Under Contract

Summer never seems to last as long as it did when you were a kid. I remember those endless sunny months, so full of formative experiences, miniature adventures, wonderment, sometimes heartbreak, but always a golden, glorious highlight of the year.
    Now I'm older there's no Summer break. I guess I'm envious of my friend, Helen, she's a school teacher and she still has mid-July to early September off, along with all those other term breaks. Sure, she complains about not being able to "choose" her holidays, but, I'd gladly swap my paltry 25 days a year for that.
    Still, she also seems to share my halcyon memory of those long - almost to the point of dragging - Summer months. I think it's because I didn't use to carry around all the concerns that now plague me, even if I have time off in Summer, my mind still harrangues me with thoughts of rent, bills, outstanding projects, the things I keep putting off, chores and admin, friends I haven't seen or spoken to, the constant gnawing worry that I'm going to die alone. That consumes a lot of time, and these were neurotic issues I did not have as a child.
    Why can't I switch off? I drink, I smoke the occasional joint, I spend long lazy days just lying in bed, procrastinating, yet time - zoom - just - zip - passes - whoosh - me by.
    On one such tangential day I was exploring some old boxes I found in the attic, there were some old camcorder tapes and I figured I'd give them a watch, see what was on them.
    Wobbly, time-ravaged images of Welsh holidays; my sister's 8th birthday party; and one video where someone - probably my Dad, he had a habit for it - had left the camera running in the bag, in fact, the entire tape, all 45 minutes, was just this constant shot of the bag. I know, because I watched it all from beginning to end, straining to hear what was going on around it, curious as to what I might discover, but, I heard nothing of note.
    What was strange though was when I finished watching the tape it was dark outside.
    Time has a habit of doing this to me, those evenings after work where I plan to get things done, I'll open my laptop and then look at the time, it'll be 10pm. It's why I end up just cramming microwave meals into my maw, I don't have the time I used to have to cook.
    But this, this was particularly odd, the longest the tape could be was 45 minutes, and I'd started watching it at ten past seven, it didn't begin to get dark until around half eight or nine. Miffed, I rewound the tape and hit play again, this time holding my watch up alongside the date-stamp that my Dad - as he was prone to do - had left imprinted in the corner.
    The video read: 05-04-88 - 15:42.
    My watch read: 21-08-18 - 21:11.
    By the time the video's time changed to 15:43 my watch was reading 21:13, and once the forty five minutes had unspooled, just over ninety minutes had passed.
    Concerned that my watch was broken I took down a wall clock from the kitchen, set an alarm on my mobile and called the talking clock from the landline. Starting the video over, watching it through, with volume at the maximum in case I could hear it being played back at half speed or something, and then checking the time once it was done; it was the same story.
    Forty five 1988 minutes were now the equivalent of ninety 2018 minutes.
    "Surely," Helen said when I called her up immediately after this revelation, "there's something wrong with the video player, I mean, how old is that thing anyway?"
    "Ten years or so, but I checked and double-checked, it doesn't seem like a coincidence. I mean, once the universe has finished expanding it must start contracting again, and what if time - the speed of time - changes as a result of that?"
    "Meaning?"
    "That time is going to get faster and faster, if it's halved in thirty years, then, another thirty and it'll be half again, until..."
    "What?"
    "Until time ends."
    Helen spluttered a laugh, "Oh, Rory, you're being a tad melodramatic. If you turn up at my front door with a Police telephone box parked on my lawn, hmm, maybe I'll believe you."
    My silence prompted the sound of the phone being shifted from one ear to another before she sighed a warm, reassuring sigh.
    "If," she reasoned, "if time is contracting then what can you do about it? What difference does it make? A day to us is still a day, the sunrises and sets when it always has, just the space between those gestures, compared to how it was in our childhood, is smaller, but the rate at which we move through space, that's the same, it's not like time is getting faster and we're getting slower."
    "Not for another forty years I'd say, although mobility scooters can do some pretty brutal speeds these days. Once almost mowed me down in the park last weekend."
    "See," Helen chuckled, "everything's getter faster."
    I could see Helen's point, there is no need in getting in a bother because time is running out, then you'd only fixate on that and ignore the fact there is still time left for you to enjoy. If you think constantly about tomorrow you'll forget about today. But, by the same stroke, why should I not ponder these gigantic concerns? When I was a kid I was terrified of asteroids colliding with the Earth, as I became a teenager I began to stress over exams, then getting a job, now my monthly outgoings, and as I grow older still my worries will further narrow until it's simple things like getting out of my chair that cause me apprehension.   
    Still, if you're thinking all the time about being struck by lightning and pay no heed to other problems then you're probably more likely the type to step in front of a bus by mistake.
    I bought myself a dictaphone with a 72 hour recording lifespan and I recorded myself for one whole day, and every hour I would shout the time: "One o'clock!", etc. The following day, at the stroke of midnight, I pushed play on the recording, and as the day wore on I noticed the shouts getting ever so gradually out of sync, until the cry of "Eleven o'clock!" landed at 22:59.
    Carefully I put the dictaphone away, buried deep in the random bits and bobs of my bedside drawer, and I made a little promise to myself not to think about it again, and tomorrow I'd try and find some room for all those things I'd been putting off. I'd try and make time.

