The Dark is Night and Full of Terrors

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Some days a fog hangs over the world - you wake up in the morning and the picture in front of you is fuzzy. Eyes crossed. The sun marches away from you. People's voices have a hum, resonant, humming underneath their words. You feel inside a fly trap. If the window's open, you close it. You smack the side of the TV but the movie is still over before it has even begun.

It's a wrongness. A wrongness in the world. A glitch in The Matrix, the darkest timeline, and a dog with a homeless man's face where the dog's face is supposed to be. You know the one, even though you don't want to. You have felt it before. You will feel it again.

These are the times we are living in, and Dark Night is a movie made for these times. It effortlessly swamps us in that ol' familiar wrongness - a thick glaze of dread dripping from its everyday All-American pores. All it is is people. Ordinary people. Regular people. Regular people living their ordinary daily lives. People sitting in chairs in darkened living-rooms, and people playing guitar, skateboarding, and watching the news. Working at the mall. Going to the movies. Parking lots. Spray paint. Next door neighbors and fireworks displays.

A face with too many holes in it. A mask with too many holes in it. That window that we previously shut, it's open again somehow. There's somebody out there. A prowler, prowling. Poking their face in, only instead of a face...

Time is staccato. Repeating itself back, back again. Repeating. The horror is everywhere, nowhere, diffuse. Bacon grease in our lungs. The air is choking around us. Florida, or worse.

All it is is people. You know people. You even, on occasion, like people. You even, on occasion, be people, when you try hard. Push open a window. Drive your car. Go to the movies. Be people, for a change. Isn't it horrible, and bright, and endlessly exhilarating? America, being great.

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