"It rubs the lotion on it's skin or else it gets the hose again." ~ Buffalo Bill, Silence of the Lambs. Screenplay by Ted Tally. Original story by Thomas Harris. Directed by Jonathan Demme. Produced by Kenneth Utt, Edward Saxon and Ron Bozman. Once one of my favorite movies and books. I watched the movies before the books, as I usually do. I guess I can still recommend them, they're objectively well made.
He was tall and muscular. Somewhat shaggy brown hair and clean shaven. Blue eyes. Nearly perfect teeth, except for a single snaggletooth next to his lower right canine. A scar around his left ring finger, as if permanently branded with a wedding ring. A strange triangle of moles over his left nipple; the only moles on his body as far as I could tell. He had a second, deeper scar on his right inner thigh. He said he had gotten it in Afghanistan. I never noticed any record of his service though.
When I met him in that dingy bar my friends decided to drag me to he was wearing a black tuxedo and top hat. I would have normally tried to ignore him, but the atmosphere seemed to make him look like a class act among a den of thieves rather than someone so out of touch that they would wear a top hat to a dive bar. Perhaps I was a bit drunk by the time I spoke to him.
I drove home with him that night back to his ranch. He was as gentlemanly as his attire let on, so I figured he had decided to retire there young. I guess I enjoyed myself enough because I decided to spend the night. I still remember falling asleep so easily in his bed.
I woke up with a mild headache, wearing only my underwear, the dirt below me cold and dry to the touch. I don't remember how I got there; I presume I was drugged. It was more a deep hole in the ground than a well; there was no signs that it had ever held water. Looking back I can't help but wonder how long it took to dig the damn thing.
It took me a minute before I started screaming. It was hard to process the fact that I was trapped; clawing at the dirt walls was clearly futile. The dirt was too soft to get a real handle on. It took a couple minutes of screaming for him to show up.
"Shut up!" he yelled down at me. Only his head was visible at the top of the pit as he leaned over. I was terrified, so I held back my cries. There was absolutely nothing I could do unless someone just happened to be trespassing on his private ranch.
He looked at me for a moment, presumably to ensure I wouldn't start screaming again, before walking away. He came back a few minutes latter and chucked a bottle of lotion at me. It hit me square in the forehead. It was a plastic bottle, but the force behind it still made it hurt.
"It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again." The reference wasn't lost on me and for a moment, despite my situation, I felt myself annoyed that he was reenacting the scene completely wrong. I picked up the bottle and just stared at it in disbelief.
"It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again!" He was clearly getting angry, or perhaps just trying to really play the part, but I had a feeling I knew where this was going and there still was very little I could do about it. I started to rub the lotion on my skin. My then muddled brain then started to become concerned with the threat of my tears washing away the hand lotion that I had just applied, so I shut my eyes tight and turned my face upward while I finished.
"Good, toss it up." he requested, a bit calmer now. I don't actually remember his name. I'm not sure I had even asked. I just remember him as Bill now.
I tried to lob the bottle up to him, but gravity decided it would have none of it. The bottle came falling back down with a thud by my foot. I tried again with the same result. The hole was too deep.
"Just throw the damn thing!" He yelled, clearly getting frustrated. I did as asked and checked the bottle as hard as I could.
My aim was terrible. It hit the side of the wall sending a bit of dirt flying off; followed by a bit more dirt falling after it. Then a little bit more. Finally the side of the hole collapsed in, burying me up to my waist.
"God damn it! Hold on." He wasn't happy. Neither was I; I may have expedited my execution just because I never learned how to throw a baseball.
When he came back he was holding a coil of rope which he threw down to me, holding onto the other end and bracing himself. "Grab on." He called down.
It was my only shot. I grabbed on and, with a hefty tug on his end, got dislodged from the pile of dirt I was stuck under. He continued to pull me up probably realizing that I could probably crawl out of the hole in the state it was in now, albeit with some difficulty.
When I was close enough I reached out my hand to get pulled up the rest of the way. It was a stupid move, but it was the best I could think of at the time. Sure enough, Bill reached out and started pulling me up.
I'm still shocked it worked, but leveraging the momentum used to pull me up I used every ounce of strength I could muster to pull the bastard down into the pit I had just managed to escape. With some incredible luck his footing was just bad enough for him to slip and having just applied lotion my hands were slippery enough to slide out of his grasp as gravity pulled him down. I haven't believed in god in years, but my lack of faith was shaken that day.
A heavy thud and an angry scream were all I heard as I ran as fast as I could, dragging the rope behind me in hopes he'd be stuck down there while I escaped.
So it was that I ended up running, then walking along the highway in my underwear. A few people drove past, but I guess they figured I was just some pervert and refused to stop. I have no idea how long it took me to get to that police station, but Bill never managed to catch me again. I was told later that three bodies were found on the ranch, skinned, one of which was the owner of the property. Bill was never found.
So that's why I never watch The Silence of the Lambs anymore. I just wish people would stop asking me over to watch the damn movie every Halloween.
