The Camera's Death

"I didn't mean to," the woman sobbed as she staggered along the bank of the polluted river. "I didn't mean to." In one hand she held the broken remains of a digital camera, in the other all that could be seen was a splash of something dark. She stumbled in the darkness that the moon produced from behind the heavy cloud cover, finally tripping on a hidden rock. Pieces of hard plastic that lay scattered dug into the skin on her knees as she fell to the rubbish-filled ground. She kneeled onto the dirt, her knees starting to bleed as the plastic was imbedded into her legs. 

"Why did he-" she broke off, shuddering violently before she whimpered out the last few words. "Why did he have to want me?" Slowly, she raised her hands to her face and looked at the broken camera, and with an almost desperate hatred, she destroyed it. The little buttons that had been worn down from years of use were pried from the frame. The carefully polished lens was shattered against a stone. The frame that had held every precious moment from the time that she was twelve to the day before the man had taken her was wrenched open and slowly crushed against the rock until all that was left was a mangled mess of thin metal. The woman's hands bled as she crushed the ball of metal against her palms.

Finally she stopped, her wounds weeping blood onto her tattered jeans. In her hands she held the last remains of the only friend that she had left in the world. She started to sob, and she stayed kneeling in the pile of sharp plastic pieces for what felt like hours, sobbing, not caring about the pain in her knees, not caring about the pain in her hands, until suddenly she heard a twig break behind her.  The woman slowly rose from the floor, her knees trembling as she turned to face the figure approaching her. She hugged her scarred and bruised arms to her body, not minding the mangled piece of metal that was still held loosely in her left hand. Quietly and slowly the man stepped out from underneath the trees and reached for the woman. She tried to pull away from him but he held her firmly. "Why," she whispered. "Why did you have to take me?" She started to sob again, the hand with the metal still hugged her own body, and the other hand was held in the unrelenting grasp of the man.

"Shh, Em," he whispered. "It's okay. I know you didn't mean to humiliate me." She whimpered and shook her head as the tears continued to flow from her eyes.

"I-I just wanted to take a picture, that's-"she broke off as the man hugged her to his chest.

"It's okay, Em," he whispered as he drew the knife through her neck with one stroke. "It's okay." He let her go slowly and she fell, her limbs forming a broken, bleeding heap. As she choked on her last breaths, trying and failing to breathe in through her severed neck, the man looked down at her once. He shook his head in disappointment and slowly started to walk away from the pile that was once a living breathing person.

"Maybe next time she'll be better" he whispered to himself as his feet carried him away from his newest failure. "Maybe next time she will love me."

The End