The gun went off, but the bullet missed. The kid slumped back against the door and screamed when he saw a generous portion of his skin hanging from the broken plastic teeth of the comb. The woman picked up the Mace and sprayed it in the kid’s face. Ouch, that had to hurt on an open wound. The gun fell to the floor and Mr Sly kicked it away. Then he delivered a finishing blow to the kid’s head, letting him drop like the proverbial sack of potatoes.
“Only good thing my drunken daddy ever taught me,” Mr Sly said, shaking the flesh loose from the comb. “A plastic comb can come in handy if you ever find yourself in a bar fight without a weapon.”
“Charming,” the woman said. She pointed the Mace at Mr Sly. “Now I think it’s time for you to leave.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “Just let me tie him up first.”
The woman kept the Mace pointed at Mr Sly as he bound the kid’s feet and hands together with packing tape.
“We should check on the girl,” he said. “See if she’s dead.”
“You first.”
They walked into the store with Mr Sly leading. They found the girl behind the counter, a purplish welt rising on her forehead. There was a bullet hole in the safe.
“He really was an amateur, wasn’t he?” Mr Sly said, as he turned to face the woman. “I’m glad she’s okay, aren’t you?”
Before the woman could answer, Mr Sly had grabbed the Mace from her.
“Sorry, but I don’t like people pointing things at me.”
The woman shrunk back against the counter. Mr Sly read the concern on her face and laughed.
“You didn’t believe all that stuff I said back there, did you?”
“Well.”
“You needn’t worry.” He picked up some maxi pads and threw them into a plastic Quik Stop bag. “Think I’ll skip the coffee. I’m keyed up enough already, aren’t you?”
The woman stared at him.
Mr Sly went to leave, but when he reached the front door and looked out at the empty street, he turned around.
“Mind if I take something with me?”
“By all means,” the woman said.
He went back into the storage room and came out with the kid thrown over his shoulder. “And just in case you get a sudden bout of sympathy for our attacker here.” Mr Sly held up the woman’s driver’s license.
“I can’t imagine that happening,” she said.
He walked with the boy over his shoulder towards the door.
“Wait,” the woman called. “I suppose I should say thank you.”
He turned and smiled. “No need,” he said. “Most fun I’ve had in years.”
Then Mr Sly went out the door and disappeared into the night.
Steve Rasnic Tem
The Bereavement Photographer
A regular contributor to the Best New Horror series, Steve Rasnic Tem’s stories and poetry have recently appeared in the revived Argosy magazine and the anthologies Quietly Now, Taverns of the Dead, The Many Faces of Van Helsing and The Devil’s Wine.
A chapbook entitled The World Recalled was published by Wormhole Books, and a collection of his selected poetry, The Hydrocephalic Ward, appeared from Dark Regions Press.
“I’ve wanted to write this story for a long time,” explains Tem about his contribution to this volume. “I was looking for a container for some of the things I had observed with grieving parents, with people dealing with loss in general.
“I’ve also always been fascinated by those photographs of the dead taken in the early years of this country — often retouched by painting pupils on the permanently closed eyelids. Dead children dressed up like ‘little angels’. Dead children looking as if they’d been unable to stay awake for their important, formal portraits. The way parents deal with what cannot be dealt with, finally, without being changed for ever.
“When I found out that a contemporary version of these photographs exists today, the story came about not without effort, but also without my ability to halt it.”
“So, have you been doing this a while now?” “A few years.”
“Sorry for asking, and tell me if I’m out of line, but you can’t possibly be making a full-time living doing this can you?”
I actually almost say, “It’s a hobby,” which would be disastrous. But I don’t. I look at the fellow: sandy-haired, a beard whose final length appears to be forever undecided. He looks terrible in the suit — either long outgrown or borrowed for the occasion. And it is an occasion — a grim occasion but an occasion none the less. He watches me as I set up, without a glance for his child. The young wife fusses with her to make ready for this picture, this family portrait.
I’m used to this. Who could blame him?
“I’m a volunteer. They reimburse me for film and lab costs. It’s a way… of being of service.”
He glances down, gazes at his wife rearranging the baby in her arms, glances away again, with no place to look.
Me, I have only one place to look. I peer through the lens, musing on composition issues, the light, the shadows, the angles of their arms. “Could you move her a little to the left?” The husband and father stares at me, puzzled, then bends to move his wife’s chair. She blushes.
“No, sorry. You, ma’am.” I straighten up behind the camera. “Could you move the baby a little to the left?” Notice how I said “the” baby, not “your”. I try to avoid upsetting words. These are family portraits, after all. Just like all families have. Most parents don’t want to be crying. I have folders full of photographs of mothers and fathers wailing, faces split in the middle. Believe me, they don’t want to keep those. Sometimes I have taken roll after roll until there is sufficient calm for me to make the picture that will go into some leather-bound matte, slipped into some nondescript manila folder, or, if they’re so inclined, up on the living room mantel in a place of honor, there, oh so much there, for the whole world to see.
I’ve been doing this for years. But still I find that hard to imagine.
I feel bad that I haven’t found the right words for this father, the words that will soothe, or at least minimize his discomfort and embarrassment. But sometimes there are just no right words. At least, I can’t always find them.
“I’ll be taking the shot in a few minutes,” I say. “Just make yourself comfortable. This isn’t going to be flash flash flash and me telling you to smile each time. The most important thing is to try to make yourselves comfortable. Try to relax and ease into this shared moment.”
This shared moment. Whatever words I say to my subjects, I always include these. Even though I’ve never been sure they were accurate, or fair. The moment is shared in that it happens to both of them. But most of the time, I think, the experience is so personal and large it will soon split the marriage apart if they’re not careful.
I’ve seen it happen so much. I’ve seen so much.
“Okay, then,” I say in warning and again I move behind the camera, almost as if I expect it to protect me from what is to come. As I peer into the electronic viewfinder, so like a small computer screen, so distancing in that same way, I see the mother’s smile, and it is miraculous in its authenticity. I’ve seen it before in my portraits, this miraculous mother’s smile, and it never fails to surprise me.
And I see the father at last look down upon his dead baby girl and reach out two fingers, so large against the plump, pale arm, and he lets them linger, a brief time but longer than I would have expected, and I realize this touch is for the first, and last, time.