Headlights sent a beam penetrating the whisps of fog ahead. Jack didn’t know where he was going, he just needed to drive, anywhere. The last two years of his life played out in grainy grabs against the screen of fog ahead of him.
‘The film just broke boy, I taught you how to splice. You can fix this.’ Jack heard the gravel of his old mentor’s voice. He only ever knew him as Pops.
He remembered the projection room at the old Star cinema where he helped the old man carry film cans up and down the stairs, watching a movie, up in that little booth at the back of the theatre, waiting in the dark as the sprockets turned the supply wheel.
It was hot in there with the fans pushing the heat out, always the faint smell of hot plastic. It was a world of its own where everything turned out right in the end. It cooconed him, shielded him from all the things he couldn’t control in his own world.
Nothing else ever compared to waiting that breathless seven seconds in the silent dark for the movie to begin. The scrapes and scratches of those old movies gifted him the capacity for awe. It was a romance that held him to one of the few multiplex cinemas still running film.
‘No, pops. It’s not like that.’
‘Life’s always like that, Boy. You think, do I stop it? do I back it up? do I start it over? But you know you got to get that reel going again. There are people counting on you. They are waiting for the next scene. The scene that makes it all right again with a kiss.’
Katy’s face shimmered in the beam of his headlights. Shape shifting at the whim of the fog. Caught in the intensity of her eyes he felt the passion, the fury, the guilt, the regret.
He didn’t want to feel.
‘Remember that time when the film just came right off the reel and was running all over the floor? Your eyes just about came right out of their socket’s boy! I showed you how to take a deep breath and just start winding it all back on again, that’s what you got to do now.’
They were at the end of their love affair. He and Kate, caught in their last moments of desperate passion. Drowning in their denial of the unintended consequences of love lost.
‘Well, it’s all slipped sideways on the floor for me Pops. Wish you were here now.’
Jack knew he’d never forget watching the old man doggedly rewind the reel, match the frames and splice the film, giving a full house just enough time for another round of popcorn.
‘A woman can just want too much sometimes and you have to keep a hold of yourself. My Connie, she was one HELL of a woman. Should have been on that silver screen there was so much spit in fire in her, but I’m glad I kept that film rolling.’
Connie had been the storm on Pops calm ocean but you just knew they were always on the same reel. Jack didn’t have that with Katy. He never knew where he was with her. She was never going to be wound onto anybody’s reel to play the scene they wanted. That left Jack to play the villain and he didn’t want the role anymore.
‘You got to get out of my head now Pops. I’ve been running the reel for too long’.
‘Not everybody gets to play the lead, boy. You remember that.’
Jack reached for the whisky bottle he’d thrown on the passenger seat.
The screen of fog lit up. Jack was on screen. Caught in the beam. The projectionist was in the truck hurtling towards him. In the wrong lane. Someone hadn’t matched the frames right. The film reel burned white hot and the sprocket holes sprung in loops.
A hand pressed his arm, ‘Jack,’ Katy whispered, ‘They say you’re going to be okay. I love you Jack…you know that…don’t you? You’ve just got to come back.’
‘Come on boy. You got to fix it; she’s waiting for you.’ Pops voice was close, too close.
Jack was still waiting in the dark. Waiting for his seven seconds before the film ran again.
© Tropical Writers Inc 2025