Thomas is hardly a cinephile. In fact, he finds the pleasures afforded by the cinema to be quite pedestrian. Especially films produced in the current cultural-historical moment: insipid trash meant solely to separate a population bred for short-attention spans and intellectual poverty from its hard-earned cash.

Give this Mole-Man a book and blessed silence over yet another Transformers sequel any day.

However, there is one sort of movie that Thomas keeps his eye out for, one genre that he follows, albeit for reasons other than his own viewing pleasure: horror. Call it cheap, but for an Autumn Courtier, the Fear such a film can generate, confined to a darkened room, is a veritable banquet.

And so, this is how the Mole-Man comes to be standing in line at the Regal Natomas Marketplace Stadium, waiting to buy a ticket for the honor of seeing 47 Meters Down, which he is quite sure will prove to be an insufferable exercise in shark-based fear mongering. Still, the excited buzz of teens in the lobby of the theater seems promising. For, while he can't normally stand those pubescent monsters, they are invariably the first to jump in their seats. To clutch at the arms of their friends or their dates. The first to scream.

Ticket now in clawed hand, Thomas buys himself a small popcorn and a bottled water. More for looks than anything else. And makes his way to theater number 5, helpfully indicated by a pimply kid in an ill-fitting usher's uniform.

Shuffling into the last row, the little man all on his own, is distinctly out of place in an auditorium filled with happily chatting youths, mindlessly waiting to be entertained. But at least the seats are comfortable. Long minutes of waiting for the lights to go down, with nothing to do but stare at the advertisements on the screen, trying not to get up and leave. And then, of course, the previews for coming attractions, each more awful than the last.

Finally, though, the film proper begins. And with it, a steady drip of anxiety, fear, dread from the audience around him. And, in their absorption, nobody notices the strange man in the last row with his eyes blissfully closed, popcorn forgotten in his hands.