Feed Drop - Burned by a Paper Sun (Maeltopia show)
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What ominous warning does the episode’s opening narrator give to listeners?
Greetings, ladies and gentlemen of Hell. The shadows are stretching long, and the air grows heavier. After this episode, we descend into the mid-season finale of The Gentlemen from Hell. Secrets will surface, debts will be called in, and the fire will burn brighter than ever. Catch up while you can, prepare yourself, and be ready to step into the dark when the grand moment arrives. For hell awaits.
Thank you.
Thank you.
When Greg looked at his phone, he almost collapsed. Earlier, he spent the morning convincing himself that the previous night's events were simply the product of a bad dream. It was a defensible thesis. The strange building he captured on his camera, together with his history of sleepwalking, was more than enough to give him nightmares. The rationalization got him through the morning. He put on his clothes, ate his breakfast, and even walked to the nearby subway, the whole time convinced the Earth hadn't tumbled off its axis. But when the sound of a tinny bell rang from his pocket, his news app summoning his attention, the world began to tilt.
Blazing across his phone screen, the headline read, Man Slaughters Family in East Village. The words weighed heavy, causing his stomach to plummet. His eyes speedily trekked down the screen, desperately searching for a detail that would allay his worst suspicions. But each sentence only confirmed them, coldly articulating the details of a murder he had watched only one night before on a large, 42-inch TV. The onslaught continued, explaining how the killer claimed demons instructed him to sacrifice his loved ones. Greg couldn't help but remember the strange voices accompanying the video as he watched. Any hope that this was all some awful coincidence finally died when he saw an image of the alleged murderer.
A skinny, balding man that bore an uncanny resemblance to the one he saw only hours before, strapped naked to a chair with wires spilling out of his head. Greg barely had time to process what he'd learned before the mechanical whine of an approaching train returned him to the subway.
He immediately became suspicious of everything. He eyed the crowd around him, wondering if they weren't made of papier-mâché, wispy, people-shaped cutouts moonlighting as humans. When the door of the train opened, Greg stepped through and stood in the cramped spaces of the car, elbow to elbow with his fellow travelers. But despite their proximity, he knew they didn't occupy the same space. The distance between him and his peers spanned light years now. A terrible revelation, the only way to bridge the gap. But even if he attempted to communicate his dark knowledge, he knew it would be misinterpreted. A garbled radio transmission lost in space. Similarly, words from the surrounding crowd floated meaningless and empty, mere vocalizations given definition to only the most superficial aspects of reality.
Even the shape and colors of the boxcar and the world whizzing by outside its windows became tawdry fashioning, glittery veneers masking the unsightly truths resting beneath. He looked down at his satchel and thought about the camera within it. He was on the verge of tears. On the most basic level, the purpose of photography is preservation. To rescue a chosen moment from the perils of time. It is, or at least he believed it to be, an objective recollection unburdened by the faults of recall. The camera conserves what memory will eventually erode. Beyond that, however, he believed a camera could capture instances that our stream of consciousness would otherwise drown. Quicksilver moments where the spirit of a thing is revealed, truthful and untainted.
So many times he thought he had photographed something transcendent, a fleeting second where discarnate passions fed the shape of their corporeal prisons, breeding momentary collisions between substance and soul. He'd spent his life kidnapping such moments, trapping them in frames, keeping them in the captivity of stuffy, overpriced galleries. But now he realized he'd been duped. tricked into photographing depthless, sheeny baubles meant to dress, obscure even, the much darker thing adorning them.
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