Closed Book

Two-dimensional beings hanging on dripping sheets from a length of string across my safelight room. The glow of red means stop, but the alchemy continues. Shadowy wraiths come to life, from the gossamer dead to better living through chemistry. There they are. Real people summarized and put in planar constraints for the tertiary beings who bring them out.

All of them hang there, lifeless. All dead from the last generation. Dripping with solvents. Emulsion sublimating silver iodide where zombies claw themselves out to join the living.

They survive until they come out into the light. Then they fade away, back into the word-of-mouth tales told at weddings and funerals and bar mitzvahs. A whole generation who could otherwise fit in an 8x10-inch album of faux leather and acetate sleeves on the shelf. Making way for the next generation of homuncular redux into one dimension.

One of pixels and data.