The Exposure

Six Months Earlier…

Pulling my eye away from the black in the viewfinder.
The blackness stayed for a moment.
Spilling as a thick, ink-like shadow.
Swallowing the polygons.
I waited patiently for the world to crash.

A flicker, as my eyes opened.
The gray edges of the ravine blurred.
Softening into color—color I didn’t recognize.
Then my ears feasted on a crunching.
Not of stone, but of leaves.

These were real leaves.
Crisp, dying, and loud.
They weren’t in the viewfinder a second ago.
Now, everywhere, piled so high against the granite.
Dying maples. Bleeding oaks.

Wind blowing tall grass ahead of me.
I move forward. My eyes squeeze together.
Trying to separate moving grass from something immovable.
Sunk into the grass like it grew from there.
One leg splayed too wide. It was empty. A tripod?

The camera I held felt heavier now.
An anchor in my hand.
I knelt to set it down. My knees sinking into the grass.
The ground didn’t stop them. I felt that familiar slide.
No traction. A treadmill with no motor.

I wiped the grit off the back of the LCD.
The screen didn’t show the headstones that were in front of me.
It showed the waiting room.
With white walls. The hum. My laptop.
The frames on the walls were now filled with this cemetery.

I pressed the playback button. Error.

The camera hummed. Vibrating lightly.
The vibration travelling up through my arm.
It settled in my wrist.
Right where the silver shutter button used to be.

I looked again through the glass. The blackness was gone.
In its place stood a figure. The figure.
It was leaning against the tripod I had just seen.
The pumpkin head mask was staring right at me. Through me.

In its hand, a shutter cable. The cord snaked across the grass.
Coiling around the headstones like a vein.
Ending near my feet.

I looked down at it. It wasn’t my focus though.
My boots. They were transparent, phasing in and out.
I could see the laces, then my feet.
Everything turning into blank thumbnails.

The weight leaving me.
The fall that hadn’t happened yet was pulling intensely at my shoulder.
That old pain, flaring up.

Click.

The camera fired without me.
Behind me, the wind didn’t sound like air.
It sounded like snapping fingers.

I didn’t turn around.
I wasn’t ready to see what was reflected.