Ugly Dog

Behind a Filter

Cvs is one of the best places to get lost in. At least, in my town it is. I find myself in the cold section, reading soda bottle labels as I wait for my photos to be done. The cashier here, Marcus, and I are on a first name basis. He's a poor kid just out of college, lived below the mountains as a kid then moved up here because it was cheaper. He's got a bachelors degree in journalism, and that's how we started talking. I'd come in for pictures, he'd question why some random teenager was taking pictures of vacant store fronts and unsuspecting people, and we bonded.
I knew I could trust him, I have before with minor details of stories and such. I told him some things about NorthSkies, my encounter with the creepy two eyed man and the trailer there. I even went as far as to tell him about Maggie and the whole possible kidnapping situation, but I went no deeper than that. I'm pretty sure shape shifting and ghosts are too much even for him.
I put back my current soda bottle and take another glance around the store. It's chilly out today, so not many people are out at the stores. One bored looking employee stands at the counter, staring into space. Marcus must still be in the back.
A muffled clatter comes from the other side of the store, followed by soft cursing. The employee at the counter sighs wearily, but does nothing. With a gall of curiosity, I make my way over to the source of the sound.
I found myself in the makeup aisle, surrounded by glossy eyeshadows and smeared mirrors. Lipsticks roll across the floor, with an anxious orange haired girl trying frantically to pick them up. Julia had apparently broken the shelf, although I had no idea how she would've managed to do that. I leant down, picking up the sticks and stacking them in my other hand. Julia tries to take a whole handful of them at once, but ends up dropping almost everything she was holding. She looks up, eyes sparkling as she notices me.
"Thanks, these aisles are horrible." She whispers, as if someone else could hear her. The only person who might've heard would've been the counter man, but I doubt he'd care. Nonetheless I return her smile.
"Nobody cares to fix them. What're you doing here, I never pegged you for a drugstore makeup kind of girl?"
Although I myself have leaned to decorate my face with the pigment-less cheap makeup, Julia was constantly glossy and moisturized. I never had the energy to go out looking for the good stuff, unless it involved an article.
Julia cracked one of her contagious smiles. "Oh, I was gonna head down to the mall today, but the road off the mountain was closed. So many cars were stuck trying to merge and get back up the hill, I was lucky to be in the bus. They let the big vehicles past first."
I swiped a few stray lipsticks that had rolled out of her grasp. Why would they block up that whole road? That's a dangerous thing to do, especially with how steep it is.
"The whole road?" I questioned. "Why?"
Julia shrugged, taking particular interest in a lipstick she had just picked up that was a light shade of peach. "Dunno, it didn't look like they were repaving it. Maybe there was an accident?"
"If there was, I would've seen it." I muttered. Was this about me? That road was the same one down to the hospital, could it be a belated investigation? We would've gotten word of that, though. I was distracted by a light punch to my shoulder. Julia laughed at me, shoving a few renegade lipsticks back onto their shelf.
"So, I haven't seen you around these past few days. Or have you just been too allusive for me to spot?" Julia chuckled. I let out a rare, relieved sigh. Everything was so serious, so hard, so confusing, and she can simplify my life with a laugh and a question. Days of weariness and pain flashed away before my eyes.
"No, I've been in most days." I told her. I couldn't find it in my heart to tell her the details of my week. She was my one normal connection to the world, and I couldn't ruin that.
"You ready for school?"
I cringed. Our long thanksgiving break ended within two days, a fact that had completely slipped my mind. Julia shoved the rest of the lipsticks back into the shelf like they were dirty clothes to a laundry basket, she shrugged. "Nobody cares, anyway." We stood, and I still had no answer to her question. She was too distracted by the lipstick in her hands to remember.
I followed her up to the register, where the bored greasy haired employee at the counter awaited. Seeing Julia, his eyes lightened and lips turned up into a smile. She had that effect on people.
"Is that it?" He asked, gently taking the lipstick from Julia's hand to scan. She threw back a blossoming smile that could make a grizzly bear blush.
"Yes, thank you." She said, pulling a five from her coat pocket.
I wandered over to the other register, laying my hands against the counter and peering into the back room. Marcus had still not returned, which was odd, he was usually very fast with my developments. The back room door was opened, as Marcus usually left it, and a lone photo sat in the doorway, glossy and freshly printed. One of mine must have fell. I glanced over to Julia, who watched as the employee rang her up. She must've felt me staring, because she looked over just as the employee dropped some change. As he bent to pick it up, I gave her a curt nod, and ducked under the counter. I dashed, still crouched, over the the doorway. With one swift movement I had picked up the photo and was safely inside of the back room. I could hear Julia continuing pleasant conversation with the employee, laughing at his replies and urging him to continue. A shiver of jealousy ran through me before I realized she was doing this for me.
The back room was small and gray, about closet sized in its first room. A desk sat to my right, next to the door, covered in miscellaneous papers and mail. A bulky printer much too old for the time squeezed it's way into the surface, which I figured was where my photos came out of. I glanced around at the stacks of papers and junk covering almost every surface of the room. Even messier than mine, which was saying a lot. I looked to my photo, why hadn't Marcus just printed them out in bulk?
It was ice.
The photo, to my absolute surprise, was just a picture of ice. Not an ice cube, not an icicle; but a full scale, close up, in-depth photo of ice. I could pick out the spiderwebbing cracks in it, see the frosty tinge of edges, it even felt cold. My camera could never capture this quality of detail. Who could have taken this?
Another door was open beside the desk, leading into a darker, cleaner room. I peeked in. This room was longer than the back, but just as thin and lined with a couplet of desks and computers. I saw Marcus leaning over one desk, staring at a computer. His tall form was hunched to make eye level with it, and his curly brown hair was messier than when I last saw him. He had a habit of running his hands through it.
