Smile for the Camera

Orville was staring into the crashing waves, trying desperately to remember his dreams from last night. It was no use. Like every night, he felt it passed all too quickly in a fevered blur and in his waking moments felt no more rested than he had when his head hit the pillow the night before. The monotonous sound of water on rocks quieted his thoughts and allowed him to focus on his dreams.

“Excuse me?”, a man’s voice injected in his mind sharply. “Excuse me, sir?”

Turning his head, Orville saw a young man with his wife standing next to him on the pier. Orville cleared his throat and replied, “Yes?”

“Would you mind taking a photo of us with the ocean in the background?” He held out his phone, and Orville glanced at it, then back up at the man. He shook the phone a couple times and smiled as Orville reluctantly grasped the metal rectangle. “Thanks dude!”

Orville lined up the shot as the two embraced in front of the ocean. He cringed as he snapped the photo, and he knew the man had seen it. He snatched the phone back and asked, “What? Never seen two people in love before, man?”

“Something like that”, Orville muttered. The young couple exchanged a judgmental glance and huffed off, hand in hand. Orville sneered at their backs, and then cringed again as the bright sun peeked around the gentle cloud cover. He was adorned in a vest, jeans, riding boots, and a brown oiled cow-hide duster jacket which he now pulled up around his ears. A pair of Aviators rode high on the bridge of his ample nose, and a ball cap with the Kansas City Royals logo sat atop his head.

Aside from the nosy newlyweds, today was his kind of day. Cloudy skies and slight spats of rain drizzled throughout the morning meant that crowds would be at a bare minimum. And with minimal crowds came minimal smartphones, minimal cameras, minimal pictures. He spat on the planks beneath his feet. And with minimal pictures came minimal questions. Orville couldn’t stand the glances, the sneers he felt burning into his back as people unintentionally took pictures with his lanky frame in the background, only to seem perturbed by what they saw. He was always quick to shuffle away from such glances, knowing he wouldn’t want to risk an open confrontation.

Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t see the young woman standing right in his path until they both crashed to the wooden floor. He gracefully separated his body from hers and helped her to her feet. “I’m terribly sorry miss-”, Orville began, and stopped midsentence. She was staring, unblinking, into his now exposed eyes. He hadn’t realized his Aviators had come dislodged in the tangle.

The young woman was quivering now. Orville gently took her by the shoulders and guided her to a nearby bench. Once she was safely seated, he replaced the sunglasses and walked briskly away from her. His mouth was dry with thirst, and he felt his stomach rumbling. He could hear a couple of passersby calling out to the young woman to see if everything was okay, and he knew she’d still have that dazed quality about her for another hour or two.

It was time to get off the pier and head home before anything got truly out of hand. He’d risked enough already. Coming out here in the waking hours, no matter the conditions, always carried some level of risk with it. He’d claimed the parking space right next to the pier with his ’57 Harley XL Sportster. After his leg was thrown over, he kick-started the engine and took off. It was a great ride. Smooth, tough, and loud. Most importantly, loud. People couldn’t miss him, and he’d lost too many people he considered friends to accidents where they hadn’t been noticed.

One of his dreams from the night before came to him then. A slow, stalking presence crept up the hairs on his neck. He was in a narrow street with buildings looming close on either side. A light shone from a nearby alley, and Orville could see the shadow of the predator, no, his prey, just around the corner. The scents of fear filled his nostrils, his senses heightened on the hunt. Scurrying into the alley, he saw a frightened middle-aged woman cowering by a dumpster. The dumpster reeked of sweet carrion, but the blood pounding through the woman’s veins held his full attention. She started to scream, but the sound died in her throat as she locked eyes with him. Her jaw fell slack, as did her hands that had been raised in self-defense. Orville closed the distance and turned her head as if to lay a seductive kiss upon her neck, but instead of soft lips meeting her flesh, cruel fangs pierced. A warm gush of blood ran down both their necks, and his stomach was filled.

He pulled back and glanced with disgust down at the lifeless woman. Pity mingled with his disgust, and he used his elongated nails to create a tear in her neck to mask the marks of his fangs. He threw her body in the dumpster and carried along through the night satiated at long last. At least three other corpses were scattered around the city, and they’d be all written off as mob violence. All the better for him.

Orville snapped out of the trancelike remembrance, just in time to slam his brakes. The truck in front of him barely took notice and pulled forward as the light turned green. He was sweating, positively soaked beneath his duster. These dreams were getting worse, more vivid, more intense. He reached a finger in his mouth and felt his canine teeth. Nothing out of the ordinary there. No fangs just regular human teeth. That didn’t explain the remaining phenomena he’d been experiencing of late, but it meant that dream from last night couldn’t possibly be true.

As his Harley died down in his normal parking spot outside his university dorm, Orville felt he’d finally come back down from the fright he’d seen in that dream. He swung his leg over the bike and started up towards the building. He managed to slip inside without encountering any other pests and snuck past his roommate’s door to his own room. Orville clicked the door shut silently and turned the handle lock. He reached into the darkness of his abode and flicked on a red lamp. The dim light illuminated enough of the room to navigate its cramped quarters. There was a twin bed with dresser drawers underneath it. A small desk sat in one of the corners with a stack of books, and an equally large stack of photographs. The walls too were littered with photographs. Dinner with his friends, captioned “Cheese!”. Afternoon on the quad, captioned “Smile for the Camera!”. Day at the pier, captioned “Look over here!”. Scores and scores of mundane photographs. But while they all appeared mundane, there was something odd in every one of them. There was an Orville shaped gap where Orville should have been. He stood atop his bed and reached for one photo pinned to the ceiling.

There he was. Standing there at his high school graduation with his Mother, Father, and younger brother. This was the last photograph Orville had of himself. Smiling. Happy. Innocent.

Carefully, he replaced it and crossed over to a chemical bath that had a piece of photo paper resting inside. He grabbed it out with a pair of tongs and staring back at him was the face of the woman from the dream. Lifeless, corpse eyes. He winced back, almost imperceptible to the human eye, and grabbed the photo with both hands. He wished his eyes would produce tears, but he knew they wouldn’t. The photo was in shreds in seconds and in the garbage only another second after that. Orville took his place on his bed, knowing his nightmare hadn’t actually been a nightmare, and he’d need his rest if he was going to go hunting again tonight.