Tim Meyer - The Switch House

Rob followed the man over to the secluded area of the booth that consisted of a work bench with two circular disks angled outward, jutting pegs in the center where the reels were commonly placed. Compiling five to six reels into one massive print looked complicated—Rob had seen it done before—and he wasn’t sure if he’d “get it” in only five days. No, it wasn’t splitting atoms, but it might as well have been.

The projectionist pointed to the splicer sitting on the bench. “See that? That’s your best friend. That’s what we use to splice the frames together. Get it?”

“Uhhhh… sure.”

“Good. I’ll show you how to build a print on Wednesday when the new movies come in. In the meantime, we can splice together some trailers for practice.” He nodded in the direction of the cage on the far end of the booth. “Let me show you where we keep some supplies.”

“Yes, sir.”

Before he took his next step, the old man shifted his gaze back to Rob, his eyes barely visible between his lids. “You call me sir one more damn time and Imma splice your chode off, cock boy. Got it?”

Snickering, Rob nodded.

“Now call me Dan, my fuckin’ name, or suffer the fuckin’ consequences.”

“Yes, Dan.”

Rob followed Dan to the cage, a small corner of the booth sectioned off by raw wood framing and chicken wire. Dan popped open the gate and led Rob inside. The cage was trashed with what Rob considered junk. There were Christmas decorations and old projector parts, cardboard boxes filled with rolled-up movie posters dating back to the eighties and dozens of empty reels. Rob also noticed several unopened canisters tucked away in the corner. There was some crap, various marketing materials that never made their way downstairs, cardboard displays and paper handouts, covering the orange and silver canisters, but he spotted them anyway.

“Okay,” Dan said, kicking a path to the far wall. “Here’s where we keep the trailers. We got a ton of old ones we keep for training thumbsuckers such as yourself. Here’s one for Pulp Fiction.” He snatched the small hockey puck-looking disc off the shelf and held it to the light as if he’d discovered a blood diamond beneath the African soil. “You like Tarantino, kid?”

“He’s all right,” Rob replied, his eyes drawn to the corner and the canisters. “I mean, I like everything he’s done, even though Jackie Brown was kinda boring.”

Dan blew an irked breath between his lips and said, “Well, you’re fuckin’ boring” quietly, so Rob couldn’t hear. But Rob did hear and only laughed at the crusty old bastard. “Nonsense,” he barked, and continued to grumble on about kids and respect, and did so in near silence. “Anyway, have your pick. There are all types of trailers up here. Knock yourself out. I might take Pulp Fiction with me. Consider it my retirement gift from this piece-of-shit, no-one-gives-a-fuck-about-you place they call The Orchid 10.”

“What are those?” Rob asked, pointing to the partially-hidden canisters.

Dan arched his brow. “Those?” He waddled over to the old dented cans and bent down on one knee. “Well, one of them is Austin Powers and the Spy Who Shagged Me, and the other…” He knocked over the marketing materials like the trash they were. They spilled across the floor, mixing with other throwaway items of little to no importance. The first thing Rob wanted to do when he took over Dan’s job was to clean out the cage, make it look somewhat presentable. “The other is a rare print from my own personal collection.”

“You collect prints?”

Dan rotated his entire body toward the kid. His lips carved out an almost sinister smile. “Yes. Yes, I do.” A faint laugh lived and died in his throat. “Mostly foreign flicks. Rarities and B-sides. Stuff you’ve probably never heard of, stuff you might not even find on the Internet. Stuff that may or may not sell for a fortune if I live long enough.”

“What kinds of movies?”

Dan’s forehead bunched together, creating wrinkles and ripples across his pale stretch of skin. “Do you like horror movies, kid?”

Rob shrugged. “Sure. Rob Zombie’s first couple were good. I’ll see the new one.”

The projectionist scoffed. “Rob Zombie? The man wishes he could make the types of films I’m talking about. The types of films I collect are true masterpieces. They’re true art. They’re… how shall I put this?” He pressed the tip of his forefinger against his chin. His eyes expanded as the words came to him. “They are morbid perfections.”

Rob stared at him, unblinking. “Oh-kay, then.”

“Take this one for example.” He popped the latch on the orange canister and pulled back the lid. Inside sat three reels. “It’s a short flick. Only about an hour. French title. Ouverture. English translation: Aperture.”

“Like an aperture plate?”

Dan winked at him the way one might near the end of a flirty date. “Exactly. Guess you were paying attention after all. An aperture is an opening. In our biz, it’s the space that allows light to pass through the projector, allowing the image captured on film to project onto the screen. In this film’s case…” He stroked the reels as if they were the spine of his favorite cat. “…it’s… well.” He laughed incredulously. “Never mind, kid. You wouldn’t believe me. Not a thing like this.”

Rob folded his arms across his chest. He’d just turned eighteen and had learned a long time ago the difference between when someone was sincere and when someone was putting him on. But in this moment, he couldn’t decipher if Dan was serious or yanking his cord. At the very least, the old, nearly-retired projectionist believed in what he was talking about. He’d known Dan for about a year, since he’d started working at The Orchid 10 last summer. He’d only spoken to the man a handful of times since, and he hadn’t seemed too loony. A man of few words, sure, but not the bat-shit bonkers turd everyone made him out to be. The man was a hermit, a real recluse, and Rob didn’t know him any better than he knew the guy at Wawa who brewed his coffee every morning.

“Try me,” Rob said, his curiosity piqued.

Dan flashed him an excited, grinning look. “You want to see it?”

“Sure.” He didn’t know if he did or not, but the answer came forth anyway, as if there were no possible way he could stop it. “What’s it about, though?”

Dan rubbed his hands together in delight. “Oh boy. You’re in for a real treat. A reel treat,” he said, snatching a reel out of the canister and holding it up to illustrate his pun. “It’s a story about love and death. Life and what lies on the other side of death’s door. Some say,” he said, that sick grin still pasted across his face, “that one viewing will open up a portal in your mind, allow you to see what’s on the other side. A temporal gateway of sorts.”

“An aperture,” Rob mumbled.

“Yes, kid.” Grinning still, the hermit revealed gums that had blackened over the last sixty years. Teeth that were long overdue for repair, maybe past the point of restoration. “An aperture into another world.”

“So you’ve watched it?”

He looked down at the reel in his hand. “Well… no.”

“No?”

“No,” he said confidently. “Why would I? That sounds scary as shit.”

“You’ve never watched it?” Rob asked, almost angrily.

“No. Nope. Started to once. Got about five minutes in and had to shut it down. Gave me a headache something fierce.”

“What happened? What was on it?” Rob felt his obsession with Dan’s story grow, as if it were some living, palpable thing inside him. Feeding on him. Gnawing from within.