A few days ago I went looking for a new lens for my camera. I’m a professional photographer and while I have no shortage of lenses I can always use more. You know how it goes, the more the merrier.
I was visiting a new city for a few days so I looked up a few stores in the area and dropped by. One of these stores was a grimy little place located on the second floor of a building that looked to be a holdover from the war long ago. But sometimes you find the best things in dingy places so I braved the rattling stairs and went in.
‘SPECIAL: This lens reflects reality as it truly is. Take pictures unlike any ever seen before.’
A tiny handwritten card sat in front of a rather plain looking lens. Intrigued, I picked it up.
“You like that one, huh?” The store clerk approached me.
“Do you mind if I test it out?”
“Knock yourself out.”
I attached it to my camera and aimed it at him.
“Hey, whoa, not at me. Anything but me.” His eyes grew wide in fear. I raised an eyebrow. Strange for a camera store clerk to be camera shy. I turned and instead took a photo of the woman standing in the corner of the shop. The sign didn’t lie, it took a mighty fine picture.
“I’ll take it.” It was cheap and I was always looking for new and interesting pieces to add to my collection. The staff seemed overly happy to have it taken off his hands. Perhaps it had been sitting there for a while.
When I returned home from my assignment my cat Misty greeted me as usual, the little bell on her collar tinkling as she trotted over. She was a gift from my husband before his deployment. “So you won’t get lonely.” A few months later I received word he was killed in action. She was all I had left of him.
“Hey baby, did you miss me? I hope Jay fed you well.” Jay was my neighbour, a single man in his 40s who mostly kept to himself. That suited me just fine. We were friendly enough, enough that he would look after Misty when I went out on business for a few days.
I unpacked my new lens from the store and took a few photos of Misty before going out to the balcony. The sun was setting and the view was beautiful. It was one of the reasons we decided to rent this apartment in the first place. I sighed, pushing the sad memories away and took a few pictures before I noticed Jay entering the shot.
“Hey neighbour!”
“Hey! Oh, thanks for looking after Misty for me!”
“No problem, anytime! How are you doing? Business going well?”
“Yeah, not too bad.”
“Good to hear. Anyway, I better get going. Urgent business to attend to myself!”
Even after all this time I still didn’t know what Jay did. He never said and I never probed. I turned the camera off and went back inside to put the rest of my things away and get dinner ready. There was a loud bang from next door. Urgent business indeed.
The next morning was when it happened. I found Misty on the balcony, dead. My heart shattered into a billion tiny pieces. The last piece of my husband, my last real attachment to the world was lying in a bloody mess on the ground. I picked her up, took her inside and canceled all my appointments for the day.
For a while I just sat there. She never moved, her hair bloody and matted. The collar my husband bought for her was still attached to her neck, a little silver heart hanging from it with the word “Misty” engraved. He chose the name because he knew I liked it. I thought of naming our daughter that one day, if we were to have one. Of course now we never could, and now his last gift to me, the one living tie to the man I loved had been brutally murdered and left on my balcony to find.
I didn’t understand. Couldn’t understand. I didn’t want to understand a world where things like this could happen. It was not a world I wanted to be a part of. I furiously wiped away tears.
I picked up the camera from the table, remembering the pictures I took of Misty the night before. The last pictures I would ever take of her. The last pictures I had of her now. I scrolled through them, tears clouding my eyes. She was still so tiny. I’d never known a more affectionate cat. She would hear the door opening and run to curl herself around my ankles when I got home, bury herself in my lap to sleep while I watched TV, she even took to sleeping next to me in my large and now empty bed.
I angrily brushed the tears away. The pictures of the sunset scrolled by. There was… wait. I stopped and zoomed in. There was Jay, but something was different. Something was in his hand. I didn’t remember him holding anything when he waved hello yesterday. I zoomed in closer.
It was a knife.
I was confused. He really wasn’t holding a knife. I would have remembered a man walking down the street holding a damn knife. His shirt was also covered in blood. What on Earth was going on?
