This happened to me in the early-2000s. I've tried to move on from it, but I know my past has come back to haunt me yet.
I was a photography enthusiast. But the only camera I had was old, whose flash had malfunctioned; it would flash the light into the eye of the person taking the picture as well. Since it was an old camera, the pictures needed to be developed in a darkroom afterward.
One day, I was at the wedding of a relative. Unfortunately, not many were eager to pose for my photos considering my camera quality, and I found myself alone.
It was then that I noticed two people nearby. One of them was a photographer too, who I saw talking to a girl in front of him. She was remarkably pretty, but the photographer didn't look like he was interested in taking pictures.
He even seemed to be very aggressive with her. The man had a hand on the girl's shoulder, and I could see he was pressing tightly into her skin. He then roughly shoved her, before moving away into the crowd. The girl was left looking despondent and clutching her shoulder.
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To raise her spirits, I snuck close and took a picture with my camera. She looked up when the flash hit her eyes, and by the time my vision was settled from the flash in my own eyesight, I saw her looking at me with a smile.
We got to talking, and she told me the photographer was a man who had taken her pictures before, only to never send them back to her. When she'd tried to confront him on it, he had become aggressive.
I promised she'd get to see the picture I'd taken, and she happily gave me her postal address to send the photo to.
"Roger Dodger," she laughed, making a play on words over my name.
A little distance away, I saw the photographer eyeing me and the girl while we talked.
When I returned home, to have a reason to speak to her again soon, I went to the darkroom to develop the picture. It took me a few minutes to get the picture filtered and in the process of being developed, during which I heard the sound of footsteps.
My darkroom was in the basement of the house, which meant the only place someone could be walking was outside by the small slits that led the sunlight into the basement.
The sound of the steps continued; I went outside to confront anyone that might have been there, finding no one. Unperturbed, I returned to the darkroom to finish my work. Once more I thought I heard a sound from above, but ignored it and turned my sight toward the photo.
Excited to see the result, I eagerly turned it around. When my eyes met the page, I dropped the picture and fell back in my chair.
The girl's face was horrifying.
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