Videodrome Read online

  IT BEGINS WITH VERY SPECIAL

  LATE-NIGHT PROGRAMS,

  AIMED AT YOUR DARKEST FANTASY,

  AND EVOLVES EVER MORE RAPIDLY

  UNTIL THE LINE BETWEEN FANTASY AND REALITY

  BLURS AND DISAPPEARS.

  AT FIRST, YOU NEED THE CASSETTE

  BUT THEN YOU ARE THE CASSETTE

  AND VIDEO IMAGES ARE REALITY

  AND REALITY IS THE FINAL HORROR.

  A WORLD OF TELEVISED MADNESS

  EXISTING ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SCREEN,

  A WORLD IN WHICH

  STAR AND VICTIM ARE ONE . . .

  AND YOU ARE BOTH!

  PIERRE DAVID and VICTOR SOLNICKI

  Present A

  DAVID CRONENBERG Film

  “VIDEODROME”

  Starring

  JAMES WOODS • SONJA SMITTS

  and DEBORAH HARRY as NICKI

  Also Starring

  PETER DVORSKY • LES CARLSON

  JACK GRELEY • LYNNE GORMAN

  Special Makeup

  RICK BAKER

  Associate Producer

  LAWRENCE NESIS

  Produced by

  CLAUDE HEROUX

  Executive Producers

  VICTOR SOLNICKI and PIERRE DAVID

  Written and Directed by

  DAVID CRONENBERG

  A FILMPLAN INTERNATIONAL Production

  A UNIVERSAL Release

  LARGER THAN LIFE

  “Who’s behind it?” Max asked earnestly, or thought earnestly. As if he could be heard. As if he could ever have been heard. “What do they want?”

  I want you, Max. You.

  The voice was Nicki’s. Max turned toward the set.

  Come to me, Max. Come to Nicki. She advanced on the camera so that her features filled the entire nineteen-inch screen. Then her enlarged face pressed out into the room in extreme close-up, all wet teeth and red cupid’s-bow lips. Max heard the crackling lilt of her breathing in his ears as the speaker cone vibrated and stretched out to him, a living orifice.

  Max approached the set—as if in a dream.

  He fell to his knees before Nicki’s image. And as he grasped the breathing sides of the set, her larger-than-life lips distended to meet his forehead, the glass of the tube melting and ballooning outward to touch his skin.

  As Max pressed his face into Nicki’s, the electron guns shot their images directly into his brain . . .

  Max closed his eyes, no longer needing them to see.

  ZEBRA BOOKS

  are published by

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  475 Park Avenue South

  New York, N.Y. 10016

  Copyright © 1983 by MCA Publishing,

  a Division of MCA Communications, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Printed in the United States of America

  To those who feel the pain they see.

  I do it so it feels like hell.

  I do it so it feels real.

  I guess you could say I’ve a call.

  —Sylvia Plath

  The medium is the massage.

  —Marshall McLuhan

  To extreme sickness, extreme remedies.

  —Montaigne

  Part One:

  Samurai Dreams

  Chapter One

  Max Renn awoke to find himself in a room he had never seen before.

  It was small, soundproofed, little more than a chamber. But bright lights as blue-white as daylight shone down on him from an unseen source. Somewhere behind the lights faces shifted—pale, unsmiling faces. Witnesses. He sensed that for some reason they were more frightened than he; the knowledge amused him. He heard their robes rustling for position over the polished floor.

  Kenshi, he thought.

  The floor became red beneath his feet as a hand pressed him to his knees. The fingers were firm but not unkind. Their pressure was almost loving, their gentle insistence almost cruel.

  His legs folded under him and he sank to the crimson carpet.

  He had no choice.

  But that was all right. After all, how else could it end?

  It would be a new experience. The ultimate one. Wouldn’t it?

  Now he saw the small table. A clearly audible gasp went up from behind the lights as he reached forward and grasped the wrapped handle of the short sword, curved and shaped to lie easily across his open palm. It balanced there perfectly, as if it had always been there, as if it had grown there while he was sleeping. He drew the blade from its sheath, and was filled with a great peace.

