I used to spend hours watching dust drift in front of the projector. The light turned the particles into dancing specks of fire. It drew me in, like running water or open flames.

Very little changed in that tiny room. The reel clattered on in its endless race to nowhere, and the machinery hummed contentedly, happy to be doing its familiar job. Time stood still in that distant space.

But where time was absent, movement took its place. The dust whirled in silent chaos, wild and alive. It was a flock of tiny birds, moving to a purpose, but none that I could perceive. It would chase itself in winding streams, only to still in the space of a breath, held in anticipation as the particles drifted quietly like settling snow.

I could never hold on to what was real in that darkened room. The countless dramas that accompanied the whirring machines never quite touched that dusty place above. Every so often, distant voices would sift through the glass window, tickling the very edges of my mind. They were familiar voices, voices I understood. They told me their stories. They questioned my past. They called for my death. They told me they loved me.

Then the dust would shift, lifted by an imperceptible breath of air, and just like that my mind would wander off, back to the place with no time. Thoughts would drift away, caught up in the flow of particles, never quite settling, never quite mattering. The world became that little patch of light and the tiny specks that danced across its glow.

But that world doesn't last. With the passage of time elsewhere comes the slowing of the reel, the quieting of the machines, and the dying of the light. The film ends. The projector flickers off, and the swirl of embers quietly winks out of existence. Reality returns as I open the door and step back into the flow of time.

Behind me, the churning dust begins to settle.