Competition Thirty-Four Winning Flash Fiction: Reel Lives 1972 by Kate Axeford
Alone in his booth, Bill threads and feeds and splices reels, but first he must clean. Meticulously. Just one speck of dirt will scratch and spoil a director’s dream. Today, Bill cleans so guns can blaze. With the soft hands his father hated—he carefully scrubs the sprocket guides. He’s soothed by the ballet of whirrs and clicks, by the rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat, as the film is drawn towards the gate. Each frame offered up to the light. Fleeting, beautiful, gone in a heartbeat.
Alone in his booth, Bill cleans and dreams. Tonight, he drifts into the frontier. Wild stallions, lone riders, prairies smouldering with desire. Handsome cowboys squint into Nevada sunsets. Cut! A horizon shot. ‘Indian’ braves—only silhouettes. Then the close-up: buckskin, braids and borrowed feathers, greasepaint striped from jaw to cheek. All made up. Those fine faces, gently brushed by soft hands holding powder puffs. As the sky bleeds pink, Bill is the last to hold them. He cradles each face before they’re taken. Lost to the shutter, lost to the reel, spliced into battles where the wrong men win. From cactus-strewn deserts to the ABC in Wolverhampton, Bill Evans—the last, quiet link in the chain.
Alone, in his booth, before the audience sink into velvet seats, before lights are dimmed and the curtain rises, before glitzy adverts for Cinzano flicker over upturned faces. Before the Pa-Pa Pa-Pa Pa-Paah of Pearl and Dean’s Asteroid and blue cigarette smoke coils like rope in the projector’s beam.
Before the credits roll, the end of his shift, the drab walk home to a beige bedsit, Bill thinks of that sunset—of who deserves to ride into it—and he stops cleaning those sprocket guides. Just one speck will do the job. Like his father, he leaves a mark.
Kate Axeford is a Brighton-based social worker who loves the sea. Her work has appeared in Brilliant Flash Fiction, Mr Bull, Bending Genres, New Flash Fiction Review and Splonk. She’s been shortlisted and longlisted for Bath Flash and longlisted for the 2025 Wigleaf Top 50.
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