Fiction Friday -- TOO MANY CHOICES

[Fiction] Friday Challenge for April, 25 2008:
Someone buys a dresser at a yard sale. When they get home there is a roll of film taped to the underside of one of the drawers. What happens next?


Well, first, a roll of film would be too large to be taped to the underside of a drawer. It would catch as the drawer is drawn in and out. Of course, that could be part of the story, like "Why does this dang drawer catch like this?!??!"

Unless it is an old roll of Pony film which was a lot smaller. However, the developing recipe is now unavailable and the film would be almost impossible to get developed, even in a small privately owned lab by a photography historian.

But then again, if it was possible to get it developed but finding a person who has the necessary knowledge and chemicals and such ... what could it be and what would be the results and why oh why was it ever taped away there and forgotten?

If it was "dangerous" it should have been burned.

If it was "hidden" as a prank, why wasn't it ever returned by the prankster to the rightful owner?

Hmmm ...

This actually has the possibility of becoming oh so much more than a little five minute short flash fiction doo-hickey ... it could be much bigger, much more interesting than that.

Okay --
a) the dresser could be taken, along with a bunch of other furniture and "stuff" to a spot along the road for The Longest Yard Sale in August -- say, from Wisconsin or New Jersey to Tennessee.
b) then purchased and hauled to another state by an artist or interior designer who goes to the sale annually to find inexpensive pieces of furniture to mosaic or paint and resell
c) purchaser or an employee finds the film ...

or

d) purchased by an antiques dealer who hauls it off and resells it to a stranger who hauls it off somewhere else

e) setting off a "12 chairs" kind of search for the darn thing

f) or setting off a chain of events that ...

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To come back to this idea ...

Some "facts" that I know about Pony film --
the roll was incredibly small by the standards of 35 mm or Advantix film canisters. I don't know when it was officially taken out of production, but I was able to purchase and have developed rolls that fit my grandfather's antique camera as late as 1985. I may have been able to have them developed beyond that, except that the gentleman who owned the photography shop was either in an accident or had an illness that was prolonged and lost him the use of his hands, so he closed up the shop.

I assume that Pony film was a 1950s and 1960s film, but I suppose a check of the Kodak website might give a history perhaps.

Another roll of film that is smaller in diameter (than modern film), but longer in length, is the 127 (I think) film for the old Brownie cameras. A 1940s - 1960s film.

To make the story of the "lost film" more comtemporary -- that is, what the film portrays -- you'd have to forgo the roll being taped to the bottom of the drawer and discover an evelope of developed negatives in either black and white or color ...

Eesh, the story of what happens next could be as simple as trying to figure out how to get the film developed and deciding it isn't worth it -- that's the ONLY scenario I can come up with that would fit a short flash fiction blurb for the Friction Friday prompt (OOPS!!! I wonder if that was a Freudian slip or an actual true "accident" of mistyping -- fRiction Friday instead of Fiction Friday ?????)
OR
it becomes something much longer involving the imagery on the film ...
some kind of mystery
surrounding
an event
an unidentified person
an unidentified location

or of perfectly ordinary photos and the mystery of why it was hidden away like that

or
or
or

...

or the story of the person who taped it there and finding out the bureau has been taken away by a stranger and the attempt to get it back and why it is important to hide it and now retrieve it

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Or
or
or
or
or

**sigh**
TOO MANY CHOICES!