it's not funny!” Bill reached into the VCR player and shoved the tape back into Pete's hands. “You're a sick freak, you know that?”
Pete was used to being called out by the kids at school and even his own family, but he hated being called a ‘sick freak’ by his friends. Sure he had more macabre tastes, but he'd ham it up around the club. He was the secretary of horror! It's his brand! But now Pete was feeling that stomach churning deep pitted feeling he hated.
Embarrassment.
As that resentful feeling hit, he buried it with rising anger, snapping back at Bill, his arms instinctually shooting in the air to make himself bigger and more intimidating. “I’M THE SICK FREAK!?! ME?!” Pete dropped his arms back down to start animating his punctuations. “You're calling me the freak?! I guess since whatever you guys like, it isn't horror, so it's fine! It's a world of depravity for everyone else and your interests, but I can't watch the shit I bring without everyone complaining about it! It's not even real, it's special effects!”
Pete heaved before getting more points out. “I NEVER GET TO WATCH THE MOVIES I BRING! THEY WERENT ALL LIKE THIS, THEY WERE GOOD CLASSIC HORROR MOVIES, BUT NONE OF YOU WANTED TO FUCKING WATCH THEM! I PICKED THIS FOR YOU! IF YOU WEREN'T BABIES, IT WOULD'VE BEEN GREAT! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU BILL, FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU!!!!” This was something boiling deep inside of Pete for months, and he finally lost it. The weekends of self control spilling out as screams and profanities.
Bill didn't know what to say or what to do. His eyes flicked over at Josh on the couch, taking notice of how his hands were just frozen in place around a bag of chips, too afraid to move a muscle of make a crinkle sound.
His attention turned back to Pete. In just those few seconds Pete's face was bright red and threatening to burst several vessels. He reminded Bill of Cohaagen from Total Recall when his face fucking exploded from decompression. In any other situation it would've been hilarious, but Bill had to settle things down.
“It's not that big of a deal, Pete. We’ll watch some other crappy scary movie you bring that doesn't have weird graphic skin eating or crotch cleaving in it.”
Pete’s expression eased only enough to where he wasn't on the verge of explosion. He shoved this tape into his hoodie and left Bill’s house. He hated it, but his feelings were hurt. His stupid bullshit feelings were hurt by the dumbshit situation.
Bill pointed at the door Pete just slammed behind himself. “Josh, go after him!”
Josh, having taken the opportunity once Pete left, was already wrestling the bag of chips open. “ME?!”
“Yeah, he's pissed off at me and Jerry's upstairs probably passed out, go talk to Pete!”
“You go talk to Pete.” Josh mumbled.
Bill made his way upstairs. “Josh, if you want this club to stay together, you go talk to Pete!”
“Okay fine!” Josh scoffed and tossed the chips to the side. “I'll go after the horror dwarf...”
Before reaching the sidewalk, Josh saw Pete. He was standing in the bushes like a B movie slasher. It was kinda funny, but also scary.
“Go back inside, Josh.”
Wavering between getting chewed out by Pete or Bill, Josh chose to go back inside.
-
Knock. Knock.
“Jer, you in there?”
Bill waited for a response, and got a surprisingly upbeat one with a hint of exasperation.
“Yeah, I'm in here.”
He opened the door, scanning around till he spotted Jerry. He was sitting on the floor, tucked with his knees to his chest and eyes squinted shut.
“You, uh… okay?”
“Yeah. I'm just waiting till Pete’s movie is over…”
“It's been over, Jer.”
“Oh. Okay.” Jerry kept sitting there.
Bill didn't press him further, he just occasionally looked over his shoulder expecting to hear Pete’s yelling in the basement again.
The air of the room began to weigh heavily on Jerry. He leaned down and started picking at the grout between the tiles.
He overheard the whole ordeal. He felt bad about being sensitive and causing a huge fight downstairs. His expression shifted into an awkward smile as he tried to breathily laugh off the guilty feeling.
