Overexposure
Grunnoch crept slowly forward, toward the small, quivering form. Slowly, and with anticipation, without fear. For although neither could it see the thoughts of humans, nor those of any other living creatures in the physical sphere, it knew full well that this one posed no threat, as things stood.
Or, more precisely, as things lie, Grunnoch smirked to itself.
Having witnessed the two elder boys attacking the smaller one with debilitating blows, taunts, and gibes, it suspected that he would be ripe for recruitment, and bear a fine yield. As always, It was merely a question of selecting the proper enticement in the time available.
Time was of the essence, of course, for it could not maintain the integrity of the portal that separates Here from There, not for long, anyway. Not without outside assistance.
Circling the sobbing, shaking boy, Grunnoch noticed the shattered camera, much of its film protruding, exposed to air. Grunnoch examined it more closely, recalling the recent scene of senseless, youthful violence that had just transpired.
“Taking pictures of we Greyhawks is gonna cost ya, punk,” one of the two pursuers had yelled. They had chased down and surrounded the smaller one, whose careful, two-handed grip on his camera had impeded his running speed, dooming his attempt at flight. Suddenly, an arm twisted and held fast evinced a painful shriek; the camera dropped, breaking.
“And I don’t see nearly enough coin in his pockets, Lenny,” the other had added, having turned the small boy’s pockets inside out as the first one continued to restrain him with his malicious, superior strength.
“From now on, Marvin, you ask permission from me and from him before this thing comes out again, got it?” the first had said.
The embattled child had, foolishly, attempted to combat unreason with reason, serving only to fire his tormentors’ cauldrons still further.
“I didn’t mean n-n-nothing by it, guys, it was just s-s-some shots for a Sentinel article about the school p-playground, I-I-I,” he’d managed to say, between sobs.
“Shut your hole!” the one called Lenny had responded, imparting further pain to the boy. Wresting the camera away, Lenny had flung it into a nearby wall, rendering it inoperable. For good measure, he had pulled the film from the camera, exposing it to killing sunlight.
The sight of the camera’s sudden ruination seemed to create in the small photographer a sudden animal ferocity.
“Lenny, no! Th-there’s dozens of undeveloped pictu- OOF!”
And the final battle had been enjoined in full, predictable in its outcome but gruesome nonetheless.
From where it lurked, Grunnoch had easily identified its candidate as the three had approached – a distinctive fragrance combining fear with impotence, rage with resentment.
Few in Grunnoch’s time had ever produced such strong and redolent scent as this. It felt confident that the temptation of redemption and revenge would prove sufficient here.
After the two bullies had abandoned their hapless victim, Grunnoch had created a temporary portal, slipped through, and assumed human form, molding itself quickly into a figure of authority, an adult in uniform. One whose voice it knew the young one would find comforting at this critical juncture.
“Marvin? Marvin, can you hear me?”
The beaten child lifted his head from the pavement, startled and sobbing, but said nothing.
“Now, Marvin, listen to me,” said Grunnoch in a practiced, authoritarian tone. “You would like those who harmed you to be brought to justice, correct?”
A nod.
“Then you shall do just that. Capture your tormentors in clear light with this new, more powerful camera. They will torment you no more.”
The boy shook his head in wonderment. “M-more powerful? How does it work? The Greyhawks said never to – “
Taking care to ensure the boy didn’t notice, Grunnoch had transmuted the broken camera into a new, silvery form, with several shiny knobs and dials on its back. A large, oval-shaped flashbulb extended from its top, and a sturdy strap with a small, sealed pouch extended from hooks on the camera’s side.
Grunnoch proffered it to him.
“Marvin, take this; it is indestructible and carries great power, one which will give you total invincibility as you capture the images of those who have harmed you.”
After the boy had taken the camera, and the usual moment of infusion and transformation, he comported himself quickly. “I don’t get it… but you got it,” he said, and fled quickly.
Watching the boy retreat, Grunnoch glowed, returning to its essential form, and retreated quickly to its own sphere, through the vanishing portal, to wait.
*****
When Marvin had grasped the odd-looking camera from the strange man, he had sensed a strange energy coursing through him. It had a warm, healing, empowering feeling to it. All of a sudden, it no longer hurt where the Greyhawks had pummeled him repeatedly. He no longer felt anything, actually, other than strength and a kind of powerful giddiness he’d never experienced before.
