Watched by belladet
The only reason Kurt Russell could control the situation was because his hair was the biggest. Not everyone can afford 20 cans of hairspray. Sometimes, you’re Keith David: the second Kurt, the paranoid one wearing a sexy blue turtleneck.
Or sometimes you're the fucking Thing.
Sometimes, you're 13, and your parents are getting a divorce; your mom doesn’t know how to handle it. So you fight with flame throwers all over your junk-filled house, setting fire to the Rae Dunn mugs that litter the living room floor. They melt and coalesce into a horrid amalgamation of everything this house used to be. If it ever even was.
Did The Thing have a mom?
You think about yourself in its place, terrified, piecing together your escape in the skin of someone else. Remember when your mom would find ripped-out diary pages of wishes and dreams that didn’t involve her or involved her too much? When all you wanted to do was go home but didn’t even know if you had a home anymore.
It’s easy to root for an intensely hair-sprayed Kurt Russell. That’s the plebian's choice. Feel bad for the man-eating monster instead. Sometimes, men deserve to get eaten. Sometimes, men meet things that don’t speak their language and try to set them on fire. Sometimes, when you’re in your room and know Mom’s lying in bed on Facebook or reading a book, you need to go downstairs or to the bathroom past her open door. You crawl on the ground so she won’t see you.
Do you think the Thing ever tried to do that?
She reads an entry in your diary. You’d scribble words about wanting to stay with your dad more, how he was the only one who actually likes you, and other not-nice things. She tells you you’ve betrayed her. If you like your dad so much better, why don’t you just go stay with him? You’re crying; she’s crying. You keep trying to tell her, to have her understand you, how hard living in this house was. Filled to the brim with junk she’s bought for that instant gratification. How many knick-knacks does it take to fill up the hole in your heart?
You’re rotting from the inside out. She says you don’t love her, and maybe the worst part is you think she’s right. Who is this person? This woman is not your mom. You both are speaking two different languages refusing to offer a translation.
You explode in a gory spray of hurtful, meaningless words. They splatter on the living room walls like blood. Mom’s face twists, then falls as if the vitriol inside her has run out. She sighs. Something nasty is bubbling up your throat, but you swallow it down. It tastes a lot like guilt.
You can’t face the aftermath, so you run outside and sit on the snowy porch steps. The snow falls, and for a split second, you think of running away, leaving the remnants of your escape in the untouched powdery lawn. But you won’t do that. So, instead, you cry. Ugly tears and ugly guilt wallowing in ugly self-pity. You call your dad on your little iPhone 4, sobbing, begging him to come pick you up. You tell him everything, how you just had a really bad fight, and how you want to go home. Because this wasn’t home anymore, you hadn’t been home in a long time.
Do you think the Thing felt guilty? After killing the dogs and consuming the men? Do you think it stood in the middle of its carnage and wondered if its dad would pick up the phone?
He sighs on the other end. A few moments pass. He isn’t going to come get you. He tells you to cool down, breathe, wait a few minutes, and try to go back and work it out. You say okay, two seconds away from prying out your teeth because talking was the last thing you wanted to do. Apparently, you aren’t very convincing because he says he’ll come get you if it doesn’t work. But he isn’t very convincing either, and you can tell he wants you to try and work it out on your own. You tell him you love him. He says it back. You hang up.
Nowhere is safe. You can’t trust anyone, and it’s really cold sitting on the porch in the middle of January. You don’t try to talk it out. You’ll sleep in the basement that night, so you won’t have to go upstairs and pass your mom's open bedroom door.
How do you look at your family and know they’re as they’ve always been? That they haven’t been replaced by something else, something evil. And what’s worse? Knowing something else has taken their place, or something that's always been there, is coming out, and it’s all your fault.
You should’ve left the ice alone instead of thawing it out. You should’ve kept your mouth shut and shot the dog. But your dog died a year ago, and you don’t know how to shoot a gun anyway.
