The Cutting Room: Dark Reflections of the Silver Screen

I remembered everything in detail, like a picture on the screen. I didn’t know what it all meant, most of it, until long after. But the images were sharp and clear, waiting for my eventual knowledge.

I heard something that sounded like gunshots, five of them. Somehow I knew they were shots, even though they were muffled, sounding nothing like what I’d heard in westerns and cops-and-robbers movies.

Later, I tried to remember back, listening in my memory to tell if his voice had sounded odd. It hadn’t, not as best I could recall. Mr. Carrigan had sounded cheerful, as happy as I’d ever heard him.

At that point in my life, I thought all adults were ancient.

I remember I wanted to believe him. I wanted to change things, right enough. I wanted my dad not just to get a good job, but to keep it. I wanted my mom to get on a quiz show and win more than anybody. I thought, sometimes when I wasn’t hating her, that I’d like my sister to be able to see Elvis on The Ed Sullivan Show. I mean all of Elvis, not just from the waist up like the camera showed. But I knew from a year of working after school and on weekends for Mr. Carrigan that it isn’t often a person can really change things. And when you can edit something, sometimes the price is way too high.

There was something in there. Something from another world. It was ravenous for human blood, and it had already killed.

I had been there the final days. And worse, that last night.