Will Willoughby
The Projectionist
There’s a sleeper down in the theater. I’ve seen them before, these sleepers, and never know what to do. From the projection booth, I watch them through the port window beside the projector—people who’ve paid good money just to nod off in one of the lumpy, torn leather seats. Most don’t outlast the credits. Dazed and sheepish, they stand, stretch, address their mouth-side spittle, and scuttle off. This one, though, is dedicated. This one’s top-notch. This one’s slept through the final courtroom scene—the verdict uproar, the cracking gavel, the swelling music—and has slept through the credits as if sleeping is all he’s ever done and all he’ll ever do. He’ll need a prodding for sure. And nobody—not the sleeper, not the waker—likes a prodding.
But I go downstairs to administer the prodding.
He’s a gawky, sedated thing jammed in his seat and propped, Weekend at Bernie’s style, against the wall. He’s wearing a pale white shirt and gnawed-on jeans. He’s knock-kneed and up-palmed, mouth agape, eyes sewn shut, a plume of gray hair spattered up the carpeted wall. His breathing is rapid, shallow, mechanical. He’s as old as I am now and as old as my father ever got.
I stand in the aisle at the end of his row and consider the options. There’s the obvious: kicking his seat, clapping, and so on. Yelling’s always good. Maybe “Hey! or “Wake up!” or “Not sure what your deal is, but you’re super vulnerable right now! People could pile popcorn on your face! Also! This kind of sleeping seems concerning! Maybe it’s a condition!”
However you do it, though, there’s risk. Especially with sleepers like this, sleeping as hard as a father sleeps after work or on weekends. Sleep as escape. Sleep as a fortress. Sleep as a satisfying middle finger to anyone outside who wants in. These fatherly sleepers are somehow both imperturbable and ready to pop. Speaking, even at low volume, could make them suck air and flail their limbs and gush profanity. So they are, traditionally, best left alone. And they’re fine, totally fine. They rest their eyes. They snore. They do their time. And when they die, they’ll die the way they lived—truculent and shrunken in their bed. Surrounded by a jagged circle of disacquainted family members who, having driven a great distance, aren’t thinking straight and don’t know where to look, what to say, or who to blame for the way things are.
Just, you know, for example. Hypothetically.
So what do you do with sleepers like this? A case can be made for doing nothing. Because it’ll end. Time will decide the matter, one way or another. There will be some sound—maybe a rumble and whoosh from the air-conditioning—and he’ll stand, stretch, address his mouth-side spittle, and scuttle off, looking at you like you’re not there, like you’re the ghost in this situation. And he’ll stagger like a discontent marionette down the hall, swing open the doors, and vanish, leaving behind only a half-eaten popcorn, an untouched Coke with no ice, and a lot of questions.
Mainly: Why come to a movie—a courtroom drama built on tropes—just to bag some zees? Is he homeless? On the lam? In a fugue state? Or just fed up? Is his life full of the wrong people? Devoid of the right ones? And how many layers of insulation does this freak need? He’s already wrapped in the dark and then wrapped in a movie. Why would he need the dreaming? Where does it end?
I could walk away. Put this behind me. Move on. But the biggest question remains: How do you wake a sleeper?
I think I know. I know I do. I’ve always known. Now I see it.
But all this would be easier in a movie. In a movie, there’d be a law about fatherly sleepers. Take action or else. Things would make sense. Accountability would exist. There’d be right and wrong. A clear struggle. A resolution.
If I were in the movie, charges could be leveled. The evidence, the prosecution would say, is incontrovertible.
Consider, they’d say, the staggering simplicity of the waking act. Consider the mandate of the first projectionist on the scene. Dereliction of this clear duty must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. We can all agree on that.
Consider the sleeper himself. There he sits: splay-limbed and scream-faced, discarded, repugnant, untended to, unmissed by a loved one. Is this a creature driven and derided by spite to impose a malicious, obstinate self-isolation? Perhaps. But whatever has pushed him here is immaterial. He’s here. For some reason, he’s here. Cut off from whatever he loves. Alone and frozen and clearly in pain. That’s all we can know. All we need to know.
We must therefore reframe the question. It is not, as the defendant claims, “How do you wake a sleeper?” It is “How do you wake a sleeper in pain?”
The answer is, once again, brutally simple. You do whatever’s necessary. You do what the sleeper needs. You move him from where he is to where he should be. You wake him quietly. You wake him gently.
Do not clap.
Do not yell.
Do not kick.
Speak to him, and speak in a whisper. Sleepers are, by nature, looking for something—something lost, longed for, or denied—and they’ll strain to hear what’s hiding in your whisper, even as they refuse to speak themselves.
If the whispering alone fails, whisper while rocking his arm, gently. He may gasp or lurch or scream what the fuck is wrong with you, you stupid fuck. Do it anyway.
If you don’t know what to say, tell him everything’s okay. Even if it’s not. Tell him anyway. Tell him, gently, what he needs to hear and what you need to understand. Tell him it’s over. Tell him you’re sorry. Tell him, quietly, that it’s time to go.
Will Willoughby is a copyeditor and writer living in southern Maine. His first published short story was “Splice” which appeared in the Summer 2023 issue of Epiphany. His work often features characters in absurd, funny/sad situations. He enjoys woodworking, astronomy, and talking to his potato-colored dog, Charlie.
