A Vacation From Craig

One moment, Craig was sitting in the open palm of a giant ape on a tropical island, dressed in a beige nightie, thinking only of his survival and the survival of the rest of the crew of the S.S. Venture.

The next, he was sitting in a darkened movie theatre, legs crossed at the knee, wearing a floral minidress.

The lights were beginning to rise. Craig blinked. For several seconds he didn't move. The theatre looked exactly as it had before. Red seats. Dark walls. Small floor lights glowing softly along the aisles. The giant screen dominated the front of the room, now displaying the credits as names rolled upward in endless columns.

Beside him sat Euphrosyne. Her empty popcorn container rested in her lap. She looked delighted.

"Wasn't that fantastic?" she asked.

Craig stared at her.

"I..."

"I've never been to the movies before," she continued, practically bubbling with excitement, "but you made it feel so real!"

Craig's eyes returned to the screen. The credits kept moving. Names. Characters. Actors. Except the names beside all those characters weren't the names of actors.

They were his.

Again.

And again.

And again.

His stomach twisted. Different characters. Different lives. He'd lived them all. He'd been them all.

"What..."

The word barely made it out as the memories flashed through his mind. The memories weren't fabricated. No matter how fantastical or impossible they were, they were real.

"And such range!" Euphrosyne continued. "Mothers, sisters, heroes, villains, damsels in distress, domineering seductresses..." She sighed happily. "I believed every minute of it."

Craig slowly turned toward her.

"What the hell was that?"

She looked genuinely offended by the question.

"Movie night, silly," she answered. "And Craig, you were magnificent."

He looked back at the screen. Each character name was a life, and vivid memories of each were still there. Not vague impressions. Not fragments. Complete experiences. Entire lives.

The yellow road beneath his feet in Oz.

The heat of Jabba's palace.

The cold interrogation room.

And so many other worlds, other people, other versions of lives he should not have been able to live, but he couldn't deny. None of them felt like something he'd watched. They felt like something he'd been.

Every one of those movies, every one of those women had been unique. Her own struggles, her own dreams, her own hopes. And while he'd lived their impossible lives, those struggles, dreams, and hopes had all been his. He had hoped to defeat the empire. He had hoped to find his way home to Kansas. He had hoped to outsmart the police.

And so many more. Lives where he'd been a doting middle-class mother. Lives where he'd danced on a stage for money. Lives where his employer had tried to take advantage of him because he'd been a vulnerable woman.

He'd felt it all. He'd understood their struggles in ways he'd never been able to before.

"How did..."

Craig stopped. His mouth closed. Euphrosyne waited.

"But seriously," she said after a moment, leaning closer, "wasn't it fun?"

Craig turned fully toward her. The goddess had finished picking at the final kernels of popcorn, her fingertips searching the bottom of the bag for one last piece. She looked almost childlike in her eagerness, completely unconcerned with what she'd done to him and genuinely interested in whether he'd enjoyed himself.

Craig wanted to give her an answer. He wanted to tell her she'd tortured him. That she'd hijacked his mind. That she'd forced him into the lives of women he had never been and had no desire to become. He wanted to tell her that nothing about the experience had been fair. That none of it had been his choice.

His mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

Craig frowned. He tried again.

Still nothing.

For one terrifying moment, he wondered if Euphrosyne's magic had taken his voice. Then he understood. It wasn't that he couldn't speak. He simply couldn't lie.

No matter how badly he wanted the experience to have been awful, no matter how desperately he wanted to reject every memory that had been implanted into his mind, there was a simple truth he couldn't escape.

It had been incredible.

Craig looked down at his hands, the painted fingernails still looking pristine.

"I..."

The admission spilled out of his mouth before he had realized what he was going to say.

"It was amazing."

Euphrosyne's entire face lit up.

"I know!"

"You knew?"

"Of course I knew." She leaned back, satisfied. "You mortals are so wonderfully simple. Only one life, only one experience. Your dreams are always so much bigger than your reality. It's no wonder that these movies are so incredible. How could you not love movie night?"

