An Escaped Story from Issue 12: "The Late Show with Jerry Paplovich" by Scott J. Moses
This story originally appeared in Issue 12: "Skeletaxonomy" and it has managed to beam itself out of our vault and onto your screen… enjoy, if you dare…
The Late Show with Jerry Paplovich
Scott J. Moses
It’s dark behind the curtain, except for the sliver I peer through. The crew’s all hustle, making those last-minute adjustments before the magic happens. Susan says something to the man nearest her, and he tilts his camera in my direction. Even now, after everything, I can’t help but stare at her in that dress. Those green eyes fluttering as she nods, gripping her earpiece. The headset mic hovering near her red lips.
1991. A rat realizes two things.
This is a maze.
There is no cheese.
The audience above and behind is all smiles, a torrent of boiling conversation. I remember standing here that first time three years ago, ready to piss myself. I chew my lip, head throbbing from last night’s bender, and my mind drifts to this morning in the diner.
The waitress leans in, big blue eyes full of life, joy—that useless stuff, pencil and pad at the ready. Frying ham and eggs permeate the air.
“And how are we doing this afternoon?”
She doesn’t recognize me. Three years hosting this show every week and she hasn’t a clue who I am. I think to tell her that I host a late show. No, not that one. Not that one either. I’m Jerry Paplovich, the guy on that down-and-out network no one watches.
I meet her gaze. “Sadly, I’m just waking up.”
“Sad thing, waking up?” She raises a brow. “You all right, mister?” She heard me wrong, but I don’t correct her. “Misheard” is the most honest I’ve been in months.
I adjust my wedding ring as the overheads focus on the curtain. I wince in the glare, burning sun’s stare on frozen snow. The clack of the drummer’s sticks. One, two, three, four. The band erupts in a maelstrom of horns and percussion, and hooks from an invisible ether yank the corners of my lips to a smile. My brows rise, and I burst through the curtain to erratic applause and screaming faces.
I am happy.
“Hey! Hello! Hey!” I spread my arms and pace across the glistening stage. The band’s all smiles, plodding out a swing-jazz melody rife with rims shots and horn blasts. I nod to the keyboardist, and he rocks his head with the groove, pointing at me with one hand and hammering keys with the other.
Issue 12’s amazing cover, illustrated by Kels Hyde
I hate my life.
I open my mouth wide, hand suspended as the roaring horns hold one long note and the drummer lays down a fill lined with cymbals, snare, and toms.
We pause, and the snare drum’s strike echoes through the studio.
I own you all.
With the flick of my wrist, they unleash a final barrage. It rolls over my chest, guts, and shoes.
Horns.
Cymbals.
Applause.
Silence.
“Evening, folks,” I say with a smile, hands clasped like a sadistic waiter describing a menu to the starved. “Welcome to ‘The Late Show with Jerry Paplovich!’ I’m your host, Jerry Paplovich, and if it’s your first time with us, our thing is that we do it live, always live. Taping is for suckers. Can I get an amen?”
The horns and cymbals hit once, twice, thrice, and as they fade, so does the applause. “We have an exciting guest for you tonight, all the way from the left coast—Los Angeles, California!” I’ve never met the guest—only know his name because Susan reminded me.
My eyes flick to the cue card, to the joke I’m to say before introducing tonight’s guest. And the bigwigs think I’m the reason the show’s in the toilet. “But first, well, I was at my optometrist’s the other day, and she said the strangest thing...”
In the car this morning, hands hovering over the wheel as the engine roars. My eyes close, and as the car veers they jerk open. I grab the wheel. But why?
“What was that, Jer?” the keyboardist asks, yes man smile on his face, gelled hair gleaming in the stage lights. The product runs down his forehead. I can’t look away—taping is for suckers. “She said I have Cadillacs up there, which is strange—I’ve only ever had Lincolns!”
The band loses their shit, and I can’t tell if the audience laughs with or at me.
The slide of the keys.
A drum fill.
Horns.
Cymbals.
