“After Steady Work Dries Up, the Aging B-Movie Queen Reconsiders Fright Night” by Alyson Dutemple (Fiction ’19)

After Steady Work Dries Up, the Aging B-Movie Queen Reconsiders Fright Night

The movie is a horror film. The movie is in a theater, at night. There are strangers in the theater. Your child is among the strangers, slouch- ing, in a seat much too close to the screen. Your child is accompanied by a “friend from school.” You do not know the friend. The movie features gratuitous violence, gratuitous everything, the kind of gratuity that made you famous, the kind of gratuity you now fear can give a person ideas. There’s artery-clogging fat in the popcorn. There’s processed corn syrup in the drinks. There’s an overdue co-pay at the pediatrician’s and too high a balance on the credit card your child has borrowed from you.