KEEP PLANNING – Addison Zeller

When I got out, I took a job at the cinema in Glen Echo, since I loved the movies. I had to alert them I’d been inside, but it wasn’t a deal breaker, they were happy to have someone. The cinema was in the old amusement park. Mostly matinee screenings of classics. We didn’t seat a lot of folks. Sometimes no one showed, and it’d be me alone in the box office under the LEDs, whole place to myself. The teacup rides didn’t move, the carousel was bolted. If you hoisted yourself up on the padlock, you could see the milky horses inside. I’d go in and watch the movie. It was almost always a jail picture. The main character committed some crime, got caught, and the voice of the judge, unsympathetic, wrapped in a black sheet, was the last thing he’d hear before the obligatory clink. Then he did one of two things: he plotted to escape, or he sucked up to the governor. If he did the former, he died. If he did the latter, he became a human being, his soul expanded, he smiled beatifically, cared for plants and animals, and was let out early. Unless he’d murdered someone, in which case he shook the governor’s hand politely, impressed the priest, and waved goodbye from the gas chamber. If he hadn’t killed anyone, they gave him a parcel of his clothes, he wandered out the gates, maybe encountered an old flame, or he’d work hard at a job, win over some kind, simple girl, die saving someone—who knows? The other prisoners eyed me hungrily through the frames. They’d knot their hands into fists and perch them on their hips. I’d flip them the bird. “What are you going to do about it?” I’d say. The theater was empty. There was nothing to worry about.

*** Addison Zeller lives in Wooster, Ohio, and edits fiction for The Dodge. He has contributed to numerous publications, including 3:AM Magazine, The Cincinnati Review, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Exacting Clam, and minor literature[s]. 16 October 2025