This is proving fun. I wouldn’t suggest it is high literature but I am enjoying how my young mind was playfully toying with ideas as this surreal collage of a book progressed.
26.
Messny was feeling jaded and worn. It had been a hectic da y. The kids had been troublesome. They were always the same on a windy day. It made for nerve-racking lessons. He usually loved it but today school hung over the bright, sunny day like an oppressive dark shadow. It had left him feeling all keyed up inside and decidedly disgruntled. He needed to get out. He knew that if he returned home he would simply slip into the TV jag and waste the evening in front of the hypnotic box and wind up feeling depressed. What he needed was some energy. He wanted to get away from the routine.
The main problem was that there was nowhere to go. He did not need company and he certainly need to get drunk. He checked but there were no gigs on. Reluctantly he decided on a film. At least it would get him out of the house.
He arrived at the cinema and was shown to his seat. The film had just started. There was silence as the audience were engrossed even to the exclusion of popcorn and sweets. Everyone was sitting as still as statues.
Right from the moment he sat down it began to feel strange. The film was familiar yet he knew he had never seen it before. It had only just been released. The characters and settings were all jumping out at him. He was convinced that he must have seen it but could not think how. He was puzzled but settled back down to study it more closely.
As he became engrossed the audience around him faded away and the feeling of familiarity grew. He found himself becoming emotionally involved with the characters and carried away with the theme. He began to realise that he knew exactly where the action was heading, what the characters thought and were about to do. He knew it inside out. Yet part of him scoffed – it was not possible.
As it progressed it was as if he had supernatural powers over the film’s progress. He could influence the sequence of events and actions of the characters as if they were puppets that he was directing. It felt like he was changing the flow of the film as it was being shown.
Messny had this strange idea form in his head that the celluloid in the canisters was all blank and that it was his own mind that was processing the film into pictures as it passed through the projector. It made him feel very uneasy and uncomfortable. He tried to shrug it off and enjoy the film for what it was.
He shifted uneasily in his seat as the film progressed. It seemed to become more real and larger as if the screen was extending round the theatre and becoming three dimensional. He sank down in his seat and toyed with walking out but it felt as if he was being sucked into that interplay created by the beam of light from the projector. He was helpless to act. He was being sucked into the action as if he was one of the actors and had a role to play.
Glancing around him he became aware that the audience was no longer there. The whole theatre had melted into the setting of the film. He was standing in the middle of a road with his hands raised in front of his face, a shriek on his lips, as a car hurtled towards him. It was the obvious climax of the hero’s death.