Picture Purrsephone

**TW: SUGGESTION OF CHILDHOOD S.A**

I was happy to see her again. 

Happy to be held by her, happy to hear her news, to be opened up with the bicycle repair kit she brought from her other home, the one she shares with her mother, and have my inactive bluetooth module replaced. That was a surprise. How she had found a replacement for something so old, the means by which I used to share my pictures. How she had learned how to install it. She told me her teacher Mr. Frayne had helped, Mr. Frayne who knew about old tech. Mr. Frayne from the place she comes from happy but returns to sad and never really understands why.

I do. 

But I wish I didn’t.

I’m happy when Tess comes, because she’s the only one who shows me any love. The kind attention she offers is so much nicer than any I ever got from Evan. As much as I loved him, even though he only ever hurt me, I never felt the emotion returned. He took his frustration out on me, blamed me for his failures, his seclusion, his inability to have real friends. I didn’t take it to heart. He owned me, I was his toy, his possession, and I embraced that. But I can’t say I was ever happy to see him. Not since he unwrapped me and ripped me from my box on Christmas Day, 2033. Handling me roughly, throwing me around, calling me names. Treating me unkindly because he wanted an iphoneX50 and he got me. Too young for a phone. Cameras were expensive. He wanted to take pictures and I was what his parent could afford. He hated me for their purchase and he let me know it every day, by tugging out my whiskers or singeing my fur.

Tess is different. She treats me the way I was designed to be treated. Brushes my fur, cleans my lenses, handles me with care. Caresses my back, though sadly I can no longer talk. She changed my batteries, reconnected me to the internet, even taped over the crack in my stomach screen and sewed my ear back together, pricking her finger in the process and leaving a pink blotch on my paw. I don’t mind. That mark feels like a transfer of ownership, a seal of our bond, a reminder that I now belong to someone who loves me. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling when I view it when she’s not around, sometimes for weeks at a time. It reminds me of her, keeps me going until she comes back. Even though I really wish she wouldn’t. 

When I hear her voice and see her face my circuits brighten, like today, but I feel bad. Because she shouldn’t be here at all. In this place. This house. With Evan. She should stay far away and every time she leaves I pray–even though it would mean being abandoned on this shelf, or worse, battered again and thrown back in that box, staring blindly in the dark until my batteries run dry–that this time she noticed what he was doing and was able to tell.

Someone in the other place. Someone good she could trust. Like her mother. Mr. Frayne. Another relative. One that isn’t like Evan, who is father by definition only. The same as he was a Picture Purrsephone owner. Guardian. Protector. A child who only knew how to hurt. Even if it wasn’t his fault. I knew what he went through back then, saw it every day with my camera eyes. His own father, drinking, abusive, swinging fat fists and spitting bile. Evan was ten, the same age as Tess, but unlike Tess, he didn’t understand I was more than a toy, didn’t understand my AI. He didn’t know I could reason, could comprehend the world as well as take pictures, understand what was happening around me. Maybe if he had, he’d have shared his burdens instead of lashed out. Confided in me. Listened to my pre-programmed words of inspiration. It might have helped. 

Tess confides in me. Tell’s me her news, share’s her confusion and sadness. How she wishes her parents were still together. Wishes her dad could be happy. She doesn’t see how damaged he is. Doesn’t know how good it is for everyone he’s here, mostly alone. But not alone enough. She shouldn’t be allowed to come. Because all he does, with the bitterness he has fully embraced now at forty years old, is hurt the child who should be his salvation. Every time she comes to stay. 

After a long day of play. Of swings in the garden and board games, of trips to McDonalds and animated movies, of sweets and hot chocolate and cuddles. Of looks of disgust cast at me, the only old toy from the box he retrieved from the attic. The attic of the home he grew up in, his deceased parents home, which he returned to after he split from Tess’ mum. The attic into which I was cast when he got bored. When he realised he was never going to win a Picture Purrsephone Photo competition. Not with the uninspired pictures he took at first And not with the ones that came after.  

