NCJDDAS: The Silver Screen

NCJDDAS: The Silver Screen

Chapter One

Ann was dead. That was the thing she was sure of.

She’d fallen into a cheese grater, and all of the bloody tubes of her body were set on fire

and stomped on. So, she was definitely dead, for starters. Silly that it didn’t last. 

She was in some kind of dark room. It wasn’t hell, it was comfortable, sort of navy,

and you could see the walls and carpeting and what not. She lay on the ground for a minute

and An Egyptian Woman and a man in 90s sunglasses entered her view of the ceiling.

“Great performance, man,” said the man dressed up like some kind of Terminator rip-off.

“You really had me crying in the break up scene with Joe there.” 

Joe had been her Ex. Ann made a face but didn’t ask.

The Egyptian Woman smiled. “It’s alright. It’s okay. You’re only dead, come on,”

and she helped her up. “Welcome to the Cinema,”

The Egyptian woman said, leading her into the crowd.

“Where are we? Ann stuttered, her curly hair draped around her shoulders. 

“You just died.” said the man in the sunglasses and trench coat. “This is the afterlife.” 

“Well, the afterlife implies that there is an after to life,” Ann mumbled.

“I’ve never taken stock in that kind of thing.” 

The Egyptian Woman rolled her eyes. “Oh, silly, in my time you would have been hanged for saying that.

Such Sacrilege when the events of your own eyes can not possibly be lying to you.” 

“Your eyes can always lie to you. They get blurry, they hallucinate,

I could be still alive and freaking out on LSD.” 

“I’m pretty sure you’d come up with something more colorful.” The Woman smiled.

“Also your death was very big, and there’s no way in hell you’d survive that.

Not that there’s hell, no. Look over there. The credits are starting to roll.”  

Ann looked on the big cinema screen to see movie credits rolling down the screen. 

“We’re your past lives.” The Woman said. “I’m Lapis, and this is Harold.” 

Harold adjusted his sunglasses. 

“I don’t believe in any of this,” Ann blubbered. 

“You better start,” said Harold.

‘The next life is starting, and we’re going to see what our newest incarnation is.

We could be reincarnated as anything. Anywhere. You don’t want to miss the first few scenes,

they’re important.” 

Ann narrowed her eyes, but took a seat that she liked in the theater, near the middle. 

The audience near her was extraordinary, from an androgynous pop star,

to some kind of oversized Ant, a Victorian gentleman, and a woman in some kind of warrior garb.

They were just the start, there were at least thirty or forty. 

She looked at the screen.

She saw a cast list, every name of anyone who had ever been involved in her life.

Looking at all the people that affected her, those she had loved and lost, she cried a little.

And then as her movie ended, another began to start. 

Chapter Two 

The light on the screen faded in, and in, until it was a deep pink, and then the sound of a child crying.

Obviously it was a child being born. Ann tried not to focus on any of the specifics.

The Child came out to the light of a hospital room, and the Doctor handed the baby to its mother.

They were two hispanic parents, smiling ear to ear. 

A moment.

“What name did we decide on again?” 

“I think she’s a Jane.” 

“I like that too.” 

The screen flashed. 

The child was older now, Ann saw.

Jane was three, and she ran around her parents house happily, playing with friends.

It was her birthday party. Jane dragged around a little fluffy stuffed animal of a frog. 

It was beautiful. Nothing but joy had ever occurred to her. 

Well, the child had had moments of sadness yes, but no responsibilities.

None of that stinking adult stuff. 

Ann was amazed. Everything was gorgeous.

The Screen Flashed again. Static on the screen. It faded out, gradually.

An old woman, a balding man in a brown trenchcoat and a 1920s flapper.

Black and white footage, grany and corrupted. 

The woman yelled, “Ann!” before the static overtook the screen again

and Ann returned to the life of Jane. Ann tugged Harold’s arm.

“Did you see that? What was that?”

“What?”

“The old woman, the man and the flapper! It was all bad old footage, it was-” 

“I didn’t see anything,” Harold said, his attention returning to the screen, utterly enrapt. 

Chapter Three

Ann sat there, confused. It had only been for a few seconds that those people were on the screen,

but it seemed dreadfully important. Whatever it was. Who were they? They seemed so strange, yet so

real. Something about them that wasn’t this old magic theater she was in. This afterlife. 

The screen continued. 

Jane was in school now, learning her ABC’s. A B C D E F G…

The crowd haplessly sang along to the childish tune.

They were all so enrapt. None of them had seen a thing. What was that? 

“Lapis, did you see the old woman?” 

“What old woman?” 

“Old woman with bald man and 1920s flapper?”

“Sorry?” 

“Never mind.” Ann said, resuming studying the screen. She wasn’t really into it yet, she didn’t think.

That was good. Something about this felt wrong to her. Incredibly wrong.

“Care for some popcorn?” Lapis offered her a handful of popcorn that had some kind

of blue sparkly substance on it. 

Ann didn’t trust it. “No thank you.”

“You’ll Get Hungry Eventually,” Lapis said in a guttural voice, before returning to her normal one.

“Want some?” 

Ann didn’t reply for a nervous moment. “Maybe I’ll get some from the lobby,” she said, nervously.

“Sure, there’s the door,” Lapis pointed. “You won’t want to miss this, though.” 

“I’m sure.” Ann mumbled.

She walked over to the door and let herself out into the lobby hallway.

She had to get out of this place.

Chapter Four

Along the hallway were posters, pinned to every single wall.

Mostly movie posters, but one struck out to her.

It was the Wendy’s little girl logo, and beneath it was a black sheet with white scrawled pencil text

that said WE HAVE IT, in a subtly ominous voice. She didn’t know what it meant. It gave her the shivers.

There were TV screens all over the hall, playing the movie with Jane. 

