Wednesday, June 5, 2013

DAY 5: The Picture Inside the Picture

Courtesy: visualfunhouse.com
Today’s Prompt:
You get to your studio to develop pictures from the hour you spent in the park. All of the pictures turn out well, except for a select few. In six photographs, there is a man in the frame. Something seems slightly off, and rather strange about each picture. Who is he and what is weird about the photographs?
Courtesy: writersdigest.com

Word Count: 2,102

Uduak (/hoodoo ark/) and Usen (/hoo send/) took a walk along the beach one morning. Cause it was a fine morning for a walk.
                “I got to tell you a thing or two about those pictures I took at the park,” said Usen.
                “Don’t tell me they were no good. You made so much fuss about those,” said Uduak.
                “They are masterpieces. But they ain’t what I expected.”
                “If they’re masterpieces and perfect and yet, you do not want them even though you took the shots, all of them, truth is, you must be nuts.”
                “I ain’t nuts, Uduak. Believe me; something ain’t working the way it ought to.”
                “Then, what exactly are you?”
                “There’s a man in the pictures.”
The men halted. The wind was picking up speed but it had nothing to do with it.
                “What else is new?” Uduak  said, fetching a pebble from the dirt. “Those pictures are from the park. There ought to be more than one man in the pictures if you asked me. You make it sound odd that there were actual people at the park or in your pictures. You did not expect to find anyone.” It was a statement not a question.
                “No, no,” Usen said, waving off Uduak’s statement. “You really ought to stop flying off half cocked. There is a man in the pictures.” Uduak meant to interrupt and Usen cut him off. “Wait. The same man appeared in only six of the photos and he was nearly always in the shadows.”
Uduak scowled as he stared at his friend. “In broad day light? You took the pictures in broad day light and managed to capture a man standing in the shadows? I ask you for the second time, are you nuts?” Uduak touched his forefinger to the side of his head and twisted back and forth, back and forth, to stress his point. “Cause if you ain’t, I must be off the bend.”
Usen’s face colored. He hesitated.
                “It sounds crazy,” Usen said.
                “No. It is crazy and you are a victim of a figment of your imagination.”

The two men who had resumed their walk stopped again urged by the arresting view of an imposing mountain far out at sea. Usen pointed out at the outcrop of land mass, which from the distance and probably, because of the little distortion of vision induced by fog could have been only a shadow standing vertical.

                “Out there in the water, do you see a mountain or is it just a shadow? And look up in the sky ain’t that a bitch. I never dreamed I’d be so happy to see the sun.”
                “Alright, I get the point. Now, quit being a smartass,” said Uduak.
                “You mean you agree that a man in the black suit can be in the shadows in a picture taken at high noon?”
                “Usen!”
                “He marked his place, Uduak. He was right there behind everybody and everything else and yet, he was a superimposition. Like one of those photostock productions.”
                “You’re really serious about this?” Uduak said, becoming a little grossed out.
                “On my mama’s grave.”
                “You never knew your mama.”
                “On my wife’s head.”
                “Heads up, Usen. You don’t have a wife.”
                “Well, just come on over to my studio and take a look at the pictures for yourself. See if you don’t change your mind in a hurry.” Usen said, flashing a smile as wide as summer.
                “Stop that,” Uduak said.

And so it happened that Uduak came over to Usen’s amateur studio to have a look at the freaky photos. He saw the man, too. It was like a picture within a picture. Uduak for some reason did not see the queerness of the situation.
The next time they got back together, which they did often, and went strolling on the beach, Usen dug up the issue again.
                “Each time I try editing those pictures or sending ‘em through the printer–I’m talking about the six with the picture of the man in the black suit –he retreats an inch into the shadows.”
                “Because you willed it to happen, Usen. Don’t you get it? You’re seeing what you want to see. Give the damn thing a rest. Just let the pictures be and in time, it just might happen that the guy in the shadows will show himself to be what he really is,” Uduak said.
                “And what exactly do you think he is Uduak?” Usen said, but he wasn’t angling for a fight.
                “Blotches in the film is all. So, what do you say? Let’s catch some chicks at a bad time.”
                “I’m game.”
Uduak and Usen pulled out their digital cameras and started snapping off photographs of abominations that stand in holy places. And for the moment, the man in the picture was laid to rest at the backburner.

After the beach walk, Uduak and Usen retired to Usen’s studio, which is what they called his laptop, printer, digital camera and several photo editing hardware. They plugged their cameras to the USB cables then connected them to the system via the USB portals. Next, they transferred the pictures to the wider screen. It improved the view significantly.
They went through the images in silence, relishing their Kodak moment. Yet, the devil came.
The men were silent, stunned out of their comfort zones as the realization shook the very foundations of their belief.
                The man in the black suit appeared in guess… six of the pictures.
When the renewed heebie-jeebies in the wake of the weird pictures subsided, Usen sighed and said, “You still think that man is blotches in the frame that’s bound to fade out with time?”
                “Please, do not patronize me. What are we gonna do about that guy cause apparently, he’s either stalking you or stalking me.”
                “Or stalking both of us,” Usen said and shrugged when Uduak glared at him.
Uduak ran six of the pictures of the man in the black suit through the printer. The printer vibrated then uttered a shrill noise as if it was stuffed with shards of glass. And finally the pictures came sliding out. The spots where the images of the man ought to have been were fuzzy as if a mild heat had charred it. Though his aspect was visible, his face took the worst hit. It was hard to identify. Uduak tried to do a reprint.
                “Maybe, at a later time, buddy.” Usen held his hand. “It’s best we don’t stress the printer,” he said.

