An ode to Crispin Glover and the degeneracy I find myself surrounded by every time I see any movie he's in.
Brief note: This is listed as part of the same series as Paper Kitten Nightmare on AO3. Take that how you will.
They're coasting along without speaking. His mother sporadically bursts into tears, drowning out the radio. Alfred loves the radio; the ever-changing hits provide a consistent inconsistency, reliability without commitment. As it is, he cannot help being less than pleased when his mother's woes drown out the radio. But then, nobody's ever happy to see their mother cry, either.
Alfred's great aunt is dead over in Utah. But they're passing through Missouri, and that is the most simple explanation of his problems.
Alfred doesn't even realize the car is stopped until his mother pats his leg and says, "Well. I guess we should stop for the night." Alfred looks up from his nearly-dead phone to see the lights of a dingy inn, the parking lot around them.
Alfred grabs his backpack and follows his mother inside, briskly stuffing his phone into an inner pocket of his coat. His mother pays for the room and gets the keys, and after a brief walk down a hallway, they're in the room. There is one queen sized bed.
His mother sees the look on his face and smacks him in the chest. "Suck it up. I'm your mother," she chastises, and then adds, "—it's all they had left."
Few teenagers want to share a bed with their mother for any reason, and Alfred has... better reason than most to be unable to suck it up. But he does, because ignoring his situation is what he does best.
Alfred plugs in his phone and decides to take a shower instead. His days only ever seem to get worse, he reflects. Everything always gets worse.
Alfred spends the next ten minutes in the shower, leaning against the wall because he's a bit too tired to stand properly. He stays in the dark and pretends he's safe as he stares at the crack beneath the door, the one letting in too much light. He's safe, totally safe, obviously. Everything is fine.
But Alfred is never really safe, not even while hiding in the dark behind a locked door. Alfred knows that he isn't safe, or at least that he doesn't feel safe; this thought brings him back to reality, and he forces himself to get out of the shower before he becomes a nuisance.
...
His mother's knuckles are red and cracked these days, and Alfred really doesn't want them anywhere near him. So he sits at the small table toward the front of the room and plugs in his headphones, dreading the sleep his mother would inevitably demand of him. For now he checks the most popular Missourian radio station, just for the hell of it really. It's too late for hits; instead of anything remotely popular, whoever the fuck runs the station (probably an iHeartMedia pawn, Alfred thinks, though he is not familiar with the corporate hierarchy of iHeartMedia) apparently decided that the nighttime was best left to empty rock from 2004. It's perfect music to accompany vague nightmares— it's perfect music for sitting a couple feet away from a sexually abusive adult in a cheap motel room in Missouri. But Alfred likes to pretend he's not living through a PSA, so he decides that if the Midwest can't be considerate of this, then it can get fucked. Hence his next thought, fuck the Midwest. Still, he feels a bit bad for his resentment.
The rock music is not enough to distract Alfred, so he turns on the TV. Immediately it switches to Back to the Future, to a scene with Crispin Glover. Alfred switches channels to see Alice in Wonderland, to see the Knave of Hearts, to see fucking Crispin Glover. Alfred has no personal opinions on Glover, but the coincidence drives him to think fuck the Midwest once again, and this time he does not regret it.
Alfred turns off the TV and is just turning to a popular Californian radio station, investing in the idea that California is too full of itself not to play hits through the night, when his mother touches his shoulder. He jumps and turns to look at her.
"Alfred. You should get us something to eat from the convenience store next to us," his mother says. She gives him twenty dollars and Alfred takes the opportunity to fuck right off.
...
Alfred stands in the convenience store. He's already decided to get two sandwiches, but there are still ten dollars left after that. Ever so briefly, Alfred does what he always does when he has any amount of money whatsoever: he considers running, booking it as fast and as far away as he can. But twenty dollars and a stolen sandwich or two aren't enough to survive, never mind his lack of birth certificate or supplies for the cold.
Besides, Alfred doesn't have a life beyond this horrifying, degenerate film-esque bullshit. Alfred doesn't have a life beyond this convenience store and the motel and the fear, and he can't imagine anything else. So he decides to buy a LaCroix for himself, as the packaging screams 0 Calories = Innocence! Alfred knows it won't provide him with innocence as he would define it, but he wishes it could and that's why he buys it. For his mother, he selects a Coke Zero.
Finally Alfred grabs a bag of pretzels and decides he'll pocket a bit of the extra money. He walks to the register, already dreading his return to the motel room. Again he thinks of his mother's cracked, raw hands. Alfred sighs; the cashier snorts and says, "Tough night?"
Alfred looks into the cashier's face; she has light brown eyes, a slight sneer. She sees him, but she doesn't help. How many people saw him and didn't help? How could he be so invisible, as to be seen and not seen? How could everyone he ever met betray him like this?— of course it wasn't anybody else's fault, but still. It's not fair.
In an ideal world, Alfred would be saved, or maybe he wouldn't have anything to be saved from. But it's not an ideal world; it's a world where he can't get over himself, where he can't make himself tell anyone else. It's a world where it's his fault, then.
At the very least, Alfred's world doesn't currently include his mother. No, Alfred is focusing so much on the sidewalk as he leaves the convenience store that there can't possibly be enough room left for his mother.
On the short walk back to the motel, he crafts the world as God might have. He decides that his world consists solely of the concrete, of the cool night air, of the stars above him. Then his world consists of just his body, and after that, only the bag in his hands. And then his world— the entire world— is swallowed by canned innocence, too small to absorb the surrounding divinity but protected by it all the same. And then everything is okay.
Sorry to the Great States of the Midwest, and Crispin Glover. No actual hard feelings toward them, just another setting and title. Hard feelings toward iHeartMedia though, fuck them. Their jingle is annoying as shit, but I guess the app did help me find some good music when I was younger.
A review would be hella lit. Have a great day and stay safe.