Applause.
Silence.
“Tonight’s guest is one of America’s top psychic mediums. He’s been all over the country helping people come to grips with the afterlife and those therein. Please give a warm welcome to my friend, Alemar Alexander!”
The band starts up and a thin man in black, with a gold-studded jacket, slips from behind the curtain. Bit much, huh guy? But something about the lights—their particular hue—takes me back to my stairwell those weeks ago.
I look up at her, a stone in my chest. “Cass, please. You’re being crazy. It’s just me and you, hon.”
She doesn’t know the specifics, but she’s onto me. She pauses at the top of the stairs, turns around. “You’ve never been honest with me, Jerry.” She’s not even crying. “I don’t care who it is anymore.”
She grips the railing, and I’m reminded of hours earlier. Cassie leaning against the coupe I’d bought way back when with that first check from the show. She picks at the bubbling paint—”Old because old has character” is what I’d said before signing for it—revealing the rust beneath the atrophied coat.
The medium extends his hand, and I grip it in mine. The hooks at the corners of my lips pull wide.
Horns.
Cymbals.
Applause.
Silence.
I lift my hand to the desk and chairs where I conduct the interviews, but Alemar’s face shifts. He turns and casts a wide glance across the audience.
“I’m hearing from the other side,” he says, bridging the gap between us and them, voice booming in the speakers overhead. Eyes closed, he lifts his hands. “Someone here has lost one dear to them. A spouse, a... husband.” He paces, arms outstretched like antennae.
Prick.
“No,” he says with a pause, eyes on the floor. “Not a husband… a son. Someone here has lost a son.”
A gasp splits the stillness, and a woman in the overhead seats—middle row, third back— stands. Her lips move, but she’s not miked. Alemar nods. My eyes flick to the crew at the foot of the stage. I snap, point, and someone runs a mic to the weeping woman. As our man clicks it on, her voice cuts in mid-sentence.
“—son, Charlie. He…" She wrenches the microphone away and brings it to her chest. A thud reverberates throughout the studio. Alemar nods and opens his eyes.
“I’m with your son now. I see him, clear as you see me, in… a white gown… a hospital gown. Did he pass from an illness?”
The grieving mother sniffs into the microphone, and the speakers shriek. I wince, my head still pounding from last night’s whiskey sours.
She nods. “Lymphoma… he passed from lymphoma…” A woman in the next seat rubs the frantic mother’s back. Alemar closes his eyes and continues pacing, his gold jacket glistening.
He clasps his hands. “Your son says no one knew he was going to depart. You can’t blame yourself.”
“Oh, Charlie!” she screams, convulsing.
I glance to the side stage, to the keyboardist hunched over his instrument, hand over his mouth in shock.
Alemar pauses and stares up at the sobbing woman. “He tells me you smell him sometimes, in the living room, or cooking dinner…”
The mother shrieks, nodding, and my eyes flick to the keyboardist, full-on crying now.
“He wants you to know,” Alemar begins, voice raspy, “that he lives through your eyes now. That he’s with you when you smell him. He’s in the room there, still loving you.”
“Oh god,” says the woman, through violent tears. Alemar smiles, and the audience rises to cheer. The band’s up too. The keyboardist brings his fingers to his lips and lets loose a whistle.
I wince and turn to Alemar, who smiles at me. We shake hands a second time.
“Wow, oh, wow!” I say, hooks pulling the corners of my lips again. “In all the years I’ve hosted this show, I’ve never seen something like that before. I mean, wow!”
The audience roars, and my eyes flick to the cue card offstage.
Live call.
“But I’m told you have something else in store tonight, that right, Alemar?”
He smiles, nods, and addresses me for the first time since arriving on the show—my show.
“That’s correct, Jerry.” He smiles and turns to the audience. “For the first time in the history of this network, I will be doing live readings for viewers at home.”
Horns.
Cymbals.
Applause.
Silence.
Susan gives me a thumbs up.
