And I woke up. A cold space, unseemingly vast. Beyond I heard the scream of wind like it was tearing across giant blades. At least I hoped it was the wind. Opening my eyes was like scraping away dirt from a window. A low sickly light filled the space. I realised I was not alone. Sitting opposite was a man on a chair. A chair that looked to be constructed from old, old bones. I recognised him, of course. He looked up from the book he was reading and seemed to consider me for a time, the way one considers a new discovery, wondering whether it's worth further scrutiny or not. His eyes were no colour I recognised. I had to look away for a moment, only seeing the aching spaces.
"Aren't you?" I said, my words like old parchment.
It wasn't quite a smile that reached his lips. Something cold instead leached through time, forever distant.
"Yes, I'm Nicolas Cage. Though here my name is Yog-Sothoth."
"But where is here?" I think I knew.
"I am all time and all space. This is my domain. The impossible." He held up the book. I read the title. Captain Corelli's Mandolin. A shiver quaked me. He really smiled and tapped the cover of the book. I knew then what the book truly was. The dread Necronomicon. The old title fell away.
"How..."
"You watched the movie."
Whatever was, was gone, the abyss reeled around us. The wind wasn't that, I realised, it was the multitudinous screams, a chorus of pain, eternal as the stars. Yog-Sothoth had the book open, his mouth distorting. Strange words that weren't words rupturing the air. It was all too late...
----
OK, I watched it. I went into the impossible. It was bad. But not quite as bad as Knowing, which was almost disappointing. Or the godforsaken remake of The Wicker Man. That's not a commendation. Left Behind is by any conventional measure awful. The laboured Bible bashing would have pushed Jesus to hard liquor, whores, and gambling. Not to measure the entire noxious Rapture theology. Kids get zipped up to heaven despite being amoral little Hitlers. Muslims, nice to everyone, but no way Muhammed, you backed the wrong horse. Boozers. Gamblers. No pass for you. Old ladies with dementia, God doesn't want your forgetful shit taking a seat on Elysium. Little people, no way. They're always so short and angry. Heaven is a tall people only gig. As far as I could tell, if Heaven took any black people, it was for the other Heaven, the one at the back. Top tip, if you want to enraptured, just make sure your write BIBLE STUDY in big bold, all caps in your diary. That's how it works. He probably won't check.
On the plus side, come on, who doesn't want to be flown by a pilot called Rayford Steele. The music (and production values) were pure 1990s TV movie (seriously, I can't stress the music enough, it's perversely brilliant for all the wrong reasons). The acting is painful and Nic Cage spends the entire movie looking like he's enduring a colonoscopy.
I can't, to be honest, even contemplate how such a movie can have come to exist. Surely there are better things to spend $16 million on. Nic could have spent it on better proctologist, for instance.