Looking down at the controls on the new silver camera, he saw they were laid out logically; they required no manual, no explanation or labeling.
Marvin knew their meaning intuitively; and he thrilled inwardly at the challenge awaiting him.
“I don’t get it, but you got it,” he’d said, running off in the direction of the playground.
When he reached the playground, Marvin positioned himself behind a fence, which opened onto the basketball court, and spied through a small knothole. The Greyhawks were in full assembly there, playing three against three, Lenny and his evil lieutenant Vince shouting instructions to the others as they squared off against one another.
Marvin placed the lens of the camera against the opening in the fence, and, peering into the camera’s eyehole, made sure all six Greyhawks were in proper focus.
Then he depressed the shutter, and held it down.
Where he’d been expecting a mere flash and a click, though, Marvin felt more of a shuddering roar and a boom as the camera’s strange flashbulb erupted. The camera dropped from his hands, landing on his right foot. The sensation he’d felt as the picture was shot resembled what he’d felt last summer while visiting Grandpa on the airplane. Just as it was about to land, in a rough and turbulent rainstorm, lightning had struck one of the wings, or very close to it. Marvin had never been more certain he was going to die than at the moment that incredibly loud, jarring combination of sounds and sensations had rattled through his small frame. Even his parents had looked shaken, as had everyone else on board that miserable flight.
Returning from that awful memory, Marvin picked up the camera and peered back through the knothole in the fence.
To his surprise, the basketball court was empty. The basketball had fallen from its mid-air trajectory, and Marvin watched as it bounced to a halt, then rolled off the court’s edge.
Gone! All six Greyhawks had disappeared into thin air!
Marvin couldn’t believe the scene before him. They had all simply disappeared as he’d snapped their picture! But how could it be? A camera can’t affect its subject. Marvin knew enough about photography to be sure of that, except with the light of the flashbulb. And yet, the facts remained: the gang had been there when he depressed the shutter, and gone once the picture was taken!
The loud noise had caused a crowd to form, made up of nervous, shouting adults and confused children. Marvin returned from his reverie, and realized he needed to be elsewhere.
Making sure not to be seen, he ran in the direction of West Maple, where his elder cousin Barry lived.
Barry was in his backyard, frying ants with a magnifying glass. That was his favorite hobby, whenever Marvin wasn’t there for him to pick on instead.
“Marvin,” yelled Barry when he spotted him running across the yard toward him. “What are you doing here, twerp? Can’t you see I’m busy doing a science project?” That last was a dig; Barry always loved to deride Marvin’s bent for science.
“Barry, I need a picture of you, right now.”
“What?” Barry stood up, smiled cruelly, and began cracking his knuckles. “And then you’re gonna sell me that camera for ten cents, aren’t you, Marvin…?”
Marvin had stopped short of Barry’s arm’s reach, aiming the camera at him.
Barry was too quick, though; he reached out to snatch the camera. His hand got no closer than six inches, though, before he retracted it with a yell, and began waving it gingerly back and forth.
“Ow! What is that, some kind of electrified screen around that thing?”
“Smile,” replied Marvin, looking through the eyehole at his cousin, as he depressed the camera’s shutter.
Once again, the loud, booming noise erupted and shot through Marvin, causing him to lose his hold on the camera. Barry was no longer anywhere to be seen.
“Barry?” Marvin called, loud enough to be heard from the yard’s few hiding places. “Are you there?”
The echoing stillness contained only the sound of birdsong and a passing truck engine nearby.
Marvin’s Aunt Louise’s voice rang out, “Barry! What was that noise? Are you playing with explosives again?”
Marvin raced from the yard, hoping he’d remained unobserved, and set off to find Archie Peregoff.
*****
Two hours later, Marvin found himself lost in another reverie while pouring out the developing solution in his basement darkroom. His parents were upstairs watching television, as usual.
