The Room With The Projector

I gripped the baseball bat like a vice, but my palms were soaked with sweat. I knew that if I even swung it just hard enough, it would fly from my hands and soar away and I would be left defenseless, but this bat was all I had. It was all I could find. I only hoped it would be enough.
My friends, all three of them, had given me reassuring smiles and good luck pats and kisses, and that had built me up for the stairway down, but now, having descended into hell, those small reassurances melted away fast leaving me, and just me, to fight the devil. We had decided that it was better for one to explore the lower corridor, rather than all of us get killed trying to find a way out. If I found the exit, I'd hurry back, hoping I wouldn't get caught in transit and we'd leave. If I found death, I wouldn't come back, and they'd try another door. Four people, four doors, there was a good chance one of us would live.
I was praying that this way wasn't the way out. The red wallpaper and dim lights amplified the sense that I was delving into Hades itself, not to mention the portraits, all blotted out with black ink. Equal distances between each. All the way down the hallway. There were no doors but the one at the very end with some sort of picture on it that I couldn't make out until I got within a few feet: it was a poster from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, completely unblemished. Gene Wilder smiled down at me with all the wonderful secrets that hide inside his glorious factory, but also in his eyes, one could find the sinister lurking and working in his brain. Especially in this light. I remembered a line from the book: “No one ever goes in, and no one ever comes out...” This should have been enough of a hint to turn around and tell my friends that this was not the way out, but I persevered, hoping that I was wrong about what lie behind the door.
I reached down and touched the door knob. It was warm, and my sweaty hand slipped on the brass, but I grabbed it and turned it, pushing the door open.
The room that awaited me was cramped with clothes on one side of the room, but the other side was uncrowded. It was dimly lit, but only three of the walls were red here, one was white with black scribbles from a permanent marker. There was no door, but the most intriguing thing in the room was the presence of an old 16mm film projector on a table facing the white wall and a chair beside it. It was threaded with some sort of film.
I think it was more curiosity than a sense of duty that led me to the projector and sat me down in the chair. The bat still clutched in my hand on my lap, I flipped the switch on the projector and it began to heat up.
The light turned on and covered half the wall, but the first few frames were empty, allowing ample time to get started before the movie itself started. I don't know how long I sat there before an image appeared, but I knew that with the first frame of the film, I would never see my friends alive again. Hopefully, they were dead already. With any luck.
Frame by frame passed, the people in the film running. The stationary camera seeing all. The killer killing. The gore became so much that, to keep my sanity, I focused all of my attention on the clock at the back of the room. The room my friends were in. The room these people died in.
I watched the clock move inexorably, second by second. I couldn't tear my eyes away. The clock was the only thing I could truly comprehend in the scene. I watched it as the time passed from 11:40 to 11:55. There was no sound, but I knew these people had screamed. The camera didn't catch everything, but I knew I didn't want to know what it didn't see.
The clock reflected the camera, a silent partner to the hideous acts on film, honestly keeping time while the other recorded the details. They had no hearts, though with their turning gears and consistent clicking, one would think they did. These things had lied to us. They had seen things that they didn't tell us about. Staring at that clock, I wondered what every clock I'd ever glanced at had seen, what history it hid inside its bastard gears. Had the clock at the train station seen a rape? Maybe even several? Had my high school history class's clock witnessed drug abuse? Maybe Mr. Furley fingering a tenth grader who wanted an A? And still it kept time. I wondered what clocks had seen my own petty crimes. Punching someone to see them cry, underage drinking, hitting my girlfriend, then holding her down. They were nothing in comparison to what was being projected on the wall before me, but with my crimes and the killer's, the clock never stopped, or reacted in anyway. It just watched, unabashedly, almost gladly. I had never heard of such amoral nihilism. I hoped that the clock in the room had stopped. I prayed that my friends were dead already and not going through these atrocities. I prayed that the camera was broken. But the clock on the projector continued to tick, as though it saw no point in stopping.
At exactly 11:57 and 24 seconds, my concentration was broken as the room shifted like it was on some sort of horrible ride, but the clock stayed in the same spot. I soon caught on that the camera itself was moving, and that the clock was in the room I was sitting in. The killer, having finished with the poor kids, was moving the camera from its stationary spot to God knows where, but the clock remained, vigilantly counting down to midnight. Transfixed, I couldn't tear my eyes away. The room swung left then right as the killer stepped over the bodies which had so recently been alive. He tripped over one, and the rest of the frames where halfway gone where the film had shifted over. All the while, the clock blinked maliciously.
I watched the dots speed across the left hand side of the projection, struggling to fix itself. When it finally did, I saw clearly the familiar hallway I had just exited. The black portraits, the red walls, the light dripping down like blood from the ceiling. I watched in horror as the door at the end of the hallway floated towards me until it filled the whole screen, already open, a light flickering within. As the camera reached the door, I heard the click-click-click of 16mm film from behind me. I kept my eyes fixed on the clock as it and the projected clock lined up, reading the same time: 11:58 and 42 seconds. The precision and timing which the killer had used. The fact that somehow, it was always the same.
Before me, on the wall, was the back of someone's head, staring at another film. The camera stopped moving, and the killer walked in front of the screen, and I knew at that moment, as I dropped my head in defeat, that the man in the film was doing the same thing behind me.
And the clock would keep ticking as though nothing had ever happened.