Projections

PROJECTIONS

“Ahhhhhh……Choooo!” Jeremy sneezed, snot spraying out to splatter against the door.  He scrabbled blindly for the near-empty tissue box on the counter, knocking it to the floor as another sneeze exploded out of him.
“Ohhhh,” he moaned, blowing his nose with a trumpet-like snort.  “I am so sick!”
Laura, his wife, picked up the tissues and set them back on the bench.  “You’ll have to stay home then,” she said.  “You can’t go to work like this.”
“I have to,” Jeremy argued.  “It’s the middle of the film festival.  There’s nobody else who can do it.  Linc and Sara are already doing fourteen-hour days.  I can’t take the day off.”

It was true too.  Every half-way proficient projectionist in town was working at one of the five Festival venues, and there was no room for any one of them to be sick.  Jeremy knew it was going to be a long day, but despite wanting nothing more than to crawl into bed, he was going to have to go.
“Well,” Laura said, disapproval giving her voice a knife-sharp edge. “At least drink this lemon and honey before you go.  I crushed four garlic cloves in there too, so it’ll be good for you.”
“Garlic?” Jeremy made a face as the pungent steam hit his blocked nose, clearing it momentarily.
“It’s good for you!”

Jeremy made his way up the narrow stairs to the projection room.  Five unopened cans of film were stacked by the door, along with the day’s running sheets. As he bent to pick up the first two reels, his sinuses throbbed, making it feel as if he had a toothache.

Ten minutes before the first session, Robyn, the Festival manager popped her head in the door.
“You good to go?” she asked.
“Well…” Jeremy tried to joke, but his heart wasn’t in it.  “The film’s ready to go.  I dunno about me.”
“What’s the matter?” Robyn stepped into the room, letting the heavy door slam shut behind her.  Jeremy winced, the sound sending a thunderbolt of pain through his heavy, stuffed up head.
“I’m sick!” he admitted, wiping his nose on the back of his hand.  “I have the world’s worst cold.”
“That’s terrible!” Robyn studied him carefully.  “I can’t afford to have you sick.  We have two sold out sessions today, one of them an archive screening.  I can’t have you messing up the reel-to-reel!”
“I won’t,” Jeremy assured her.  “I just feel like crap..”
Robyn smiled at him. “Look, I have something back at the office that might help. After we’ve got this session underway, I’ll go and grab it, okay?”

Half an hour later Robyn was back, a small paper-wrapped package clutched in her hand.
“What is it?” Jeremy asked.  “Heroin?”
“Ha! Ha!”  Robyn stuck out her tongue at him.  “As if!  No, it’s some herbal stuff.  You mix it with orange juice and in about ten minutes you feel better.”
“Does it have to be orange juice?” Jeremy asked.
“Yes.  Or at least, that’s what the homeopath told me.” Robyn’s hand was still on the doorknob.  “I’ve got to run.  Session over at the Embassy in fifteen.  I’ll pop back later.”

There was no orange juice in the projection room and Jeremy didn’t feel like traipsing all the way downstairs to the candy bar.  It was likely to be mobbed and noisy down there, and his aching head didn’t feel as if it could handle anything more than the low hum of the rectifier and the rattle-clack of the projectors.  His thermos was on the rewind desk, full of the noxious remedy Laura had forced down his throat this morning.  Lemon, orange; there wasn’t too much difference.  Both were citrus after all.  He dumped the contents of the envelope into the thermos and gave it a quick shake before tipping it down his throat.

“Yuck!” Jeremy exclaimed, almost gagging at the taste.  He glanced up at the projector, surprised to see the reel almost reaching the end.  Dashing to the port window by projector two, he almost tripped on an open film can.  Squinting out at the screen, Jeremy just caught the first pair of cue dots and switched on the motor, letting the film run through, slowly at first then gathering speed.  The second set of cues flashed up in the corner of the screen.  Jeremy reached out, felt the change-over button beneath his fingers and pressed it hard.

The sensation was like falling, spinning over and over through space, his stomach flipping as if he were going down the steep slope of a roller-coaster.  His eyes were squeezed shut, and when he opened them, Jeremy was startled to find himself looking out over a crowd of people sitting in the darkness.  A beam of light shone down, dazzling him.  He was sitting on…. Grass?  This made no sense.  He got to his feet, becoming suddenly aware of voices behind him, the words unrecognisable.  Turning away from the light, he found that he was in a huge field, cows grazing nearby.  Two people, dressed in clothes that seemed very old-fashioned, were arguing in a foreign language.  Both gesticulated wildly as they spoke. 

Jeremy turned, seeing the crowd of upturned faces before him.  He walked towards them, tripping on something.  Picking himself up, he looked down to see what it was that had tripped him.  It was a word: animal, in white typeface.  He set it back, just as it was swept away, replaced by another set of words.

“What the….?” Jeremy muttered to himself.  His nose wasn’t blocked anymore, but where the hell was he?  He raised a hand to shield his eyes from the intense white light that shone down from above.  Carefully, he stepped over the white words that stood at shin height and walked forwards a few steps.

There was a tearing sound, white light, darkness.  Jeremy picked stale popcorn from his palms as the entire front row stared at him in the light flickering from the screen.

999 words