Photogenic

There are no pictures of me after my 12th birthday, which is when she started to notice what happened.

                My mother used to joke how I would always cry as a baby after having my photograph taken, but now, reflecting upon that, it's hard to see the funny side.

                She told me again and again that I could not be photographed; I thought she was just being a weird, controlling mother, perhaps worried that some sort of pedophile would want to letch over snaps of me.  That's why she didn't want me on the internet, that's why she didn't want me to go out, that's why I couldn't have my picture taken.  But it was for my own good, that's what she said, and I know that's true now.

                She took me to doctors to try and figure it all out, wrapped me up in sheets and bundled me in the back of the car just in case, and she'd stake out the waiting room for CCTV and the like, unsure as to whether that might have a similar effect.  I could just about see through the dark cloth sheets, I'd stare at the other parents and children who would, cautiously, stare at me, but only when my mother wasn't looking, they didn't mind and didn't know that I was looking right back at them.

                The doctor said that there was nothing wrong with me and my mother tutted and sighed, he wanted to take some x-rays to make sure and she called him bad names and dragged me out by the hand and back into the car.

                She had taken me out of school, I was getting home tutoring, and the teachers would be subjected to rigorous searches; they couldn't bring laptops with web-cams or mobile phones with digital cameras.  One of them asked my mother if she was Amish, she pointed sarcastically to our large plasma screen television.

                I asked my mother if I'd have to stay like this forever, she rubbed shampoo into my hair and said that one day I would be my own responsibility and then it would be up to me.

 My mother died of a brain aneurysm a few weeks after my 19th birthday, I was too scared to attend the funeral, I said goodbye to her in the front room and then people from the funeral directors took the coffin away.

                My Auntie came round afterwards and told me it was a lovely service, she'd brought some sandwiches from the wake in a Tupperware container, they were fish paste.

                She said that if I needed anything I could count on her, and then she became serious and told me that I would have to get a job, that it was strange for a girl of my age to be at home all the time.  I told her that I couldn't go outside, she scrunched up her face and said not to be silly, but then she sort of bit her lip, became more considerate and asked if I'd ever seen a psychiatrist.  I said I hadn't and she said she'd look into it for me.

My aunt arranged for the psychiatrist to visit, she asked if she wanted me to be there as well, but I said it was ok.  I was nervous, but I reasoned that I would need to begin to face things on my own now.

                The psychiatrist introduced himself to me, juggling some binders of paper from arm to arm in order to shake my hand.  He pushed his round framed glasses back up his nose and shuffled awkwardly past as I closed the door behind him.  I made him a cup of tea and he batted, somewhat embarrassed, at a dusting of biscuit crumbs that had fallen on his green woolen vest.

                After telling him about my mother's, and my, fears -during which he scribbled the occasional note on yellow paper - he began by asking me if I had any sensitivity to bright lights, I told him that I didn't, and he mumbled something about photophobia, before proceeding to suggest, more to himself than anything, that it might just be cameraphobia. He asked if there was any reason my mother might have been afraid to let me be photographed, any incident that I can remember that might have created this paranoia?

