A Perfect Exposure

Memories are fragile, but a photograph lasts forever. That’s why I never went anywhere without my DSLR.

I needed to capture everything—the old hardwood floors of our house, the strange, keyhole-shaped pupils of our matching eyes, and the quiet, empty afternoons spent with my home-schooled younger sister Lucia. She was a ghost in her own home, sometimes slipping into dark, manic silences that terrified our parents, mainly because a nosebleed would soon follow.

But the camera always brought her back. The familiar click-whir of the shutter would make her blink, pulling her out of her own head just long enough to smile for the frame. She never wanted to hold the camera. She just wanted me to make sure she was real.

“Remind me again, why don’t you like taking pictures?” I said, my voice calm and grounded. “Because they always wind up creepy… especially pictures of you. Chloe, your face always looks… wrong.” Her voice was light and airy, but she hesitated before saying the last words. “It’s always all distorted…..Like the camera can’t decide which face belongs to you.”

I remembered.

We both used to have cameras, but every time Lucia tried to take a picture of me, they would glitch out. My face would look smeared across the photo, stretched in ways it shouldn’t, or like I myself had been corrupted. At first we thought the cameras were broken, but it happened every single time, only with me.

Click-whir-FLASH.

The dining room lit up as I took a picture of Lucia.
“Hey!! You know the flash hurts my eyes,” Lucia said with the light yet aggravated tone I’d grown used to, rubbing at them before looking away from me.

“You know, with Mom being out of town, I invited Devon over. Maybe you’ll let me take a picture of you two this time?”
Lucia scoffed, “Not happening.”

Devon was the new student at my school around a year ago. We became friends pretty quickly. He’s one of the few people outside our family who’s actually met Lucia, and she quite fancies him, which is exactly why I tease her about taking pictures together.
His dad’s a big movie director, so he’s busy most of the time, but for being a rich kid, Devon’s surprisingly grounded. He’s never acted spoiled or full of himself.

I stood up from our old, worn-out couch just as I heard the familiar ding-dong of the doorbell.

“Oh~ that must be Devon.” I smiled over at Lucia. “Are you ready?”
She didn’t answer. And after a moment of silence, I asked again.

“Lucia?”

Still nothing. I turned toward her, and she hadn’t moved. She was staring straight ahead, completely motionless. A thin stream of crimson slowly pooled beneath her nose before dripping onto her shirt.

“Lucia…?” Nothing, not even a blink.

Click-Whir-FLASH.

The DSLR’s flash filled the room. Her pupils didn’t react; they stayed wide, almost swallowing the gray of her eyes. For a second, she just stared through me. Then, as the familiar whir of the camera faded, I watched something shift behind her eyes, like the sound had pulled her back from somewhere impossibly far away.

She blinked, looked at me, and frowned. “…Why are you looking at me like that?”

I looked at the LCD on my DSLR, and it showed Lucia sitting at the table in the same pose, but her… face. I don’t remember her grinning like that.

As the night continued, I debated deleting that photo of Lucia, but it’s as if something were stopping me; maybe it was my curiosity, or maybe it was because the exposure had captured the look on her face so perfectly. It was in that moment that I felt a familiar hand tap me on the back.

It was Devon. “Whoa there, you’re not starting to go all ghost on me as Lucia does, are you?” he said with that joking warm tone of his.

“I..I’m here.” Lucia said in a more sheepish tone.
She was always bad at hiding her emotions, like how a camera will be brutally honest about your framing if you have it set wrong.

“Oh…I had thought you zoned out with how you were staring through me,” Devon said, with a faint uncomfortable tone, but it rapidly changed back to his joking tone as he said, “You… must have been staring at me then”

Click-Whir-Flash

Devon’s pupils rapidly turned into saucers before returning to normal from the flash of my camera. “You should see how smug you look right now,” I said, with a chuckle under my breath- “I just had to take a photo of it!”

His smirk turned into a smile as he said, “Oh, you want to do a photo shoot, huh? Well, I brought the perfect prop from my dad’s collection to make this photoshoot a little more interesting”

In this moment, I stood up, taking my camera strap from around my neck so I could hold the camera at more exaggerated angles, and Lucia quickly took my preheated spot on the couch with a smug look of her own as if she accomplished something she had been planning.

“I’m taking my spot back once I’m done taking photos, Lucia.” She stuck her tongue out in response before I realized she started looking past me. As I turned around, I saw what she was looking at: Devon holding a very well-made handgun prop, its metal reflecting the light in the room with a mirror-like sheen.

Click-Whir-Flash

“Does it not look like the real deal?” Devon said with a mischievous look on his face, proud of what he had taken from his father’s collection

Click-whir-Flash

“Yeah, it does, and it’s doing wonders for those dainty hands of yours,” I say mockingly before taking another photo.

Click-whir-Flash

“Hey…I thought movies used real guns for filming?” Lucia said this in an unsure but still worried tone, and her keyhole-shaped pupils locked onto the man she adores.

