Monsters

Chapter 1In space, no one can hear you scream. “Agghhh!” I remembered the line but didn’t know if it was factual. “Agghhh!” Technically, 12,000 feet up wasn’t space. Hurdling toward Mother Earth my first time skydiving, stuck upside down with a parachute that wouldn’t open, who had time for semantics? One thing was certain; I could sure as Hell hear myself. “Agghhhhhhh!” All I wanted was to be on the ground, barefoot in the Hawaiian sand again, to continue my honeymoon with Shawn, the love of my life. Considering how quickly that sand was now approaching, I rethought my goals. “Stay in the sky, Otto! Stay in the sky!” Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be an option. The jump was supposed to provide a wedding day rush. “It’ll amp up the s****l thrill when we consummate our marriage right after,” Shawn had said. “Do something adventurous for once in your life, Otto. Do something bad.” Being naked beneath my jumpsuit was my idea of bad. I’d planned a big reveal—”Ta-dah! Let’s fuck.”—just my birthday suit and my wedding bowtie. Now, all I could focus on was the fact my last birthday was my last birthday, that and my former nanny being mortified by the fact I wasn’t wearing clean underwear when I died. Any underwear. How embarrassing. I could count the number of times Shawn and I had f****d on one hand and still have a pinky left over to amp up the s****l thrill another way. Did our s*x life really need a boost after barely a third of a year as a couple, most of that time in different countries? “How romantic will it be to just see each other at the wedding after so long,” he’d said, “then come together in bed on our honeymoon…We’re talkin’ kaboom time, Smarty.” Whenever Shawn called me Smarty, I was putty in his hands. Unfortunately, fate had other plans. My ripcords had malfunctioned, the primary and the backup. The wedding was beautiful, but now, instead of kaboom, I was looking at splat! “So much for romance!” I yelled up toward Shawn, who was floating through the clouds, like an angel, like I should have been. Then, I rethought my anger. “I love you.” It was better to end our relationship—to end my life—on a happy note, I figured. Thirty-one and a half years on Earth, I wondered why they weren’t flashing before my eyes. Was my existence that dull? Were there no highlights to replay? It felt like that sometimes, especially before I fell in love. Our romance was whirlwind for sure. It was literally thirty seconds from salutation to penetration in Shawn’s trailer. * * * * My half-brother, Rex, introduced us. “Otto, this is Shawn Slate.” “Hey, I’m Shawn Slate.” “Yeah. He just said that.” Second lead in a superhero TV pilot with a good shot at receiving an order to series, Shawn would be playing the sexy villain. Wavy black hair, dark bedroom eyes, lean and muscular, he was everything a TV star should be—a movie star—which was his ultimate goal, according to his i********: profile. “I mean, I knew who you are, anyway.” I’d looked Shawn up the moment I’d heard my father’s production studio had cast him as Lightning Bolt’s arch nemesis, Todd Thunder. “I’m Otto Brennington.” “I know who you are, too, Smarty,” he told me. “The big man’s son.” I was the on-set tutor for all the minors on the massive Cooper Brennington Television and Movie Productions lot. That was the genesis of Shawn’s nickname for me, I assumed, me being a teacher and all. “You all blond, blue-eyed and pale,” he continued, “me all tall, hung, and handsome, we’d look good f*****g, don’t ya think?” Shawn was of age, old enough to buy cigarettes and alcohol and run for president in another eight years. Eight years according to our marriage license, eleven per the info on the back of his headshot. “I’m supposed to be over at the Family of Fifteen set pretty soon,” I told him. “Come on, Otto.” He grabbed for my hand and tugged. “Don’t be such a goody two shoes.” It didn’t take much convincing. The kids on that sitcom were monsters, all fourteen of them. It was no wonder the woman who played their single mother had to be recast in the second season. “Okay. Ten minutes.” “I’ll get you off in five.” I almost came just peeling him out of his bad guy black latex onesie. * * * * Though we started dating exclusively right away, Lightning Bolt’s immediate pickup for a full twenty-two episodes also meant an immediate move to Vancouver, Canada for Shawn. * * * * “Can’t you make the show down here?” I’d asked my father. “I like my job. I need my job.” Despite the family wealth, I tried to pay my own way. Being a teacher, even if not in a traditional setting, was also rewarding. “Do it for me, Dad. For your son.” “I could buy a new