For those of you who have followed me for quite a while...
do you remember in the past when I used to post short stories I'd made from inspirational thingies?
Well, on Wattpad (Where I have published two full chapters of my fantasy novel!) I have just written a short story for a short story contest and have decided to share it with all you delightful readers! :D
Here is my Wattpad Page:
http://www.wattpad.com/user/exodus238
Here is the picture inspiration:
And here's the short story:
Snapshots.
Life through a camera lens is different to real life. The
camera lens sees things differently. We can portray our lives through a camera
lens in any way we choose.
Melody discovered the magic of the camera. Every day, she’d
take pictures of herself with someone knew, posing as if they were a friend.
She’d go somewhere and take pictures as if she were on holiday. Her pictures
showed a life she didn’t have. A life she wanted to have.
Melody had died her hair a dark red to show the camera the changes
in her life. Melody now wore a strapless short black dress when only a few
weeks ago she wore an ACDC band t-shirt. She wanted to show the camera how she
had changed. Her life was in the camera, while reality was on a stand-still.
“I regret giving her that camera” Her mother had said to her
father one day. They didn’t know Melody was sitting in the room next door,
taking the camera to pieces and putting it all back together again, over and
over again. “She’s obsessing over it too much. She has it with her all the time!
It’s silly how teenagers feel they have to document every part of their lives
nowadays!” Her mother liked to go on rants about this and that. It made her
feel like she was getting her say in the world, even if her say really didn’t
make any difference. Her husband usually listened to her but not this time. And
that was his mistake. She believed that Melody was just being a normal teenager
and his wife was fretting too much.
Melody’s friends found the camera intriguing at first. They
liked to take pictures with her. That is, until she confused them. She wanted
to take pictures of things that weren’t happening. She wanted to pretend they
were happening. Her friends rapidly turned away from her, with a nagging fear
in their stomachs about her mental health and a warning in the back of their
minds to stay well clear.
And so they did. Melody lost her friends at school but she
didn’t mind. She had her life in her camera. She told herself it was real. How
could you capture something unreal? She could prove she had lots of friends.
She could prove it because she had pictures with them on her camera. Okay,
granted, they weren’t always sitting beside her – in fact, they tended to be
studying in the background or chatting to someone else but you know how it is
with people – they’re always distracted!
Melody’s Mum as informed by a worried teacher that Melody had
no friends at school. She was confused. Melody always talked of her many
friends when they got back from school...how they’d taken fun pictures of their
day! But Melody would never show her pictures. She said, her mum didn’t need to
know every single bit about her life! She was a teenager after all! She needed
her privacy!
When Melody stopped going to school, she became friends with
her therapist who loved to take pictures with her. With less people around,
Melody decided to document the new objects she’d obtained in her life. She’d go
out into town especially, taking pictures of her friends walking in the back
ground, and she would buy something new to document. Her life was always
changing, you see. And she wanted to remember how it was always changing.
Her therapist told her that she should leave her camera alone
for some time. It would be good for her. So Melody lied and said she would. But
how could she? Her camera held her life! For anyone else, it would be like
lying still in bed for their whole lives!
Melody then moved homes. Her new home was completely white
with padded cells. She documented this for a while but soon had nothing to take
pictures off. After she had captured every bit of wall and every bit of body possible,
she started to sink into the darkness.
When she awoke one morning, her camera went missing. She
searched high and low for it in the white room of soft walls but it was not to
be found. It had gone from her life and she needed another way of documented.
She bit into her wrist and wrote on the walls in red.
The next morning, she was strapped down on a black bed, in
the centre of the white room, unable to move. The black bed smelt of leather.
She needed to remember that or at least tell someone! She needed to tell...she
needed to...she needed...she...
She slipped into a state of unconsciousness. She was awake
but she couldn't function.
Melody stayed there for 5 years and slowly forgot. She had
always known that if she hadn't documented, she would forget.
She returned back home refreshed. As if she’d never had a camera
in her life. As if she had never learned the magic of a camera.
Well, what did you think?
M. x