The freelance photographers waited in the silence allowing both the static and tension in the studio to fill up the void in their brains.
                “What are we really going to do about that guy?” Usen spoke like a man climbing out of a dream.
Uduak sat hunched over and he had pulled the collar of his flannel shirt over his head. “Well, we got digital cameras for a start.”
                “What’s that got to do with anything?”
                “We get back to the park and we can start by checking the pictures soon after we snap ‘em,” Uduak said.
                “Great idea,” Usen said, but his words lacked the conviction. “What do we do when we find the trifling son of a whore?”
Without looking up, Uduak said in a growl, “We will cross that bridge when we come to it. Okay?”
                “Whatever.”

One beautiful morning, these freelance dudes set off on an investigative paparazzi stint and were still undecided on what to do with the man in the black suit if and when they had him in their clutches.
                “We couldn’t even tell if he had on a leather jacket or an overcoat.” Usen way out of his elements did nothing to hide his sense of defeat from dripping through his words.
Uduak blew hot air on his hands and rubbed one against the other. The chill wasn’t in the air but in the gig. It had him all tensed up. “Mind if we ask around if anybody ever saw this guy in the park?”
                “And strike terror into the hearts and minds of these lovely people? Would you like being called a freak?”
                “How long before we start taking the snapshots?”
                “How about right away?”
And they were off snapping and checking the pictures.
Snap. Check. Nothing. Snap. Check. Nothing. Snap. Check. Check. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Outwitted and outfoxed, the freelancers mobbed a park bench and crashed their tired butts into it.
                “Did you see those pictures? He’s not in any one of them,” Usen said.
                “You telling me? I wish I could just forget it ever happened. This creep show’s not good for my nerves.”
                “I’ve had my share of the creeps the very first time I set eyes on the dude in six of my pictures. If freaking out was hard currency I’d be swimming in dough, right now.” Usen flung up his arms and jerked his head backwards so that it perched against the top edge of the backrest, his face staring up into the sky. A dark figure leaned over him and looked straight into his eyes holding him in his gaze. He couldn’t break his paralysis. The eyes of the man in the black suit pinned him into position and penetrated his subconscious and in that instant, Usen knew.
It didn’t take five seconds but he knew why his camera had picked up the man’s image. Then he was gone.
                Usen bowled out of his seat and totally flipped out.
Uduak jerked forward but stayed seated on the bench. “You trying to give me a heart attack? What’s gotten into you?”
Usen’s eyes roamed the park, searching for the man in the black suit. He was nowhere in sight. “Shit. He was standing over me just now, looking dead into my eyes. I saw his eyes, no irises, just two orange balls of flame. And he had no face, I could see right through him. He was wearing a hat, a magician’s hat but it seemed to hang on empty space, a void. And he smelled like…”
                “Like sulfur,” Uduak completed his sentence for him.
                “How did you know?”
                “You saw the devil? I read something like this before in a Stephen King story, The Man in the Black Suit it was called. Well, I never.”
                “He stood right here.” Usen went around the bench and stood in the spot he supposed the man in the black suit stood a few minutes ago.
                “You really saw him? In black and white?” Uduak’s words oozed with sarcasm, an unconscious act triggered by dread.
                “Of course, I saw him. He was here, right here.” Usen stomped up and down on the grass.
                “If he ain’t anywhere around here now, where the hell did he go?”
                “You can’t be asking me that, can you? You’ve been here all along and you happened not to notice a man this tall, wearing a black suit creep up on me and give me the jump of my life?”
                Uduak shrugged. Usen burst out laughing and Uduak followed. It dissolved the tension.

                “That fools turning us against each other. We can’t let that happen. We need to put him behind us.”
                “I’ve been thinking the same thing.” Uduak patted his friend on the shoulder. “Maybe, that’s just what we’ll do. Get the devil behind us. Somewhere where the sun never shines and the water is fire.”
The freelancers looked into each others’ eyes and laughed again.
                “Maybe, the bastard wished to be left alone.”
                “All he had to do was ask. It’s simple courtesy,” Usen said.
                “Maybe, we wouldn’t have understood his language. Come on, we’re done here.”
                “Maybe, he should have stayed the hell out of our pictures, is what I think.”

Uduak and Usen left the park and went home. At Usen’s studio, when they moved their pictures into the system for editing and printing, the man in the black suit was back in six of them. In each of the pictures, he had his back towards them and each succeeding picture showed a smaller image of him. He was walking away.

Sometimes, the man in the black suit was back in the pictures but Uduak and Usen put him in his place–at the back of their mind. They knew better. He never bothered any one of the men again. And when people picked up one of their photos and asked about the mystery man in the background the photographers said, “Oh, that’s the park caretaker.”
When they replied, “Why do we never see him around?”
They answered, “It’s best if he is left alone.”


Eneh Akpan
June 5, 2013



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