By The prompt that produced this story was “Found Footage.” The inspiration was The Blair Witch Project. This is probably the best well know found footage movie. This was a great way to end the Halloween season.
My short story does not deal with video but film. This is the unpolished, original story. I will probably go in and clean up this story a bit. That being said, I’m really happy with how this short story turned out and I’m excited to see where it goes.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
Going through his things after his death, at the bottom of an old metal box I found my grandfather’s old TLR camera. It was beat up from his time in warzones. Something clattered against the concrete floor as I pulled the camera from the box – a single roll of film. I blinked, grandfather had always developed his film. He had even taught me in the darkroom he had built.
My grief overrode my senses. I couldn’t keep going through his things, he wasn’t here. Wanting to feel that closeness again I took the roll of film to the darkroom. The process to develop the film was as much an art of taking the photos. A ritual I was familiar with, a ritual we had done together. With precision I developed, stopped, and washed the film before flicking on a red light.
Holding the damp film negative to the light, I saw some type of big cat-looking animal against a background of trees. As part of my ritual, I scraped the excess moisture from the negatives before hanging the film to dry in the red glow.
I didn’t recognize my error at first when re-entering the darkroom, filled with white light. The scanner hummed as I imported the images into the computer software. I blinked as the images popped up on my computer screen. Trees, black and white trees. But there had been an animal on the negatives. Pulling the film from the scanner I held it up to the light. The animal wasn’t on the negatives, not in any of the 12 frames. I blinked. It was then I realized that the light was white, not red.
Instinct pushed me out the door. I gasped in the hallway of my grandfather’s house, warm yellow sunlight filtered through my grandma’s yellow lace curtains onto a… the wall before me had once been sage green. It always reminded me of spring. But now the wall was gray, the pictures there of family vacations, shades of gray. Fear and curiosity gripped me, I followed the loss of color down the hall to the kitchen. There sniffing around the kitchen was the creature my grandfather had captured on film, who knows how long ago. It reminded me of a cat, if a cat was twice as large as a tiger with a spiked tail and long pointed ears. Muscles rippled as it moved, shadows stripping the gray fur.
I squeeked, unable to contain my primal terror. That massive head turned, and silver eyes bore down on me as white teeth flashed. I felt myself becoming less, glancing down at my hands I stumbled backward, trying to outrun the fading. My fingers, palms, and forearms were the gray shades of black and white film as were my shoes.
Capture. Capture. Capture. I had to capture this thing. Stumbling to my blue car I pulled open the door with trembling hands. I always kept a camera loaded with film. Grandfather always said it was good to be prepared. Maybe this was why. Pulling the 35mm from the passenger seat, I turned as the cat crashed through the door. Grass faded before me as I raised the view finder to my eye and clicked the shutter. The creature moved towards my badly protected form. Those silver eyes flashed. I didn’t lower it as I advanced the film. Taking shot after shot until the roll was at its end. Only then did I lower the camera. The beast was gone but the world around me was now shades of gray, everywhere it had looked, and I didn’t know if color would ever return.
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