Quotes From "Super 8: The Sequel To Smog City" By Rebecca McNutt

1
Alecto, have you noticed how downhill this little island is becoming?” Mandy questioned sadly. “All these organic food stores and yoga studios and cellular phone towers… Cape Breton was one of the only places left where it still had that nostalgic small town atmosphere but now… I’ve only been away for a year, how could things have changed so quickly? I mean, how can the world accept it?”“ C'est la vie, ” said Alecto, looking extremely tired as he stared out the window at the late November maple keys fluttering down from vibrantly red trees lining the streets on either side of the windshield. Rebecca McNutt
2
I love the smell of old books, ” Mandy sighed, inhaling deeply with the book pressed against her face. The yellow pages smelled of wood and paper mills and mothballs. Rebecca McNutt
3
Mandy was thinking back to when she was five years old, when she, her parents and Jud went outside before Christmas and had a snowball fight with the gray snow of Sydney Mines. “This is a wicked blast, ” Jud would say, and Mandy would snap photos with a 35mm disposable film camera, photos she wished very much she could step into sometimes. Rebecca McNutt
4
I don’t want anything else bad to happen, ” she whispered, her voice choked with tears. “I’m so sick to death of bad things happening, of seeing bad things that happened in the past! And I’m guilty of so many things. I’m sorry that I killed Mrs. Matthias and wrecked her stupid greenhouse back in the Eighties and I’m sorry I left you here alone while I went around the world.”“ I wasn’t alone though, I knew you were doing what you wanted to do and that you were still alive, so I wasn’t really alone, I knew you were still there somewhere, ” Alecto told her. His damaged smile and downcast, sorrowful eyes were draped in the shadow of the night, saving Mandy the trouble of seeing. Rebecca McNutt
5
Oftentimes she wondered what had happened to super 8. Sure, it made perfect sense that nobody wanted the hassle of spending money on a three-minute cartridge of film and threading it through a projector, but though digital cameras were convenient and cheap, Mandy didn’t care. Super 8 had integrity, it wasn’t just nostalgia, it was art, it was history, it was a little recording medium that somehow possessed the power to evoke lost memories, to turn back time, and there was something dazzling about waiting excitedly for a reel of film to come back in its yellow and red Kodak envelope, eating buttered popcorn while the projector paraded life’s best moments, and capturing something beautiful in only three minutes. Rebecca McNutt
6
Tell yourselves whatever you’d like, but I’m afraid it doesn’t make it true, ” Mearth sighed, beginning to look impatient. “Step aside Mandy, I have to remediate him, otherwise you’ll find yourself in a whole mess of trouble.”“ You can’t do this, it’s wrong, ” Mandy insisted.“ You don’t have a choice, Mandy! Either you let his life compromise the lives of everybody else in the world, or you let me remediate him and get it over with, ” Mearth icily declared.“… Do what she says, Mandy Valems….” Alecto added, standing up and staring with glazed eyes at Mearth.“I can’t, ” said Mandy.“…Go away! ” Alecto shouted at her suddenly, glaring with narrowed eyes, speaking in a voice that hardly sounded like his own. “Get out of here, Mandy Valems! I hate you, I want you to leave me alone! Go home and don’t ever come back here! ”“ I….” Mandy started, looking totally shocked.“ I said I hate you, don’t you understand anything? Go away, get out of here! ” Alecto repeated menacingly, stepping forward in a threatening manner. He looked like a mad dog, shivering as he chased her away from his site. She tearfully took off running, seeming both shocked and horrified, and he watched her leave for a moment with a blank expression, his dark eyes hollow. He looked like he was going to black out, but Mearth walked quickly towards him, for once not smiling at all. If it weren’t for her eyes, she would’ve looked like a person. “That was very cruel of you to do, Sydney Tar Ponds. I thought you loved her, ” she disappointedly exclaimed.“ I do love her, she’s my friend, and that’s why I said that stuff to her, ” Alecto replied forlornly. “None of it’s true, I don’t hate her at all… but I know what’s going to happen and I don’t want her to see it, so I lied to her and told her I hated her… can you explain to her after… why I said all that to her?. Rebecca McNutt
7
…Look, I’m real sorry about Cheryl, I know you loved her a lot, ” Mandy apologized gloomily. “It’s wrong that people have to keep killing off Pollution.”“It’s alright, I think she wants to be remediated, ” Alecto told her calmly, though his grief-stricken and depressed expression said more to Mandy than his words did. “You don’t have to forget Cheryl, no matter what Mearth said to you, ” Mandy pointed out. “People shouldn’t be forced to forget what they love, or to just get over the death of what they love. Cheryl was your friend and nobody can make you forget her if you don’t want to. Rebecca McNutt
8
Creosote made Mandy think of the thrill of rushing through a garden sprinkler as a kid, of playing washer toss in the backyard, of spending nights in the neighbors’ huge in-ground swimming pool when she was twelve, throwing glow sticks in the turquoise water during Canada Day block parties. She thought of Jud for a moment, how he’d loved doing all those things when he was a kid, but how, as he got older, it was all about popularity, sports, a life of illusion… and without warning, a totally different kind of memory filled her mind — the dull feeling of her head hitting the concrete walls near the wood shop at her old high school, the sounds of kids laughing, the sharp smell of sawdust, the buzzing of electric sanders nearby, the sound of Jud laughing while he beat her up… without realizing it, she’d started crying noiselessly. Rebecca McNutt
