Category Archives: Photo Finish Friday

And so the story goes….

Submitted for your approval, one used paperback found in one used book stall in one place specializing in the bizarre, zany, supernatural. Such a book stall may be miles away or it may be just around the corner from your where you live or it may be even closer, as close as your imagination, for you have just crossed over into… The Twilight Zone.

A prop woman readied the coffin. At the behest of the director, she walked up and down the length of the three-foot deep grave, adjusting the bier’s position beside the hole and trying not to knock free any of the flat-black paint sprayed on the soil to give it depth.

“No, no. A little more to the right, babe. There you go, that’s it.” T. Xavier Gabriel glanced through the camera’s viewfinder and clapped his hands.

“Okay, people, places everybody. Time is on the short.” He checked the filter on one of the cameras as four banks of Klieg lights were turned on and three separate lights repositioned.

“Hey, dim the lights,” Gabriel said. “This is supposed to be a night scene: Night scene. See the stars.” He pointed skyward, but saw instead that it was overcast with lightning dancing among the clouds.

“Damn,” he muttered.

Several of the crew laughed lowly.

He shook his head. Another snafu in the making. “Damn. Goddamn.”

Gabriel glanced at his watch: 11:47 p.m. Post mortem. Pre migraine. Petty and mundane. He stomped his foot. It was a child-like gesture, but nothing adult-like was working now or for any part of 1985 that he’d directly had a hand in.

“Places everybody. Places. We shoot in fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes. Places.” The assistant director loped around waving a flashlight and a clipboard. “Time is on the short.”

Gabriel smiled. It was a stiff, brittle, unsure smile: a guest at the funeral home smile. “Time is on the short” was his personal euphemism for running into overtime, something he had been crucified for more than once. He rubbed his forehead and wondered if he’d ever get back to Hollywood, or if he’d spend the rest of his life in commercials, talking to semi trained mammals and now mimics of a dead man.

He glanced at the crumpled note still wadded in his hand. His ex-wife could find him anywhere. Two hours earlier he’d made the mistake of answering the phone.