The Smiling Man

Long before the instant gratification of digital photography, I used disposable cameras. Then, I would wait a week for the corner drugstore to develop the film so I could show it to my mom. I was nine years old, and my mom would buy those plastic Fuji cameras that came wrapped in a bright green cover. Those same cameras still hang on store shelves today.

I know it was that specific brand because one day, my curiosity led me to remove the cover and open the camera. I wanted to see the internal parts. I was shocked to find out what was inside - literally shocked. I touched the circuit board, which caused a bolt of electricity to run through my flimsy 9-year-old body. What must have been two seconds felt like two minutes as the electrical current caused my little muscles to contract, leaving me stuck to the camera. You know how Peter Parker got bitten by a spider and became Spider-Man? I was shocked by the camera, and nothing happened. But Fuji-Film, even its disposable cameras that almost killed me, will always have a special place in my heart. That's how I developed my love of photography.

I'm a wedding photographer now. I've done this work for so long that many of the couples that hired me have already filed for divorce. In fact, by my math, 24% of the couples whose weddings I captured have split bitterly. That statistic, of course, isn't disclosed on my website. 

I am still determining how I got into this line of work. One day, my cheap cousin, Hector, gave me a call. "Hey, Sammy! He said, with that sense of guilt that comes from people who only reach out when they need something. "Listen, I need a huge favor from you, Sam. Saw your bird pictures on Facebook. You've got a real gift, man, some real talent there. What kind of camera you got?"

I tried to sound enthused about his call and his fake compliments. "It's a Nikon, I said, "just a basic, beginner DSLR. I only have the kit lens for it, though." I included that last part in hopes it would deter him from asking me what I expected he would ask me next.

"Listen," he said, "I'm getting married next month. You're obviously invited; you should bring your camera."

After that, I began to get invited to many events, invites that ended with "You should bring your camera." Eventually, I began to reply with, "You should bring a check." I've since upgraded from that small Nikon body. I have ventured into Sony's mirrorless lineup for professional photography. And, of course, for my personal pleasure, I use Fuji-Film.

I don't have a particular passion for wedding photography. The truth is, I don't know why I do this. I imagine it's for the same reason an underwater welder goes down to the deep, dark ocean depths to weld pipes. It pays a lot.

"You're an idiot, Sam," I whispered to myself as I saw my workload. I was frustrated with the overwhelming number of files I had to sort through. I've got a bad habit of shooting in burst mode, to capture the perfect moment. The good thing is, I do; my camera shoots ten frames per second when it's in burst mode. This means that if you sneeze and I photograph you, I will have a picture of every muscle contraction in your face. The bad thing about burst mode is that it produces thousands of unnecessary pictures. But sometimes, the perfect moment lies within a split second. "This is gonna take all night," I whispered, reaching for the small speakers under the desktop. The computer screen illuminated my face in a dark living room. I realized it was too quiet so I turned up the volume to classical music and got into a new level of focus. The room was dark, and my desk was clean, and that helped ease my tension. "Let's do this," I said. 

After some time, while sorting through the files shot in burst mode, I came across a strange photo. At first glance, it didn't seem unusual. It was a warm picture of the bride talking to her 87-year-old grandfather. In the photo, the two shared a special moment among a sea of guests in the background. It was one of those pictures that she will look back in 50 years and ask herself, "I wonder what he was saying to me." Or perhaps she will carry his words with her long after he's gone. Or maybe he was complaining that the DJ plays too much of that loud hip-hop music. Who knows. What was strange about this photo was the man standing a few feet behind the bride. It was a candid shot, so nobody was posing or facing me. Nobody except for this little man wearing a velvet burgundy suit. He paired his costume-like attire with a black top hat with a red ribbon around the crown. "What a strange-looking man," I said under my breath. I laughed a little as I zoomed in to get a better look at him. My little laugh ceased immediately. He was looking straight at my camera with a hideous smile, a grotesque mimicry of joy stretching unnaturally wide across his pale face. His eyes locked on me as if he knew me.

