The traffic had shifted from two lanes traveling in opposite directions to a snake shedding its skin through rows of exhibitor booths, adding new layers just as quickly from the columns. I cut through artist alley to avoid the reptile slithering toward the VIP Experience. As with other conventions, artists alley was a ghost town with only a few stragglers buying from this collective with their offerings framed on ten-foot booth walls. The alley felt like a gauntlet of the macabre with both sides featuring dark renderings of the worst society had produced. Their deeds stylized in deep reds and gore. Even the lighter fare provoked a cognitive dissonance (imagine one of these men set loose on the Sesame Street of your childhood). I emerged from the narrow alley with only the body of the snake in front of me, its head disappeared into a curtained area I recognized as the VIP photo booth. I’d been through a couple of these lines before. Stand for hours, pay $75 for a photo, no touching, just say hello, smile, camera flash, exit the rear of the tent and pick up your photo in thirty minutes.
As I looked up and down the line, the same giant, portly man from the hotel lobby obnoxiously waved his hands, motioning me over.
“Didn’t you have a beard last night?” I asked as I approached.
“Didn’t work with my cosplay. I kept this awesome ‘stache, though.” He pointed at the black facial hair resting on his upper lip. It matched the top of his head which had also lost its distinctive “salt” from the previous night.
“So, who are you supposed to be?”
He stood slack jawed, then burst into laughter.
“Stop giving me a hard time!” He paused to catch his breath. “You know I’m Ed Kemper!”
I laughed uncomfortably. Maybe that’s who he was supposed to be, but to me he looked like a guy in a 70’s era denim prison uniform.
“Here...jump in behind me. If not, it’ll be Wednesday before you get your picture.”
I snuck in hoping not to draw the attention of hundreds of cosplaying serial killers.
“Hey! You can’t do that! Your place in line starts out on Capitol Avenue.”
I turned to face a short bald man in an extra small Joker t-shirt standing with a Harley Quinn. I put my hands up to give him the “Don’t worry...I’m a journalist” speech as picking a fight with someone built more like Batman than Joker wouldn’t make for an enjoyable end to my first NoxCon.
Before the first word escaped, a large hand pulled me backward, giving me the rear view of my denim-clad friend. He looked seven feet tall hulking over the man who stopped making eye contact about halfway through the softly spoken reprimand.
My new friend turned around and smiled down at me.
“Being in-character is like 50% of cosplay.”
The line crept forward with every camera flash behind the curtain. We purchased our NoxCo branded tickets from two grandmothers in black, NoxCo polo shirts who smiled and encouraged us to “Enjoy”. A group of four girls, probably still in high school, stood in front of me giggling as they stared at the NoxMods in their hands.
“Totally worth the $75.”
“Do you think he’ll autograph it? It’d probably triple the value.”
“I can’t believe we’re doing this. If he talks to me, I’m gonna piss my pants. Right there. In the picture.”
“I bet it’s not even him. Probably a professional cosplayer or some jerk-off corrections officer who talked to him for like five minutes one shift. That’s what everyone else has been,” said one of the girls, gesturing back toward the autograph tables. The laughter started up again in anticipation of seeing what was behind the curtain.
As we crossed the threshold to the curtained VIP experience, a NoxCo employee handed a tablet off to the group in front.
“Please read, then type and sign your name. This document states that you are entering this VIP experience under your own free will and you agree to hold NoxCo LLC harmless if any mental, emotional, or physical harm were to occur as a result of our VIP experience.”
The girls each laughed a little less as they scrolled, typed, and signed their names onto the tablet. My friend jumped ahead, happily signing the tablet before the NoxCo man could finish his legal obligation. I glanced through the hold harmless clause before the line pressured me to sign and move on. “...including but not limited to asphyxiation, blunt force trauma, paralysis....” were the only words I retained.
I leaned around to get a view of what was happening in the curtained area. Where anticipation and excitement rippled through the line outside, tension radiated from the small group of us in the VIP experience. A large man, larger than his cosplaying doppelganger, wore a khaki prison uniform. The camera flashed for a family, the husband under one of his arms, the wife under the other and two children, less than ten, standing in front. All smiling forced smiles like those in Christmas card photos.
