The Eleventh Film – A Flash Fiction Serial

Part I

Auguste and Louis Lumière put on the world’s first public film screening. It took place on December 28th 1895 at the Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris. Eleven short films were on the bill that night. Only ten films are listed for posterity. The eleventh film was called The View of Pazuzu returning to the World. It was a desert scene, with a half-buried broken statue and a sandstorm. It ran for five-eighths of a second. It was not noticed by the audience.

Part II

It was actually Georges Méliès who first saw the angels and charted their progress as they moved like sainted bees. And ever since then we have tried to speak to them. But how can you talk to bees? What can you say? How would you even begin? And so we never did and that became the natural way of things and though we were granted a limited purview we were never truly ever given access.