son with the money I’ll save in just one week shooting anywhere other than LA.” My father’s sly grin indicated he was aiming for levity, but I had a feeling he’d already priced my replacement. * * * * Despite our brief time together, somehow, it felt as if I’d known Shawn my entire life. Another moment from my past came rushing back to me as I fell, a scene from when I was five. Bel Air. Halloween, 1996. * * * * “Look, Otto! It’s Pumbaa!” My sister Tabor and I were out trick or treating with the nanny. Tabor was quite excited to spot the little boy in a costume complementary to mine. “Hi.” Always the more outgoing of the two of us, she waved. “My brother’s Timon.” After two hours in wardrobe and makeup with a couple of Hollywood’s top artists at both, I hoped my character was recognizable without my sister telling people. “I know.” The neighborhood boy joined our trio but seemed rather shy. We hit mansion after mansion together, treading over manicured lawns, up walkways outlined in orange lights, and rushing up and down stairs with fancy black wrought iron railings covered in fake cobwebs. Most of the time, Pumbaa and I held hands. My new young acquaintance joined my sister and me several years in a row after that, as Buzz to my Woody, Bart to my Milhouse, and Vincent to my Eric from the HBO series Entourage, which our housekeeper let me watch with her when I was eight. This other kid apparently got to watch it, too. “Best friends, Otto,” he said to me more than once. “Best friends forever.” * * * * Forever hadn’t lasted quite that long. “What was his name?” Damned if I could remember. Maybe because the kid didn’t exist. I’d made the whole thing up. Not the whole thing, just him. My real life was so dull, so lonely at times, I was having a flashback of imaginary adventures with my imaginary friend What’s His Name. “Oh, well.” The only person I wanted on my mind right then was Shawn, anyway. “Be sad for a while,” I yelled, whether he could hear me or not. Was that selfish? “But then, go on without me. I’m grateful my last hour on Earth was with you.” I wanted my last memory to be of Shawn, too, so I took myself back to his proposal. * * * * “Keep your eyes closed, Smarty.” Shawn was in LA for the day to do press. “It’s hard to walk with my eyes clo—Ow!” After tripping on a cable, I smacked right into a wall. Closing my eyes wasn’t necessary, anyway, because I’d been blindfolded, blindfolded and loaded into a golf cart. I assumed we were still on the Cooper Brennington lot. Where we’d ended up on the property, I didn’t know. “Okay. Now, you can look.” I was about to find out. “Otto Brennington…” When I whipped off the blindfold, there was Shawn, down on one knee. Fresh flowers would have been a tip off, the scent of them, but we were surrounded by well-made fake ones, roses, in pink, red, and cream. There was even a giant heart made out of them hanging over Shawn’s professionally styled head and filtered spotlit, made-up face. He’d taken me to the Dead Over Heels set, all decorated for the scene where the female mortician finally proposes marriage to her shoe salesman beau, in the sitcom’s penultimate episode. After eight seasons, the series was finally going off the air. Not a moment too soon, as far as I was concerned. “Will you marry me, Smarty?” “Whoa.” I looked at the faux flowers, at the battery operated flameless candles, and at the ring box in Shawn’s hand. I wondered if it was real or yet another prop from the sitcom. “Say yes, Smarty. Otherwise, I’ll look like a fool down here.” I smiled at him. “Yes, Shawn! Yes.” The place erupted in applause. The cast was there, hidden, up until now, behind fake walls and doors that went nowhere. My half-brother showed himself, my father, too. Dad was the first to congratulate me, after he’d congratulated Shawn. “How long have you been gay, son?” Dad asked. Was he serious? Likely so. “In the few weeks between you proposing the purchase of a new son and Shawn proposing marriage, have you forgotten the reason you and I had that conversation?” Dad stared at me blankly, like he so often did. Sometimes, I felt as if I might as well be invisible. “Nowadays, most intelligent people agree gay starts at birth,” I told him. I remembered my father and Rex, an entertainment lawyer, discussing how it was okay for Shawn to be open about his sexuality, since he was playing a villain. “It might actually do more good than harm,” Rex had said. “Controversy draws interest.” As far as I was concerned, there was nothing controversial about being gay. For a supposedly enlightened and liberal place, Hollywood bigwigs weren’t always as accepting and inclusive as they could