The first thing I did when I woke up was check the perimeter. That is what you do when you do not know where you are. You look for the exits. You check the locks. You find the heavy things you can throw. I was in a small house near the woods. It smelled like pine and old dust. My head felt like a bruised peach. I did not remember driving here. I did not remember renting the place. My name is Brooks. I am a journalist. Or I was. Right now, I was just a man with a hole in his head where a month of memories should be.
I walked to the kitchen. It was a tactical nightmare. Too many windows. Too many ways for something to get in. On the wooden table, there was a single Polaroid picture. It was face down. I picked it up. My hands were shaking. I hate it when my body betrays me like that.
I flipped it over.
The image was clear. It was me. I was lying on this exact kitchen floor. My eyes were wide and flat like marbles. There was a red line across my neck. It looked like a second mouth. The blood was a deep, wet crimson. It was spreading across the linoleum like a dark map.
I dropped the photo. My heart started expanding like a panicked pufferfish in my chest. It hit against my ribs. I looked at the bottom of the photo. There was a date and a time written in black ink. It was for Friday at ten at night.
Today was Tuesday.
I checked the house again. I found a bag in the closet. It had my gear. A heavy flashlight. A folding knife. A roll of duct tape. Basic survival tools. I am a man who likes a plan. If you have a plan, you have a chance. But how do you plan for a photo of your own ghost?
I sat on the floor with my back against the only solid wall. I watched the door. I did not sleep. Every time the wind hit the side of the house, I gripped the knife until my knuckles turned white. I was waiting for a killer. But the killer did not come on Tuesday.
On Wednesday morning, I found the second photo.
It was taped to the bathroom mirror. I did not hear anyone come in. I did not hear a floorboard creak. The house was a trap. This photo showed me in the bathtub. My chest was open. It looked like someone had been looking for something inside me. The date was Saturday.
The fear was not a sharp thing anymore. It was a cold, heavy weight. It felt like I was swallowing lead. I looked at my reflection in the glass. I looked tired. I looked like a man who was already dead.
I left the house. I had to move. If you stay still, you are a target. If you move, you are a hunter. I got into my truck. The keys were in my pocket. I drove until the gas light flickered. I stopped at a small diner in a town that looked like it was rotting from the inside out.
I sat in the back booth. I could see the front door and the kitchen exit. I ordered black coffee. It tasted like burnt beans and dirt. I needed the caffeine to keep my eyes open.
“You look like you saw a ghost, sugar,” the waitress said. Her name tag said Nora. She had kind eyes. They were the kind of eyes that make you want to tell secrets.
“I just haven’t slept,” I said. My voice sounded like gravel grinding together.
“Nobody sleeps well in this valley,” she said. She leaned in close. She smelled like peppermint and cigarette smoke. “People lose things here. Time. Keys. Themselves.”
I reached into my pocket. I felt the edge of a third photo. I had not felt it there before. I pulled it out.
Nora gasped. She backed away. Her tray hit the edge of a table with a loud clatter. People turned to look. I looked at the photo.
It was a picture of Nora. She was behind the counter of the diner. Her eyes were gone. Just dark, hollow holes. The date on the bottom was tonight. Eight o’clock.
I looked at the clock on the wall. It was seven forty-five.
“Get out,” I whispered.
“What is that?” Nora asked. Her voice was thin. It was breaking like dry glass. “Is that me?”
“You need to leave. Now. Take your car and drive until you see a city. Don’t stop for anything,” I said. I stood up. I grabbed her arm. It felt small and fragile.
“I can’t just leave my shift,” she said. She was confused. She did not understand the weight of the dark.
“The window for safety is closing,” I said. I used my reporter voice. The one that gets people to listen. “If you stay, you die. Look at the photo. Look at the date.”
She looked. She started to cry. It was a quiet, soulful ache of a sound. She turned and ran through the kitchen. I heard a car engine scream in the parking lot. I watched her tail lights fade into the blackness of the trees.
I sat back down. I waited. I held my knife under the table. My eyes were fixed on the door.
Eight o’clock came. The door did not open. Eight-oh-five. Eight-ten.
I felt a surge of hope. It was a bright, dangerous thing. Maybe the photos could be changed. Maybe the future was not a cage.
Then the lights went out.
The diner was plunged into a blackness so thick I could feel it on my skin. It felt like cold oil. I heard a sound from the kitchen. It was a wet, sliding sound. Like someone dragging a heavy bag of meat across the floor.
I turned on my flashlight. The beam was a thin spear of light in the dark. I pointed it toward the kitchen.
There was no one there. But the floor was covered in Polaroids.
Hundreds of them.
They were scattered like fallen leaves. I stepped forward. My boots crunched on the glossy paper. I looked down.
Every photo was of me.
In one, I was hanging from a tree. In another, I was folded into a small wooden box. In another, my skin had been peeled away like an orange. Each one had a different date. Each one was a different ending.
The sheer scale of it made me drop to my knees. It was beautiful in a terrible way. It was a gallery of my own destruction. I felt awestruck. I felt like a bug looking at a collection of pins and realizing I was the next one on the board.
I saw a movement in the shadows. It was a shape that did not make sense. It was too tall. Its limbs moved with a jerky, clicking motion. It sounded like a clock being broken.
“Who are you?” I screamed.
The thing stepped into the light.
It was wearing my clothes. It had my hands. It had my face. But the face was wrong. It was a mask made of developed film. Its skin was the glossy, chemical texture of a photograph. When it moved, I could hear the crinkle of paper.
It held a camera. An old, heavy thing with a wide lens.
It did not speak. It did not have to. I realized the truth then. The month I had lost. The fugue state. I had not been running from a killer. I had been becoming one. My mind had fractured into two pieces. One piece lived in the now. The other piece lived in the what-comes-next.
The thing that looked like me raised the camera.
“Wait,” I said. My voice was a sob. “I don’t want to die.”
The camera clicked. The flash was a blinding white star. It burned my retinas. For a second, the world was nothing but pure, clean light.
A photo slid out of the bottom of the camera. The thing reached out with a hand that felt like stiff paper. It handed me the picture.
I looked at it.
The photo showed me sitting in the diner. I was holding a photo. In that photo, I was also sitting in the diner, holding a photo. It went on forever. A loop of silver and shadow.
“It’s all we are,” the thing whispered. Its voice was a thousand rustling pages. “Just moments caught in the dark.”
I felt a deep, cold peace. The struggle was over. You cannot fight the horizon. You can only watch it come.
I looked at the date on the bottom of the new photo.
It was for right now.
I felt the knife in my own hand. My fingers were moving on their own. They were following the lines of the photos I had seen. My body knew the choreography of the end. It was a perfect, tragic dance.
I saw the red line open on my own throat in the reflection of the darkened diner window. It was beautiful. The blood was as bright as the flash of a camera. I fell to the floor. The linoleum was cold. It felt like coming home.
As my vision faded, I saw the thing pick up the camera. It walked toward the door. It had more photos to take. It had more futures to develop.
I closed my eyes. The last thing I heard was the sound of a photo being pulled from the camera. A soft, chemical hiss.
The dark was finally finished developing.