Picture Perfect

Michael stamped his feet against the cold, and blew into his cupped hands. Not for the first time that night he contemplated his warm flat. He pulled the collar up on his coat, and went back to contemplating the window. This was becoming a little tedious. All he wanted was to be able to take a picture of the woman in the house with a certain celebrity and he could go home. He’d managed to follow the celebrity here on a number of occasions, but had never managed to get the money shot. Truth be told,he hated this kind of assignment. He felt it demened both him and the newspaper. The thing was, a dead-line was a deadline. He had often thought of going freelance, but freelancers with morrals didn’t get printed, which essential meant that they didn’t eat.

It was a fruitless line of thought. He had run around the tracks so often they were probably burned into his brain. A light turned on in his precious window, and he raised the digital camera to his eye. Many purists insisted that the only way to get the best shots was with old fashioned film. He wasn’t one of those purists. The woman walked passed the window taking off her top, revealing her blue bra. This caused Micheal to raise an eyebrow. No matter how many times he had hid in similar bushes or trees, he always expected the sexy woman to be wearing a black lacy bra, rather than a plain cotton blue one. At least, he mused, if you were in the habbit of taking your top off infront of an open window, you should at least put sensible under ware on. The woman paused with her back to the window, and then slowly turned, and walked towards the window, staring out into the night. Mechanically, her hands raised to the window catch, and she pushed opened the window wide. Micheal frowned. This was not what he was expecting on such a cold night. He lowered the camera, and saw a man climb in through the window. Finally, some action. He raised the camera to his eye, and the man dissopeared. Micheal frowned, the woman was still standing there, staring out into the night. Micheal pulled the camera down, and the man had vanished. Curious, he made his way through the foliage closer to the house. There was a dark shape moving through the house, but the woman still stood there staring out the window. He made it up to the window, and cupped his hands around his eyes so he could see in.

Inside there was a man, moving in a funny shambling gate moving through the room. Picking up various ornaments, bringing them to his face, pausing for a while, and then discarding them without any thought. The man moved along the mantlepiece, and finally found one that he didn’t discard. The man raise it twice to his face, and then nodded to himself, and slowly turned towards the window where Micheal stood. The Micheal stared at the man, who seemed to have a melting, mottled green face, and large, pointed bottom teeth, which it smiled eviliy at him. At the same time a scream from upstairs startled both of them, and Micheal took off into the night.

He didn’t stop running until he had made it to the bright lights of the city center, and even then he didn’t feel safe. He got into the first taxi, and rode to his office, where he knew there would be a night-guard, and others like him working on a deadline. He signed himself in in the brightly-lit lobby, and rested against the walls of the metal elevator as he rode it to his floor. Arriving in his cubicle, he hung his coat up, and flopped into his chair. He sat there for many long minuets, simply trying to gather his breath. He flicked his computer screen on, it’s not like anyone ever shut their computers down here. He opened up an editor, and stared at the large white space. He took a deep breath, and began typing. The words tumbled out in a flood, almost falling over themselfs to make it to the page. In what felt like no time at all, he had a full story. The only problem was that no-one was going to believe him. No photographs, a “thing” that he couldn’t see in his digital camera, and a story which essentially ends with him running away from a place he shouldn’t have been in the first place after being seen by someone there.

He leant back in his seat, and stared at the story. He leant forward and pressed print anyway. He pushed his seat back, listening for the whirr of the printer warming up. A sudden loud ringing made him jump so hard he knocked his chair over. He stared at the phone on his desk like he’d never seen it before. He lifted the receiver like it was going to bite him, and held it to his ear.

“hello?”
“Ahh, Hello Micheal?” said a young voice on the other end of the phone in an almost impeccable British Accent said.
“umm… Yes?”
“We hear you had an encounter this evening” the voice continued. It seemed soft, and reassuring
“Who….. Who is this?”
“That’s not really important right now, we are just here to give you an offer. You have probably just printed a story that you think no-one will believe. That story may be important. ”
“Pardon?”
“I understand, your head will be swimming. It’s a lot to take in. Go home, get a good night’s sleep, take your story with you. If you would like to find out more, meet me in the smal Cafe at the end of your road at 10 o’clock.”
There was a click and the line went dead. Micheal shook his head and put the phone down. Whoever the stranger was, he was right about one thing, Micheal needed to sleep. He picked up his story, and headed home.

