Short Kings Looking For Love

By Tara Jenkins

 

Over a million people pass through O’Hare in a week, branching out in ever thinning webs across counties and continents from there. About two of those people pass through Hampshire intentionally. There’s little chance of overcrowding, at least people-wise. You don’t have to count high for much in Hampshire. Maybe for corn. Maybe there’s a million stalks of corn in Hampshire. Connie imagines this—row upon row of stiff necked soldiers, so green that it wears out the cones in your eyes. Tow topped and intimidating in their endless ranks. She didn’t like the corn. It felt like so much could be hiding in between the overlapping leaves. The vast expanses of produce felt foreign, which they were, an artifact from movies where someone would get lost, or chased, in the undulating vegetation.

The driver didn’t seem to like it much either, but maybe she was projecting. The hour-long ride out of the city of Chicago into the fields had begun, proceeded, and ended in an ever thickening silence. By the time the driver slowed at the turn off, mailbox signifying something lying behind the heavy tree cover, the light was beginning to die. He didn’t seem to want to turn into the single lane dirt path. The email had explained this would probably be the case. Connie clears her throat and prepares to ask for the driver to proceed, but with a weary sigh he turns onto the path without any goading.

The path is bumpy, already too dim in the late afternoon light. The car trundles forward slowly, stiffly, until finally the trees open up after about a quarter of a mile. The “castle” is as the email described it. Three stories of gray brick with turrets at either end, a rough circle drive carved out of the thicket before it. The driver leaves Connie in front of the wooden steps up to the slim porch. There are a coterie of different types of vehicles haphazardly parked in front of the four car garage— mud covered trucks squeezed next to sedans that look like they could barely make it through the underbrush with their two wheel drive. Connie spots a white passenger van partially hidden by a couple of the trucks.

She hefts her duffel bag over her shoulder and turns, heads back down the stairs and away from the front door. The passenger van is half unloaded, black hard cases seemingly organized on the dirt, but no one seems nearby. The email had detailed that the overnight crew would start unloading before the main unit arrived on set. Connie had never met the overnight crew. After today, she probably wouldn’t see much of them other than in passing moments as she left in the morning or headed back at night.

 

They were all staying in the same converted barn somewhere farther back on the property. The email had advised that the owners didn’t give out keys that they refused to ever lock their doors. Connie guessed that meant she could wander back and claim a room then, whenever she wanted. She guessed it also meant she would have to prop a chair in front of the door knob to feel comfortable and pop an extra Propranolol at night.

Her neck prickles with that inexplicable sense that there are eyes on her. She turns around, as if someone had called her name. She hadn’t thought she would meet the ghost turning the day. That felt completely unghost-like. Connie is under dressed for the occasion—still in her sweat pants from the flight. The ghost, meanwhile, is decked out in a 80s style cocktail dress with exaggerated shoulder pads and lime green sequins. It looks young, bony and white and no more than thirty. Its eyes are rimmed with dark eye shadow, its blonde hair in an imperious up do.

 

Honestly, ghosts tend to be so dramatic. Sometimes it is hard for Connie to take them seriously. The ghost doesn’t seem to want much at the moment, though, just recognition. It floats back and forth through the cab of the Toyota Tacoma in front of Connie, showing off its intangibility, before floating away into the sky like a stray balloon.

Connie waits respectfully for the ghost to evaporate before crawling into the passenger van and continuing to unload the cases. It is going to be a five camera shoot, mostly handheld work, and her first time moving up from camera assistant to operator. A man in a Short Kings Looking For Love shirt appears from the garage and begins to help her, silently, music blaring from his headphones.

That night, Connie barricades her door with an apple box that she took from the set. Her ears are primed to every quiet creak as strangers move about the barn around her. There is the occasional gruff, masculine laugh from somewhere she cannot place. She knows a few of the others, but their voices are strange and loud in the dark around her. The windows of her room are opaque in the utter blackness. They remind her of one way mirrors. She feels she is being watched. Her muscles stay tense; her senses primed until she falls into fitful sleep around 3 A.M. She dreams of endless corn.

The next day, the short kings are introduced at an extravagant pool party. The weather is hot and humid, which means that each short king only spends twenty minutes outside at a time before retreating to the air conditioning. Connie spends all morning perched awkwardly behind a bush, surreptitiously filming the bronzed and oiled bodies as they parade in front of the pool, sweat trickling down her back. The ghost doesn’t appear until close to two, and when it does appear, it doesn’t stay for long. It floats disinterestedly in the middle of the pool in nothing but scandalous lingerie. The panties are see through, something Connie studiously ignores.

