Pet Hate

scrawling as my hands start to move over the pages. It's [bad word]  driven by muscle memory more than conscious thought; I cannot do anything else but write.
The words escape my lips—saying them aloud seems to focus the agony. "If anyone finds this, then I guess my plan didn't work and I'm already dead..." With cold understanding, I'realize that I am crafting my own epitaph. "But if I can just go back to the beginning of all this, I still might be able to save her—"
There would be more, but the pain does not allow me. Blood spots the paper as it trickles from my nose. I'm rooting through the box now, tugging at the contents, fear and panic rising up inside me like a dark fountainhead. And there I find the reels, Day-Glo plastic spools heavy with strips of film, hundreds of feet of footage all packed into tight discs, labeled with black letters on age-worn masking tape. single word in Jason's writing. My father's writing. Evan.
The film rattles through the aged projector and stutters into life—the air tingles with ozone from the laboring lamp and motors—the hot, close texture of heated celluloid. It's the smell of movies.
On the screen, behind the camera, Dad fumbles at the controls of the old Bell & Howell, working to keep it in focus as he follows Mom's gurney down the hospital corridor. She moves in