Morning all. Still have a nose that is stuffy and red from the rag weed, but I am up. Mostly because when I lay down I can’t breath. So while I wait for the antihistamine to kick in, let’s jump into the morning prompt. Timers set to fifteen minutes and phasers set to stun. Let’s go.
I need another fifteen minutes with this. Then I’ll know where it is going.
Tuesday, September 24th: The film was grainy.
The film was grainy. He squinted as he tried to make out the facial features of the major players. Behind him the large reels clicked as they spun, on real spinning out the fil in front of the light, the other gathering it up afterwards. He was certain one of the men was Bob Haverson. He could tell from the limp. It was more pronounced in the film than it was the last time he met with Haverson. In the film, the injury was still fresh, the weight too much for the shattered bone to carry.
While it healed since the time, it was never going to be a hundred percent. John squinted. The faces were gray and streaky, fuzzy and half formed under the grain of the film. ‘Mayb something other than features,’ he thought. ‘Like Haverson’s limp.’
He picked one of the others. A woman this time. His eyes still wanted to focus on her face, to look for identifying features. She was just as grayed out and blurry ass the other two. He shifted to her walk, her posture, her gestures. He watched the film through looking for habitual actions as the recorded time frame passed.
“Silvia Weston,” he finally realized. She too made the same gesture with her hand to tug her left ear lobe when she was nervous. He saw it caught on celluloid.
He rewound the film. The strip clicking madly as it went back to the first reel. The end flew loose and he stopped the rewind and reloaded it into the reel. He pressed the button to play. The scene was a general gathering. A picnic, some volleyball, relaxing under the shade. Absently he wondered who was recording this. He knew it wouldn’t be Weston or Haverson. Neither would think to do so and quite honestly neither would want a recording of their personal life in anyone’s file.
‘Probably why it is so grainy,’ he thought. John suspected the camera was located a bit farther away than the cameraman would have liked and probably hidden where those being filmed couldn’t see.
‘So Haverson and Weston,’ John mused, dismissing thoughts of the camera and it’s operator for the moment. He tried to recall who they hung around with back in the days when this was films even as hie eyes picked out another figure to follow. He focused on the man, known associates skimming through the back of his mind. He still hadn’t placed him by the time the film ended. He rewound and again played, this time shifting to another of the people recorded.
By the time he called it a day, John identified three more people. Two were still a mystery. ‘But five out of seven is a good place to start.’
This time when the reel finished he reached over and turned the camera off. The metal was warm to the touch. He pulled his fingers away and leaned back in his chair. He let the dark envelope him. The five he identified would be a good place to begin his search. There were however precautions he needed to take first.
Ten til Midnight 