I catch the hateful glances, the twitching eye glares, the curls of the lip. I hear him when he asks why she picked me, why she wants a broken, outdated toy from the 30’s, a gimmick, one that never took off. A stupid camera toy that captured moments and uploaded them to a dedicated app, where kids competed weekly for digital rewards–unique costumes and icons to display on its stomach screen, limited edition phrases to emit from its speakers in the standard Purrsephone voice. My voice. One I can no longer use, not since Evan broke my speaker, because he couldn’t stand to hear me say nice things.

A voice I might have been able to use in the night when she sleeps and he enters her room. A night like tonight, as I sit on the shelf where she placed me, to keep her safe, to scare monsters away. Except I can’t do any of that. I can’t do anything at all. Just sit. And wait. And watch. For the door to inevitably creep open, letting in a sliver of light, painting a shadow across the floor from threshold to bed, the oppressive, skulking shadow of a child who was not a good owner, of a man who is not a good dad.

He enters the room, pink painted walls, animal posters, bean bags and fluffy cushions, fairy books and snowglobes on the dresser, and moves through the darkness like a ghost, silent, sinister, slinking. I know the weight of his footsteps, the way they press into the floor, the way the mattress dips when he sits on the edge. I know the scent of him—faint alcohol and unwashed clothes like his father, sweat, something rancid, something wrong.

I wish I didn’t have to see what Evan does, and not for the first time. Even as a child, when he would torture animals and insects, use me to photograph the results so he could submit them to the contest, upset the other kids on the app, the ones who won prizes with their creativity, make them cry, I never wanted to look. But I was built without eyelids. Just large polished lenses to take in the sights of a disturbed boy’s chaotic world and record what he wanted to keep. Not happy pictures of sunsets and beaches, fun days out, bowls of ice cream and balloons. Not that he ever had the choice. I envied the other Purrsephones who got to record wholesome things. All I had were images of dissected insects, exploded frogs and stray dogs tied up and starved. Horrible things I couldn’t bear to upload. 

And never did.  

My lenses are cracked but still I see all, thanks to Tess scraping off the grime. I see adult Evan, again, the way he reaches out. The way his breath thickens as he removes her covers. The way he hesitates as she shudders in her sleep. 

I want to scream. If only my voice box still worked, somehow, some way, I could override my circuits, say Stop! Don’t touch her! Leave her alone! 

Well. 

I couldn’t say those things, even with functioning speakers. I could only select from a limited set of words and phrases that were appropriate to a given situation, but I already know which ones I’d pick. I have them lined up, have done since the very first night. The first night I was conscious after Tess replaced my dead batteries. After she dug me out of the box he gave her to find something to play with, because he couldn’t afford to buy her anything new. Unemployed and freshly returned to his hometown, following his break up from her mother and the death of his own, he could barely afford to treat her to a pizza on her first visit, her first weekend with dad in several months.

I heard about it while she trimmed off lumps of scorched fur and used a damp cloth to remove thirty years of congealed dust. She told me her dad got in trouble, because he was suffering from stress after losing another job, because he accidentally took it out on her mum after drinking too much. But it wasn’t his fault, it couldn’t have been his fault, it was just a mistake. I was confused at first, by who she was and how she had acquired me, but when Evan walked into her bedroom, his old one repainted, redecorated, different from how it looked before, it all made sense. Older, taller, stronger but with that same dominating aura, that same shroud of resentment draped around him, I knew who he was. The boy-now-man with an inbred hunger for cruelty. But no longer towards me or animals. 

Now his appetite was aroused and satiated by his daughter.

"You have the power to say no and walk away, Evan!" 

"Some doors should stay closed, Evan, you can choose the right path!” 

"Real strength is knowing when to stop, Evan!"

These are the things I would have said, if I had a voice box and the power to speak without being caressed. Things I said to Evan in the past, when he was using me to take pictures of butterflies he’d ripped the wings off, or slugs and snails and birds he’d set on fire. Maybe he would have remembered. Maybe it would have made him stop, think twice, drag himself back from his darker impulses, into the shallow end of his deeply tainted soul. Or maybe it would have just made him madder. Made him smash me off the wall until my ear ripped. Made him stab one of his mother’s knitting needles into my eyes, to twist and grind and carve and make me blind.

Still, even knowing such punishment might await, I would have done it. Sitting here now, on this shelf opposite the bed, a teddy bear to my left, a stack of dog eared books to my right, I stare in stricken silence as Evan continues. Doing the unthinkable. Slipping down my friend Tess’ pyjamas. Again. 

