This, That, and the Other

Diana was excited. She hadn’t been to an actual movie theater to see a movie since before the pandemic. She remembered the last time she’d been at this multiplex. It was right before Christmas in 2019 and the theater was packed with movie goers coming out to see the Christmas blockbusters and holiday movies. She loved going out to the movies in those pre-COVID days.

Now here she was, after an absence of more than three years, about halfway up the steps from the multiplex’s lobby on her way to the second level, where there were 14 individual auditoriums, each showing a different movie. She had a box of Raisinets in her coat pocket, a bottle of water in her left hand, and her ticket in her right hand.

She glanced at the ticket. Theater 10. The showing time was at 1:25, eight minutes from now, according to her watch. Plenty of time to get in, find her seat, take her coat off, and settle in before the previews of coming attractions started.

Diana hoped that this outing to a multiplex theater marked the beginning of the return to normalcy in her life. In all of our lives.

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Written for Cyranny’s One Minute Fiction Challenge. Photo credit: Cyranny.