I don't remember seein' this guy, I thought to myself, and he'd be hard to miss in that crowd. I thought that perhaps that split-second shot caught him in an unflattering light so I clicked on the following picture to get a different look. But he was gone. I paused and stared blankly at the floor. Then I went back to the series of photos where the bride was talking to her grandfather, and in that whole series, he was in only one frame. I lowered my head slightly and gazed up at the ceiling. The dark room suddenly became colder, and a chill went through my right arm.

I'm not very good at math, maybe that's why I'm a photographer, but ten photos were taken of the bride and her grandfather sharing a moment. All within a single second. "That's one frame every tenth of a second," I thought. The smiling man only appears in the fourth photo. He needed 0.3 seconds to jump into the fourth frame and get out, to be in only one picture. "Nobody is that fast!" I thought. I went back to the picture where he appeared. The room become darker and colder when I looked back at the photo where the smiling man stood. His eyes gleamed sinisterly as if a demonic spirit lurked behind them. It was as if he were alive in the photo, behind the computer screen that illuminated my face in that dark room. 

Suddenly, another source of light appeared in the room. I jolted in fear from my chair, feeling an abrupt feeling of panic spread through my chest. It was my phone ringing. A loud, generic iPhone ringtone and the contact photo of Lauren, my friend, appeared on the screen. I looked at the clock and then looked back at the screen. I picked up the call.

"Sammy, I'm so sorry to be calling you at this hour. Were you sleeping?" Her words were slightly slurred, and I could hear music and people in the background. The last time I saw Lauren was at her sister's wedding the weekend before, and she definitely drank then, too. "Sammy, I know it's almost midnight. I'm so, so sorry," she said, in her usual way of over-apologizing.

The truth is, I was glad that she called at that hour. Even if the phone ringing startled me, I needed to get out of my head at that moment. "It's okay, I'm editing late. What's up?" I said. "What's up?" "Please say you're coming over to complain about a man. Please, please, please, please," I thought to myself. I didn't want to be alone for the first time in a long while.

"Sammy, you remember my aunt Stacy, right? You met her at the wedding last week."

"I remember her fondly," I said in a sarcastic tone that went right over her head. 

"She's with me here. She wants to talk to you about something important," said Lauren. Chatter and music went on in the background.

"Hello, hun," said the other voice on the line. She had a slight southern accent. "I'm so sorry to be botherin' you this late, but I need your help. What a week it's been. I've been in shambles since the other night after my niece's weddin."

"Oh dear," I said. "How can I help?" 

There was a dire concern in her voice. There was a dire concern in me as I held the phone to my ear and stared back at the smiling man in the picture across from me. "It's my earring, Sammy," she said. "I must have lost it somewhere at the reception last week. It's nothing fancy, but those earrings have been in my family for three generations." Confused, I kept letting her talk to learn exactly how she thought I was supposed to help. "We're here at the ranch, where the reception was," she said, "as you know, Lauren's uncle owns this property, and we're having a little family shindig. I tried looking for it all over this darn place, but it's just too big." She paused. "How do I say this," She said. "I know it's extra work, and I'll certainly pay you for it, dear, but can you go through all the reception pictures? Lauren had this brilliant idea. Maybe you could pinpoint where I dropped the earring; You took pictures all night. And since I was asking you to take pictures of me with family all night, maybe we can narrow down the spot where I should search."

I was instantly reminded of how this woman kept nagging me for photos the whole night at that wedding, "Sammy, get a picture of me with my sweet nieces. Sammy, get one of me and the cake. Sammy, get a picture of me and the cousins from Iowa." But the most annoying thing was how she pronounced the word "picture." She said "pitcher," like a baseball player, and I heard that word a lot that night.

"So, you want me to scroll through all the reception photos?" I asked. "I should look for photos of you with a pair of earrings until I find a picture where you're only wearing one, right?"

"Yes, Sammy, please, I know you can do it, sweetheart."

"That's actually kind of genius," I said. "Sounds like a plan, Stacy."

"Oh, hun, one more thing," she said. "Do you think you can do that tonight?"