Click-whir-Flash

“What do you think this is? The nineties, all of that is CGI now”

Click-whir-Flash

I adjusted the focal ring on my DSLR, watching Devon through the lens. He looked ridiculous holding that heavy prop gun, trying to strike a dramatic action-movie pose.
“Hold still, Devon,” I laughed, pressing my finger down. “Don’t ruin the composition.”

Click-whir—BANG

The world didn’t just go loud; it went entirely silent. A deafening, absolute vacuum swallowed the room. My eyes burned from the flash. The camera’s heavy plastic slipped from my grip, tumbling toward the floor. And a sudden, strange blooming warmth spread across my chest.

After the smoke cleared, the silence remained. Devon stood entirely frozen, his face draining of all color as the heavy gun trembled in his grip. I looked down at the carpet. My hands were perfectly steady.

“Oh,” I said, my voice sounding light, airy, and entirely unbothered. “I dropped my camera. “

My fingers brushed against the cold, matte plastic of the DSLR lying on the floor. I lifted it to my eye. The viewfinder was smooth against my cheek. As the familiar feeling of my nose starting to bleed set in, I turned the lens toward the figure on the floor, adjusting the ring until the green autofocus squares locked onto her face.

Click. Whir. FLASH.

A soft hum vibrated through the camera body as the image processed. I looked down at the glowing LCD screen. A manic, breathless smile stretched across my lips as my mind splintered.
I did it. I finally took a good picture of my sister.

For the first time in my life, her face wasn’t a warped, digital blur. The pixels didn’t scream or stretch across the screen. It was as if the photo had A Perfect Exposure. It was just a shame she was lying in that limp pose, her crimson warmth bleeding into the color correction.”

I stepped over the widening pool of red, the camera screen still glowing warmly in my palms. Devon hadn’t moved an inch. He stood rooted to the floorboards, the heavy metal gun hanging limp in his hand, his eyes wide and vacant as he stared at the ceiling. He was hyperventilating, his chest heaving in shallow, ragged gasps.

“Look, Devon,” I whispered, my voice bubbling with a childlike, manic pride. I thrust the camera forward, pressing the plastic screen right up against his trembling chin.

“Look at what I did.” Devon’s eyes slowly tracked downward to the LCD. The camera’s flash had illuminated everything in brutal, high-definition detail. On the small screen, my sister’s eyes were still half-open, her distinct, keyhole-shaped coloboma pupils staring blankly at nothing. The crimson staining her shirt looked impossibly bright against the muted colors of our living room rug. It was a masterpiece of composition.

“See?” I giggled, my thumb tapping the playback button to zoom in on her pale face. “No blurs. No static. It’s perfect. Aren’t you proud of me?”

A violent shudder ran through Devon’s entire body. He looked from the screen to the corpse on the floor, and finally up at my face. When his eyes locked onto mine, the sheer horror in his expression shifted. He wasn’t just crying for Chloe anymore. He was looking at me like I was the monster.

He let out a strangled, choked sob and backed away. His trembling fingers gave out entirely. The gun slipped from his grip, tumbling toward the hardwood floor.

CRACK.

The gun discharged upon impact. The second muzzle flash lit up the room in a blinding, instantaneous white streak. Devon shrieked, collapsing as the bullet tore through his side. Blood erupted across his shirt. He scrambled to his feet on pure adrenaline, hyperventilating as he gripped his bleeding side and lunged wildly toward the front door.

“Wait! Devon, stay still!” I cried out, panicking as I jammed my finger onto the shutter button. “The lighting is shifting! Look at the camera!”

Click-whir-FLASH

He threw the front door open and vanished into the pouring rain. Trembling, I looked down at the glowing LCD screen to review the frame. My chest tightened in absolute disgust. Because he had been sprinting, the shutter speed wasn’t fast enough to catch him. Devon’s face was completely ruined—a horrific, jagged streak of motion blur. The composition was completely messy. The focus was entirely soft. The frantic movement ruined the color correction of his spilling blood.

I stared at the pixelated mess of his escape, a cold, manic fury hardening in my chest. He had ruined the set. He had ruined the rhythm. My dead sister lay perfectly captured on the floor behind me, an immaculate masterpiece of stillness—but Devon had left a smeared, ugly defect in my portfolio. Slowly, a wide, empty smile returned to my face as I gripped the camera strap tightly around my wrist.

“It’s okay,” I whispered to the empty hallway, my voice switching back into the grounded, reassuring tone of my older sister.
“Every amateur photographer makes mistakes. We just have to track down the subject, set up the frame again, and get a perfect exposure.”

Click. Whir. Flash.

“Exposure…” I whispered, tasting the word. “Too much exposure ruins a picture.” I laughed softly. “Chloe was always my shutter. She knew when to close… when to hide me from all the light.” I looked up. “Now nothing is stopping it… I’m the exposure.” A manic smile stretched across my face as I started laughing and skipping over Chloe, the pallor mortis already ruining her complexion for another photo, and I made my way into our garage.