“You have a beautiful family,” the large man said without the faintest smile. The husband shuttered a “thank you” and quickly ushered his wife and children away.
The group of girls handed off their tickets to the photographer’s assistant and set their NoxMods on a side table near the large man with outstretched arms. I wanted to look away, unsure of whether the outcome of the picture would include some of the language in the hold harmless document. The girls flanked him on both sides, wrapping their arms around his waist and one another. His wingspan was such that he rested his hands on the furthest shoulders and pulled everyone in tight. The girls smiled as if it were their yearbook picture or a manicured selfie for their Instagram. The camera flashed.
When they broke apart, the pessimist in the group stumbled through “Can we get your autograph?”
“You’re going to make me blush,” he said with a smirk under the gray mustache. He signed their NoxMods with a silver marker before they were ushered away, giggling as they did before.
My new friend rushed forward, dropping his ticket at the feet of the assistant.
“Mr. Kemper....I can’t believe I’m actually meeting you!” His excitement was not reciprocated.
“It’s like I’m looking into a forty year old mirror,” the man replied. I thought I saw a tear well in my friend’s eye. The camera flashed on the towering men.
“I threw a lot of this together from scavenging thrift stores,” he said opening his jacket by the lapels.
“Mine were delivered custom. We wear cotton now...like hospital gowns. Easier to clean,” the large man said.
“Okay...next! We need to keep this line moving,” announced the assistant.
My friend was ushered from the experience and the large man’s eyes met mine. He stared through me with wire-framed glasses and a glare I couldn’t meet. Fear dropped my ticket at the feet of the assistant. My feet dragged as I willed myself forward, like my body was refusing the task set before it. There was an “X” on the floor indicating where we should stand for the photograph, but it and the space around was occupied by a sociopathic colossus. I turned to face the camera, my shoulder in the clutch of an animal’s paw, pulling me close as though I were more prey than friend. Two corrections officers sat in the corner opposite the line, a fat one eating convention food and one slender, scrolling through his phone. Oblivious to what could happen and too far away to prevent it. The camera flashed my eyes wide. I turned to face the monster as its grip loosened.
“I’m...I’m...a jour...journalist.”
“Then you must have a question. They always have questions.”
“How are you here?” I squeaked.
He pulled me back in, his claws dug into my shoulder as we faced the camera again.
“He said he blinked. He’d like another,” the monster claimed. The photographer exhaled.
“People like me, if there is such a thing, capture imaginations. We demonstrate what they are capable of and convince them of their humanity at the same time,” he said angling me toward the line that stared back with frustration.
The camera flashed.
“I moved. Take another,” he calmly ordered the photographer. His grip tightened as he squeezed me into his hip.
“Nobody has cared about me in forty years. Now, I receive visits from documentarians, “podcasters”, journalists...all wanting to hear my story. They want. Every. Single. Detail,” he said, angling me harder toward the line that crowded into the curtained area, their frustration melting into anger.
The camera flashed.
“Again.” The monster said. The photographer looked at the officers, one still eating and the other looking up from his phone long enough to “okay” the request. I was in a vise grip with no escape, pulled so close that breathing took effort.
“When the public wants, your institutions accommodate.”
He leaned down, tightening his grip, his hot breath on the side of my face, my expression pleading with the photographer, the assistant, the inept officers.
“Movies. Television shows. A company making a $10 plastic cartoon of me. Prisons padding budgets for access and rental like we’re animals.”
My shoulder cracked as he leaned closer.
“Animals you forgot to fear.”
The camera flashed and the lights went out.
To this day, I can hardly look at the 8x10 glossy image of a limp body clutched in the arms of a smirking monster. Even with the offer from my editor to double the rate, I refused to submit the picture alongside the story. Not from embarrassment, but because it reminds me of the crime scene photos on the vendor table. If I shared it with the world, it would become another artifact in need of a signature, asking to be commercialized. It would drive people to him and the others, the “animals” we forgot to fear.