I gave the photo of the smiling man one last look and then closed the folder. My shoulders became less tense, and an instant feeling of relief came over me. "Okay, Stacy. let's find your earring." I whispered to myself. The first picture with Stacy came on the screen. She was posing with a warm smile next to the bride's father, she wore a bright blue dress. I could see in the picture that she was wearing both earrings. I zoomed in to get a better look at them. "Oh, Stacy, you little liar," I said with amusement as I reached my head closer to the computer screen. "It's really nothing fancy," I mockingly said to myself. The earrings in question were a pair of gold-plated Hermés Olympe earrings in madame calfskin. My camera, a Sony a7R iV, has a 61.2 megapixel full-frame sensor, which means I can zoom in on your mitochondria from a computer and see every detail. Those earrings were indeed fancy.

I took a sip of Diet Coke, and after 20 minutes of scrolling, I finally got to the photo the the missing earring. In the picture, Stacy was standing next to a water fountain. She and two other ladies, I'm assuming extended family, were smiling for the picture. Stacy was leaning against the marble fountain while the other two women stood, holding a glass of wine. I could see the resemblance in their facial features. They all had a similar smile. 

"Okay, let's retrace our steps," I thought to myself. But before I could click back to the previous picture, a cold chill went through my arm. I froze in fear. It was the smiling man looking directly at my camera. He stood behind the water fountain. The skin around his lips was stretched, tearing at the edges, as if the smile was carved into his flesh forcibly like a permanent mask of terror. My head began to spin.

"Am I having a stroke?" I thought to myself. There was no way to rationalize this. It was a completely different wedding, a different time, a different venue. "Is...is it my camera?" I thought. "I am losing my mind." I looked at the clock, and it was almost 3 a.m. "I'm sleep-deprived," I thought. "That's it."

The room was silent, a silence I had never experienced. It was as if time stood still, and all that was alive was me—me and this smiling man.

"Hello, Samuel," a voice crackled through the speaker. It was a haunting blend of whisper and growl. "My, how you've grown," he said. "You were just a little boy the last time I saw you." The words lingered in the air, and a cold and malevolent energy made the room grow colder, and the shadows stretched longer, suffocating me in a cloak of fear and confusion.

I didn't need to ask who was speaking. The smiling man in the picture's mouth was not moving, but his eyes were locked into mine. I could feel his presence as if here were in the room with me.

"Are...are you in my computer?" my voice cracked as I mustered the courage to ask.

"Won't you join me, Sam?"

"This is impossible," I said. "You're not real. This isn't happening."

"Oh, but my dearest Samuel, a picture is just a moment frozen in time." His voice went from a low pitch to a high pitch after every syllable. "Do you believe in magic, Samuel? Photos are magic. And you are a magician, aren't you?

I was suddenly overcome with a breath of courage. "Photos are magical," I said. But magic is an illusion; it's not real. These pictures are not moments captured in time. All they are is light—light trapped in a camera sensor, with every shadow, every color, every shape. That's what a photograph is—an illusion of the past." A rush of cold came over my shoulders. “We the light,” I said.

"Yes, yes," the voice smeared through the speaker. The smiling man in the photo stood motionless. "And we'll see how useful you are without your fucking light!"

The computer shut off, and the room went dark. It was a heavy darkness that prohibited me from seeing my own body. I got up from my chair to find the light switch. But I could not feel any physical object. The only sensation I had was the feeling of the cold floor beneath my feet. I walked cautiously towards the wall, but I could not reach it. It was as if I was now in a new dark, empty place. I walked for several minutes in darkness without reaching anything to touch. I was in utter nothingness.

"Sammy, Sammy!" a voice came from above. I looked up, and it was as if the darkness opened up, revealing a clear blue sky with a single plane flying above, leaving a trail in its path. My mother's worried face appeared above. Her face looked a lot younger. Her long dark hair fell from her shoulder as she reached down for me. I was in my swimming shorts, lying next to the pool. Suddenly, I felt the sensation of grass beneath me. I was on the ground, lying in the shadow of a sycamore tree. I raised my head and saw my dad running towards me; he looked younger, too. I studied my surroundings and my body, and I noticed that I was a child, I was...9 years old. Next to me was a disposable camera that had been forcibly opened, and a metal fork laid next to it. The camera's open circuit board reflected light into my eyes.

"Honey, you're going to be okay," my mother said.