Badly Spliced

An actor returns to his Beverly Hills mansion – blows his brains out with a 38 special. I must have dozed off, cops at my door, a line of chain-smoking flashbulbs in baggy turn-ups. I watch myself being taken away in a body bag. The movie is badly spliced. Black Packard’s keep morphing into flying saucers. We are all wearing hats, even the writers in the backroom are wearing wide-brimmed hats. The women are wearing hats. They wear pencil thin skirts, and talk out of the side of their mouths. A screen flickers; a skinny man behind an obscuring microphone apologizes for the delay. Meanwhile, space aliens have landed in Brooklyn, and are exterminating people in hats. It’s a radio show hoax, but I don’t know that – until I wake-up into a world filled with terror and chaos, there are no aliens and few brimmed hats. I can’t sleep.