SPOILER ALERT!
Rumors had been spreading like wildfire. “Manumission” was the talk of the town. It was to be a new art gallery, opening soon… Right on the same grounds that’d been the site of such horror…
The empty lot had stood vacant for 6 years. Despite the prime location, no one wanted to build there. After all, 98 people died, 124 injured, when an F4 tornado touched down, briefly, carving cruelty through that glass and steel-plated building, hollowing it out like a wrecking ball…
In addition to its infamous location, Manumission’s structure itself was a big reason for the hullabaloo. A six-story high building, it was half a block wide, shaped like a pyramid, and had thick, black-tinted windows that sparkled in the sunlight.
At night, the pyramid lit up, in riots of color, bursts of neon brighter than a Christmas tree, with “Manumission!” in bold red lettering, wildly circling the whole of the structure like a television news crawl gone haywire.
Everyone passing by the unusual structure gawked, was agog at its peculiar appearance. Pictures of the building soon went viral.
Soon after, “Anamnesis” leaflets were dropped via genital-shaped drones, plastered all over the city.
The leaflets featured collages of frames from the 1989 film Weekend at Bernie’s interspersed with comic book-style drawings of Kanye West. The drawings depicting Kanye, in a wedding dress, scaling the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai.
Each leaflet was sunburst gold and had blood red, Times New Roman font on its front center, promoting the gallery’s opening exhibit. The exhibit simply entitled: “ANAMNESIS: SPOILER ALERT”
The flyers were a bolt out of the blue and so striking and outlandish that they prompted scores of rumors, began long Craigslist and Reddit debates over just who was opening the gallery and exactly what “Manumission” and “Anamnesis” meant… Was it a publicity stunt? But for what? No one knew for sure… The proprietor behind the gallery was listed as “System Bandit Company” and had no website, no social media, and only a P.O. Box address listed in the Caymans.
On the Sunday afternoon “Manumission” opened, the air was soft and warm, and there was a long line curling around the block. The anticipation was palpable. A buzz was in the air, and the crowd’s murmurs and thrums began to blend into a uniform hum, its din growing louder than a hundred televisions. The hubbub soon drowning out the hiss of the nearby highway…
Many in the gathering crowd appeared nonchalant, while others were at the ready, with croaks of laughter, feral grins, and faces aimed at and away from screens. Then there were others in the line who weren’t even initially aware of what the hype was about. They just wanted to join the crowd. Those who happened by, joined the line spontaneously, were those seeming to take the most photos, video.
The crowd was diverse but skewed young, 20s, 30s, and most appeared hip, or appeared aspiring to be hip, or were those simply too hip to ever actually be hip… Many wore colorful hats and vintage clothing… A big bear of a man, a hipster, with a pox-scarred face, walked slowly, in long strides, alongside the line, live-streaming the scene…
One heavily made-up young girl, with a great cloud of purple hair, was by the pyramid’s entrance. The girl was pacing like a caged panther and was excitedly gesticulating and doing duckfaces as she snapped selfies of herself in front of the front of the line.
The air stirred, and the crowd suddenly hushed when a boom sounded from atop the dark pyramid: DUN DUN DUN… DUN DUN DUN… DUN DUN DAA DAA DAA DAAAAA! It cried out, sounding something between the 2001 theme and heavy metal guitars.
The colossal triangle’s front doors slid open, split apart from the pyramid’s bottom center, like the unveiling of stage curtains. Inside, the pyramid appeared pitch-black as the mouth of a cave. A faint mechanical buzz whirred from within.
Then came a cone of uneasy silence.
The curious crowd stood ensorcelled, unsure how to proceed. No one dared take the initiative to step in first.
A Black man, a rough sleeper, of about 60 years of age, ambled by, dragging his left foot. The man had a humpback, a weak chin, and his cheeks and forehead were scored by a series of deep crevasses, making his profile look like a wind-battered cliff. His worn army uniform was caked in dust and muck.
As the man limped along, he stopped in his tracks, then swiveled his wild-eyed gaze at the crowd, then at the opening in the pyramid’s face.
In a gravelly, high-pitched voice, the man mumbled something about “dancing ’til my toenails fall off.” Then his rheumy eyes bulged and twinkled and a playful smile broke over his chapped lips. Slowly, he limped toward the pyramid. His lame left leg pulling and scraping over the sidewalk. The man mumbling incoherently, pulling his leg like a sack of potatoes as he disappeared deep into the darkness.
A couple of seconds later came a shrill, wolf-like howl. Cautiously, the assembled onlookers crept inside, one by one, holding their glowing camera-phones in front of them, like tiny square shields.
Several others who entered let out a similar cry, an ear-piercing scream.
But none came out.
The hipster bear’s big blue eyes widened. His mouth curled downward. The blood drained from his face, and he turned pale as an early morning’s mist. Carefully, he assayed the pyramid’s ominous entrance. Then he drew in a protracted, deep breath and tiptoed inside, crinkling his nose as a bitter smell, like a medicine, greeted him, and a gust of ice-cold air slapped at his skin as he entered the antechamber’s dark doorway.
The interior of the pyramid looked like a museum in between exhibits. Lots of open spaces and chrome, marble, mirrors, and shiny surfaces everywhere.
On the hipster bear’s phone, which he carried on a selfie-stick, stark images emerged… Onlookers in disbelief… Mouths agape… Arms folded… Faces twisted in confusion… Some were kneeling, others weeping while watching sped-up, looped video…
Video footage of their own deaths.
The footage flickering as holograms, shooting up from the white marble floor like tunnels, water jets from a fountain.
Some were dying in car accidents, some were lying in hospital beds, one was aiming a handgun at his head… There were furious, grotesque figures, clawing at one another, in a spreading circle of red… A pot-bellied man in a grocery store, grimacing, clutching his chest… A woman in hair-curlers tripping over a cat and tumbling down a flight of stairs…
Above each hologram flashed pointillist, fiery red lettering:
#SPOILER ALERT! #SPOILER ALERT! #SPOILER ALERT!
