don’t blink

inspired by Afterimage by Robert Chafe

He was told to not pick up the camera, but he did anyway. Why did he not listen, why did he not understand the powers the camera held? It was powerful, much more powerful than anyone could imagine it to be.

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He was twelve when he had first found the camera in the attic; he had rushed down to tell his mother of his new discovery. Her eyes widened in shock and met his wide with excitement. She told him to not pick up the camera and told his father to lock the attic. He soon forgot about the camera.

When he was sixteen, he asked his parents for a camera. He had signed up for a photography course and needed one, but he was met with silent rejection. Until that moment he hadn’t remembered the camera in the attic, so he asked if he could use that one. The day after he found an unopened box on his bed with a camera inside.

Ten years later at 26 years of age, he came back to his childhood home after moving out seven years earlier. He had visited, but those were few and far between. His mother had passed away two weeks earlier, several months after her husband, and he was to clean the house before selling it.

He went from floor to floor, room to room, searching for any items that he wished to keep while ensuring the house was in a proper viewing state. This continued for most of the day and he finished relatively quickly thanks to his late mother’s cleaning habits. He had but one place to go, the attic. But he decided to leave it for the next day knowing his flight back was in the evening and went back to his hotel room for the night.

When he arrived the next morning, he checked the two floors of his old home quickly to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. It felt like he was stalling as he had already been through this yesterday; he hadn’t been in the attic since he was twelve years old and didn’t know what he would find. He began lowering the ladder and climbing it with shaky legs, unaware of if it could support his new adult body. Turning the key that he had found in his mother’s dresser, he opened the latch into the attic. He coughed immediately after entering finding dust covering every surface that could be covered. With a mask on his face, he began sorting through the boxes the littered the floor.

He had gotten through two-thirds of the boxes finding things of significance – his parent’s photo books, his mother’s wedding dress, his own childhood memorabilia. Gently, he placed them into the suitcase he brought for these items with a sad smile seen only through his eyes. In the corner of the attic, he found another box; it was separated from the relative organization that was his mother’s doing and he opened it with caution. In it, he found the camera he had first seen fourteen years earlier.

It was an old-school camera that he had only seen in movies and television shows and he picked it up with interest. It was heavier than he thought it would be -much heavier- but he was no longer the boy he once was. Perhaps this weight was the reason his mother didn’t want him picking up the camera. After inspecting it all its glory, he brought the camera to his eye and snapped a few shots of the room dimly lit by a light. He was silently delighted at the prospect of getting to develop his own photos and making use of the art department’s darkroom at his school.

He finished cleaning the attic and brought down his new discoveries into the main floor of the house. He went through his childhood home once more before he left it to new people. With a silent goodbye, he locked the door and carried his bags to the taxi that waited to take him to the airport.

Upon arriving back to his apartment, he left his bags by the entrance before leaving with his new-old camera. Since he was younger, he had loved photography and was excited by the opportunity to use old equipment. He took pictures of trees and the river when he saw the perfect shot of a squirrel going into a tree. With steady hands, he held the camera and took the picture anxious about the result. When he looked back up at his subject with his own eyes, he found the energy that it once had gone. He was slightly confused but paid no mind to it and continued with his picture-taking journey.

Hours were spent in this small adventure before he decided to go develop pictures in the darkroom at his university. He found himself alone after getting a key from the main office and quickly set off on the developing process.

A while later, he was satisfied with his work and stood back to admire the film that hung off the line. The pictures were becoming clearer and he found himself searching for his action shots to see the result. He found the shot of the squirrel slowing coming into view and felt nervous before he began backing away with shock and fear taking over his face.

The eyes, they were blinking.

Once he recovered after what felt like hours, he went to see the other shots to see if anything else resembled the picture of the squirrel. And every single image of a rabbit, dog, or anything that was living had the same blinking eyes that stared back at him.

With his heart in his throat, he ran out of the room leaving behind all the prints on the line and a sore foot from trying to break the camera – the keyword trying. It had these powers, why his mother had probably locked the attic. And he left it there in the darkroom.

The camera that sucked the soul out of its subjects.

 

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