“... I’m sorry I pussied out… and that I made a scene… and that I pissed Pete off. That guy needs to take a chill pill or something, am I right?”
Jerry started to rub his neck and rock himself back and forth to soothe his anxiety somehow.
Bill turned to watch every mannerism and gesture his friend made. He didn't know why he got up to turn the movie off. It was like he was possessed by some unknown force to do it. No matter how gross or cringe a movie was, he'd sit down and watch it all. Opening credits to ending credits.
Maybe being club president made him feel extra protective over the weak. The weak being Jerry.
“It's whatever, Jer. Stop worrying about it.”
“F-A-B.” Jerry stood up in an instant, ready to put this all behind him. “So is Pete still here?”
A simple shrug was the only answer Jerry got, guess he'd know for sure when they headed back.
Bill peaked downstairs expectantly for any sign of his fourth member and glared daggers toward Josh just sitting lonesome on the couch. His sneakers pittered down the wooden steps like an angry drum solo towards the other secretary.
“I told you, you Gibbering Mouther, to talk to Pete!”
"Yeah, I talked to him!”
“And?!”
“And he’s probably still outside! You go talk to him, you're the one who took his movie out, not me.”
“Well. If you did take it out…” Jerry piped up.
“Who's side are you on?!” Bill looked back at Jerry, almost offended. He was so over this whole thing already. The club was supposed to just hang out and talk about their shared interests, not be solemn about some weird drama going on.
“You know what. Fine. I'm the only capable one here actually. The both of you couldn't even ask a store clerk when the next restock was without me having to ask for you!”
Josh and Jerry both looked away, it was true, but they weren't going to acknowledge it verbally.
“Whateverrrr.” Bill stomped towards the exit. Pete probably wasn't even there anyway, why would he be?
Unexpectedly, the first thing Bill saw when he opened that back door was Pete seated on the top step, facing him like a stone gargoyle.
It felt like a stand-off between the two. His juxtaposition to Jerry earlier was the first thing Bill took note of. Pete never broke eye contact, and his body was stiff as a board.
“Um… so… Pete. I have something to tell you.”
He waited for Bill to continue, his attention undivided.
“... Emergency meeting.”
-
The four of them rejoined in Bill’s basement, all seated in their respective foldable chairs. Pete really didn't want to be there, he was still embarrassed by the whole argument and getting emotional and making a complete ass out of himself in front everyone, but he'd seem like even more of a bitch if he went home.
“I’m sorry, Pete.”
Pete’s unibrow raised from his set scowl. Jerry apologized... You know, that’s why he liked that guy. Jerry always apologized, even if it didn't mean nothing and had no sincerity, Pete at the very least appreciated the gesture. “Ehhh. It's whatever, Jerry.”
“Alright men!" Bill called all for attention. "-I've been thinking. As club president and all, I think it's about time we set some actual rules for movie night.”
A short sigh escaped from each member. More rules. A necessary evil to keep the peace, but what were they, commies?!
“We're going to take actual turns, just like we do for meetings. Jerry goes, then Pete, then Josh, then I go. It's reverse member order. If someone isn't here because they're grounded, then it skips your turn and you gotta wait till it loops back around. Same thing goes if my VCR can't play your tapes. Alright? We're probably gonna pick out some shit movies the rest us don't feel like or wanna watch, but that's how the rules go!”
Josh raised his hand.
“Yes, Josh?”
“So Pete can bring something like Faces of Death VI, and we'd HAVE to watch it?”
“Good question, Josh, yeah.”
“YEAH?”
“You have glasses, just take them off whenever a scaaaary scene comes on.”
Jerry seconded Josh’s retort. “Some of us don't have glasses to take off, Bill.”
“You have eyelids. Close them.”
An argument broke out, but Bill stood by his decision. Overall, the peace was kept and the club survived another day. He doubted Pete would even bring in anything that shocking again. And if he did, well... Bill knew how to make his VCR jam if he really needed it to...