Camera Shy File

Lena finally understood. She hadn’t been losing pieces of her soul to cameras.

Her blood chilled. “What?”

Lena touched her face. Her reflection in a nearby game booth mirror confirmed it: her irises had faded from warm brown to a pale, watery grey. And behind her navel, where the cold hollow had lived for fifteen years, something pulsed. Warm. Whole. Camera Shy

Lena should have run. Instead, she felt seen for the first time. “You know what it is?” Lena finally understood

Mia found her ten minutes later, sitting on a bench, staring at the tintype. “Lena? You look… different. Did you do something with your eyes?” “What

“You feel it,” he said, tapping his own chest. “The little rip. The tiny loss. Most people are too numb to notice. But you’re… camera shy .”

Lena smirked at the cheesy horror-movie tagline. But the man behind the booth made her pause. He was old, with skin like crumpled parchment and eyes the color of tarnished silver. He didn’t smile. He just looked at her Pentax and said, “You understand the cost of images, don’t you?”