"Selling" by George Oliver

We sell popcorn. It’s our job, even if it’s not a sufficient economic provider. We abide by rules and maintain standards and report to an employer that doesn’t care about us, but something brings us back every day.         

We load the machine. We scoop out the popcorn. We fill the variously sized boxes. We speak to customers, naughty and nice. We tidy shelves. We sweep floors. We do toilet checks. We change and take out bins. We scour the showtimes for typos. We count the money.         

But we also sneak into films. Sometimes, we’re given permission to sit in on screenings. Other times, we go in anyway. For those pockets of 90, 120, or 150 minutes, we’re defibrillated. We’re on stilts, watching from high above ground, untouchable by the miserable shift manager or overqualified duty manager who otherwise have the power to relegate us to floor level. To popcorn machine level. To cash register level.         

We sneak into commercial blockbusters and arthouse gems. Films that make us smile and films that make us shout. Films we disappear into the crowd for, glad to not be responsible for people’s experience. Films that less successfully distract our terms of employment – that we discretely scoop up popcorn during, wipe down a seat with an anti-bac cloth during.

Those films repel us. Others invite us in.

The doors to screen 5 are unguarded by a ticket checker. This is a weekday matinee commonplace, for anything higher than screen 2.         

20 minutes after the advertised start, I’m in screen 5, seated on the back row, momentarily pretending to dustpan and brush spilled pick ‘n’ mix.       

10 minutes later, after the post-advert trailers have turned back into adverts, I stop pretending to dustpan and brush. Mick – the team favourite – is shift manager today, meaning we could gut a patron, move the body, and clean up the mess (negating the possibility of a crime scene) and he wouldn’t notice. His head would be in a crossword or his attention on a YouTube tutorial for sushi making. His feet up on his “desk.” The door to his “office” closed.         

5 minutes later, I escape with Scarlett Johansson to Glasgow. She’s an alien taking human form; I’m an idle spectator, at the mercy of whatever instructions or advice or warnings her character and the film wish to give me.     

Johannsson’s alien seduces Scottish men and traps them in an all-black void, where they become submerged in a liquid abyss. I only sink into the fabrics of my uncomfortable red seat.         

I think of my Dad leaving my Mum a year ago. I wonder where he is.    

I think of the deferred university place I’m soon scheduled to take up, a year later. I think about whether the transportation from one world to another and the permanent closure of my comfort zone are worth it.         

I think of the corn kernel which expands and puffs when heated. I think about whether sales of sweet will outdo sales of salted today – and about who will bother to record this information for Mick. Sweet or salted… salted or sweet.      

George Oliver has just finished a PhD on contemporary transatlantic literature at King's College London, where he also taught American literature for three years. He is both a short fiction and culture writer. His short stories have recently appeared in The Bookends Review, BRUISER, Clackamas Literary Review, Eunoia Review, and Querencia Press.