The Camera by J. C. Laird (book recommendations for young adults .txt) 📕

Nestled among the towering pines of the Jemez National Forest, the picturesque mountain cabin harbored nostalgic memories for Justin Solomon. He couldn’t have chosen a better place.

Although he’d rented the cabin for two weeks, he was sure his spreading pancreatic cancer was going to qualify that as a bad investment. He smiled. Not that it made much difference, anyway; like they said, “you can’t take it with you.”

The radiation and chemo therapy treatments had been discontinued; the doctors had given him six months to live, and he’d already maxed that out. He was lucid enough to realize that the end was near. He’d been like the walking dead for the last ten years anyway, wandering through the days, months and years like some specter, with only the slightest contact with the world around him. He often wondered if he had gone insane.

Justin dropped his exhausted, emaciated 6’2” frame into the large, overstuffed chair. Once an athletic 225 pounds, he had been reduced to a wheezing 140 and draped in clothing that had grown several sizes too large. The doctors had encouraged him to check into a hospice facility, but he had declined. He hadn’t brought much with him to the rustic cabin, but limping up the wooden porch stairs with his few possessions had completely drained him.

This had been their “retreat,” and now he had come here to spend his last days with her. With his memories of her, anyway. He looked down at the cardboard box next to the chair, a box containing their photos and albums, images of their life together, reflections of his memories.

Ten years had passed since Megan had died, but Justin continued talking to her, as if she had never left. He had aged more than those ten years warranted, his hair graying, his body stooping, his gait and speech hesitant and unsure. People came to think of him as just a crazy old man, wandering the streets, vacant eyed, muttering to himself. It was ironic; the cancer that had ravaged his body over the last year was finally going to be his means of escape.

Through the open window he listened to the silence of the forest, broken only by the sigh of the wind in the tall pines surrounding the cabin. They had rented the cabin several times during their marriage, usually to escape the stress of her job at the University of New Mexico. Good memories, but then all of his memories of Megan were good—except at the end.

Justin squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to block the tears. He whispered, “I’m so sorry Megan; please forgive me.”

The dark images of that last night started to slip their terrifying tendrils into his mind. He shook his head and pressed his palms to his eyes, trying to keep the horrific pictures out of his head. Gritting his teeth, he got up painfully and started putting away his meager supplies.

“Okay Megan, let me get a little organized here, then I’ll start sorting through all those pictures.”

His memory lane had been so well traveled over the past decade that he really didn’t need any prodding to walk down it again. His images of her were stuck in a closed-circuit, continuous loop in his often faltering mind. Sometimes it seemed there wasn’t much room for anything else. But that was okay with him.

He’d managed to keep down a peanut butter sandwich earlier in the day; he didn’t eat much anymore. He was well stocked with the pain-killers morphine and oxy-codeine, drugs that were fighting a losing battle against the painful onslaught against his body. Between them and the spreading disease, his appetite had become a casualty.

It was early evening and he was tired from the drive, but he wanted to look over some of the photos. Slumped in the easy chair, he browsed a couple of the albums, stopping and commenting to Megan as if she was actually present. He hesitated with his hand on one, shaking his head, but it made him smile. The two of them were skydiving. “I still don’t know how you got me to do that, Princess.”

The next picture had them both waving to the camera from the floor of the Grand Canyon. Then, the two of them, hand in hand, crossing the finish line of the City Half Marathon. There were several at University Arena, Megan in her red University blazer and black slacks and he in his Campus Police uniform. In another, a picture of her, her smile radiant, right after she had received the news that she had been promoted to Director of Special Events at the University.

He ran his hand over the picture lightly. “I had a crush on you the first time I ever saw you. It just took me a year to get the nerve to ask you out.”

When he first met Megan she was the Assistant Director of Special Events. She was handing out assignments and giving instructions to personnel before a basketball game. He had been on his University Police job for all of two weeks, a retiree from the Albuquerque Police Department. His twenty-year career there had established a habit that sabotaged his retirement after a total of only two months.

Justin remembered being introduced to her. He thought her the prettiest girl he had ever seen, although at age twenty-six, “girl” was certainly a misnomer. Soft spoken, with dark hair matching her expressive eyes and dark complexion, he had found out later that her mother was a native Hawaiian. Indeed, Megan’s lineage could be traced back through her mother to former kings and queens of the Islands, but her mother had married a U. S. serviceman, so Megan figured that nixed the whole royalty thing.

Justin liked to call her Princess, and on their first anniversary had given her a bracelet inscribed with her full name: Princess Megan Malu Makahilahila Solomon. The inscription had cost almost as much as the bracelet. She had laughed in her soft, melodic way, a laugh that made people smile even though they didn’t know why. He loved to make her happy…

Rummaging through the cardboard box he came up with more loose photos, which he carefully placed in the album. He had left instructions to forward these and a few other personal items of Megan’s to her parents in Michigan after his death.

