more, but one caught his eye. As he held it, he felt a shock in his hands, as if he’d touched a live wire. He jumped, nearly dropping the camera as he thrust it away. Mark back-pedaled a few steps. His fingers tingled and he wiped them on his jeans, but he couldn’t leave the camera alone. He had to pick it up again. This time, instead of a shock, it warmed his palms and gave a charged hum.
Turning to the vendor, he asked if it worked, but the vendor just shrugged. Mark didn’t know if that meant the man wasn’t sure if it worked, or he just didn’t understand the question. Mark fiddled with the camera, held it up and framed a shot in the viewfinder. The hum felt good in his hands. Even if it didn’t work, cleaned up a bit, it would look good in his studio. He had to have it. Curious about its history, he tried to find out how the vendor had acquired it, but the man only smiled and shook his head. The price was steeper than he expected, but Mark had paid without even trying to barter.
Restless, Mark sat up and paced the cell. It was five steps lengthwise, and when he stood in the middle of the cell, and stretched his arms out at his sides, he could touch each wall with his fingertips. He remembered reading that a person’s arm span correlated with their height. He was six-foot two, so he guessed that the width was about six feet.
A smothering sensation clawed at his throat, and he tugged his t-shirt collar as he eyed the walls. Flat and white with no shadows, they seemed to close in, ready to crush him.
He closed his eyes and tried to quell the rising panic. Leaning against the cold wall, he slid down until he sat with his knees bent, elbows propped against his thighs and cradled his head. Swallowing rising nausea, he fought to get a grip.
The silence was absolute and deafening. He hummed, not sure what song it was and not caring. It broke the stillness. Mark let his head droop and intertwined his fingers on the back of his neck. The memories of the days after he returned home from Afghanistan flowed into the vacuum created by the isolation.
He hadn’t trusted anyone else to clean out the camera, so he had done it himself, making sure that no grains of sand remained in the body. Mark massaged the muscles of his neck and smiled when he recalled his excitement of loading the camera with film for the first time. He had spent the whole day down at the lake front shooting pictures. Nothing was safe from his shutter. He snapped skaters, dogs catching Frisbees, sun-bathers, the skyline and dozens of other things.
Mark sighed. What a great day that had been. If he closed his eyes, he could almost smell the fresh cut grass mixed with car exhaust and topped with a faint fishy odor from the damp sand. He remembered lying down and taking a picture straight up into a tree. The sun had shone through the branches creating a great light and dark contrast on the rough bark.
That night he had developed his film, eager to see how the camera performed. Most of the shots were junk, but a few came out well and he had been happy. One shot had puzzled him though. He couldn’t recall taking that picture and he would certainly have remembered if he had. A small child lay on the sand, her hair plastered to her head. A man bent over her blowing into her mouth and a woman appeared to be doing chest compressions.
He shrugged it off as being some kind of test picture on the film. That night, he’d dreamed of a child drowning, dying on a beach. The child in the photo. It had been so vivid, so real, he had recalled even the smallest details. The dream had stayed with him all that next day, and he stared at the picture, wondering about the little girl. Mark was sure it had to have been a still from an old movie. But no matter how hard he had tried, he could not erase the stark scene from his mind. Even the scent of the beach had lingered in the morning. He felt silly, but after doing two photo shoots that day, he had gone back to the same beach from the day before. Somehow, he knew it was that beach.
Picture in hand, he had walked the beach and even thought about asking the lifeguards if they had been involved in a rescue of the child, but they were busy watching the swimmers. Mark would always recall the feeling he’d had at that moment. It was a feeling of anxiety and foreboding. Uneasy, he had paced the packed sand at the edge of the beach, sidestepping toddlers and darting children. He had searched the waves, not really knowing what he searched for but feeling compelled to continue. For a half hour, he walked the shore. He had ignored the glares from some parents even though he knew his behavior was making them nervous. He was helpless to stop.
Then, it happened. He heard a woman scream, and whirling, he saw lifeguards rush towards the shore and long minutes later, the little girl was hauled in, limp and blue. Mark had backed away while every hair on the back of his neck stand on end. On the way to his Jeep, he had sunk to his knees and vomited on a sand dune.
Mark had ignored the camera after that, but curiosity picked at his resolve, and two weeks later, he took it down from the shelf in his studio. After a thorough examination, which showed nothing but normal wear and tear on a fifty-year old camera, he held it to his eye. Just to prove that it had been nothing but a coincidence, he pointed towards a church across the street, and snapped a few pictures. Then he shot a couple of cars rolling to a stop at the corner of his street. He finished off the roll of film with other random, boring shots.
When he had developed the film, the one that should have been a truck double-parked in front of his building, had changed to a horrific traffic accident. Mark had flung the print away.
That night, like before, he had dreamed the details. The next day, he found the street, saw the car that would be involved in the accident, and he let the air out of one of the tires. He had never done anything like that before, but it had been like he was possessed. The owner had come out of nearby bar and shouted, but Mark was too fast for him.
When he went home, the picture had changed. Instead of the accident, he had a print of a guy changing a tire on the car.
The slot on Mark’s door opened with a screech and ripped him from his memories. He tensed, his hands braced on the floor at his sides.
“Approach the door and lie with your feet through the slot,” said a disembodied voice from a speaker set somewhere in the ceiling.
Mark didn’t take the time to look for the source. He followed the directions, flinching when the hated shackles snapped around his ankles. He repeated the process with his hands. The voice then told him to stand in the middle of the room with his back to the door.
He took a deep breath, trying to will his muscles to relax, but the stress and fear overcame him and the chains on his shackles rattled with every wave of fear. If only he had a clue what was going to come next.
The door creaked open, and guards entered. The web of chains again circled his waist and attached his hands and feet to a central chain. He dared to look at the guards surrounding him, relieved that none held the other gear. He felt he could face whatever was coming as long as he could see and hear.
The guards took him down a half dozen hallways, through locked doors and into an elevator. He realized it didn’t matter that he could see. He became so turned around and confused, he had no idea where he was. None of the guards spoke and the halls were quiet. If there were other inmates, Mark didn’t see or hear them.
The group arrived at a door that looked no different than the dozen that they had passed en route. The guard in the lead opened the door and held it open, locking it behind them.
Mark’s apprehension escalated when he noticed some odd features in the room. Eye rings jutted up from the floor and the cement sloped down towards a rusty drain. A wood table with six chairs took up the far wall. Five of the chairs looked like they had been pulled from offices. One was straight-backed and wooden. He had no doubt which one was meant for him.
The lead guard pulled that chair into the middle of the room and motioned for Mark to sit. He did as he was told and waited. The guards remained, none speaking. Mark wondered what they would do if he spoke to them. He could ask the one in charge if he wanted to go have a beer with him after work. Go shoot the breeze.
Of course, he wouldn’t do that. Even if he had tried, it wouldn’t have worked because when he attempted to make eye contact with them, one by one, they looked right through him. It was like he was invisible. Only one, a younger guy, made eye contact, and the flash of knowledge and pity, in the guy’s eyes an instant before he looked away, sent Mark’s heart racing. That guard knew what was coming and whatever it was, wouldn’t be pleasant.
Time passed, but how much, Mark had no way of knowing. His hands became numb from the cuffs and the position in which he had to hold them. When a key rattled in the door, a bolt of pure fear pinned his back to the chair. His vision narrowed to the entrance and his heart thumped so hard, it threatened to punch a hole through his chest.