I approached silently, he did not notice me, or if he did he didn't acknowledge me. Slowly he moved his hand to the mouse beside him, clicking slowly. The light illuminating his face turned from a garish brown to stark white, and I inched forwards to see what he was looking at.
My photos.
He must've loaded my cameras memory already, but instead of printing, he was looking through them. I opened my mouth, about to chastise him as I would my brother for taking so long, when I focused upon the pictures he was scrolling through.
The one he currently stared at was of the crispy white snow falling by the gates of NorseSkies. It was a still photo I had taken of the gates, the area where the body bag was supposedly found. I remembered taking that one, as I do the others. There was nothing there, save for a few parked cars that made it in the shot along with the snow flurries.  On this version there was a single, pristine red dot right in the center, where there was only air and snow. It had not been added afterwards, unless it was by someone who could use photo shop like a genius, as Marcus did not. The shadows against it were too real, it's color too dark and shaded perfectly by the clouds so that it had to be in the moment. A levitating stain, reminiscent of blood. A shiver ran down my spine.
Marcus clicked to the next image. It was one of the quick, motion packed photos I had taken of the metal trailer. This must've been the last one, it was relatively still and clear. This one had no red blood stains or anything out of the ordinary, but what it did have was the glint of an icy blue eye right in the crack of a closing door.
The blue eyed man, I thought. It could have just been the glint of medal mistakenly taken for an eye, or it truly could be him, sneaking into the trailer behind me. I stepped closer. "Marcus?"
Marcus jumped as if he'd seen a ghost.
He whipped around, running a hand through his mass of hair.
"Valentine. Oh! Right, your pictures." He took a breath, as if words had faltered his mind. I came closer, and he backed away from the computer.
"They're really weird this time, Val." Said Marcus. "They give me this creepy feeling... I can't describe it."
I looked closely at the trailer photo, noting the shadow placements and the doorway.
"Show me the worst one." I told him. I backed away from the computer, and he stepped up. I feared he might pull up a messy shot instead of a creepy one I was looking for, but he seemed to have gotten my message. My breath stopped in my throat.
Fear circled my stomach and griped my throat like a viper. It was a shot of one of the windows on the main building, dirty and foggy from years of standing in the cold weather. There was nothing strange about it, it could have been the most normal of them all, but there was a feeling in my head I just could shake. Like watching a horror movie, even hours afterwards you feel the lines of the story dripping into your veins and affecting your thoughts. But horror movies gave you something to be scared about, this harmless picture did not.
"You feel it too?" Asked Marcus, and I nodded, shell shocked.
"I started playing around with it, trying to see what was so scary. I inverted the colors and all that, then turned on a U.V filter."
Marcus clicked through a set of options, and the colors of the photo shifted. In the center of the window, dragging down to its bottom, was a dark brown hand print that seemed to suck in the light around it. My mouth dropped, I looked to him for explanation.
"I don't know! I just started messing around with effects and it popped up." Marcus told me, running his hand through his hair again.
"It's just, strange." I said. "Having the U.V light on, it wouldn't have even made a difference unless it was on the crime scene, a picture never would have shown it. It doesn't work like that. You need stronger technology." I was aware that the technology used to print out photographs had simple editing options on it, much like something on Instagram or Facebook, just filters and such. By turning on a U.V light filter, nothing should have come up.
"Can I just have my photos please?" I asked. Marcus seemed so caught up in the strange images that he had completely forgotten he had a customer waiting.
His somber face faltered, and his usual smile popped up. "Yeah, of course! I'll print em right now." He clicked out of the program he was in, saving the regular photo file and pressing print. We heard the printer hum to life in the other room and walked out, Marcus closing the door behind us. It locked automatically with a click, and I wondered why he had left it open in the first place, if its computer contents were to be safe kept. I decided to blame it on the momentary security lapse of a bored employee.
The printer in front of us made a sound like a garbage disposal. Marcus put a gentle hand on my shoulder, pushing past me in the crowded room. He cursed under his breath, pressing a few buttons.
"What's up?" I questioned.
"It's clogged. Does this sometimes, really annoying. The bosses won't pay for a new one." Answered Marcus. The printer chugged like a stationary train under his hands, then shot out a blob of wet black ink onto the opposite wall. The propulsion was so sudden that both of us jumped back, giving the printer ample room for anymore possible spewing malfunctions. The blob on the wall sunk slowly down, creating a line of deep purple on the faded grey wallpaper. As it found a settling place atop of collage of green and red binders, the printer sputtered and went dark.
"Oh, crap!" Marcus muttered. He rushed back to the printers side, opening drawers and checking buttons. I approached the glob of ink, which was now beginning to seep into the binder. I picked it up by its clean edge and looked to Marcus.
"I hope you didn't need this." I said.
"What's going on here?"
Marcus and I both snapped our heads towards the door. The greasy haired employee from before stood in the doorway, and I could just see the tip of Julia's head as she curiously tried to peak over his shoulder.
"Reg, the printer busted, were gonna have to call for a new one." Marcus said. Greasy hair - Reg, I suppose - didn't bat an eye. He looked instead to me.
"What's she doing back here?" He asked. I flashed an over-exaggerated smile at him.
"Just seeing what's taking my photos so long to be developed." I answered. "But seeing as the printer is broken, I'll just come back for them later."
I shimmied past Marcus before he could interrupt, and ducked under Reg's arm. Julia, holding her bag of lipstick tightly to her chest, followed closely behind as I rushed back in front of the counter.
"I'll have another store print them out for you and mail them!" Marcus called out to me.
Julia rushed out the door in front of me, a giggle escaping her lips. I followed behind her, slowly trailing. I reached into my pocket, and gripped the icy photograph I had managed to sneak away. At least I had one.