He came across a close-up photo of her, a half smile on her lips, eyes locked on the camera. He grinned and sighed. “Ahhh…my princess…what chance did I have against those beautiful eyes of yours?”

He was often assigned to various sporting and entertainment events around campus, and had frequent contact with Megan. She was a woman whose eyes mirrored her emotions; confidence and self-assurance the majority of the time, frustration and anger on the rare occasions when someone disappointed her. But disillusionment and pain had also made their appearance in those brown depths when she was bypassed for a promotion at the University. Her unexpected vulnerability had been the final push. A day later, stammering and stumbling, he asked her out.

Throwing her head back and laughing she’d said, “It’s about time!”

That had caught him off guard. “Uh…what do you mean…?”

“You’ve been following me around like a puppy dog for the better part of a year. I’d given up on you; I didn’t think you were ever going to go for it.”

With her he had reached the pinnacle of his life, a crest that lasted almost five years. Those years seemingly outweighed all those that had come before; they were married six months after their first date. Megan was the last piece of the puzzle completing his life.

They began talking about names for their children; she wanted at least two, a boy and a girl, but felt she needed to earn her M.B.A. Degree and land the Director’s job first. She achieved both, the last coming only two weeks before…He reached for the bottle of morphine and quickly dry-swallowed two tablets.

Justin gently placed the photo in the album, and reached back into the box, pulling out an old digital camera. It took him a second before he remembered; he’d bought it at a local Wal-Mart a week before that final night at the theater ten years ago. It was a deal he couldn’t pass up—a discontinued model, twenty-five percent off. He’d jumped at the offer, but if he remembered correctly, had only used it once—on their last night together.

He’d purchased AAA batteries on the drive up and now inserted them in the camera, but was still mildly surprised when the camera turned on and the screen lit up.

There were only four pictures in the memory, all from that last night at the theater, all taken outside in the courtyard. His favorite was of Megan standing near the entrance with the night-time crowd, grinning and waving at the camera, proudly preening in a stylish new red dress; a beautiful, white lace shawl draped loosely around her shoulders and trailing down her back. The lights from the antique lamp poles lining the courtyard and walkways highlighted her beauty. She was exquisite. His heart had ached looking at her then, just as it now pined looking at her picture.

Justin was exhausted; he was done for the night. He shuffled off to the first bedroom, the one he and Megan had always used when they had stayed there. It afforded the best view of the forest.

#

The nightmare came as it always did, as it always had. It was burned forever into his mind, etched indelibly into the very fabric of his being. Nothing he had done since that night had blurred or dimmed the horror. He moaned in his sleep, an echo of the pain deeply embedded within him

On their way home from the campus theater and a performance of the musical “Cats”, they had stopped at a local 7-Eleven store; Megan wanted to pick up milk for the morning, and Justin needed to use the restroom. He had been washing his hands when he heard the yelling outside.

Running out, his world was forever turned into a ragged, broken film reel, a surrealistic montage of jumpy, disjointed images.

Two wild eyed meth-heads standing at the counter with guns drawn, aiming at the cashier, screaming almost incoherently for money.

Drawing his off duty gun, aiming at them, yelling for them to freeze, to drop their weapons.

Drugged out of their minds, eyes blazing, turning and firing wildly, a fuselage of bullets, one grazing his shoulder.

Returning fire.

One robber falling to the floor by the counter, the other firing wildly over his shoulder as he staggered towards the door, before finally collapsing.

Walking forward, gun trained on their immobile bodies, glancing down the aisles, yelling for Megan.

Saw her crumpled on the floor, a growing blossom of blood staining the front of her dress a darker red.

Yelling and screaming from far away. Coming from him.

Holding her in his arms, one hand frantically trying to stem the blood seeping from her chest.

Her breathing loud and labored as her punctured lung struggled for air.

Her lips unnaturally red from blood.

Her panicked, beseeching eyes wide in fear and pain. Looking at him. Pleading with him.

Now, blood on the floor.

Coughing, more blood on her lips.

Struggling to breathe.

Another ragged breath, gasping, choking.

Then another.

Her eyes frantic, begging.

Her hand, clutching his arm.

Finally, a rasping exhale, and then—

No more.

Her hand fell away.

Crying. Screaming. Welling up from deep within him.

When the police arrived minutes later, Justin was still on the floor, holding and rocking her, talking to her, begging her not to go. They had to pull him away.

He had never stopped screaming inside.

#

The next morning he drank his coffee on the covered front porch,