"That doesn't mean I liked what happened to me," Craig said, his painted lips turning into a frown. "This isn't my life. Those movies aren't my life."

"How do you know?" the goddess asked, a playful tone in her voice.

"What do you mean, 'How do i know'?" he shot back. "I know because I know! My life isn't walking around in heels and skirts. My life isn't putting on lipstick and perfume. And my life certainly isn't wearing a leather bodysuit and freeing Neo from the Matrix."

"The other thing about mortals," Euphrosyne said, thoughtfully, "is that while the nature of your life is limited, you consistently add more limits than are necessary. What Eros is blessing you with is a gift. Perhaps you can't see it yet, but your life is, and will be, so much better than the life you have known."

"I don't care," he spat. "It was my life. Mine. You and Eros don't get to decide what's best for me."

Euphrosyne's smile softened.

"Oh, sweetheart," she said, reaching over and touching his knee. "We absolutely do. We're gods."

Craig stared at her, dumbfounded. She was right. The power that they held was beyond what he could imagine. All day long, Euphrosyne hadn't treated him as a friend, as an individual, but as a plaything. A toy. The fashion show, the movie night. All of it was for her enjoyment.

And none of it had seemed to cost her anything. It was a simple thing to turn him into Buttercup, being rescued by Wesley in the Fire Swamp, or Baby, learning to dance at a resort in the Catskills. For Euphrosyne, magic was like breathing. Reality like a suggestion. There was no point in fighting her power. He was an ant, she was a boot.

Craig turned back toward the screen. The credits continued to roll. He remembered every role. Every scene. Every emotion. Every life. It had been more vivid than anything he'd ever experienced.

There hadn't been a screen between him and the story. He'd been the story.

And for a few minutes, Craig had forgotten his own life. Forgotten Eros. Forgotten the wardrobe. Forgotten the streaming contract. Forgotten the ridiculous job. Forgotten everything. He had simply become someone else, free of the torment of the gods.

Several someones.

And maybe the most disturbing part was how much he wanted to be put back. There had been something liberating about those moments. No history to carry. No expectations. No fear about who Craig was supposed to be or what Eros was turning him into.

For a little while, he hadn't been Craig. He had just been whatever character the story required. And that had felt wonderful.

"But I really did enjoy it," he admitted quietly, unable to stop the magic from slipping the truth past from his lips.

Euphrosyne grinned.

"I know," she said as she stood, holding out a hand toward him. "I think you've had enough movies for one night."

Craig glanced at the screen again. The names were continuing to scroll past. How many lives had he lived in there? How long had he been gone? Days seemed to have passed. Possibly weeks.

He pulled his phone from his purse and looked at the time. Same date, just minutes after they'd arrived. Somehow, Euphrosyne hadn't just manipulated his life, but she'd manipulated time itself.

Magic.

She held her hand out again. Eventually Craig took it. Her fingers closed around his. The moment they touched, some of the tension he'd been carrying finally eased.

His stomach growled loudly. Euphrosyne giggled.

"I was waiting for that."

Craig stood. The theatre seemed strangely small now. He had lived an entire collection of lives inside that room. Countless lives that were already beginning to blur at the edges. Part of him wanted to ask her to stop, to put him back into the movies, to leave him there, but that wasn't his world. That wasn't his life. So little remained of the life he'd once had that he had to hold on to whatever he could.

Craig followed Euphrosyne toward the exit. Then, just before they reached the doors, he glanced over his shoulder one last time. The screen was still glowing.

The last few credits had scrolled away. One message remained.

No Craigs were harmed in the making of this movie.

Craig stared. For a moment, he wondered if that were true. Had he been harmed? He wasn't sure.

But as the lights went up and he stepped out of the theatre, he knew that while harm might not be the right word, change certainly was. He wasn't the same man he had been when he'd walked into the cinema that evening.

Like so many patrons before him, going to the movies had left him a changed man.