The ghost doesn’t seem intrigued by any of the short kings; though it does show off again by turning its skin inside out. When Connie doesn’t react, it hovers petulantly in front of her frame, making it hard to focus the lens on the talent. When the cinematographer barks at Connie over the walkie, the ghost vanishes in a sulfurous haze. It really was infuriating sometimes how disinterested in the affairs of the living ghosts were. No sense of female solidarity. Of course, the construct of gender was one of the first vestiges of human life to leave the undead. Based on the fashion choices, the ghost had had forty years to forget the inanities of human society.

The crew breaks for lunch at four. Connie eats with the sound team out back of the castle in companionable silence. In the distance, the property owner slinks past, sharp eyes trained on the back porch. He scowls, scuttling towards a cabin barely bigger than an outhouse, where he slams the door. There had been talk that he was upset by the content of the show, that he hadn’t been fully apprised of what a “short king” was or that “looking for love” would include bikini clad women and lots of tequila. Connie finds herself staring at the cabin. She feels like the man is still watching from inside. She leaves the porch and heads back to the garage.

The work is hard but it goes quickly. The show is low budget, shooting an episode a day. Connie barely takes the camera off her shoulder all afternoon. Ten women are introduced to the short kings, who fight for their affections through mud wrestling. The on set medic is called twice for sprained ankles. Connie manages to beat the right place at the right time to capture one of the kings’ trip another. She is rewarded with a positive bark over the walkie. At ten, the overnight crew takes over for confessionals. Connie finds herself alone, rushing back through the dark towards the converted barn. She can feel the eyes of the owner on her from the unlit cabin.

She barricades her door again, and covers the windows. She dislikes the stillness, the quiet of the countryside. Everything is so spectacularly loud. She stays awake, alert, listening to creaks and groans as the floorboards shift and her fellow camera operators’ move around doing whatever it is that they are doing in the wee hours of the morning. She doesn’t welcome sleep. With it only comes more corn. She misses Los Angeles deeply. Damn the budgetary constraints that led to shooting in the middle of nowhere Illinois. She counts the nights left in Hampshire. Too many.

The days pass fast, the nights slow. The ghost takes a liking to the HMI lighting units, flitting around them like a moth, always wearing a garish orange equestrian outfit. Connie practices focusing her lens by eyeballing the distance to talent when the ghost decides to hang around in front of the camera. It makes her into a better camera operator. She gets more barks of approval through the walkie. They fall into a pattern, the ghost and her, a dance of acknowledgement and irritation that always ends with the ghost disappearing in a huff of sulfurous haze.

One day, Connie catches the owner staring at her through a slit in the curtains of the port hole window in the tiny cabin. His face dissolves into shadow immediately, but she can still feel his eyes. She can always feel people’s eyes. She continues to barricade her door. The night sounds continue to keep her up. One day, she falls asleep at lunch and dreams of dancing corn in lingerie. She starts to drink energy drinks on set to stay awake.

The short kings dwindle, going from ten to eight to six prized bodies to swoon over. They fight viciously to stay, with words and sometimes with blows. The set medic is always close by. The women dwindle too, placing their hopes on a king who will either lead them victorious to the finale or will dash their chances at winning the Hawaiian vacation. Some of them talk of love, in vague, nebulous terms. One player self eliminates because the pressure is too much. It’s good reality TV. That’s what everyone says. Connie starts to picture season two, returning as a camera operator. She almost forgets, during the days, the vast emptiness and darkness of the nights in the converted barn. Then, every evening, she tips over into despair yet again. She never forgets to barricade her door.

The omens of doom don’t start until the last few days of filming. Suddenly, the ghost is appearing in blasts of lightning every other hour, crying blood and levitating over the beautiful, oiled bodies of the remaining short kings. It’s terribly distracting and makes framing shots very hard, but Connie perseveres without complaint. She becomes adept at framing around the ghost, at imagining what would be visible behind the five sets of wings that the ghost ostentatiously sprouted one afternoon. Connie had to admit that the wings did worry her a bit—they were quite reminiscent of a Biblically accurate angel. Not that she would let the ghost see that she was at all phased by the wings. She continued to shoot around the ghost as if nothing had changed.

