Story Extract: Legend

I've never seen any of Carmine Seraphimo's films.  Nobody has.  It's become something of a hobby of mine, to figure out when they started disappearing.  Must have gone on for quite a long time, maybe decades.  Hundreds, even thousands of reels, all consigned to oblivion.  It would be impossible today to erase a movie like that, let alone an entire career.  VCRs and whatnot replicate films more quickly than we can imagine.  But Seraphimo, he was lucky, he struck before all of that.

I'm sure that some of the reels were gifts. Others were probably rotting in an old vault whose keepers were happy to surrender them to a loving home.  Still, I've thought for a while now that he probably stole most of them.  He wasn't a bad person, but he was single-minded.  He wouldn't be deterred once he'd decided on something.  Seraphimo had his way, always.  That was the Seraphimo I knew.