Reflective

When I moved into the wreck called a charming cabin which only needed a few renovations by the realtor I was met by the stale air and the intensive odour of the ageing furniture and flaking wallpaper. The realtor who had shown me the cabin had made few efforts to bear a positive perspective of the decaying wood and the moss which grew over the croft, since he considered me a hermit and a loner who only wanted an escape from the suffocating air of community with no regard for quality of living. He considered me a deal already made and gave me a tour of only ten minutes before he fled in his jangly Peugeot. Within a week I had moved all of my selective belongings and carefully made myself a home underneath the roof which could fall to crumbs and rain down in a thousand pieces while I slept. When I lie comfortably in my bed in the cold cabin with only a thin blanket over my shaking body it’s almost possible for me to see chips and dust slowly fall down from the roof, a warning for the foreboding crash. The roof has held up yet, in all my time here. When the summer began to show signs of its presence a safety fell upon the woods surrounding my cabin and eventually I managed to let go of the constant anxiety regarding the roof. The list of things which needed examining and renovating was never shortened, but my residence improved despite the daily discoveries of defective living conditions, nooks, or holes which could be signs of rats, eventually I enjoyed myself. 

It is as mentioned a relatively small cabin, one floor and a cramped attic. I explored the attic only when I had cleared out all sorts of spiderwebs and dirt from the hatch which led up, which in all honesty occurred a lot sooner than what I would have wanted. All kinds of dirt laid to rest upon my head and shoulders when I managed to push the hatch open and even more fell down on the already dirty floor when I put the ladder, dark brown after years, against the edge of the square opening to this unknown floor. I had to make my way through a lot more spider webs, an adventurer in the Amazonas. There was little of interest there and overall I considered my efforts to get myself up were not worth it in the end. To my surprise I found a small box which contained two analogue Canons and two rolls of film. My mother had been a very talented photographer, but the talent of art never stuck with me. 

The next day I brought the box with cameras and rolls of film to a photography store two miles away from my solitary cabin. My plan was to have the film developed and buy new film and go out in the blooming nature to honour my mother’s memory by finding the beauty in my surroundings and immortalise it. She had taken countless pictures of me in parks and playgrounds and made photo albums of the pictures. She had decorated walls with these pictures and put hundreds of albums in the bookshelves. Where all these photos of me and who knows what now exist is beyond me, to me they were destroyed the same moment my mother passed away. 

In the boutique a bearded man assisted me with my gadgets, his arms were dressed with tattoos and his glasses shimmered in the stark light streaming in. He explained that the cameras needed 135 film, whatever that meant, and that one of them needed a new battery. He put a battery and a box of three rolls of film on the counter and received my film and told me to return in a week. After paying and when I was on the edge of my heel he hastily asked me where I lived, the community was small and he didn’t recognise me. I told him about the croft north of there. He nodded and smiled politely and said farewell. 

The cashier had been kind enough to show me how to put the film in the camera and I dutifully followed his instructions and managed to get the device working. On the next day I started by photographing buds on trees and snowdrops and birds and even a docile squirrel. On one walk I used an entire roll, I decided I would use up all the rolls before I went back to get the developed film to save myself a repetitive trip. Unfortunately I became frugal about using them all too quickly and I never managed to fill the rolls with photos. My photos remained incomplete. 

When two weeks passed I faithfully returned to the boutique and received the envelope with my pictures. I put the envelope in the passenger seat of my Volvo and wondered what sort of pictures there could be the entire way home. When were these photos taken? Was it the previous owner of the cabin, an old woman who passed three years ago, or was it the cabin owner before her? Was the box a gift, or inheritance? I don’t have an eye for art at all, neither the quality nor motive of the photos would unlikely have a remarkable impact on me. If anything had this short lived adventure given me an exciting pursuit in my otherwise trivial life. 

At home I sat down at my desk, a chestnut coloured table with a view of the blossoming forest with lively mosquitos and animals sneaking around. I opened the envelope carefully and I put the photos in a pile in front of me. The photo at the top of the pile showed a man’s back, he wore a white dress shirt with what looked like flora embroidered at the sleeves, curiously similar to the shirt I got four years ago from a girlfriend I had, Maria. She had given it to me and said that the red flowers would remind me of the summer we spent in Dalarna, in a cabin surrounded by poppies. The photo had dim lighting and seemed black and white to me, despite that the man at the boutique had told me the roll was in colour. I sat and examined the blurry photo, when I had decided that it was uninteresting I put it aside. 

The next photograph was a picture of the house, this photo clearly showed the colours of the tiny captured world. The withering red paint of the house almost seemed to chip away in the wind as I examined the photo. In the corner on the left was the front of a dark blue car visible, with this detail noticed I felt cold shoot through my back. I was at that point not entirely sure of it, but the car looked identical to mine, from the small part of it I could see. I tried to speak to myself, calm myself down with the argument that cars are often very similar to the same brand, I hadn’t seen enough of the vehicle to determine if the car actually was the one I had bought second hand two years ago. 

I set the photo aside and picked up the third, but I immediately put it down when I saw the picture underneath, the fourth photo. The third photo showed me the view from my office where I then sat and didn’t acutely cause me stress. The fourth mirrored the grimace I wore when I with trembling hands held it up. I stared at my own face, not like a mirror, but in the perspective of another person’s eyes. When I blinked the copy repeated my movement. Horrified, I felt the photo slip away and it floated crookedly down upon the table.

I sharply grabbed the photo of the cabin and the car and rushed with stumbling steps out on the yard where my car was parked. As I feared I was visible on the photo on the stairs, messy hair and wild eyes. I kicked the foundation of the house and immediately rushed back into my office, as if I had angered a creature of horror by hopelessly kicking the house.

The last photos in the pile I only looked at very hastily, each one showed different perspectives, each one watched me. I threw them on the ground and sprung to my bedroom to calm myself down. This was a joke, created by my horrid brain to create drama in this isolated world in which I live. I cried and pulled my hair, with pauses here and then when I ran to, yet again, assure myself of what I had seen to be true, which led to another burst of crying and pulling. 

Eventually I calmed down to a somewhat functioning state. I gathered the damned photos and walked out into the dark forest. The sun abandoned me during one of my attacks. I didn’t worry for wolves or foxes, nothing could disturb the solid ambition I had etched within. When I reached a clearing I had discovered on one of my walks in the area I tossed the photos to the ground and burned them, at least I tried to. Even when I put the flame under the edge of the photo which mirrored my face twisted with anger the fire only seemed to dance around the picture, as if it was too slippery or lifeless for the fire to get a grip of it. 

Exhausted and hopeless by my failed attempt at freedom from this unbearable stalking I found only one solution. I laid myself down on the dry needles, engulfed by the earth, carefully lit my sleeve on fire and let the cool force overwhelm and swallow me.