The owner of the property begins to be very present on the periphery of the set, always watching, always scowling. The producers appease him by offering him the opportunity to be on camera for the finale— leading the horses for the last two short kings as they enter the jousting arena. Originally, Connie had been asked to lead the horses, as one of the only crew members with equine experience. The change in duties affects her little. There is enough to manage with the camera and the now omnipresent ghost careening around the set. After a particularly spectacular performance on the part of the ghost, who had now taught itself to vomit up its ghostly insides, Connie almost rops a lens. She becomes so irritated, her eyes betray her, tearing up.

The cinematographer asks Connie if she is flustered by the pace of the show, after which she walks around with an idiotic fake grin plastered on her face to show how nonplussed she is. This seems to disturb everyone around her, but Connie barely notices. She simply takes another swig of her energy drink and sets up to capture the overhead shot of the joust. The set is truly impressive, especially for the budget of the show.

 

Banners hang from the wooden structure that production design spent all night putting together. Energy is high. It’s almost time to go home. The network is watching, two representatives present to watch the big finale. The horses were brought in from even further out in the country, from somewhere prestigious where race horses were bred. Everyone is talking, and the talk is that the show is going to be a hit. It feels like the last day before summer break.

The ghost seems to be paying attention to its surroundings for once, noticing the heightened energy. It pirouettes above the favored short king, wearing the see-through lingerie, spewing green goo. Connie ignores the ghost, face cemented in her mirthless grimace. The cinematographer thinks to himself that the odd girl that used to be a camera assistant is a bit of a buzz kill and makes a mental note to talk to production about hiring his friend Dave for next season. Out loud, he tells Connie that she is doing a good job.

Cameras roll. The horses are trotted out to great fanfare. The ghost does summersaults in front of the HMIs. The network executives’ stand in front of the monitors, arms crossed over their chests. The owner of the property seems more relaxed than he has in two weeks, like he’s come alive on camera. As the contestants pause in the middle of the arena, the owner is supposed to step aside, but he seems incapable of giving up the spotlight. He stands there, stuck in place, looking proudly at the cameras. The ghost swoops down lazily like a leaf in the breeze, floating in lethargic “u”s down and down until it lights upon the back of one of the horses. The property owner is still frozen, looking out over the expectant crowd.

Connie can see the horse stiffen as the ghost sets down upon its back. The ethereal presence weighs too much. The horse twitches, staggering a little. The short king atop the horse pulls the reins up tightly, stiffly. He’s inexperienced, scared. The weight is too much for the horse, the tugging of the reins too much. The horse was bred to race, to feel the wind on its aerodynamic, sleek coat. To have nothing heavier than a nimble jockey, all bird bones and light touch, upon its back. The meaty king alone was an outrage. The ghost entirely too much. The horse bucks, freeing itself of short king and ghost. It strikes out with its front hooves in outrage, making sharp contact with the property owner’s temple. The crack is loud enough for Connie to hear from the top of the risers.

The freed horse gallops away to the other end of the yard, leaving the short king prone in the dust, where he scrambles away from the growing red pool around the fallen property owner. The ghost hovers about ten feet in the air, wings unfurled, and mouth open in a silent scream. Connie keeps rolling, forgets to cut the camera as she runs down the stairs, onto the grounds. By the time she makes it to the property owner, there is a swarming mass around his prone form. He is

Not moving, face in the dirt. The ghost screams mutely for a while more, dissipating when the cops arrive. It’s very late when Connie makes her way back, alone, to the converted barn. She walks slowly, exhausted. Tomorrow, they will take a day off on the network’s dime. Then, they will reshoot the finale, this time with no horses. They will finish out the season with grim resolution, then they will pack up and return to Los Angeles. The tiny cabin with the porthole window will remain empty. It is unlikely anyone will ever film at the castle again.

For now, Connie falls into bed, too tired to think of anything. Too tired to remember to barricade her door. Somewhere over the fields of Hampshire, the ghost glides peacefully on the night air, counting ears of corn.

 

A million and one….a million and two….

 

Tara Jenkins is a writer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles, where she lives with her wife and three cats. She is a graduate of USC School of Cinematic Arts, where she earned her MFA in Film Production. She is a staff writer for one of the oldest magazines in the United States, American Cinematographer, where she covers the behind the scenes of the most talked about films of our times. She has written for publications across the film industry, including Women in Media and Fujifilm.