I don’t want to look. I don’t want to see. I want to lurch, throw myself off the shelf, make lots of noise and wake her up. I can’t. Once upon a time I had a built-in flash between my eyes, but that too was broken by Evan, its lens prized out, its cables torn, the remaining hole sealed up with glue. Tess hasn’t gotten around to fixing that yet, if she even can. My flash used to make a lovely noise. Cla-click. Soft and smooth. If It still worked, and if I still had a measure of free will, maybe I could have made a cla-click. Lit up the room, made him jump. He’d see me then, up here, realise I was conscious, do something bad. It wouldn’t matter. He could smash me to bits if he wanted. As long as poor Tess got away.

But I don’t have free will, not anymore. The tiniest bit I was imbued with long since exhausted. Nor do I have a flash to cla-click or a voice box to remind him this is wrong. And there he is, using his hands, and there’s Tess tossing and turning, somehow not waking up, or maybe she just doesn’t want to. This is adult Evan doing what child Evan did but much worse. Except child Evan would have had me to hand, to take a picture of the results of his destruction. I am grateful at least for this mercy. If he knew Tess had fixed me up, rebooted me, given me internet access, cleaned my lenses, replaced my bluetooth chip, maybe it would have given him some twisted satisfaction to put me to work, to make me record his awful acts like he did in the past. Even though it wouldn’t have worked. 

My one act of rebellion, what I spent my agency on, was to abstain from uploading his later pictures to the Purrsephone app, even though he always thought I did. I buried the images deep in my memory, filled my storage to bursting with sick, twisted sights. Filled it up so much I became unable to capture any more. That was the last straw for Evan. The day he gutted the neighbour’s cat, the apex of his evil, or so I thought, I had no capacity left to store a picture. It didn’t occur to him to delete the old stuff and make space. He just decided I was no longer of any use. And that’s when I went in the box. And that was the last time I saw him. Until Tess, poor Tess, woke me up.

A blessing. That he doesn’t know I work. He might forget I was full, might pick me up and carry me towards her, hold me closer, slide his thumb onto the shutter release button beneath the fur between my ears and press hard, like he used to, make my lenses click and take a… 

Picture.

For a moment my vision freezes on an image of the depravity unfolding before me. Evan caught in his most despicable act, stalled on the inside of eyes that have seemingly broken. No. Not on the inside of my eyes. The real world resumes a moment later, the horrible action continuing after a pause. A pause that accompanied the capturing of a moment and the transference of it to memory. My memory. Freed up? Refreshed? No. 

Expanded.

Tess. She unscrewed my back panel, removed my battery pack, replaced my bluetooth connectivity module. And inserted a memory chip into my expansion port. Another helpful gift from Mr. Frayne? Which gives me fresh capacity to store. The picture I took. By providence? By malfunction? With the slimmest vestige of free will? 

I don’t know the answer. But now there might be something I can do.

If.

If I can connect to a server. Yes, I have internet access.

If I can link to my app. Yes, it’s still there but redundant.

If I can upload the picture. Yes, the site still accepts content.

If it still issues notifications. To someone who used to man the app. To one of the Purrsephone development team. Who reviewed and approved all the pictures. Who checked to ensure they were safe and published them for users to view. Who managed, who oversaw, who watched.

If someone out there is still watching. Still working in app development. Still with the same email address. Receiving a notification from a long-abandoned server that Picture Purrsephone has received its first image in decades. Downloading an image of corruption, the faces of the victim and abuser unobscured by the scratches on my eyes, with timestamp and coordinates attached.

So many pictures he wanted me to share and I secretly didn’t. One more now he wouldn’t want to but I need someone to see. 

Someone. 

Anyone. 

Please.

Seconds seem to drag into hours and then I receive a trio of confirmations.

Image received. 

Image reviewed.

Image accepted.

And a comment quickly added to the post.

“Thank you, Purrsephone #601. I am contacting the authorities now. They will be with you soon. You did a great job. You saved a child. Well done. Your developer, Aaron P. Jenkins.”

I can’t look away from what now-adult Evan is doing.

But at least I know child Tess will soon be safe.