Nine of them, gone! Permanently, he hoped. Nine of his worst nightmares, vanished with the press of a button. The entire Greyhawk gang, his cousin Barry, Archie Peregoff (who had been making a habit of stealing his lunch money of late), and the old, menacing shopkeeper at the corner store. He had caught Marvin stealing a lousy pack of baseball cards the previous weekend, grabbing his hand painfully. Said he’d be reporting him to his parents the next time they were in the store. But his parents hadn’t mentioned the incident yet, so he guessed they hadn’t gone there since then. And now, of course, no one would be saying anything to them or anyone else about it, ever.
As Marvin lay the film in the developing tray, he counted four exposed frames. There were twelve unused frames. Ordinarily, Marvin liked to wait until all the pictures on a roll had been shot before developing them, but in this case, his curiosity had gotten the better of him. Plus, the camera itself gave no indication of how many shots were left to take, so he couldn’t predict when he’d run out. He vowed to count carefully to sixteen before returning to the darkroom.
Then, suddenly, an unnerving thought struck him. He had no way of obtaining more film beyond what was currently developing!
Unless the stranger who’d given him the camera reappeared at some point to replenish his camera, his little payback crusade was finished! He let out a small sob. Then he remembered the small pouch hanging off the camera’s strap. Opening it quickly, he found another roll of film, exactly the same as the first. With a manic glee, he opened the camera, placed the new film inside, and re-closed it with a snap.
“Armed and dangerous once again,” smiled Marvin.
Now his attention returned to the photographs developing in the dim purple light of his darkroom. There was still no trace of whatever the camera had picked up on any of the four shots. Marvin’s scientific mind began to take over, wondering whether the camera had worked at all, and what could take these pictures so long to develop.
Then, finally, the very first picture he had taken, the one shot through the playground fence outside the basketball court, began to materialize.
Only Marvin couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing.
Pictures typically take a few minutes to develop; from the start of the process to the end, the subject of the photo gains outline and clarity over that entire time. The image in the photograph stays constant, other than in its resolution.
This camera’s pictures, on the other hand, were playing out like a slow-motion movie sequence as they developed. The six Greyhawks were there, underexposed, with the basketball in flight from one pair of oversized hands, arcing ever so slowly, second by second, toward the basket. It was as if several thousand exposures had been taken in the split second the shutter was depressed, and the process of developing them was replaying that split second.
The photos continued to develop.
As the ball reached the top of its trajectory, another form suddenly appeared in the sequence, seemingly out of nowhere. It descended from the top of the frame, and resembled a huge, hideous spider, bigger than the basketball court, only instead of legs, this thing had what looked more like gnarled tentacles with suction cups that reached down and covered the heads of all six boys simultaneously. It reminded Marvin of the program he’d seen on TV of a giant squid devouring its prey. It had appeared from nothingness, through a crease in the sky.
Marvin recalled the incredible roaring boom that accompanied each of the four shots he’d taken, and suddenly knew its cause.
All four pictures began developing, and Marvin saw the same horrifying creature in all four, a slow-motion descent from the crack in the sky, the sickening, extending tentacles ensnaring the subjects within a frame or two. The ensnared victims were then pulled up into a giant maw of a mouth that had appeared on the creature’s underside. The helpless victims disappeared into it quickly, bodies writhing.
Then the beast began disappearing into the same fissure that had produced it, though now engorged with its human prey, leaving only the empty background of each scene. As he stared down in shock, all four pictures flashed to white. Overexposed – that should not have been possible!
Marvin was paralyzed with revulsion. What had he done? By taking pictures of his mortal enemies, he had consigned them to an ungodly and horrifying death. He couldn't believe it. How could such a thing exist anywhere in the Universe?
As the minutes passed by, Marvin began to shake uncontrollably. His mind was racing. How could he ever atone for what the monstrous being had done?
“Marvin, dear?” His mother’s voice called from outside the darkroom door. “Aunt Louise is on the phone. Something very strange is going on…”
Marvin turned towards the door, and contemplated facing his parents. Impossible. The horror of what he had seen in the darkroom tray burned his memory like fire.
He tried to say something, but he could form no words. No thoughts, other than the terror of existing in a world where such an awful thing could enter. Beckoned, as it were, by Marvin.
Soundlessly, then, Marvin chose. He picked up the camera, turned it toward himself, closed his eyes, and depressed the shutter.