be. “When did you come out?” my father asked me, as Rex took his turn hugging Shawn. “The day I first saw my private school PE teacher in gym shorts. I think I was eight.” Apparently, Dad had forgotten that, too. He was beaming, though. I’d never seen him look happier. “Cooper Brennington’s golden-haired boy and his biggest star on the rise…” Dad scruffed that golden hair, then offered a rather hard slap on my back. “It’s a match made in Heaven. Congratulations. I’m proud of you.” I was almost convinced he meant it, until I saw him make a beeline for the dude from TMZ. * * * * An hour after the grand romantic gesture, Shawn was back on a plane for Vancouver. Four weeks later, exactly one hundred and seventeen days after our first f**k, on a mild sunny autumn morning in Hawaii, a few dozen friends and family members dabbed at their eyes as he and I walked across the beach from opposite sides at our sunrise destination wedding. John Legend serenaded us with “All of Me.” It wasn’t a CD. He’d been there in person, because even if Shawn hadn’t yet reached Hollywood royalty status, my family had. My mother was a two-time Academy Award nominated actress. My sister Tabor, aka Catie California for four seasons on Nickelodeon, also did a ton of episodic work and had more than two dozen theatrical and TV movies under her belt. My half siblings both worked on multi-million dollar deals behind the scenes. As for me, born the crown prince of Brennington Productions’ king and a silver screen queen, I was thrust into the limelight with very little say in the matter. Tabloid papers wrote about my kindergarten finger paintings, my entrance into prep school, my report cards, and wins and losses on the collegiate tennis court. My dream had always been to teach. Somewhere along the line, I’d made the compromise to do it on a soundstage. My love life had always been fodder for the entertainment press as well, though there hadn’t been much to write about before Shawn. Funny thing was, even when the story was supposedly about me, any photo featured was usually of someone else, one of my parents, my more famous sister, now Shawn. Otto Brennington, Son of Ashley Moreau-Brennington and Cooper Brennington to Wed, a recent magazine headline blared. Beneath it, there were my parents and Tabor, and also a photo of Shawn in his Todd Thunder costume. A photograph of me didn’t appear until page three of the article. Yup. Invisible. Helicopters soared overhead during our wedding ceremony. So much for keeping the whole thing under wraps. Someone had tipped off the paparazzi. Were those flashbulbs I was seeing, still, as I plummeted toward certain death? “Snap away!” Now, instead of a blurry cover shot of Shawn and me—or maybe just Shawn—standing before Jane Lynch to exchange I dos, The Enquirer would end up running a time lapse spread as I made my literal final descent. At least I might finally make the cover. “Agggghhhh!” I screamed again, this time in fear and in anger. Though “Til death do us part” sounded a lot more infinite just a few hours earlier, I still had to wonder why the f**k mine was taking so long. Even before the skydiving instructor mentioned “terminal velocity,” which now had a whole new meaning, I knew at my height and weight I’d be falling at approximately 120 miles per hour—200 feet per second. And 12,000 ÷ 200 = 60. Plane door to splat should have taken approximately a minute, give or take, since maximum acceleration wasn’t instant. Though I’d left my watch behind, I figured my minute had to be almost up. “I love you Shawn…Mom, Dad, Celia, Rex.” My relationship with my half sibs had started off rocky but got much better as we all matured. “Tabor. Thank you for being the best sister ever. Aww, and poor Mystic.” I couldn’t choke back the tears as I thought of my sweet, pet rat wondering why Daddy had never come home. “You can stay with Gramma or Tabor.” I spoke like my precious rodent could hear me. “They won’t make you live with Shawn.” Mystic had met Shawn just that day. Naturally, I brought my favorite fellow to the wedding so he could watch me marry my other favorite fellow. My new husband. My brief husband. My widower. “I ain’t holding no rat!” It hadn’t gone well. “Aww,” I said. “He likes you.” “It snapped at me!” “Mystic…Dat’s not berwy nice.” He didn’t snap at me when I kissed his twitchy little rat nose. “No, it’s not. No, it’s not, my wittle pumpkin.” I’d never seen Mystic snap at anyone before, except when he did it to Rex just forty seconds prior. “Too much excitement, I guess, huh, sweet ums? He’ll get used to you,” I told Shawn. Maybe Mystic thought Shawn and I were rushing things. Mom and Tabor did; Rex, on