“Well, there you have it! At the bottom of your television screen is a number to call one of the top psychics in the country, Alemar Alexander!”
The audience cheers. Susan grips her earpiece, looks up at me, and flashes a new card.
Jonathan. Ferrer’s Hill, OH.
“I’m told we have Jonathan from Ferrer’s Hill, Ohio. How we doing tonight, Jonathan?”
A chuckle crackles through the phone’s receiver. Then… breathing.
“Uh, Jonathan? You there, bud? You’re live. Go on, friend.”
Alemar steps toward the camera, peers in. “Let’s find peace, Jonathan.”
The breathing in the phone roars like static.
“Peace…” the voice says, chuckling breathily. “Tell me, Alemar. When you woke up this morning, did you know you were going to die?”
My hooked smile ripples, and some in the audience gasp. I fire Susan a look, and she cups her earpiece, nodding. I slice my neck with my hand. Next caller.
She shakes her head no, gives me an OK sign.
They’re more desperate for ratings than I thought.
Alemar clasps his hands. “Death meets us all, but I don’t fear it.” He scans the crowd, still smiling. “Death is natural, part of life itself, but it’s not—”
“Gonna stop you there, Alemar,” the static voice says. “I’m not sure you got my meaning. When you woke up this morning, did you know you were going to die, tonight?”
Chatter simmers in the audience, pockets of outrage and fear. Alemar turns to me, gestures what gives? with raised hands.
“Okay, Jonathan,” I say. “That’s enough.”
More static. “Hey, Paplovich, big fan… sort of. You’re usually on late when I have heartburn or can’t sleep. Good white noise.”
I sigh. Susan’s back is to me, hand over her earpiece.
“Well, John, if you’re not interested in the show, why call in?”
I smirk in that way I’m supposed to. I’m the king here. I give the keyboardist a look, and he twirls a finger by his temple. Nutjob.
I chuckle as the static resumes.
Jonathan sighs. “And they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery… bullshit.”
“What’s that, John?”
“I won’t lie, Jer. Most of tonight I’ve wanted to die.”
“Okay?” I say, only realizing how insensitive it is once it’s left my lips.
He chuckles. “I like you, Jer. I do. And I want you to know that this is fate. Here I am, sulking in my own failure in some backwoods motel, when lo and behold I’m channel-surfing and see your show. Your guest… what’s his name? Anal Wart? He gives me and mine a bad rap, so against my better judgement, I’m here to set the record straight.”
The audience gasps as one. Susan’s eyes widen. Alemar faces the crowd and crew, suspended there—inches from the floor—as if held by strings. His arms dangle at his sides.
“Mr-Mr. Alemar? Are you— “
A static exhale. “How about someone interviews you for a change? Let’s talk about what just happened. I mean, come on, Paplovich. I saw it on your face before my call. I know you know it’s fake, or that you suspect it is. Could be a natural inclination to doubt the mystical, which I can’t much fault you for. We have restrictions on what we can and can’t do. Rules, understand? But I’m getting sidetracked…”
The once-weeping mother stands from her seat, chin dangling so it brushes her chest. A python unhinging its jaw. Her eyes milk-smeared voids, drool trailing from her limp tongue.
“You there, Paplovich?”
I jolt, find the camera. “Ye-yes, Jonathan. I’m here.”
“Tell me you didn’t let Anal Wart choose…” He trails off, sighs. “Of course you did. Gracious host and all… So, I don’t doubt there’s a grieving mother in your audience tonight, but I have to include her, Jer, in case she’s in cahoots with Anal Wart over there.”
The woman looses a gargled moan, twitches in her seat. The people around her pile into the aisle.
“We have a vast array of gifts—and while I haven’t seen them all, I can tell you that someone who sees beyond the veil has to take the client’s hands. I had an acquaintance who’d only host viewings when absolutely necessary because, according to her, you can’t truly know that what answers is the loved one. She had to move twice in six months because something hung around her and her child after her last viewing. She’s given it up now, manages a Denny’s or something, but that’s not the point. See, she had a fire about her—something I could sense. I peered into Anal Wart here, and felt... nothing.”