  He straightened his back and strained toward the promise of release. Breaths, his own and many others, were held in quivering expectation as the lights trembled and sang. The air became warm, moist, and began to distort into grainy bands of light and darkness.

  He felt new eyes very close by, behind and above him.

  He glanced over his shoulder and saw the broad, painted face of a woman, his kaishaku. She was somehow familiar. He had never known her like.

  One of the kenshi cleared his throat and began the litany of charges.

  Max could not understand the words. But he knew what the sentence would be.

  His hand closed around the shaft.

  Suddenly a wave of desire washed over him as he prepared for the first thrust.

  The singing of the lights and the shrill, authoritative voice of his accuser rose in pitch until the close walls reverberated with a sound that was very much like a scream.

  Her eyes were looking at him.

  “MAX, IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN . . .”

  The scream became a crackling lilt.

  “TIME TO SLOWLY, PAINFULLY EASE YOURSELF BACK INTO CONSCIOUSNESS. NO, I’M NOT A DREAM, ALTHOUGH I’VE BEEN TOLD I’M A VISION OF LOVELINESS.”

  She giggled.

  “I’M NOTHING LESS THAN YOUR FAITHFUL GIRL FRIDAY, BRIDEY JAMES, WITH YOUR WAKE-UP CALL FOR TODAY, WHICH IS WEDNESDAY THE 23RD. GOT THAT?”

  He rolled over, and awoke again.

  The face was speaking to him from across the room.

  The dream began to fade.

  He felt new eyes very close by, behind and above him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the broad A DREAM of a woman, his kaishaku. She was somehow LOVELINESS . . . He had never known her like. One FAITHFUL GIRL FRIDAY began the litany of charges WHICH IS WEDNESDAY THE 23RD. Max could not understand AND I HAVE A MESSAGE: REMEMBER the shaft. A wave of SHINJI KURAKI OF HIROSHIMA VIDEO . . . the first thrust. TO TAKE PLACE AT THE CLASSIC HOTEL of his accuser WHO WORKS NINE TO FIVE? OVER AND OUT, COMMANDER.”

  Her eyes were looking at him.

  Bridey, he thought groggily. You’ll never win first prize in the Miss Toronto contest. But guess what? You’re beginning to look better and better to me . . .

  But then everything looks better on TV, doesn’t it?

  He struggled to find his watch. It was on his wrist. But he could not find his arm. He had fallen asleep with his arm twisted under him; now it shivered awake with the pain of pins and needles. The sensation made his teeth hurt. He lay there waiting for it to end, or to begin.

  He found his arm, raised it numbly to his forehead and, in the dim light that was leaking through the curtains, tried to read the hands against the black watch-face.

  Good old Bridey. She was right again. Of course.

  It was that time already.

  With his good hand he groped for the remote control, but not before the wake-up cassette repeated.

  He punched the volume down and watched his secretary’s nineteen-inch face mouth the message a second time.

  I use
d to have a thing, he thought, for prissy, puritanical types, back about the time I was in Radio and Television Arts College. Bridey . . . another month working for me and who knows? Play your cards right and you might end up shacking with the president of Civic TV.

  If I can stomach the job that much longer.

  Well then, Bridey, maybe you’d like my job. Maybe that’s what you’ve secretly been after all along. If so, you know what? You can be my guest. You can start spending all day, every day scrounging for new programming. And I can start living out my fantasies, instead of buying and selling other people’s dreams like sausages by the pound. You want it, kid? You’ve got it. It’s all yours.

  He punched up the volume again before the tape finished. He wasn’t at all certain that it had made sense to him the first time.

  “. . . AND I HAVE A MESSAGE: REMEMBER YOUR MEETING AT 6:30 THIS MORNING WITH SHINJI KURAKI OF HIROSHIMA VIDEO. THIS MEETING IS TO TAKE PLACE AT THE CLASSIC HOTEL, 483 KING STREET WEST, SUITE 58, AND NEEDLESS TO SAY IT’S YOUR FIRST OF THE DAY. DON’T YOU KNOW ANYONE WHO WORKS NINE-TO-FIVE? OVER AND OUT, COMMANDER.”