Jane was at the playground now. 

Ann didn’t give it much thought, moving down the hallway.

The posters and television screens were everywhere. Most of them said WE HAVE IT. 

She tugged on a door to go into another movie room but it was locked.

All of them were evidently not being used, except for the one she had come from.

What kind of place was this? She didn’t believe in an afterlife, this was more some other kind of strange

scenario. She came out into the central lobby with the concession stand.

She looked out to the exit to the parking lot. Outside was infinite darkness. 

There was a man at the concession stand. It had a Wendy’s sign on it. She came to the man.

She checked the Menu.
IT: 1.99

It was evidently the only item on the Menu. Maybe it was the popcorn.

She was trying to figure it out. She reached into her pocket, and a pile of quarters, eight of them,

spilled into her hand. 

Screw it, I’ll figure out what they're selling.

“I’ll have it please, sir.” 

A solid thirty seconds passed.

The Concession Stand Waiter turned around, and then said back in her own voice, 

“ Do You Think You’re Ready ? ”  

Chapter Five

Ann ran. She rushed back into the theater. 

Oh gosh what the hell oh what the frick what was that

She turned back to the screen. 

It fluttered with static and the old woman was on the screen again.

“ANN! I’m the Doctor, and I’m here! You need to avoid watching the movie!

I need you to trust me, Ann, I’m coming!” 

“Who are you!?!” Ann called.

“Don’t talk to a TV, it’s bad form! Hold on, Ann! Hold on!” 

The screen flickered back to the movie. 

Ann turned around to avoid watching it.

It was on the back wall as well, another full screen that she was certain wasn’t there before.  

“What the?-?” 

And now on the twin sides, wall and floor, all the movie, surrounding her.

Ann closed her eyes.

“Ann Dearest. Don’t You want to watch some telly”

Her own voice whispered and cracked and creaked back to her. “You watch the screen or I may be forced to do something decidedly unkind.” 

Ann tightened her eyes so much her eyelids hurt.

“Look at me. I am your entertainment, little girl..” 

“I don’t know what you are, but you aren’t that!” Ann yelled.

She felt a feeling, deep inside her, nudging her to look, she had to, but she couldn’t.

It was trying to get at her.

“I was going to show you hundreds of lives. So many for your own entertainment, and you would be engrossed. You would eat my special food and you would become my slave. I would feed on you. But now, I will just have to eat you. It will be a lot more painful. Turn around little Ann. Turn around...” 

And as her own voice mocked her, and tears sprayed down from her closed eyes,

she heard a whooshing, grinding noise, and the ripping of cords, and then- 

Chapter Six

The Doctor looked over her. 

“Congratulations, Ann. You’re alive.” 

Ann believed her. 

“What was that?” Ann sputtered. 

“The theater, used this machine to kidnap you, rip you from your home,

and deposited you here, in this strange sort of..medical facility.” The Doctor explained.

“And as you can see, you aren’t the only one.”  Ann got up from the hospital bed she was tied to,

and ripped the last remaining cords off of her arm.

 As she got up, she saw hundreds of beds,

stacked on top of eachother, person upon person covered in cords and tied to machinery.

Hundreds of people, now withered husks, their last ounces of life being drained out of them

by this machine as they were played other lives for their own entertainment as they lost their own. 

The bald man and the flapper nearby began to talk.

 “Hello there, I’m Roman, this is Cherry. It was a struggle to track you down, you know.

We saw you get taken by some sort of machine, and we eventually found this place.

They play the lives of their next victim for the people that are being eaten.

Somewhere out there in the world, there’s a Jane we have to save too.”

The girl named Cherry finished.

“The theater gave you the psychic impression that you were dead so it could more easily take you

willingly. Several religious people are already being eaten, Christians not shown reincarnation,

but a movie theater in Heaven, filled with Faux friends and family.

You were an atheist, so it didn’t know how to calm you down.” She paused.

“Or at least that’s what The Doctor and Roman said.” 

“Can we save the others?” Ann asked.

“No,” the Doctor said. “If they couldn’t see me on the screen, they were too far gone.” 

“How’d you do that?” Ann questioned. 

“Really? You didn’t figure that one out? Sonic screwdriver, hacked into the machine's mainframe,

which was why the footage was bad, but I managed to edit myself in.” 

“What’s a sonic screwdriver?” Ann asked.

“Okay, so that’s irrelevant, the point is, we’ve saved you.

You can go out into the world again, live your life. We’ll find who caused this and hunt them down.

Possibly offscreen.” 

Ann cried a little more. It had almost taken her.

Roman and Cherry led her to the TARDIS, they were going to take her home. 

Epilogue: 

The man sat in his room. 

A droid came up to him. “Report,” he grumbled. 

“We have had our first failure. Our psychic theater has lost a potential victim.

Name, Ann Sherry, taken from Britain, Sheffield, Earth. She escaped somehow. We do not know.”

The Droid Exclaimed.

The Man rose to his full height. “This will not do. It can only be the Doctor.

She will find what I am doing! Insolent Machine!” 

The Droid grumbled. “We shall stop her, Sir.”

The Man growled. “We must. I have a reputation to uphold. The name of the Celestial Toymaker.” 

The Toymaker turned around, and walked over to the computer. He intoned a few commands.
DISCONNECT PSYCHIC THEATER.

And billions of people, drained away in hospital beds in the Toymakers private rooms,

suddenly all, at the same time, drained away permanently to die. 

The End?

This Story (Hypothetically) Starred

Felicity Jones as Ann

Felicity Jones as The Voice of The Theater

Dame Judi Dench as The Doctor

Scarlett Johansson as Cherry

Patrick Stewart as Roman

Riann Steele as Lapis

Arnold Shwartzenegger as Harold

Robert Redford as The Celestial Toymaker