The Camera

Two neighbors investigate an old mysterious camera

Cindy approaches her neighbor Joe as he’s getting the mail. She’s holding an ancient Polaroid camera.

“Joe, I have a math problem for you!”

Cindy is always asking Joe for help. In her opinion, he might as well be the most intelligent man in the world. Joe likes to be helpful but is quite a militant atheist. He would rather lecture someone on the inferiority of religion than have a two-way discussion about anything supernatural.

“Why don’t you ask your psychic what the magic number is?” Joe says with a condescending smile.

“No, this is serious! It does involve a psychic… Well, a camera I got from a psychic.”

“No thanks.”

“I think it’s broken because the dates are all over the place.”

Joe thinks Cindy has been had. A psychic sold her something broken. Big surprise. He welcomes the challenge of fixing something that may have been designed to malfunction.

“That’s something I actually can help you with,” Joe says enthusiastically. “Come on, let’s get that camera working.”

 As they walk inside, Cindy explains the camera's problems. “Every time I take a picture of someone, it prints a different date, and every time I take a picture of the same person, the date rolls back one year.”

“That requires facial recognition technology… which didn’t exist when polaroids did. It’s rigged.”

“No look.” Cindy takes three consecutive pictures of Joe. The first is dated November 12, 2057, the second is dated November 12, 2056, and the third is dated November 12, 2055. “It does this every time!”

Cindy finally fesses up. “The psychic said every time you took a picture, you made a trade.”

Joe is visibly fed up with Cindy's nonsense. “This thing is a hoax. I’ll prove it right now. I’ll take a picture of a random person, and I guarantee it will prove your psychic is a con artist.”

Joe sees a little old lady dressed in pajamas walking her dog down the street and snaps a picture of her. She instantly falls over and dies.

“Call 911!” Joe screams as Cindy fumbles around with her phone. Cindy is frantic. She is shaking so badly that it takes her four times to unlock her phone and dial 911.

 When the paramedics finally arrived, they called for a significant police response. The police kept asking who put the body in the street. Joe and Cindy insisted that she was walking down the street, but the police insisted she was four months decomposed.

After four hours of being detained and facing a brutal onslaught of questions, the police finally leave. Cindy is crying. This is her first time seeing someone die. On the other hand, Joe was formerly an officer in the Marines, more familiar with death. He just wanted to know why the cops thought the body was decomposed. As he wracked his brain for diseases that can be mistaken for decomposition, he came up empty. 

Joe considered for a moment that the camera might be supernatural. After all, it is a scientific method to rule everything out, no matter how improbable. He looked at the date on the picture. It was dated four months ago. Joe stares at the picture as if holding a three-headed snake. “I solved the math equation.”

Cindy isn’t concerned with the camera anymore. She had just been detained for four hours after watching someone die. “Just keep it. I don’t care about the camera anymore, I’m going home.”

Before Cindy can walk away, she notices the way Joe is looking at the camera. “What’s wrong?”

“The camera takes a year off your life in exchange for telling you the date you’re going to die.” Joe is completely deadpan.

Cindy has immense confidence in Joe's ability to solve puzzles. He has been doing something math-related for work since he’s been out of the military. He’s tried to explain it to her dozens of times, but the only thing she seems to understand is that his job is for brainiacs.

“So now I’m going to ask for your advice, Cindy. You describe yourself as spiritual. What would a spiritual person do with an object like this.”

Cindy thinks long and hard. “Well, we shouldn’t take any more pictures with it.”

“I’ve got a fix for that, too.” Joe slams the camera to the ground, smashing it into several pieces, then stomps on the pieces for good measure.”

Cindy noticed that the unused strips of instant film lying on the ground were not blank. She picks a few up and looks terrified. “Joe… these are all pictures of you.” She continues to pick up more pictures. “This one is dated for tomorrow.”

Reviews

[Arundass TP]

Every time I take a picture of someone, it prints a different date, and every time I take a picture of the same person, the date rolls back one year.”


More than story I felt like a screen play. Good images. Intelligent and creative ideas 💡