it's entirely possible that Nope (2022) made me lose it

your blood, your brother, your family, this idiot you won’t let die no matter how much it seems like he wants to. Not for you, no way. A brother doesn’t die for his sister, you’re not gonna let him leave you the ranch and the horses and nothing, nothing really, because what could this world offer you if your own brother is gone? (A sister could die for her brother. You could die for your brother. It’s funny, how easy it seems when you’re not the one left behind) Blood dripping from Heaven, God’s wrath. Nah, not God. This isn’t God. It’s a higher something. It’s worse. Blood all over your family home. It’ll never truly wash out. No part of this ever will. You cannot come back to your home, except to haunt it as a ghost—

would it be better, if it was a ghost? Would it be better if it was something of this world, a thing that came back, a thing that once belonged? It’s still an impossible shot, right? It’s still unbelievable. But it would be easier, in a way, facing a ghost. You’re haunted anyway. You’re stuck anyway. It would peaceful, maybe, to share it with something that would truly understand. You’d like it to take you down, you want the floors of this house to part and swallow you, to become a ghost story, yes, whatever, as long as you’re not taken from above, carried in the arms of frighteningly beautiful angels, sucked into a cloud—

into the sky, into Heaven. It’s forsaken now. Fuck a miracle. Not a single thing should come down. Think about how hard it is to unlearn trust for the things you’ve always held as natural, obvious, vital parts of this machine. It’s beyond hiding in plain sight. If a cloud can be a predator then what to make of anything and everything. A curse kills everything it touches. Every star can be an eye waiting for you to look back. Every cloud, a smokescreen. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep your eyes down for the rest of your life and pray. Pray  that you don’t get lucky ever again, pray that God never looks down and spots you, pray that this was your only shot—

it’s impossible to get this shot. Even if you get it, how could you? Who would believe such a thing? It’s not meant to be believed, it cannot be true, if this becomes the truth then everything else you’ve ever known wilts away, disappears into this blinding glare. How many shots can one get. The money shot. The picture, the success, the getting to be a forever part of something impossible. If you make it out alive, that is. That’s the trick, isn’t it? Making it out. For just a second, getting the beast to obey you, taming the wild—

you've always known, in the end, nothing can be tamed. You wish it wasn’t this way, you wish you could tie a noose around everything you love and get it to stay. You wish animals weren’t animals but then what would the fun be, right? You think the hand that tames is hateful, you want it to be a thing of love, you don’t know if it can. Everything a human hand touches, is it not cursed? How could it not be. How could a wild thing ever understand our backwards ways, the way we have of making everything worse just because we can, the ease with which we could sell our own souls, their souls, the world’s soul. What could they do with something as useless as a word, what good is this senseless thing we call speech for a being that will never need it? We can never tame an animal, not in any way that matters. They’re not like you, like humans. They have a heart they can come back to. You’ve forgotten it so long ago you have no shot of ever getting it back. You cannot be the hand that tames and still be free. You have to cut that part out. You have to bite down the scream—

you're screaming before you can even think about it. You’re hooting under the sunlight, you think you’re so brilliant; yelling until your throat gives up, when you no longer even care. What does it matter, what could it possibly matter. You’re listening to everyone else’s screams, you’re listening as they get devoured and you cannot scream with them. Maybe if you’re silent enough it will never find you, maybe you’ll make it, you’ll get lucky—

what the fuck is luck. Was it not luck, too, what killed your father? Luck can be bad, luck can be a lurking creature, a hunger so vast. Maybe you don’t want to be lucky. Maybe you don’t want the universe to ever notice you. And here's how lucky you’ll get: you won’t die. You’ll get to come back to your haunted home, you’ll get to claim the shot that changes everything. You’ll have a fever that will never end, you will have an indentation in your chest no one will ever see, you will never know peace ever again. Is it worth it. Think over the trade you’ve made. Think it over when you lay in your bed at night and slowly dare to think if maybe that thing has a brother like you, if maybe it has a thousand, if maybe tomorrow morning you’ll see out of the window a new cloud, one that doesn’t dare move, if maybe the whole sky will be filled with them. And you’d know it was your own fault, for you would do the same. Had that thing killed your brother, you would have found its home just to slaughter it and everything it loved. You would’ve found its weakness, any, and you would’ve struck. You wouldn’t have stopped until it gave back what it took from you, you would’ve made it bleed, as blood is the only thing that can settle a debt of blood—