                I told him about my 12th birthday party, that it was the last time any photos had been taken of me.  He asked to see them.

The psychiatrist came back every Wednesday, and we'd talk, at first about my past, then about school, what I wanted to be, how I thought I could be those things if I wished to continue this hermitage.

                'There are cameras everywhere,' he said.

                I told him that I could work from home, and I'd already been looking into some simple work I could do in the meantime to earn some money.

                He asked if he could conduct an experiment, if I would permit him to take one photograph of me in order to observe the effects.

                As soon as he began speaking those words a cold shiver wrapped itself around my skin, as if I was standing in the cold bathroom after a hot shower.  I told him that I didn't feel comfortable with that, he tried to explain his reasoning, but I didn't want him to, I kept telling him to be quiet, but he persisted until his voice lost its earlier calm quality and began to sound like a petulant whining child.  I repeated myself over and over, but he just wasn't listening, he didn't seem to care, I wanted him to leave.

                I stood up and opened the front room door indicating that he should go, but he sat there in that chair like a dumb animal, a look of ignorant innocence on his face, and I wanted to scream at him, but I couldn't bring myself to do it, so I just reached forward and grabbed his bags and threw them outside of the house and, sheepishly, with an accusatory face, he followed.

That evening I was sat in the front room, the TV was on but it didn't show any channel, it just gave off a blue light.  I had turned the heating up even though I was trying to save money on the bills, I just wanted to feel warm and didn't fancy wrapping myself up in layers of clothing and quilts.  It was getting late, but I wasn't sleepy, in fact I was preoccupied with thoughts about those old photographs.

                I knew that in my mother's room there was a box in which she kept the photo albums, she hid them away, but I knew she liked to look at them, I had seen her many times, through the crack between the door and the frame, sitting on the edge of the bed, smiling and turning the plastic covered pages.

                My auntie had been the only person in my mother's room since she had died, I had managed to almost erase its existence from my thoughts, and when I opened the door it kicked up dust that twirled, dizzy in the moonlight.  The box was at the top of the wardrobe, squashed between neatly folded piles of linen, I eased it down carefully, standing on my tip-toes.

                Thick books, with slightly squashy blue covers, inside pages of photographs held behind sticky plastic leaf, other scraps, party invitations, birthday cards, leaflets of holiday destinations.

                Pictures of my family, my father, my mother, my grandparents, aunts and uncles, and strange children I don’t really recognise anymore, some familiar faces, youthful, radiant.  In the pictures that I appear I often seem sad, separate from the fun around me, I remember being wary of cameras as a child.  But there is nothing distinctively wrong with these photos, other than my peculiarly glum expression for a four year old.

                I turn the page, it’s Christmas, a few years later, I’m standing on a step ladder, my father supporting me, putting the Angel on top of the Christmas tree.

                Over the page and we’re on a Summer holiday, I must be about ten years old, my father had left by then, I’m not the only one looking sad in the photos now, my mother seems anxious.

                My twelfth birthday, these are the last photos of me, and I look as sullen as ever, no smile as the cake is brought out, awkward posture as my family sings happy birthday, and then the perfunctory, hurried blowing out of candles barely caught by the camera.

                The rest of the album is empty.  I put it back in the box, though underneath is a video cassette.  My mother’s television has a VHS player built-in, so I turn it on, insert the tape and watch.  It’s the same moment from my twelfth birthday as captured in the photos, the blowing out of the candles, the camera follows the cake from the kitchen, all alight, as it moves – carried by my mother – into the darkened dining room where I, and my relatives, are gathered around the table.

                As the cake approaches they begin their sing-song; ‘Happy birthday to you…’

                The camera follows the cake, there are flashes as my Uncle takes the photos I saw moments ago, and it pulls back as I lean forwards, hurriedly, to blow out the candles, someone shouting; “Make a wish!”

                As the camera looms on my face, the room disappearing into darkness, there’s a confused gasp from one of my Aunts, someone turns the lights back up and I look different, older, and I seem to be ageing as they stare at me, there’s a worried gesture, I am confused, turn to look into the lens and I am a teenager, fourteen or fifteen.  My mother drops the camera.