There's this guy, kinda looks like Dennis Hopper or Michael Douglas, you know, that type. Anyway he's a cop but he's not in uniform, and his daughter has joined up with this high-tech organized crime gang. His daughter looks kind of like Barbara Gordon from the Batman T.V. show of the 1960s. The third character in our tableau is this beautiful woman, about 23. Her face is really pale, and she's wearing make-up, including dark lipstick which sharply contrasts her stark white skin. She has really short straight black hair that makes her look like she might possibly be a lesbian, but it's still long enough that she looks like she might possibly not be a lesbian. She's a pretty high-up member of the techno-gang. The three of them are in this really tastefully decorated gang-headquarters. All of the furniture is glass or metal or plastic. The walls and the furniture are mostly black. Everything that's not black is either silver or transparent, but there are some colored light sources that I can't see, but which cast colored light cones on the smoke in the room, and I can see them reflected by the silver and glass.

So, the scene opens with the cop holding a really low caliber gun on the gang-woman who is holding the cop's daughter and holding a weird device against the cop's daughter's neck. The cop is trying to negotiate with the gang-woman and his daughter, but the two of them are both giggling uncontrollably because they've taken some weird synthetic drug. Then, gang-woman discharges the device she's been holding which releases what looks like a little static electricity burst. She only does it for a second. Daughter yelps, but then starts laughing again. The weapon obviously stung for a second, but didn't do any serious damage. The cop is getting agitated. gang-woman shoots daughter again, this time for a little longer. This time daughter screams shrilly, and then starts laughing hysterically. The cop is getting very upset. Then gang-woman shoots the weapon for a third time, this time holding the trigger down for a sustained, intense blast. Daughter starts screaming again, then starts clutching her throat, then stops screaming, but is still alive panicking and flailing and frantically stroking her throat with her fingers. As this progression of behavior has been going on, a black, flaky char-mark has been growing at the point of contact, and by the end there's this huge burn mark. Gang-woman is laughing the whole time. The cop is freaking out! Finally, he shoots gang-woman in the shoulder, causing her to fall backwards on to the floor, and to release daughter, who falls away from gang woman on the floor, and is clutching and clawing at her throat, generally spasming, and making weird choking/hicupping sounds. She can't seem to breathe.

Here there's sort of a gap. I guess I took my eyes off the TV for a second or something. Anyway, somehow, the cop does not have the option of using the gun. Maybe it's out of bullets, maybe it jammed, maybe gang-woman playfully kicked it out of his hand. But he's leaning over gang-woman, and he's picked up something that looks like a scalpel, only with a somewhat shorter blade and a sharp point on the end. So he's over her, poking her with it in her torso, over and over, stabbing her. But the blade's pretty short, and it's through her clothes, so while it must be cutting and hurting her, it's not really injuring her. So, she keeps on laughing. Then the cop starts to slash her face, alternating every few slashes between horizontal and vertical. Through it all, gang-woman is still laughing, but her laughing is growing less playful, more serious. After a very short while, gang woman picks up this knife that was laying next to her, and slashes cop across the middle, cutting him really bad. The knife was bigger than a hunting knife but smaller than a machete. So, the cop is split wide open, at the belly. His skin is hanging off, and his guts are poking out. He just stands there stunned. Slowly he falls to his knees, still with this confused, dumb look on his face. As he falls, gang-woman stands, and the TV shows her slashed face for the first time. She has neatly ordered hash marks on her face making a fairly ordered and regular grid. A little like that guy from those Clive Barker movies with the pins sticking out of his face, only her's don't cover her whole face, and they're dripping blood. Her laugh has changed from serious to downright maniacal by now.

So now the scene on the TV is over and I'm back to paying attention to what's going on in the restaurant. I'm a member of this gang that was on the TV and we've been watching a fictionalized, commercialized account of a real-life event. I look over at another table and I see the real-life version of gang-woman, but she looks very different from the actor who portrayed her. In the first place she doesn't look like she's maybe a lesbian, she looks like she's definitely as lesbian. She has real short medium-brown hair and she's in her late 30s/early 40s. She's not attractive at all; she looks sort of like Janet Reno. And she's got these scars criss-crossed all over her face, but they're not neatly arranged at all. They're just all over the place.

So, I ask the people at my table, "Is that how it really happened?" A guy says, "I was there, and yeah that's pretty much right, although they took a little artistic license." So, I ask, "What was that weapon? Was it a stun gun? I think that it'd be really handy to have a stun gun that is capable of a continuous discharge." The guy answers, "Naw. I don't know why they did it that way in the movie. What it was was a laser gun. I guess the cops just assumed it was electric because it left really clean burn marks on the body. If you ask me, the movie would have been a lot cooler if they'd a done it with the laser. When it happened, the girl started screaming, like in the movie, but she didn't just stop screaming, all of a sudden. She started gurgling and blood started coming out of her mouth. But the laser isn't like a super laser like out of Star Wars or something; it's a pretty mediocre laser. So this was going on for like almost, I don't know, fifteen seconds or something. so she's screaming for like five seconds, then the gurgling starts, and then, after like 15 seconds has gone by, you finally see the beam come out the other side. And by the time it was over, she couldn't even gurgle anymore. It was just like she'd had her throat slit, only without any slit in her throat. So she's clawing at her neck, tryin' to get at where it hurts, only she can't 'cause her neck's just fine. Freaked me out."

Then, somebody grabbed me from behind, and that's when I woke up.

What do you make of it? Tell me. Write me at danzig@acpub.duke.edu.

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