The Unauthorized Serial Novelization of the 1994 Film, The Mask (pt. 3)
Part 3: "I’ll use your empty little skull to break in my nine iron."
Hi paying AWKSD subscribers! Welcome to the first entry of the Unauthorized Serial Novelization of the 1994 Movie, The Mask. Over the next few months, I’m going to give the Jim Carrey hit the literary treatment it always deserved. Nobody stop me!
Big thanks to the very talented Laura Gwynne for illustrations.
I hope you enjoy. Please tell your friends and thank you for supporting me.
After the hysterical horrors of the previous night, we crossfade to a shot of the Edge City skyline. It’s morning. The sun is rising on all the grime and corruption. It’s a city that can and does radicalize a man, twist him to his breaking point, push him to unleash his suppressed violent fantasies.
Stanley lies in his bed, asleep, honk-shoo, honk shoo. The morning sun filters down on his face and he stirs from his slumber. He sits up, rubbing his eyes, and the camera does this little zoom in. He freezes, opens one eye. A look of terror crosses his face. It seems that Stanley is having memories.
He jumps out of bed and lurches toward the mirror. Alas, there’s no green-face ghoul looking back. It’s him. It’s Stanley. He caresses his cheek just to be sure. The look of relief that washes over him is profound. He holds up THE MASK, which has reverted back to its natural, wooden state.
“It was a dream,” Stanley says to himself. He laughs, and repeats: “It was a dream.” But there’s no mirth in Stanley’s laughter. “Better lay off the cartoons” he says, like an idiot child.
There’s a knock at Stanley’s door. He unlatches several locks—a subtle detail that speaks to the dangers of living in Edge City. Stanley opens the door and comes face to face with Lieutenant Kellaway, a secondary antagonist of this movie. Kellaway is a no-nonsense kind of cop, kind of a throwback to what I imagine the characters on Dragnet to be like (I’ve never seen the show—too busy writing Mask novelizations).
Kellaway asks if Stanley knows anything about the previous night’s disturbance. Stanley, confused, has no idea what the detective is talking about, but there’s a slight break in his composure—the first inkling that his delusional, violent fantasies might be anything but.
“Some kind of prowler broke in and attacked Mrs. Peenman,” Kellaway says. A look of shock crosses Stanley’s face. “You didn’t hear anything?” Kellaway continues, skeptical. “She unloaded a couple rounds of 20-ought buckshot five feet from your door.”
Holy shit, 20-ought, we’re thinking.
Stanley leans his head out of the door and eyes Mrs. Peenman, yelling at a cop and pointing at the holes her shotgun put in the walls and floor. The uniformed cops scribble patiently in their notebooks, but it’s a miserable scene: Mrs. Peenman, a scared and angry gun owner, complaining about the damage she did with her own gun.
The gravity of the situation sinks into Stanley. “This is...impossible,” he says.
“Those pajamas are impossible,” says Kellaway, just a little too quickly, as if he’s built up a mental rolodex of Cop QuipsTM Meant to Alienate Eye-Witnesses. (For the record, Stanley’s pajamas are actually quite nice).