The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Rise and Fall of Stars
by Melissa R. Mendelson

Little Timmy was a fifty-four year old man, and he wasn’t little.  He was rather large and loud and highly obnoxious.  I’m not sure where the Little came from, but most people had little patience for him.  Maybe, that’s where the nickname came from, and nobody was surprised the night that he disappeared.  We were actually glad that he was gone, but his house had burnt down.  And a strange thing remained behind in all that debris.  It was a metal box, and inside was a roll of 8mm film.

I was the collector of oddities and the only one in town with an 8mm film projector.  I was tasked to review the footage, see if there was any kind of foul play.  I highly doubted it.  Little Timmy was gone.  He packed up his bags and burned his house down.  I still watched the film, but I made popcorn first.  I just hoped that it wasn’t some kind of creepy footage.  I had enough issues.

As the projector rolled the film, the screen was mostly white, blank.  Maybe, whatever was on the film wasn’t there anymore, but then a shadow appeared.  It slowly came into focus.  It was a man.  It was Little Timmy, and he looked right at me.  He screamed, and I jumped.  He banged his fists against the screen, and the projector rattled.

Little Timmy turned around.  The color of his face drained, turning paler even in a black and white film.  He glanced my way, and I noticed something off to the corner.  It waved around like a flame, and suddenly, Little Timmy burst into fire.  He screamed and rolled right through the screen, landing onto the floor and touched my leg.  But I did not burn too.  I was inside the film, staring out at Little Timmy’s body.  I watched my house burn down, and somewhere in that debris, a roll of 8mm film would be found.

Fiction © Copyright Melissa R. Mendelson
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from Melissa R. Mendelson:

Name’s Keeper

I got a one-way ticket out of hell. All I need to do is drive across country with a body in the trunk and run miscellaneous errands, but a lot of those errands come with a heavy price. And if I lose the body in the trunk, then I have to go back, and I’ll be damned if I return down there. I will fight to stay here, even if there is no rest for those wicked.

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