9
Hey Alecto, film this! ” she called out. With the slide being as tall as a two-storey house, it felt slightly risky being up there. “On second thought, why don’t you come up here? It’s a blast being up here.”“ I don’t really like to be in high places, ” said Alecto as he filmed her, the camera lens reflecting the entire playground, which was partially secluded by tall trees that cast otherworldly shadows dancing across the ground.“ If you don’t like being in high places, then why’d you take so many drugs in the seventies?” Mandy questioned jokingly. “Do you want me to go up there and push you off the top of that slide?” Alecto threatened coldly.“ You’d never do that, we’re best friends! ” Mandy pointed out. She reached over and picked a bright red maple flower from one of the long branches of the trees, tossing it down to him. “Even in this failing 21st century, where people are cell phone addicts and crude humor and violence is the norm, even when society falls apart and drowns in its own mistakes, we’ll still be best friends! ” She looked incredibly eccentric, never mind the fact that she was an adult woman wearing a trippy rainbow Pucci dress from the 1970’s, standing on top of a slide at a children’s playground. Alecto didn’t seem to mind, he just continued to film her with his camera like she’d asked him to. . Rebecca McNutt
10
Alecto Sydney Steele, an entity of few words whom society managed to overlook as it rapidly dove into the 21st century. Everything about him, his interests, his friends, his own life, was constantly in danger of becoming an anachronism. And caught up in that mess was Mearth, not exactly evil in nature but just misunderstood. A very long time ago Alecto’s life had been all incandescent sparkles and Kodachrome, but that was before the environmental movement changed Mearth from a perfectly nice and kind guardian, to a deranged and malevolent monster. . Rebecca McNutt
11
The print was an old one made from a negative taken in the 1960’s of her parents in Sydney Mines, dancing with thrilled, excited expressions on their faces, in front of a classic car that had been a wedding gift at the time. Her mother’s hair, red back then, was held back by a blue handkerchief, and she was dressed in a billowing skirt and white blouse. Her father’s denim jeans and faded t-shirt were streaked with coal dust as he held her hands and spun her around in the front yard of their old clapboard house, yellow grass under their feet and a cobalt-blue sky with white clouds drifting above. Mandy could almost feel the late summer breeze as she gazed deeply into the print, watching the flamboyant colors come to life. She hung it up to dry on two wooden clothespins hanging from a string above her. Rebecca McNutt
12
Every day it’s something worse being predicted. Mearth says that sooner or later copyright on books will be all in the past because they’ll all be available electronically. She says that electric cars will replace gasoline-powered cars. She says that something called drones will be used to watch the entire country, she talks a lot about something called nanotechnology, and 3-dimensional printing and cellular phones being implanted into peoples’ minds and all available careers being replaced by robots and human cloning and overpopulation and film becoming obsolete, cellular phones making regular telephones obsolete and LED lighting replacing everything and eventually she says that the planet will collapse and become an apathetic wreck, ” Alecto replied rapidly, his run-on sentence sounding sinister and dangerous. “Mearth says that eventually people will be able to see inside the minds of everyone. Rebecca McNutt
13
Just because something isn’t good doesn’t mean it’s bad. Rebecca McNutt
14
Super 8 film is the language of silence. Rebecca McNutt
15
I never said I was sad, I’m just pessimistic, ” said Alecto. “Expect the worst, that way you’ll never be disappointed, Mandy Valems. Rebecca McNutt
16
The hardest part of being a Canadian kid is having to color in Nunavut with a crayon in school, hell on earth. Rebecca McNutt
17
Smile for the camera, pretty little Sydney Tar Ponds. Rebecca McNutt
18
I know what I'm talking about, Alecto! When I think of Jud, I think of the times he wanted to be a coal miner, the times he took Wendy and me sailing in the harbour, the times he showed me how to play soccer, but I forgot all the bullying and I’ll never understand why. And now you ask me, you ask me what happened once we were in high school. You said you didn’t understand what having a family was like, so ask me! ” Mandy was shouting at him without even realizing it, her words sharp and unforgiving.“ I….” Alecto started, hesitating for a moment. “You don’t seem like yourself Mandy Valems, not at all….”“ No, go ahead! You want to know what having a real family is like?” Mandy snapped, turning to stare at him coldly. “Ask me what happened, I’ll tell you anything you want to know! ”“… What happened?” Alecto asked quietly, looking nervous and confused.“ I stayed late after school in shop class when I was in grade 9, trying to keep my lousy grades up. I was building a birdhouse, something like that, and that was when Jud and all his popular jock friends came storming in, laughing and swearing like a bunch of pigs, ” Mandy continued. “So ask me what happened next.”“ I… I don’t want to ask you what happened, ” Alecto replied.“ Ask me! ” Mandy yelled.“ Alright, what happened next…?” Alecto questioned. . Rebecca McNutt
19
I think we ought to find something else to do, ” said Mandy. “But Alecto my love, you’re the first person to notice my retro diner kitchen. When my parents saw it, they thought I was creating a weird art project.”“ I like it. It's got that let’s-drown-ourselves-in-better-days type ambiance, ” Alecto declared, his gray eyes narrowed. Rebecca McNutt