Antibirth

            On Tuesday during my early afternoon siesta I got a call from a guy who had a few days before that contacted me by email about the Minolta Hi-Matic F camera that I was selling for my upstairs neighbour, David. He asked if he could come by in the next hour and pick it up. I tried to go back to sleep for a while but it didn’t feel like it was going to happen. I was contemplating getting up when the phone rang again. I assumed that Jeremy had arrived but it turned out to be a guy from Toronto Water responding to my complaint about the chemical taste of the tap water. I told him it was only really bad for one day. I drank some while talking with him to confirm that it was okay right now. He explained what I knew already, that in the summer sometimes they have to put more chlorine in the water to counteract the increase of algae. He also suggested that if I live in an older apartment building the pipes could be affecting the taste of the water. I don’t think the latter is the case in this situation.

            I had a can of tuna with some tomato basil bruschetta for lunch. It was quite tasty.

The phone rang again and it was Jeremy. He was a tall guy in his early thirties with his long hair in a bun. I showed him the camera and asked if he’d brought batteries. He told me that he’d ordered some but that the Type 640 batteries that the camera needs are no longer widely available except in a specialist factory in the States. He’d learned on You Tube of a workaround using two SR44/A76 1.5 volt button cells and a folded paper clip. He couldn’t make it work that way but he trusted that it would be alright with the batteries he’d ordered and he paid me $40 for it anyway.

I went upstairs to give half the money to David, but for the second time in a row he wouldn’t take the money. He complained that a lot of people take advantage of him but that I’m a very honourable and honest person. He did suggest though that he had a guitar and some rare coins that he would like me to sell online for him and that he would split the money with me. He wanted to make sure that I understood that the things he acquires are not stolen.

I did some work on my book cover for half an hour and then I took a bike ride. The sky was full of large islands of big beautiful sun-haloed dark clouds that looked like they could drop a quick heavy rain at any moment on whatever place they were directly above.

I rode to Glebemount and north to the alley behind Mortimer which I followed across to Woodbine, then back and north to do the same along Dunkirk and Barker.

On the way home I stopped at a Starbucks to take a pee. I noticed a sign saying they sell draft now, but it turns out that it’s not beer but rather something called Nitro Cold Brew that is coffee infused with nitrogen. The washroom doors all have key code systems for unlocking them now. The woman behind the counter, after seeing me try the door, anticipated my question and told me the code was “147#”.

As I was ravelling my cable after unlocking my bike, a woman in an electric wheelchair and wearing a nasal cannula stopped to look at the price of some grapes on display outside of the vegetable stand. She looked in the doorway and then she moved on, looking at me and explaining, “I can’t get in!” I looked and saw that there were some boxes piled up just inside the entrance. It looked like me that she could have made it but she probably knows what she can do better than me.

While I was crossing the Bloor Viaduct I was passed by two big middle-aged guys that were riding together. I assume they were riding fast bikes since they didn’t look like they could pass me with an equal machine. I came up behind them several times at traffic lights all along Bloor Street but never got past them. They were pretty aggressive riders with one guy taking the lead who shouted, “Move!” to a car that was turning in his path. Despite their hurry they only went through one red light, but that time the intersection was not on the south side. One of them went on ahead by himself though so maybe the other veered off to do the shopping.

On the way home I stopped at Freshco where I bought grapes, bananas, Fuji apples, a pork sirloin half, some cheddar and lots of yogourt.

That night I watched the rest of the indie horror film, “Antibirth”, starring Natasha Lyonne, Chloe Sevigny and Meg Tilly. Lyonne plays a drug addict named Lou in a small town in Michigan. Her dealer though is mixed up with a secret government organization that is using female addicts as guinea pigs in order to find one that will serve as a compatible host for an alien foetus. The atmosphere of the alien home world is extremely poisonous and so in order for one of their foetuses to survive in a human womb it has to be that of a woman who has severely abused her body with toxins. One night when she is very high at a party that’s being thrown at a remote location Lou is drugged, strapped down and inseminated with alien sperm. Afterwards she doesn’t remember what happened but then becomes pregnant, even though she didn’t have sex. She starts having strange flashes and visions.

Then Meg Tilly’s character, Lorna shows up. Lorna is former military but she was also one of the early guinea pigs for this project. An alien growth was removed from her arm but the process of having the alien briefly inside of her caused her to become psychically sensitive and so she was able to track down Lou to try to help her. Lorna serves as the midwife for the alien birth just as the bad guys arrive in SWAT gear to take it away. What comes out of Lou is an adult sized living alien head. The feds place the head in a special atmospheric tank. When Lou is told they intend to use her again and again for the same purpose she grabs a knife. When she’s struggling with one of the bad guys a pair of adult alien arms and hands reach out of her vagina to strangle him. Then Lou collapses like a deflated sex doll and a fully-grown headless alien body emerges and kills everybody in the room.

It was a very low budget film but the story was certainly unique. Lyonne’s character was kind of a disgusting person in her habits, but I guess it was necessary to depict that in order to show why she was a compatible host for the alien. Pretty much everyone in the film was gross except for Meg Tilly until she delivered the alien, had extraterrestrial afterbirth splattered all over her face and was in ecstasy about how beautiful the creature was.

The film ends with the alien standing there with its own head in one hand in a kitchen that made me feel much better about my own housekeeping. The moral may be that one should always have one’s head on straight before killing everybody. That way the place won’t be as hard to tidy up for the next time you have company.