  Right, he thought, as Bridey’s twinkling, state-of-the-art eyes stared mercilessly into his living room. He had fallen asleep watching television again. This time as she finished she was replaced by the sign-on logo for Channel 83, The One You Take to Bed with You. Then the close, stale, grainy air and Max’s head were pierced through by the station’s fanfare, jaunty, brash and cheerfully schlocky, modulated too high as last-ditch wake-up insurance. After a few notes the theme segued into a relentless electronic tone, and the picture tube was louvered by the Day-Glow bars of a color test pattern.

  There was no escaping it.

  He stretched and disembedded his legs from the sofa. Inch by tortured inch. He waited to feel the touch of his feet on the carpet. It seemed to take a very long time, as if he were moving in slow motion instead of real time.

  He dragged himself through his apartment, punching buttons as he went, as though dressing a set with lights.

  The dark green walls of the cramped kitchen damped much of the indirect lighting; only the occasional piece of red enamel cookware reflected painfully back into his eyes, like the jar of Ragu sauce on the shelf, like the glistening smears scarring the warped pizza box on the table.

  He fired up his battered espresso machine and drew a thick cupful, feeling the heat from the nozzle steaming his eyes open the rest of the way. Idly he reached for a congealed slice of the half-eaten pizza. He stood chewing as he fingered a scattered stack of stills on the counter.

  Each of the glossies bore the title Samurai Dreams. On the first photo the identification was just below the small, bared breasts of an apparently nude Japanese woman. Her hands were raised to unwrap her traditional hair; her narrow eyes were closed and on her face was a distracted, ambivalent expression that seemed poised somewhere on the edge between pain and pleasure.

  He could not be sure what was going on out-of-frame, but the possibilities were distinctly limited.

  The other photos were in the same style. The frames had been blown up and cropped for the sake of modesty and the postal authorities, but the masking only worked to heighten the tease. Max had seen enough material of a similar sort to appreciate how canny and calculated it was. The stills were vaguely exotic, with just enough cheap artiness to offset the blatant eroticism. The result was a pretentious but low-key sell.

  Now, as when he had first looked them over last night, Max found them ultimately dull and unexciting. Something was missing.

  Depressed, he tossed the photographs down, leaving a weak dribble of pizza sauce like cold blood across one of the black-and-white torsos.

  And noticed that the red smear added a flash of unexpected color to the pose—enough to pique his interest. Despite the hour he felt the first tentative stirrings of a connoisseur’s curiosity. Distracted, he tried to rub off the red stain. That only made it worse.

  Frowning uneasily and scratching his belly through his rumpled clothes, he left the kitchen.

  Samurai Dreams, he mused. Hmm.

  What was it really about?

  Now the model in the photo seemed oddly familiar, like the projection of one of his private fantasies on the screen of 8 x 10 inch paper.

  He tried but couldn’t remember.

  For the time being, he let it go.

  “So good to see you again, Max!”

  The security chain was in place but the screws were pulling out of the jamb. A good hard shove, thought Max, and she’d open wide.

  He smiled tightly at Shinji Kuraki’s low, polished head. In his nervous haste the Japanese businessman drew the chain taut instead of unhooking it. Now the screws ripped free and dangled, widening the slit in the doorway to permit unopposed entry.

  The door creaked back and Max stepped into Suite 58.

  Shinji’s bows became a rhythmic and mildly embarrassing affectation. Dutifully he shook Max’s hand and then unfolded his fingers like the blades of a greasy fan, indicating another plaid jacket against the heavy curtains.

  “My associate, Hiro Nakamura.”

  “How’s it going?” said Max.

  The associate smiled stoically behind his close-cropped baby beard and took up his post at a flimsy card table. An open briefcase displayed stacks of small vinyl containers arranged in an arcane pattern. Max squinted at the titles as he passed the table, but the words were unreadable in the dim light which filtered wanly through the red drapes. They were probably untranslated ideograms, anyway. Max sat.

  The two businessmen seated themselves before him with a show of controlled casualness. But behind their buttoned collars they were straining at the leash like dogs trained to wait for first blood before moving in for the kill.

