Seeking Horror Without Typecasting

20260719

Prompt from Eiiri’s Prompt Foundry, “Pride 2 Disability Boogaloo”.

The thing is, Adrian had seen a lot of cosplayers and such. They were exactly the sort of people who kept a retro concept like “movie rental” afloat. And he’d never had a cosplayer fix him with the kind of grim, wary stares these two were.
Adrian looked uncertainly between them.
Now, it was October, though still early enough in the month that you didn’t usually get people wandering around in advanced makeup. But… the guy on the left’s scar was running from his nose to his lip, which felt like a strange place to put it. And was crooked in a very organic way that, again, didn’t seem aesthetic. Meanwhile the guy on the right’s face was drooping and had bulging patches. Surely that would be a lot of work? You wouldn’t want to go through all that and just pair it with a plain jacket and jeans.
Deciding it was best not to try and understand what was going on, and hoping that if this was being filmed for some prank vid he’d at least get some free advertising from it, Adrian put on his best customer service smile and said “How can I help you? Are you looking for anything in particular? We’ve got a ton of movies, on various media, though most of it’s stored out back…”
The pair scrutinised him. They looked at each other. Right nodded.
Left turned back to Adrian and gave a lopsided smile. “Alright, you passed the first test.”
“Test?”
Oh great, this was totes being filmed, huh?
“Yeah.” Right said nonchalantly. “You didn’t scream, gawp, or start asking us invasive questions.”
“Uhhhh?” Ok, Adrian now definitely had questions, but no idea where to start. So he just put on a politely perplexed smile and probed “Are you here to rent a movie, or…?”
“Several, hopefully.” Left leant on the counter to peer at the ‘Browse our full collection’ terminal. “What horror movies do you have where the villain doesn’t have facial differences?”
“Differences?” Adrian repeated bemusedly, then blinked and said “Ah. You mean, um…”
“Yeah. Like us.” Right said patiently. “We want movies which don’t use any kind of ‘abnormal’ faces to signify evil. Cleft palates, neurofibromatosis, Crouzon syndrome, scars… Or at least, Hollywood takes on us. None of that.”
“Ooh, ok!” Adrian started scrolling through his own terminal, lips pursed in thought. “Give me a moment…”
“Sure.”
“Do you have any preferences for what kind of horror?” Adrian asked pensively. “And are you ok with indie productions?”
“We’re desperate enough to be casting a wide net.” Left said resignedly. “And it’s a pretty diverse group, so having a mix of movies would be best. Try and make sure everyone has something to watch.”
“Oh, this is for, like, a club?” Adrian said curiously, glancing between them.
Right nodded. “Uh-huh. Support group for people with facial differences. Normally we don’t do anything for Halloween, it’s a fraught time for a lot of us, but Ben saw an advert for this place and we figured it was worth a shot. See if we could get personalised recommendations. I mean, there’s got to be some Halloween-worthy movies where the villain looks normal, right?”
“Loads.” Adrian assured them. “I mean, the villain looking normal is integral to plenty of horror mysteries, for example, and serial-killer plots often have ordinary looking killers for the same reason. And then there’s…”
He trailed off uncertainly, then coughed and awkwardly asked “What about movies where the villain’s, um, non-human? I’m afraid I don’t know if, say, Nosferatu is based on a… real-world condition. Or, er, there’s the wolfman, and all that kind of…”
Both men grimaced. Left (Ben?) said, politely but firmly, “We’d rather avoid any evil inhuman-looking characters.”
“Including aliens.”
“Fair.” Adrian murmured contritely. “What about facial differences on non-villain characters?”
They made uncertain noises. Left warily ventured “So long as they’re not, like, laughingstocks…”
“Got it. I can give you a short list now, or if you leave an email address or something - or come back in a few days - I can dig through and have a more confident list of recs. When do you need this for?”
“Oh, like next week would be fine.” Right said, brightening up. “Especially if you think you can find us stuff worth watching.”
“Yeah, I can definitely get you enough for a good watch party.” Adrian said firmly. “Can’t promise you’ll have heard of any of it before, and while I’ll filter for quality you have to remember taste’s subjective and all, but you’ll have a stack of solid movies to choose from.”
“Perfect.” Left grinned. “Tell you what, I’ll give you the email for the group coordinator, then she can just forward the list to everyone.”
“Sounds good.” Adrian grabbed a leaflet from a pile and hopefully offered it to them. “And if you haven’t gotten a media player and everything sorted yet, we also rent that stuff out, or you can even hold a watch party right here! I’m afraid the ‘theatre’ rooms only fit like a dozen people, so it’d depend how many of you there are and everything, but it’d mean you had our entire collection on tap… And there’s five theatres, so if you’re all watching different movies anyways…”
They stared at him, then the leaflet, then exchanged a pensive glance. Right took the leaflet and examined it, while Left said “I mean, if nobody’s going to stare at us or freak out…”
“I promise to be professional.” Adrian said earnestly. “And, um, if you come in the middle of the week, this place is going to be totally empty. Even in the Halloween runup.”
Left nodded slowly. “What’s your policy on snacks?”
“You supply ‘em, no selling anything on the premises, you’re responsible for your guests’ safety - especially minors - and if you make a mess I can’t vacuum, you get billed for cleanup.”
They both gave approving nods.
Right declared “Nice. We’ll talk to everyone and get back to you.”

Prompt was “Facial difference”.