Daily Flash Fiction Entries

Crime Scene

Written for the: "Daily Flash Fiction Challenge" 
Prompt: Write a story in which someone takes a picture.
_____________________

I’m not supposed to be on duty tonight, I try to tell my impatient boss. I’m only an intern, no experience with this kind of thing. Yet.

“You wanted to work in the police department, right?” he growls at me.

“Ye…yes, sir…?”

“Then shut up and start doing your goddamn job, son!”

The camera is thrust in my hands and I am pushed into a throng of chaos, noise and anarchy. The whirring lights from the officers cars, cast eerie red shadows along the wall. Their figures dart in and out of the building, voices mingled with police jargon which drifts in and out of my ear. My heart beat is a thunderous sound, drowning out the noises as I step past the yellow tape. The camera is my passport. A simple nod of understanding from the officers on duty and I am ushered into the remnants of hell.

I step over broken glass, the camera poised like a shield in my trembling hands. I try to gather moisture in my mouth, feeling the cold prickle of fear creep up my spine at the scene before me. I hold the camera to my face and focus the lens, and in a single flash, a story unfolds.

He comes home drunk and kicks the door open. She’s in bed with another man, frantic desperate cries for him to stop as he picks up the baseball bat. He smashes the head of the bastard with his woman, his blood a grotesque display against the wall. She’s dragged to the living room and made to plead for mercy, before he lashes out his anger on her as well.

I lower the camera with a sigh. My job is done, and tomorrow she’ll just be another statistic in our morbid album of memories.


Word Count: 300