God I hope I think of everything. I don't know who you are or how you found this but I'll try to put down everything important. Everything you'll need to know to—do whatever.
I have no idea what the hell is going on!
When my contact gave me the film he told me not to watch it. He always says that, every film. That's what he does: he gives me a film and a drop location. My job is to transport it. I think the ultimate destination of these films is some place in the Neutral Zone, but I've never been trusted that far; I only travel within the Greater Nazi Reich.
Always I do what I'm told, but this time, something about the way my contact spoke, the emphasis when he said "don't watch the film!" got to me. So of course, I watched it. O God I wished I hadn't watched it.
My drop was in Old Georgetown, the neighborhood of Washington. I could see why they picked the place; Nazis avoid the area even to this day, but lowlifes don't mind the risk of radiation.
My drop was a pawn shop on Wisconsin Avenue but I drove my DeSoto down to M Street. I found what I was looking for: there, among the boarded up storefronts, an abandoned movie theater. (If you found this message then I guess you already know.) I made sure no one was watching as I tucked the film under my coat. The main entrance was unlocked.
The place had red velvet everywhere with gold metal trim, very ornate, but gone to seed. The posters on the wall were a time capsule of U.S. cinema before everything went to hell: The Outlaw, Lassie Come Home, shows like that. There were movie tickets on the floor. The place had been abandoned in a panic and nobody every came back to clean up.
The popcorn bin was empty. Rats had broken it open and feasted upon its contents, leaving behind some turds. Behind the counter I heard an odd little scraping sound. There was an rancid tub of shortening there and a black rat had recently got the lid off. The greedy thing had jumped in there, stuffed himself, then found he couldn't climb out of the slippery hole. He looked exhausted but he would not stop churning the yellow slime with his claws. I laughed myself silly as I watched him struggle. I kind of liked knowing there was something more hopeless than me.
Fact is, I'm a mess. I can't hold down a job. I taught at a university years ago, and then a couple of high schools, but always I crack and get fired. I get by, barely, as a tutor of rich kids. I can't concentrate because of what I saw in the war and because of what they did to Joyce, my fiance, afterwards.
I went into the theater. The place was huge, with a big gilded arch over the stage. It must have been quite something in its day. I found the door to the projection booth, up behind the last row of seats in the balcony.
I opened the canister. The other films had been labeled "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy" but this one was called "Heavy Lies the Grasshopper." It also said "Do not rewind!" I wish I had paid more attention to those hints. How was I to know? God, I wished I had paid attention.
I fed the movie into the projector and turned it on. The picture was big as a football field. It was not what I expected at all. I was sure of one thing: this was no Hollywood production. The details looked real, more than real. Another uncanny thing was the camera motion, which seemed off somehow. It was like I was watching a documentary from another world. The lack of sound only made it stranger.
The movie showed a destroyed city. I figured out real quick it wasn't Washington. Some buildings still stood but others had been flattened. This devastation was the work of many small bombs, not one Überbomb.
I saw a structure I recognized. You see it in newsreels of Hitler's triumphs: the Brandenburg gate. This was Berlin. This was what Berlin would look like, if the Nazis had lost the war.
Like I said, this was no Hollywood back lot. It all looked as true as any newsreel.
I saw a human figure, just a small dark dot, picking through the wreckage. It moved with inhuman back-steps and I got why the film seemed so strange: it was playing backwards. Then I remembered the writing on the canister and I knew it was not an accident.
The camera moved on. The camera was hand-held and the blocks of smoking ruins slowly receded as minutes passed. The cameraman pivoted at a right angle and reversed into a doorway. We were inside the lobby of an intact building. I was given a glimpse of the walls and I saw movie posters, all in German. We were inside a Berlin movie theater.
The camera swung back to the entrance and a man silhouetted in the bright outdoor light came in backwards. He wore the uniform of an officer in the U.S. army, a colonel I think.
He stopped and pivoted as he drew out his gun. (Really, he was holstering it, but backwards—you know.) From the direction he turned, I couldn't see his face, although he seemed familiar. He never looked at the camera. It was like he didn't know it was there.
The camera followed the aim of the gun. A man lay on the floor. A shrinking pool of blood surrounded his head. The camera moved in on his face. It was a bloody mess.
The camera skittered back. Quick as a wink, the blood was sucked up like his head were a vacuum cleaner. The body jerked up and rose to its feet like a marienette's puppet would, ending with a flash from the pistol. It would have been funny if I wasn't convinced I had just seen a real murder.
There was another reason I wasn't laughing. I could see the man's face clearly now. I had to stop the film to be sure. The man was dressed in the shabby clothes of a German worker, but there was no mistake. I knew him well, although we sure as hell weren't what you would call friends. The man was Obergruppenführer John Smith.