The woman convulses, drool sailing, arms firing at the vacant seats around her. She’s swallowing air, jaw working like a ventriloquist’s dummy. She wriggles, climbing the rows of seats before her, falling in the floor of each before righting herself, making for the rail. Alemar croaks and cocks his head as the slack-jawed woman plummets from the seats above. She hits the floor with a thwack, sending the crew scattering.
Jonathan chuckles. “They’re fake. False. They owe you an apology. Go on, tell them how false you are.”
Alemar jerks his head up to me, his eyes white. He croaks and steps forward.“False… false…”
I can’t look away from him, or those dead orbs. He smiles, and blood streams from his nose and eyes. The audience is blurred chaos. A rolling ocean of screams and pounding feet. Alemar inches closer, repeating his mantra: “False False…” Blood coats the gold of his jacket.
The slack-jawed woman twitches on the floor. She stands, and stumbles on mangled legs, twisted and bent backward at the knees. She turns to the crew as they pound on the rear exit doors. Those in the audience flee to the side exits, coagulating in screams of desperate fury.
Alemar stands before me and cocks his head.
“False…”
Red sprays from his neck in a mist, coating my shirt, suit, and face. Red runs in lines from his ears, eyes, and nose. He smiles and collapses at my feet. I lose myself in something slick, crashing on my ass.
FuckFUCK
I crawl backward until—something solid. I reach behind me. My desk. I lean my head against the wood, the toppled cameras taking me in from the foot of the stage. Susan and the crew flail against the door like fish ripped from the sea. They moan and croak, staring at the ceiling, their eyes white voids. Massive piles crowd the exits, though a few stragglers litter the studio floor, twitching and bleeding from their ears and eyes.
My hand brushes the mic clipped to my tie, and a rustling pours from the overhead speakers. I scan the rigid, twitching bodies in their Sunday’s best, now bleeding shells of themselves. They shift like unaware insects, and every so often red mist hissssses from one of their throats before they collapse.
Alemar’s mantra ripples through my mind, accompanying me through the recent weeks of my life.
False.
Susan and I in my dressing room two months ago. She straddles me in the leather loveseat after the show. Both of us married—panting with lust. Sweating, pumping, kissing, pulling, moaning, anticipation in our eyes as she throws her head back in the lowlight of the mirror’s bulbs.
False.
Cassie trudges down the stairwell, bags packed. I’m scheming, pleading, lying behind her—but no, not this time. I tell her she’s crazy, yell she’s delusional through the open door leading into the brisk night of our dying suburban dream. She throws her bags in the trunk of her roadster, walks back to me, and drops a medley in my palm: loose change, and the ring I proposed with three years prior.
“Call someone who cares,” she says, and storms off. I yell after her and she walks on, middle finger held high.
Though the jostled camera’s on its side, it stares at me as the shells of the band, crew, and audience twitch and jerk. Their empty eyes cast heavenward. The lens won’t let me go, it wants… something.
And what’s more important than the truth?
False.
Nothing
False.
All I do is stand up here.
False.
All I do is lie…
My hand brushes the mic again, distortion disrupts the croak-laden stillness. I don’t know if we’re still live. Jonathan is either disconnected or silent, but none of it matters. All that matters is the truth. Anything other than being… …false.
As I lean into the mic pinned to my tie, a shell in a blue dress sways, then lurches as red mist sprays from Susan’s eyes. She collapses to the floor.
Confession: “Sometimes, I think of suicide to ask God why…”
Confession: “I dreamed I fell in love again. What an incredibly stupid thing to do…”
Confession: “I’m not sure everyone gets to be happy, and maybe that’s all right…”
Confession: “I’m having an affair…”
Confession: “You were right, Cass.” I’m sobbing now. “I’m an unfaithful shit… you deserve better...”