  “Well,” Max began with measured enthusiasm. He felt them inch closer, a thin film of perspiration buttering their wide faces. “I looked over the stills. I’m interested.”

  The bearded man puffed up confidently in his stiff chair.

  “A little bit,” Max added.

  The balding man leaned in, proffering a half-empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Red, and a thin scent of Right Guard deodorant wafted toward Max. It dawned on him that the two had been at it all night; the bottle was occluded with fingerprints.

  They’re running on Hiroshima time, he realized, waving the bottle aside. Jesus Christ, it’s not even seven a.m. here. Don’t they know that? Don’t they care? No. Of course not. Why should they?

  He showed them his teeth. “How many shows?”

  “Thirteen,” said Shinji immediately, “with the possibility of another six, if the sales go well.” His eyes were black beads in his flat face, all pupil, like a shark’s eyes.

  “You got cassettes?”

  “Of course, Max.”

  The tension broke and there were curt laughs all around. The balding man snapped his fingers and his associate went into action, wheeling out a cassette machine. Shinji dealt the first tape out of the briefcase.

  Max stopped his wrist. “Uh, hold it.” The balding man reacted with surprise. Max flashed his teeth again for reassurance. “Show me the last one. Number thirteen.”

  Shinji’s eyes widened, desperately sanpaku. “But Max,” he pleaded, “everything is set up in the first two. You won’t understand anything!”

  “My audience isn’t going to see the first two shows.” Max maintained eye contact without flinching. “Show me the last one.”

  Reluctantly Shinji deferred.

  Max settled back. He considered removing his overcoat, loosening the leather necktie that bound his throat, but did not want to imply any longer stay than was absolutely necessary.

  He felt off-center and mildly oppressed; he hadn’t had time for a shower, had barely managed a quick shave, and had made it this far on nothing but coffee and sheer guts. The warm tone of the fresh paint on the walls didn’t make it any easier. He scanned the room as he waited. He rubbed his temples, tapped his fingers, took out a bent cigarette. The
new paint didn’t hide much. Cracks showed through like the outline of veins in the plaster; it seemed not quite dry. He wondered what it would feel like were he to touch it; he imagined his fingers sinking in and leaving an impression like a handprint in moulage. He lit up and dragged so deeply that no smoke was visible when he exhaled.

  The television monitor flickered to life.

  The three men turned their heads to it with exaggerated nonchalance.

  The tinny strains of a melody plucked on the strings of a koto filled the hotel room and the chamber onscreen, where just now a somewhat modernized geisha was preoccupied with the unfettering of her thick black hair.

  Her eyes closed dreamily.

  Her robe fell away from snowy shoulders as, behind and above her, shadows moved against ricepaper panels. Two ersatz Samurai warriors appeared and began delicately, respectfully to caress her fragile skin. Then their robes, too, fell away . . .

  Max fidgeted.

  The performance was discreet, charming, surprisingly slick—and only mildly provocative. At least so far. He had known it would be this way. But he had to be sure. He had to see everything with his own eyes.

  “Lighting’s not right,” he said to himself.

  “What?” Shinji was taken aback. “I can assure you, Max, we use only the best facilities. Our cameraman has worked for Oshima. Our lighting director—”

  “It’s too neutral. It should be more like daylight. Blue, you know?”

  The Orientals were staring at him.

  “At least that’s the way I remember it.” He snapped to, remembering where he was. “Forget it.”

  “There is another series like this? Some other supplier . . . ?”

  “No, not at all. It’s just—it reminds me of something.”

  “Of what, Max?” The businessman racked his brain. Finally he settled on a satisfactory explanation. He searched for the right words. “Ahh, I see. The paintings of Utamaro, perhaps? Our art director—”

  “Which one is the kenshi?” Max pointed impatiently at the screen. Other figures had entered and were pairing off gracefully in the background.

  “Kenshi?” said the supplier. The televised pattern of orchestrated movements reflected off his face, causing his features to cloud and squirm. “A Japanese word meaning ‘witness’. Is that what you mean to say?”