Micheal spent the tossing and turning, the memory of the face sneaking into every dream he had, turning it into a nightmare. As the grey light of dawn spilled through his grubby curtains, Micheal gave up on sleep and made his way to the kitchen, and began a fruitless search for a clean cup. He picked up one hopefull cup and tipped the cigarett buts out of it, and looked at the sink overflowing with days old dishes. He added his mug to the the precarious pile and staggered back to his bedroom to get dressed.

The Streets were busier than he would have expected at this time of the morning. In the same way that the Cafe on the corner was busy than he would have expected. He ordered a cup of coffee and sat himself down in a corner, staring off into space. Several hours, and cups of coffee later, Micheal was still sat there, when a man in his mid-twenties with shaggy blond hair, a suit and trainers slid himself into the chair oposite him. Micheal looked at the new-comer. “I’m waiting for someone”
“Yes, you are. He’s here” the young man smiled.
“What is this all about?”
“You wont really believe me if I told you”
“Try me”. The young blond man smiled and reached into his jacket, pulling out a folded manila envelope. Over the following hour, the young man explained how things worked. How people who had seen things very often went on seeing strange things, and how there was a choice, at least, for some of them. The young man explained how different people had different roles to play, and how Micheals was one of reporter. Micheal would submit his stories, in the usual way, using the pen name “Erin Sacks”. The story would then be then be picked up by some local sensationalist news-papers, things that had the names like “Strange and Mysterious Weekly”, and he would get paid for them. Sometimes, he might be asked to go on strange assignments, which would result in a story for Erin Sacks, but above all the young blond cautioned him, he was a reporter, because the world needed to know. Micheal added another cigarette but to the overflowing ash-tray.
“What’s in it for me?” Micheal asked. The deal didn’t really seem to do him any favours.
“Once the story is submitted, no-more nightmares.”
“Of any kind?”
The young man looked at him. “You know what I meant. The personal demons you already have you’ll have to deal with on your own”. Micheal nodded, and pulled out another cigarette.
“Most of what you’ve just told me isn’t true, is it?”
The young man simply looked at him, his eyes impassive. “You’ve just told me what I need to know. Offered me the carrot, with the implication of a stick. Perhaps parts of what you’ve told me make sense, but it’s not the full story, is it?”
The man stood up, and tapped the manila envelope that contained the details that they had gone over. “I don’t know, your the Journalist, you tell me”
Micheal nodded, and lit his cigarette. “You’ve not even told me your name”
Micheal glanced up to where the man had been standing, and noticed that he was already half-way to the door. He nodded to himself and picked up the envelope. Somedays life doesn’t just kick you to the ground, once your there, it jumps all over you.

The thing about being a journalist like Micheal is that no-one batted an eye-lid when he showed up in work in the middle of the afternoon. There was a pile of mail on his desk, most of which were the letters from what he affectionately called the crazies, which he slid into his bottom draw. Amoungst them was a memo from his editor congratulating him on the pictures that he’d taken, and the story that went with it. The memo didn’t really surprise Micheal, as he had that feeling of his life sliding in a way that he didn’t really understand. He also got the feeling that this was the only time he was going to get helped out like that. He flicked his monitor on to find the story that he had written, edited slightly, and pictures, taken from a few meters to the right of where he had been hiding. It showed the woman in the blue bra kissing the celebrity he’d been waiting for. A closer look at the embrace showed it was deep, and tight. The woman was probably terrified when the picture had been taken. He felt a pang of guilt, and once again cursed his conscience. He closed the story, and sat back in his chair, the gnawing sense of guilt growing. He looked at the drawer full of letters from crazies, and after a pause, reached down into it.