This was supposed to be my day off. But my camera called to me.
It happened on a Wednesday. I remember that clearly because Wednesdays were editing days—quiet, predictable, clean. My desk faced the window, and I always sat down with a mug of instant coffee by 9 a.m. sharp, the scent of stale milk powder already clinging to the rim.
That day, I wasn’t supposed to shoot anything. I’d blocked it out. The weekend had been a grind: a wedding with poor lighting and even worse people. The kind who treat a photographer like a hired hand at a barbecue—someone to boss around while sloshing champagne and adjusting a tit for the camera. I hated those jobs, but they paid for the gear and the bills.
This was supposed to be my day off.
But the camera called to me.
It was ridiculous, I know. Cameras don’t call. But mine did. Not literally. It was sitting in the black foam cavity of its case, inert. And yet something about its presence… pulsed. I was halfway through cropping a close-up of a bride’s rhinestone hairpiece when I found myself standing over the case, lifting it out, clicking the lens into place, powering it on. My fingers moved without consent. That should’ve been the first sign.
I told myself I’d only shoot textures—peeling wallpaper, rust, anything to recalibrate the artistic part of my brain. The part that used to see. That’s what the old darkroom had been good for, back when I shot on film. That red light, the chemical smells—fixer, developer, acetic acid—it was my first confessional. The silence was absolute. Inside that room, I met my true self more than once, but I never dared speak to him.
I thought digital had taken that magic away. That was until that Wednesday.
I started in the kitchen. The grime around the faucet, the pattern left by evaporated water on the kettle’s chrome shell—mundane, safe. But then I turned the lens toward the hallway. Something about the shadows down there felt… ripe. My feet took me closer. The hallway narrowed like a throat. I photographed it wide open, ISO high, just to catch the noise. That was when it clicked—literally and metaphorically.
There was something inside the noise.
Something looking back.
I zoomed in on the LCD screen. A smudge? A pattern in the grain? But no. It had shape. Symmetry. The outline of a face—blurry, but there. A female face. Eyes open, mouth slack. Like a corpse remembering how to scream.
It vanished when I looked down the hall with my own eyes. But it was there in the photo. And that’s when I knew—I wasn’t the one in control anymore.
There’s something you should know about me. I’ve never been one of those photographers who talks about “capturing souls.” That’s self-indulgent rot. We don’t steal souls—we project them. We wrap our darkness in art and call it composition. Rule of thirds, golden hour, leading lines… all tools to trap chaos inside a rectangle.
But that hallway shot? That wasn’t chaos I was taming. It was me being tamed.
I started seeing things after that. Not in the real world, but in the shots. Faces. Silhouettes. Sometimes just eyes, floating in pools of motion blur. I stopped uploading images to clients. I couldn’t bear to look through the proofs in Lightroom anymore. I kept editing wedding albums that no one ordered, over and over again. Just clicking, adjusting, zooming. Every time, there she was. In the bouquet. In the reflection of the limo’s glass. Watching.
Samantha.
Yes. That Samantha.
My wife.
The marriage had been dead long before the camera ever turned on me. We were sexless. Emotionless. Occupants of a shared tomb. She stopped touching me sometime after the third anniversary. No explanation. No drama. Just silence. The kind of silence that thickens around your throat while you’re eating cereal and wondering if that’s the day you’ll finally scream.
But I never did. I buried it.
I buried it in the darkroom once. Now I buried it in Lightroom.
I started seeing her in places she never was. A bride would tilt her head, and I’d flinch. Same slope of the nose. Same bite of the lip. One even wore Samantha’s perfume—though she swore she didn’t. I could’ve strangled her for lying. But I didn’t. I went home. Locked myself in the study. And stared at the image in the hallway shot again.
It was Samantha. But not. Like someone had taken her face and softened it with sorrow. Her eyes held secrets mine never earned. I felt a throb in my temple and dropped the camera. When I picked it up again, the photo had changed.
Now she was smiling.
Mitchell, what are you doing?
That was her voice. Not from the photo. From behind me. But I was alone.
That’s when I started locking the camera away. It didn’t help. I heard the shutter click on its own. Once, while I was sleeping. Once, while I was showering. I checked the SD card. There were photos. Grainy. Tilted. But mine. My body. My face.
Who was holding the camera?
One night, I tried to destroy it. Hammered it. But it didn’t break. The plastic cracked. The screen bled colour. But when I powered it on, it worked. The face in the hallway shot turned toward me that night.
That’s when I understood. The camera wasn’t cursed. I was.
SEETHINGS. That’s what I started calling them. The fragments. The shadows. The things only the lens could find.
The name came naturally, like it had always existed inside me.
I started documenting them, thinking that if I could map their behaviour, I could stop them. I even created a folder—“SEETHINGS”—hidden deep inside my external drive, buried under wedding edits. But the images moved. I’d find them outside their folder, embedded into family shots, travel reels. One even attached itself to a RAW file I sent a client.
She returned it with a note: “There’s something in the reflection. Is this a joke?”
I didn’t reply. I deleted her contact. But the image remained. I couldn’t delete it.
I printed it instead.
There’s something beautiful about ink on paper. It’s final. Permanent. I mounted her face on foam core, framed it, hung it in my studio. Called it “Obscura No. 7.” People thought it was art. It sold within a week.
Then came Obscura No. 8. No. 9. Each more detailed. Each smile wider. Each presence stronger.
I stopped shooting people. But they kept appearing. I aimed at walls, puddles, ceiling corners—and still, she came. Sometimes it was Samantha. Sometimes it wasn’t. But they all smiled the same way.
Knowingly. Intimately. Like lovers sharing a joke at your expense.
One morning, I woke to find the camera pointed at me. Balanced on the tripod. Powered on. Lens cap off.
I hadn’t touched it.
I checked the card. Fifty shots. All of me. Asleep.
In the final frame, my eyes were open.
But I had no memory of it.
That’s when I accepted it. I was no longer the photographer.
I was the subject.
I started writing again. Notes. Observations. Trying to reclaim logic. But words fell apart. They’d twist on the page, rearrange themselves. “Focus” became “Foresake.” “Lens” became “Lies.” One night, I wrote: I never touched her, but she haunts me still.
I don’t know if I meant Samantha, the ghost in the frame, or something worse.
The guilt, maybe.
The fantasy.
Or both.
I’ve tried to make peace with it. There’s something seductive about surrender. I’ve learned to shoot without purpose now. I just aim and let her find me. The faces no longer scare me. They comfort me. They understand what Samantha never could.
Desire unspoken becomes disease. But captured? It becomes art.
I don’t shoot weddings anymore. But the bookings haven’t stopped. Somehow, word spread. People come for “Obscura Sessions.” I never advertise them. But they find me. Couples. Singles. Widows. Cheaters.
I take their portraits. And when I show them what’s in the background—the hallway, the mirror, the space just behind their ear—they gasp.
They say, I never noticed that before.
I nod. I say nothing.
But inside, I whisper: Now you do.
And the camera, my camera—it smiles.
[Author’s Note:]
This reflection was pulled from the mind of Mitchell Felding, the central character in SEETHINGS, a novel that explores the razor-thin boundary between control and collapse, intimacy and obsession. He is a photographer, a husband, and perhaps something more—or something less. The camera may be the only one that truly sees him.
Discover more from Michael Forman – Author of Dark Fiction & Drama
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