the other hand, when I expressed some doubts to him, put it thusly: “You’re not getting any younger, bro. What if this is your last shot?” Ironic how things turn out sometimes. I had time for one more brief flashback. Present on many a soundstage when a script came in a minute short, I should have remembered sixty seconds is a lot longer than it sounds. For whatever was left of mine, I decided to go back to my last kiss. * * * * Our tuxes were both in a heap on the floor of our honeymoon villa as we dressed to head out for the jump. Shawn was at the full-length bedroom mirror, his long sleeve polo shirt tucked under his chin as he tried to rid himself of a few stray hairs on his chest. “Why are you looking at me?” His nervousness had put me more on edge. “Because you’re beautiful to look at.” I walked up to embrace him from behind. “You can leave a hair or two, ya know. I like hair on a man.” He roughly plucked another rogue strand from just below his belly button, let the shirt fall into place above the waistband of his cargo shorts, and then walked away. “Why are you so jittery?” I asked. He’d felt like a bundle of nerves when I’d tried to embrace him. “You told me you’ve done this before.” “Done what?” I laughed. “Umm…jump out of a plane.” “Oh. I have. It’s not jitters. It’s…it’s excitement.” Mystic was in his cage on the bedroom dresser, chattering away. He was nervous or excited, too, it seemed. “Get changed,” Shawn said on his exit. After bringing my little one out a minute to calm him with a dozen daddy kissies, I returned him to his cage and then did as instructed. My underwear shed for the big surprise moment, I stepped into the last thing I would ever put on and zipped it all the way to my chin to hide the bowtie. But then, second thoughts. “Ya know…” By the time I joined Shawn in the bathroom, he was all the way into his jumpsuit, too, and already strapping on his parachute pack. There were three cigarette butts in the ashtray by the sink, and a fresh one burning. “I knew I smelled cigarettes. I thought you quit.” “I did. I’ll quit again.” The smell didn’t bother me. I found it sexy—unhealthy, but sexy. “I think a change in plans is in order.” I went in for a taste of it on his lips. Though he turned away from me again—my fault, as I’d caught him off guard—I followed to get what I was after one way or another. “Stand still a minute.” He huffed but did. “That’s better.” I had to have him, so I went for his zipper, the one that ran neck to crotch, to get to the next zipper, right there at his c**k. “How about we forget about the dive, and I just rip this jumpsuit off you, so we can f**k instead?” For a loose fitting garment, it sure did show off his shape. The bad guys in superhero stories had to be buff, too, most of the time. Shawn worked out like a fiend. His broad shoulders, hard chest, and small waist looked good in wrinkled nylon. The parachute straps between his legs that framed the thick bulge his d**k made had it looking even bigger than I remembered. My lips got close, but he put a hand on my chest to hold me back. “Was your mouth on that rat?” “No.” Starting our marriage on a lie probably wasn’t a great move, but it was just a tiny one. “Good. No s*x until after, so it’ll be special.” He caressed my cheek, and then took off again. Any time I was with Shawn felt special to me. Man, oh man, how had I gotten so lucky in love? “Why do you have your chute on already?” That made me laugh again. “What a Boy Scout.” I caught up to him and worked a finger under the woven black strap, following it all the way down Shawn’s body to where it went from the front of him, then under, then to the back. “Mmm. Be prepared and all that, but don’t people usually wait to put their parachutes on when they get in the plane?” His phone buzzed, “We gotta go,” and he yanked me toward the door. “I guess I’m eager to jump so we can…” “Get back here to make love?” “Yeah. That.” * * * * I’d gotten my kiss, at least, right before being shoved out the door of the plane. Had I known it would be goodbye forever, I’d have made it last longer. “Okay. This is it.” Not quite thirty-two, four flashbacks was all I got. It still seemed like there should have been more. A whole life in four acts? Even a twenty-three-minute sitcom had five these days. “Nothing left to do but hope I lived a decent enough life to end up in the good place,” I said to whatever supreme being I was about to meet. “The Good Place…that was a great show.” I wondered if Heaven had on-demand TV as I tried to get a handle on the time I had left. “Seven seconds, I’d say. Six, five, four, thr—” In television and movie production terms, fade to black.