[#023] Shutter

"So it's blurring the pictures or something?"

I wiped the sweat from my forehead as Taylor turned my camera over and peered through the front of the lens as though he thought he could scoop the problem out. "Or something."

"And only when it's pointed at me?" He sighed and thrust the camera back into my hands, then turned and began to pace before the mantle.

"Can we just go?"

"No, not until we've got something we can post to the front page."

"Then how about you take the photo and I'll stand with the old man."

He snorted. "No way, we had an agreement. I'm the face of this show and you're the ass. That's not changing just because you can't do your job." He paused and studied the figure above the cold, dark fireplace.

The old man in the painting wore an elegant, black scarf tucked into a red coat like something from a Revolutionary War doc. His sunken, ringed eyes seemed to glow beneath his wide straw hat, burning with a midnight energy I could feel bubbling from the canvas when I looked away.

Those eyes chilled me to the bone, but I couldn't leave. I had a contract.

And anyway, it wasn't me the old man was watching.

Taylor turned and glared at me, the scowl on his face taking longer than he probably meant to slip into his showman's smile. He placed his hands on his hips and posed before the old man who seemed to gaze down on him with hungry eyes. "Alright then," he said. "Let's have another go."

I took a deep breath to keep my hands from shaking and slowly lifted the camera to my face.

The change occurred in the split second the plastic case obscured my vision, as it had the last three times. When I gazed through the viewfinder, the painting warped. The old man had bent from his perch, gnarled claws reaching out and down from his seat towards my subject, towards Taylor, and this time the illusion seemed to stretch the frame, wood bulging outward as the predator's painted fingers sought their prey, and they were so close, so close.

A calm fell over me, and I knew this one would be the last. One more photo, one more time the shutter would obscure my view, and the painting would change again.

One more click and I would be free. No contracts. No bullies. No showmen. Perhaps I would continue running the website in his memory. Or perhaps I'd let his memory eat dirt.

I grinned. "Say cheese."

"Seriously?" Taylor whined from just beneath the old man's claws.

Click.