I Took Your Picture

On one of may glaciers, a colony of seals relaxes in the early summer sun—that shines on fields of snow. Samuel walks in the snow, making crushing sounds with each step. In the distance he sees a shelter of some kind with a gleam of light coming from the hole where a window was. Moving again he notices the small cabin that appears dilapidated. He worries there may be wild animals living inside; as he turns the doorknob a creaking sound whips his nerves before a wood beam falls inside the cabin. The harsh metal thud grabs Samuel’s attention. Carefully, he opens the door to find a rickety structure in the room. A web of cords and wires surround the disjointed sections of plastic and metal that the machine is built from. Above the sunlit dust floating in the air is a small letter placed in between two arms of the machine.
Samuel opens the letter to find a picture of himself on a snow hill laying on a red and white checkered blanket. He’s in the bottom right corner looking back at the camera with the foreground of snow sweeping low in front of the empty blue sky. Also in the background, the sound of the ocean spoken in the sentence of the earth, which lies flat. He had been watching the layered surface in frame, as though contemplating what pictures to hang there, and when he turned back to look at the sky he could not visualize himself in a photo of this place, but before that, he smiles at the camera. With no memory of having this picture taken, his head feels like it’s floating above an ever expanding body that his arm travels miles to reach across in seconds. Outside of frame, a seal sits in the snow, slowly blinking it's eyes in the warm sun. Samuel takes a few steps back and reaches for the cabin door, while the picture falls from his other hand. Now outside, he begins to walk with no particular stop.
Coming to a hill that overlooks the shores, he notices a camera at the top of a slope on his side of the hill. On the other side is a more gradual slope that eventually leads to the ocean. Samuel notices himself laying on a blanket in the snow, with no footprints surrounding him. Looking unbothered, he turns his head at Samuel and smiles. Picking up the instant camera, his hand becomes steady. It seems familiar to him as though he had lived through the lens that saw him grow old. He points it at himself, and leaving some room untouched, presses his finger down—click—a photo rolls out below the camera. For once it feels like time passes—about 80 seconds go by while the photo develops. Samuel feels small again—his sensations have settled other than his head feeling light. The picture shows himself on the front and after turning it a note to himself written on the back reads, “I took your picture!” with an exclamation point. He looks up from the photo to find himself gone and no checkered blanket on the snowy hill. Looking at where the ocean meets the sky, then at the empty place in the snow, then back at the camera—Samuel closes his eyes and the sensation of pilled cloth meets his fingertips. He tries to see himself from a distance standing in the snow, and can now vividly see it in his head. “There you are!” Samuel says to himself.