Another husk mists red and thuds to the floor. My hand brushes the mic again, and I freeze with Alemar’s void-borne stare. His arm slides through the blood pooled around him, and he smiles, lifting a finger to the side exit doors. The utility phone on the wall rings. I stare transfixed, heart slamming as it riiiiings... riiiiings. I lift myself from the floor onto noodling legs. My shoes and suit coated in red, stomach wrenching as I overstep the fallen, their limbs gnarled and twisted, their mouths ajar. Bile laps at the back of my throat as I pass those still upright. They twitch, bulging anticipatory eyes to the sky in wait, for death to let them fall.
I make my way to the screaming phone, hand hovering. Riiiiing… Riiiiiiing... Inhaling, I lift it from the receiver and bring it up to my ear.
“They cut the broadcast a while ago,” Jonathan says, his breaths labored. “But luckily, I’m in tight with Anal Wart over there.”
Alemar waves from his place on the floor, then goes limp.
“Now I’m just a man in a cheap motel with bloody fingertips pressed to a television screen, and though I’ve pessimistic tendencies, I’m a realist. So, listen close, Paplovich. There will be those who ask you what happened tonight. These people, my people, are looking for me. I can’t promise they’ll let you live—run if you like, self-preservation is your God-given right—but when they inevitably find you, tell them something for me.”
I turn, lean against the wall, and inhale to speak.
“No, let me finish, Jer. This takes a lot of effort. It’s new. Let’s just say I’ve come a long way from bending spoons. But that’s not the point. See, I think they bar us from interfering with you lessers because they’re afraid we’ll get a taste for it, and you know what? I’m not sure I don’t enjoy this, so you tell them my experiment worked—that I’m coming for them. And that I hope killing my wife was worth the unending hell I’ll rain in on their door. And if there’s a real tall, pale fucker masquerading as a detective or something, you tell him that somewhere in hell, his brother begs for a sip of water. That’ll rattle his fucking cage… oh, and for good measure, you could...”
I tune out his ramblings as the phone hangs by its cord, and slump against the wall beneath the glowing “Exit” sign. I find Alemar—lifeless puppet that he is—waiting for the pull on his slack strings. Two twisted shells near the stage burst mist from their mouths as they fall in a one-two thud to the floor.
Our wedding day. The pastor smiles, says “Kiss the bride.” Cass grabs my face, licks my lips and cheeks like a dog. Laughing all the while. I knew what love was then… knew she was the one. Still is the one.
Jonathan’s still talking. The Advil in my dressing room coax me to them. The keyboardist is wedged over his keyboard, bent in a triangle, red dripping from his eyes and nose. There’s a pounding from outside the door nearest me, and though they yell, I’m not concerned. The mound of lifeless bodies do well to dampen the sound.
I bring the phone to my ear again.
“…and perhaps they’ll ask, ‘Why did you kill two hundred people on the Jerry Paplovich show?’ and I’ll say ‘Because I didn’t get a puppy for my seventh birthday, no assholes, because you killed my fucking wife...’ Still there, Jer? It’s important you’re getting all this.”
Cassie and I on our honeymoon. Her dark hair blowing in the breeze of that oceanfront cantina. She’s smiling. God, I love her. Something she says as the wind lifts her hair. “Everyone has something to offer. What makes you a good person is if you offer it to the world.”
I’m crying, overlooking the bog of prostrate bodies. Lungs raw. Vision swimming. I clear my throat.
“Am I a good man?”
Jonathan laughs through horrid coughs. “Uh… I’m kinda in the middle of something, Jer. You listening? It’s important you’re listening…”
I stare over the sea of corpses. A lone wretch stands, twitching—praying, in its way. Left behind.
Jonathan breaks the silence. “If you have to ask, more than like you’re not.”
“What makes you think I’ll relay your message? You’re sick. Evil. You need serious help.”
“And who the fuck are you, Saint Thomas?” He sighs. “Listen, Paplovich—you listen well. Sit there and judge me for what I’ve done tonight, but know this. Just because someone in the world has done truly awful things, that doesn’t mean you’re a good person.”
