Hollywood Ending by Kathy Charles Read Free Book Online Page B

exist on the knife’s edge, the sharpest point of the blade where you could fall either way, the only guarantee that you will inevitably get cut. He rolled the dice, tossed the coin, shook his tail-feather in the face of death until the reaper lost his sense of humour. The punch line was a big fat speedball to the heart; a massive dose of heroin and coke that left him dead in an expensive hotel room in Los Angeles, bloated and bleeding on freshly laundered linen and thousands of miles from his home.
    I sat down at my desk and watched footage on the internet: the old CBS newsreel from the day Belushi died—all grainy and washed-out— posted on a fan’s website. A swarm of photographers milled outside Belushi’s bungalow at the Chateau Marmont; the coroner, grim-faced, wheeled his body out on a gurney. That famous toga was now a death shroud: a thin, white sheet pulled up over his head in an attempt to give dignity to the unmistakeable girth beneath. For some people this unpleasant image would have been enough, but I wanted more. I wanted to see autopsy photos: the incisions made by the coroner’s blade, the thick, careless stitches that left the deceased looking like Frankenstein’s monster. But what I wanted to see most was an image from the inner sanctum: the photographs of Belushi lying dead in his hotel bed, his naked body seeping gas and fluid onto the sheets. This was the money shot, the point of impact where life abruptly ended. To see how a celebrity looked at the very moment of passing, that mysterious instant where life just stopped. This was what I lived for.
    I checked in at The Celebrity Autopsy Room. The website was run by an anonymous webmaster who called himself The Coroner . He had set up a Frequently Asked Questions section to try and impede the flow of disgust levelled his way. Yes , he posted, I can live with myself. No, I don’t know what it’s like to lose a loved one, but I’m sure it’s terrible. No, I am not being disrespectful to the dead, if anything I am preserving their legacy by showing the truth of their final days. No, I will not post a photograph of myself on the website, as it will only assist those of you with vigilante justice in mind to track me down and beat me with a baseball bat, as you have threatened to do so many times before. Yes, if you have any photos of dead celebrities please send them to me. No fakes please—after so long in the business, I can tell the difference.
    I logged onto the chat room and posted a question asking whether anyone had seen a photograph of John Belushi dead. There were some high profile celebrities who were fortunate enough never to have photographs of their bloated, distended corpses find their way onto the internet. Phil Hartman was one, which I attributed to the fact he was so well liked and no one had the stomach to publish photos of such a likeable guy with his head blown off. Another was Kurt Cobain. Sure, there was that famous shot taken through the window of the greenhouse where Kurt’s dead, lifeless leg can clearly be seen, a Converse sneaker on his foot. But actual photographs of his full dead body had never surfaced. I’d read that the impact of the shotgun blew half his head off. I guess it would be difficult to prove that the exploded head was actually Kurt’s and not some other unfortunate individual’s.
    I checked the message board. A couple of people claimed they had seen photographs of Belushi’s autopsy on the internet, but when I clicked the links to take me to the photos I was redirected to porn sites. Most people pointed me in the direction of photos of Chris Farley’s death, which had been readily available on the internet for years. Chris Farley was a Saturday Night Live comedian who wanted to emulate his idol Belushi in any way possible, even if it meant dying like him. Farley died of a drug overdose at the age of thirty-three, exactly the same age Belushi was