Silver Screen
Rachel flicked open the lighter and brought the ornate cigarette holder up to her lips. The glow from the flame caused flickering shadows to play across her face, deepening the lines until they formed a pattern of deep furrows around her eyes and brow.
She inhaled deeply, suppressing the urge to cough and looked at herself in the large mirror. Her once long golden hair had become thin and grey and her skin sagged, as fatigued as the rest of her. She flicked her green scarf around her neck. Its colour as faded as her beauty. It had been her trademark, now it was just a bitter reminder of long ago, like everything else in the apartment. A mausoleum – a monument to past glories that no one else remembered or cared about.
“I was beautiful” she said to the mirror. “Courted by princes and movie stars. Now? I am just a lonely old woman, dying alone”.
“It doesn’t have to be that way” said a voice in her mind. HIS voice. “You can be as you were. Young and beautiful forever”.
She was the last of them. All of the others had given in over the years. Accepted the offer until only she remained, stubbornly clinging to the fading embers of her life, until those embers had grown cold through loneliness and age.
She walked to the old projector and picked up a tin case that contained the movie. The last one she..the last one that any of them ever made. Her hands were trembling as she wiped the dust from the metallic box. The ink on the label had long since faded, but she knew the lost words by heart. Providence, 1936.
She opened the case, reverently removed the roll of celluloid from its resting place and attached it to the projector. Rachel let out a small grunt of pain as she pulled the cord at the bottom of the screen, dimmed the lights and started the movie.
Oh, she had forgotten how perfect they all had been. Simon, tall and dashing as he swept her into his arms. Michael – quietly confident and charming. And her – tall, vivacious and gorgeous. A tear rolled down her cheek and she smiled. She would be with them soon.
The movie came to an end. The credits had rolled and now they were all back again, beckoning her and smiling. The roll of film made a flapping sound as it completed its transfer to the other spool of the projector. Rachel waved at Simon and his smile widened as he returned her gesture.
The screen flickered and she suppressed a gasp of shock. For a moment it had seemed that, instead of the beautiful faces of her co stars, she had seen grinning skulls with scraps of flesh hanging from their bones. But only for a second, a trick of the light? Or the overactive imagination of an old woman? She dismissed the thought.
Rachel got up from her chair and finished her brandy in a single gulp before walking towards the smiling figures on the screen in front of her. She reached out her hand, a smile on her face.
A faded green scarf drifted slowly to the floor of the empty room.
copyright Graeme Reynolds 2009