“I know that Dad keeps his tools here~.” I was rummaging through dusty boxes. Our dad loved woodworking as a pastime. “Oh, there you are~.”

I pulled an old nail gun out of the box. I remember Dad telling us never to toy with it because its safety was compromised.

Click. P-tew. Thunk.

“Oh… this will work.”

I walked out of the garage; the rain had finally cleared up. “Perfect; everything always looks more vivid right after the rain, and there I can see those crimson droplets. Devon must really want me to get a good photo just like I did of Chloe.”

I started following the trail Devon had left for me, walking down the sidewalk and then turning onto a trail in the woods. “OH, I almost missed this!! The way the sunset is shimmering off of his crimson trail”

Click. Whir. Flash.

“This looks so pretty. I can’t wait to get that perfect photo of him~.”
After a few more minutes of walking on the old dirt trail, I found myself in the middle of the woods. It was so hard to stay focused when there were so many good photo opportunities, but no, I must get that photo of him.

“OH~ Devon~ why won’t you let me take your photo~?” I heard a faint crack of twigs in the distance, so I slowly walked towards them, and right as I crept around the final tree.

Click. Whir. FLASH.

Devon screamed at the sound of the DSLR, “Huh.” I turned my head towards the scream, “I guess I got the wrong tree.”

CRACK. CRUNCH. SHUFFLE.

Devon had started running away from me. Well, the best he could with his injuries. “DEVON!!! Come back, I just want your picture!”

As I started running after him, he yelled back. “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!”

I frowned. “Nothing is?” I raised the viewfinder back up to my eye. “You are just making this harder than it needs to be.”

Click. Whir. Flash.

I looked down at the LCD. “Aw, too much movement.” My grip tightened around the camera strap. “You need to hold still; you’re moving too much for the photos to look good”

“Just leave me alone!” Devon yelled at me, his voice starting to quiver more. “But, Devon, you’re bleeding… I just want a picture.” My lungs started to burn. I haven’t been this active in a long time.

“Ooo, a cardinal.”

Click. Click. Flash.

“Pretty,” I said as I looked at the image preview. “Oh, WAIT!! Devon, it’s starting to get dark out! And I need the lighting!” I could hear a thud in the distance, and Devon’s groaning soon followed.
“Just.” There was a pause. “Leave…me…Be.” Devon’s voice sounded tired, like his adrenaline had finally given up on him. I felt a warmth bridge across my nose as I could finally see the man I had adored this past year.

“Devon, you finally decided to hold still. Thank you so much!” A smile worked its way onto my face as I said this.

Click. Whir. Flash.

My smile changed to a frown as I looked at the image. “Devon… You moved again… I said you need to hold still.” Devon groaned again; he was trying to drag himself away from me. “I just don’t get it; you always stood still for Chloe, but I guess since you refuse to hold still for me.”

I grabbed him by the shoulders and groaned as I sat him up against a tree. “Hmm, if tripods hold cameras still.” I looked at the nail gun. “Then nails can hold people still!”

“Wait…Please…”

Click. P-TEW. THUNK.

“AHH…YOU ARE CRAZY.” Devon wailed and screamed at the nail I put through his hand to keep him from moving.

“Aww… see? That wasn’t so bad. Now you’ll stay where I put you. I wouldn’t have done that, but MY photo subjects shouldn’t move. You could learn a thing or two from Chloe~.”

Click. Whir. Flash

“So pretty, Devon”

Click whir Flash

“No wonder I always liked you”

Click.
Whir.
Flash.

“Chloe…”

“Help…me”

A grin came across my face.

“Devon, I’m trying”

Click. Whir. Flash.

“Hey, could you look a little more lively? …Devon?” As I looked down at him, I realized he was sitting perfectly still, just like my sister is. “Oh… Perfect, nice pose, Devon.”

My nose started to bleed again, and my head started reeling. “Okay, set the exposure for the low light, and-.”

CLICK. WHIR. FLASH.

This was it, FINALLY the Photo I have been begging Devon to let me take. As I looked down at the LCD, I shuddered; his face…it was…distorted as if the camera couldn’t decide which face was supposed to be his. “Wait… two faces?”

CLICK.
WHIR.
FLASH.

A foreign camera flash exploded right in my face. The burst of white burned instantly into my retinas, blinding me. The sharp auditory trigger tore through my brain.

I blinked, and someone was standing in front of me. I couldn’t make out their face at first.

Just white, too white.

A mask. Not a smile. Not a frown. Nothing at all.

My fingers tightened around my DSLR. They had a camera too. My heart started racing, not from fear, but from curiosity.

“Wait…” I raised my camera. “You took my picture.”

The figure didn’t move.

“That’s not fair.” My smile returned. “I want one of you.”

I lifted the viewfinder to my eye. “No…” My breathing quickened.

“I need one.”

Credit: Hedonism

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