Tracy’s break had just gotten over, and it was unfortunately the last one of the night. Which meant that they wouldn’t be able to sit down and relax until the end of their shift. Thankfully tonight isn’t too boring because Riley’s closing with Tracy.
“Hey, welcome back,” Tracy hears Riley half heartedly exclaim.
“Ugh don’t remind me.”
“At least no one’s here,” Riley taunted. “Isn’t it great that we’re not busy?”
“Ha ha ha,” Tracy replies as they turn to double check the list of tasks and duties. Tracy knows that the two of them had already cleaned the whole movie theater at least twice by now but still hoped there would be something to clean that they had somehow missed. Predictably every single task was done.
“You know there is never anything left to do,” Riley pointed out obviously.
“I know,” Tracy sighed.
The old movie theater seemed to sigh along with them, as though acknowledging through random creaks and noises that it too understood that it wasn’t being used as much as it should.
It’s late October and historically fall is a more active time of year for the theater because of the long held tradition of showing old thrillers along with new horrors to celebrate the spooky season. Usually people would flock to the theater for the nostalgia of rewatching old horror movies that scared them when they were kids. They would laugh at how bad the costumes were and how the films had ever spooked them before. Instead the theater is quiet with only the most avid horror and film buffs participating in the tradition.
Tracy thought the place seemed even sadder than normal with the lack of engagement that is historically expected. But Tracy had accepted a long time ago that there is nothing they could do about it.
At least th-
“Hey! Did you hear me?” Riley asked snapping Tracy back to the present.
“Uhh no. Sorry what do you say?”
“I said it’s almost the end of the last showing of ‘Casper the Friendly Ghost’...” Riley looked at Tracy expectedly and when they didn’t respond she continued. “Which means it’s closing time baby!”
“Oh yeah, nice!” Tracy responded with a sudden spike of energy.
They’re excited because it’s now time for their tradition of flipping for who gets to go home early and who has to stay and clean.
“Alright heads or tails?” Riley asked.
“Heads.”
Riley flips the coin. “Oops too bad it’s tails,” Riley said, “Better luck next time buddy.”
“Oh, it’s fine. I went home early last time and it’s always good to have the money,” Tracy said to try to cover up how bummed they were.
“I guess. Still sucks though.” Riley sympathised. “Do you want some help making sure everyone leaves?”
“Sure, thanks.”
As soon as the last showing ends Tracy and Riley walk through each theater to make sure there aren’t any stragglers. Thankfully there weren't any this time, and it didn’t seem like there weren’t any big messes in any of the rooms. Because the theater isn’t that dirty Riley headed out after the onceover and left Tracy to do all the normal closing jobs.
Tracy got to work and finished cleaning all the theaters by the time their shift was scheduled to be over which had been happening more recently due to the movie theater becoming less popular among the community.
As Tracy makes their way back to the sanitation station with a mop in hand, lights flicker behind them and the carpeted floor creaks. Tracy doesn’t mind the creaks, they’re just the old theater settling. The movie theater never seemed to be completely still.
Before Tracy could leave for the night they had to walk through the movie theater one more time just to make sure that there really were no more people left behind.
“As if there were loads of people that could stick around,” Tracy muttered to themself.
Tracy makes their way nonchalantly through every freshly cleaned theater room checking for any people that might have stuck around.
“No people at all,” Tracy says out loud. “I don’t know why anyone would want to stick around here anyways.”
“Yeah it’s no fun here,” a voice responds to Tracy.
Tracy looks up frightened and spots nothing. “Maybe I’m just imagining things,” Tracy thought hopefully. “Or maybe someone stuck around.”
Now with a purpose Tracy makes their way to the end of the hallway to check the remaining movie theater rooms. Then Tracy sees it. A ghost.
It looked like a cartoon ghost which was very disappointing but still surprising, and it brought up the question of how the media had gotten this right. And Tracy was scared of it, this cartoon ghost that was slowly moving towards them. Holy crap it was floating towards them.
“Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap,” Tracy repeats as he backs away into a sprint away from this spirit.
Tracy hightails it out of the movie theater only bothering to look behind when they finally made it to their car.
“I’m going insane,” Tracy exclaimed as he drove away desperately wishing to forget what he just saw.