I Build Myself A Time Machine With Broken Glass and Film

Erika Santos

The footsteps are loud. The sky is dark. Our breaths are held, our eyes focused. I see a modern house, or a forest, or a house party.

I can recall the echoing screams of my family the moment the darkened figure appeared on screen.

I can recall the silence among us at the awakened apprehension; the cold fear that washed over them slowly.

I can also recall my shameless grin at the terror etched on their faces. Their childish, innocent nature had never been so amusing as when watching a horror film.

Horror films, for as long as I could remember, had been a colossal fragment of my family’s amusement. When I was younger, dinners, gatherings, and birthdays had always ended in the tiny living room of my grandparents’ house. The sight was almost ridiculous: the large group of my cousins and I squished together in front of the television to enjoy whatever film my uncle wanted us to watch. As distant as some of us are now, the remembrance of these times had forever engrained itself in the pits of my mind, and my stomach, where glimpses of these memories ate at the pulp of my organs until it felt so heavy that I still sometimes cry.

The open-mouthed, engulfing gape of the mask stares back at me. It droops, slowly, like a dejected spirit. Picture a Screaming Sculpture hangs in the Buxton Contemporary in Southbank at the University of Melbourne for its Nightshifts exhibition. It is dark and overwhelming, holding a collective of sounds in one picture. I imagine its creator, Ricky Swallows, likes to sculpt my misery, and photograph it onto a moulded frame.

The film Scream always had an enormous connotation of enjoyment attached to it. It was never scary, nor entirely dramatic, but weirdly wholesome and hilarious. I can recall laughter better than I can remember frights, and in some ways, I value it better than other horrors.

My family was always close. We were large and compacted, but we made it work, and my large group of cousins and aunties and uncles had helped with that. Films were a religion we frequently practised, and whenever I explain it aloud, I imagine the group of us in scout's uniforms doing bonding exercises at a summer camp. There were some people who were forced to participate, like my brother, or a few of my cousins, but the fear of being excluded always inflated bigger than the fear of the films.

I, an incredibly emotional person, always cherished these moments. Sometimes, I barely remember the movie but could recite every detail of the seating arrangements, who was there that day, what food we were eating. The description of Ricky Swallows’ work at the gallery states that the piece has ‘references to themes of memory, nostalgia and the passage of time.’ There is something so enigmatic about the melancholy, almost frustrated, feelings of nostalgia that arose when large pieces of memories have faded, and you no longer frequently saw the people who were the centre of those said memories. Now that my grandfather has passed, I find myself thinking back to the past, as unfortunate as that is to me.

I am observing Picture a Screaming Sculpture. I find myself confused as to why I immediately thought about my grandfather and my family. I am dejected to remember that I am grieving, and that every thought I have will now surround itself in grief, and that all the love that I had saved for him has now bubbled to my throat and stays there proudly whenever I think too hard.

The night my grandfather had died, his drool slipped down his chin and his eyes remained half-lidded, and he could barely think clearly enough to recognise half the faces in his bedroom. We were all ready; our faces were already drenched with tears and our hearts hammered, ready for the dreaded end. When he passed, it was not anything spectacular. There was no big sound effect, or a loud departure that finalised the moment, but my mind had divided itself into fragments of brain and goo, and the only visual I could vividly recall was my hand shaking when I looked down. But there were loud screams that sounded as if I were underwater and could not rise to the top. My family members were sobbing uncontrollably with their whole bodies, like small, injured lambs.

There was a tiny, morbid part of my brain that had found the screams theatrical, in a way. Not to say my family members were not incredibly upset, but I was more so amused at the bodily reaction of such an echoing sound to emit from the body going into shock. Thinking back to the artwork, I imagine the piece somewhere along the background amongst my cousins and family. It would blend in seamlessly with the rest of the screaming faces. Loud and stretched, like the mask.

My grandfather, with his last breath, released a loud gasp as he sat up in his bed, although he had been immobile for days before. He grabbed onto my grandmother, and his life had concluded in a total of three seconds.

“It is difficult to laugh when your throat closes, and restricts you from releasing any other sound but a pained whimper.”

I had always wanted to find humour in pain, and positives in tragedies, but sometimes his gasp replays in my head like a broken looping record, and my cousin’s screams echo in my left ear whenever I sleep on my side. It is difficult to laugh when your throat closes, and restricts you from releasing any other sound but a pained whimper.

I imagine the loud cry, or a wretched scream, and my grandfather's face interlaces with the mask the closer I look until I cannot decipher the two. The face is wracked with pain and angst, drooping angrily from itself, but beneath the extremities, there are pain and dreaded, loud existential feelings that rise like the dead: unapologetically.

Standing at the Buxton Contemporary, I look away from the photograph but look back quickly. I observe the shadows and the black point, and I convince my mind it is enough, and that I do not have to search for a hidden meaning when it is a mask of a serial killer. It leads to darker thoughts, and I wonder if I would grieve differently if someone had hurt my grandpa, but instead, I have no one else to blame but sickness and genetics and bad luck. I blame the summer, because it was so incredibly humid when he passed and it felt like the world was mocking me, and the lump in my throat has stayed since he passed six months ago, and whenever I look at the sun, I curse it. I blame time, also, simply for not having enough of it.

The tortured face stares back at me, loud and unremorseful, but through its face, I see films and memories, and the couch is warm, and the lights are off, and my cousin's laughter surrounds me like air and my grandfather is still alive.

I don’t remember the last time I watched a film with my cousins, similar to when we were kids, but I wish I could build a time machine and transport myself back to that night and wish that I could hug my family a little longer, and that I could trace fingertips onto my grandfather's face. Even though I would not know if he were thinking about his own cessation, I would know he would be in pain, and I would remind him that it would be okay.

I look back at the picture. I am hesitant to walk away because it hurts. It feels raw, like a paper cut, but I want to press down on the wound and feel the pain. I want it to hurt, and I want to remind myself that it is okay to feel this deeply, because I am a lover and I love so entirely. I do not love in halves; I want to say to myself. I am grieving because I love. I will wear the pain proudly.

I look at the piece a little closer. Through the dark shadows, I spot my own reflection. My hair is ruffled, and my cheeks are red in the uncomfortably warm room. I see my grandfather standing next to me. The sound of his walking stick remains familiar to me, and he knocks it into the floor as he stands smiling beside me.

Words like pain, anguish, grief, nostalgia, and time, run through my mind with wide arms.

I look at him. He looks back at me.

There is no deeper meaning, I say to myself, and I know my grandfather would agree.