Hotline Bling Miami
“And I have a coupon for that…”
Christine rolls her eyes at the elderly woman as she begins to dig around in her oversized, floral purse. She runs the barcode for the Diet Coke over the scanner and waits. It’s not the coupon that she’s waiting for: it’s the talking.
“My grandson is coming to town today!” the woman begins, her hands searching the bag. She offers Christine a smile, which officially she returns, however, once the lady looks down it rapidly drops.
Christine watches her own joy begin to visibly drain in the reflection of her phone just before it flashes to life as it starts to ring.
“What is this? What is this? What is this?”
Craig grasps the side of his beard, tugging at the hairs as he paces back and forth in the parking lot of the CVS only three blocks from the arena. He stops, looking down at his hands.
“Are you seeing this?” he asks. A man unlocking a silver Subaru beside him eyes him warily.
“You’re poisoned! He poisoned you!!” The bumble bee yells angrily, firing a few rounds into the air to accentuate his point.
“Poisoned? What is going to happen to me?” Craig asks the man who immediately moves to the inside of his quickly locked car. Craig stumbles past, shrieks, then falls back dramatically onto the hood of the man’s car before dashing off-towards the entrance.
“It’s already happening, man!” The bee blasts just in front of him, hovering by the door. He stops, standing by what he thought was the door but is clearly a window.
“You’re freaking out!” he yells at his reflection.
“You’re freaking out!” it yells back.
Startled, he steps away, looking over the man who looks oddly familiar. The face in the reflection slowly begins to twist and undulate just as she recognizes it as his own. Craigs mouth opens to scream, but he can’t make a noise. He can only walk away, his hands stuck to the side of his face in mimicry of the Edvard Munch masterpiece.
“Gotta keep it together, gotta keep it together,” a voice in his head said and he in turn repeated out loud. A pair of middle aged men, a case of Coors under each arm, comes through the door beside him. He watches them pass before stealthily slipping into the store.
“ONE MARIJUANA CURE PLEASE?!” he screams, shoving past the line that has started to form behind an elderly woman elbow deep in her floral purse. He makes his way through the store, running back and forth along both the toothpaste and magazine aisles before finally finding the pharmacy. He repeats his order.
“Sir!”
“IT. IS. AN. EMERGENCY!” he announces, first to the pharmacist and then the store, his hands held in the air. “I HAVE BEEN POISONED!”
Suddenly weak, Craig drops down to his knees, breathing heavily.
“Sir!” she tries again. The People’s Champion turns, tears gushing down the glory that made up his chiseled cheeks. “There’s no cure for no marijuana.”
The emphasis she puts on the word marijuana is lost on him. He only hears the words: no cure.
“No cure…” he says, looking down once again at his hands. His hands! What happened to his hands! “WHAT HAPPENED TO MY HANDS?!”
Staggering from the floor, Craig shoves a thin man in a pin-striped suit into an Ensure display, stops just short of a biker much bigger than he - shaking his hand - then rushes to the door, catching his foot on the cane of an elderly woman with a floral purse sending him sprawling into the automatic door which opens with a squeal on his semi-smashed face.
“Are you okay?” She asks, adjusting the strap back onto her shoulder. Her glasses, which were usually placed precariously at the tip of her nose, now lay crumbled beneath the confused Cogan. “Jimmy? Little Jimmy is that you?”
“Jimmy?” Cogan asks, the swarm of bumble bees blasting off with both barrels around his head, “I’m Jimmy?”
He grabs hold of the metal detector that encompasses the entrance of the store and attempts to pull himself up using just his biceps, his eyes still locked on his hands. The structure, not designed for that type of shear torsion, tears from the floor and he stumbles back out into the parking lot and straight into the front of a 1967 Cherry Red Plymouth Barracuda. Wearily he repeats, this time with much more surety: “I’m Jimmy.”
“Jimmy!” the woman shrieks, her three-step shuffle scurrying his way. With the help of her cane and the little energy he had left, Cogan rises once more.
“It’s gram gram!” she says, holding her arms open wide for a hug. Craig, suddenly unsure of his even his own name, leans in and embraces the elderly woman. “How did you know I was at the CVS?”
In response, the People’s Champion vomits on the pavement. With a concerned look on her face, she pats him on the back, shuffling to the passenger door of the small two door Plymouth, pulling it open. After helping him in, she shuffles around to the driver’s seat. For a moment, he wasn’t sure if she could even start the car, but after gingerly setting the cane aside and settling the rear view into place the beast roared to life. She reaches into the overhead, removing an oversized pair of aviators, dropping them onto her face.
“Ready to ride?” she asks, but before he can respond, she rams the stick into reverse and slams her orthopedic into the accelerator, the car whipping across the lot and three lanes of traffic. The squeal of tires and blare of horns are quickly left in the distance as the car turns into gear and gears away.
Craig, both in the beginning stages of a concussion and extremely high off the marijuana that had just recently been blown into his face, holds onto the handle just above the window, his hand white knuckle and his mouth once again the mimic of the Munch.
“I baked some cookies,” the woman says, finally easing the seatbelt across herself. She turns, much longer than he would like, offering him a toothy smile and a mild amount of myocardial infarction. Hesitantly, he pulls one of the boxes from the floorboard, peeling it open. He pulls a note out, which despite his best efforts, he cannot read. As the car pulls past the bulk of the traffic, a song begins to play.
“I know when that hotline blings…”
Craig sets the note aside and pulls out the second item from the box: a full sized, my little pony mask. He lifts it up, his hand shaking, unsure of the implication - his eyes slowly shift to the grandmother who smiles knowingly his way, the Cherry Red rocket headed right towards the back of a full-sized sedan.
“It can only mean one thing.”
[After consuming several of the cookies, Craig pushed the seat back as best he could. His eyes looked into the mask - longer than he would have liked. At first, he thought nothing of what it was but then, everything began to expand. The mask - his mind - the world itself, shifting in a swirl of colors and a carefree emotion that was partially concussion, but mostly cannabis. He turned to the woman, one of the cookies clutched in her hand and held up the cartoon horse head.]
: What’s the mask for?
: A gift! :
: For who?
: For you!
[Craig blinked.]
: You’re a brony right?
: I’m not a jabroni!
: No, a brony.
: What was in these cookies?
[The woman smiled, taking another bite. She turned his way once more. He watched as each and every crumb found its way free from her mouth. The way she chewed becomes mesmerizing - a mystery all of its own.]
[Screaming. A call. A voice. Stacey - who the fuck is Stacy?]
[He calms down visibly for a moment.]
[Rather than simply hang up the phone, Craig rolled the window down. He tossed it onto the highway, pushing himself out the window, holding one hand over his eye to scour the signs for something specific. He screamed above the wind.]
: Okay!
[Craig turned to see the woman who he had begun to refer to as Grandma, also leaning out the window, a hand over her eyes. He once again started to scream, this time with less words and more feeling.]
The door to the pawn shop opens and a man wearing a bright My Little Pony mask steps through the door. On instinct, the man behind the register places his hand over the silent alarm. Just behind him, a small woman with a cane and floral purse hobbles after.
“WHAT DO YOU HAVE IN THE WAY OF WEAPONS?” Craig asks, much louder than necessary, but because of the mask it all sounded muffled to him. The attendant, confused at first, waves his hand around the store. The people’s champion looks around, unsure of where to start. As explores, the woman slides up to the register, dropping the heavy handbag onto the counter, her hands beginning to dig.
“Depending on what it is, I may have a coupon!” she says with a wink.
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