‘This lens reflects reality as it truly is. Take pictures unlike any ever seen before.’
Suddenly it clicked. Rage boiled within me. The type of rage built upon soul crushing sadness and a desire to watch the world burn. No, not the world.
Him.
It was him.
I wrapped Misty in a towel and carefully set her down in her bed. I didn’t know what I was going to do, exactly. Grief and rage blinded any rational thought. I went next door and banged on the door a few times. There was no response. I banged again. Nothing.
One of the side windows was slightly ajar. It was too small for a regular man to fit through, but I was no man. I pushed a garbage can over and climbed up. My shoulders barely fit. For a moment I panicked; I could move neither forward nor back. He’s going to come home and find me like this and he’s going to kill me, too. I struggled, trying to wriggle my way in when I heard it.
A voice. It was a woman’s voice.
“Hello?” I replied. Jay didn’t have a girlfriend…
“Help… help me…” The voice was barely above a whisper, but it was enough. I renewed my efforts and as my shoulders finally passed through fell on top of the toilet seat with a loud thud. Not something I ever wanted to experience again.
I ran through the house looking for the source of the voice. It didn’t take long. There was a door leading down to the basement, although calling it a door would be rather generous. It was made of bars, like a jail cell. There was a rather large padlock in front of it.
“Are you okay?” I called down the stairs. There was no reply.
“If you can hear me, just… make some type of sound.”
There was a metallic clang. Silence. Then another. Someone was most definitely down there. I shook the door a few times but it wouldn’t open.
Something on the third step down caught my eye, reflecting in the sunlight from above. My heart sank. It was a bell. The same bell that in my grief I didn’t even notice was missing from Misty’s collar.
I shook the door even harder but it was no use. Rage started to well up within me once more.
A car pulled into the driveway.
I walked into the kitchen.
The front door opened.
I took out a knife.
Footsteps echoed down the hallway.
The walls were covered in photos.
The lock opened.
Some of the photos were of me.
Voices. Jay’s voice and that of another. A stranger.
It was like watching a movie play out right before my very eyes.
I approached the top of the basement stairs. The two men were down there, laughing. I gripped the knife tighter. I descended, stepping over Misty’s bell. I’d come back for it after.
It wasn’t a basement. It was a jail cell. The two men were standing in the door, discussing a price for the woman chained to the wall. The knife sank into Jay’s flesh first. It was smooth, almost effortless. Coming back out, not so much.
He screamed, grabbing his side as blood poured forth. The knife sank in again. I didn’t realise until after that it was the same knife in the photo. How fitting. Jay doubled over as I felt warmth run over my hands. The woman’s eyes flickered as the knife went in again and again. Finally the man beside him recovered from his shock and threw his hands up in the air.
“Don’t hurt me, I didn’t do anything!”
If this were a movie the good guy would pull out his cell phone, call the cops and turn the guy in. He could claim self defense or some nonsense on the bad guy bleeding out on the floor, probably with some witty quip, and the damsel in distress would be saved and the good guys would live happily ever after, the end.
The knife sank into the second man’s stomach. Then up through his chest. It landed finally in his neck. He hit the ground, gurgling, trying feebly to pull the knife out with trembling hands.
Oh well.
A set of keys were lying on the floor beside Jay’s dying body. I picked them up and walked over to the woman.
She was no longer moving.
I put a finger to her neck. She was gone.
I put the keys back down and returned to the staircase. I picked up Misty’s bell, closed the door and locked the padlock. I walked out through the back door, stepped onto the wet grass, returned home and took a shower. This wasn’t the movies. They skipped all these things in the movies. They didn’t tell you how you were supposed to feel after something like this. What you were supposed to do. How you were supposed to continue living your life.
I dried my hair, got dressed and sat down on the couch. I placed Misty’s bell next to the camera. The camera with the lens from a dingy shop in some smallwater town that had the capability to show reality as it truly was.
I picked up my phone and confirmed my appointments for the next day.
I had a lot more photos to take.