1
I walked along the thin dirt path, camera in hand. It was cool this morning, with mist covering the surrounding bushlands. I’d had to pull a jumper on when I would’ve rather been sleeping in bed under the quilt, because while I knew these shitty low-lying clouds of water vapour looked gorgeous on film, they were not much fun to walk through. I paused and took a breath, all feelings of discomfort fading. For a moment, I wasn’t Kira, not my body nor my conditions, all of it falling away until there was only what I saw. Through the viewfinder, the mist transformed from cold inducing nuisance to eerily beautiful, and the stark stands of trees in the background conjured up feelings of windswept moors and women in period dresses, running towards broodily dysfunctional, hot men. At least, that’s what I hoped as I took the shots.
Click, click, click.
I captured some big empty shots with not enough detail for a landscape but perfect for compositors to add gaunt models or rugged looking SUVs in front of. I twisted the lens, zooming in to take some close-ups, snippets of the wider landscape, good for mood boards and small product shots. I crouched down low, looking up, so the trees loomed menacingly, the sky white and stark against the clawing black limbs. This was my bread and butter kind of shot. To the person clicking through page after page of glossy stock photos on the big websites, if they wanted moody and creepy, I was their girl. My best friend, Jenny, says I have this unique knack for turning the most innocent thing into something weird, which is perhaps why it was now that she stumbled across me.
“Fuck, more creepy trees and mist?”
I jumped out of my skin, nearly dropping my bloody expensive camera, something that had her grinning wildly at me.
“What the fuck, Jen!”
“Why the creepy again, Kira? Seriously, we can jump on a plane to Bali. Sun, sand, someone willing to massage us for hours, and you can take shot after shot of gorgeous me in the brand-new bikini I bought.”
My best friend struck a pose, and weirdly, it worked. She might have been rugged up with winter woolies and a beanie over her long white hair, but Jen had always had the unerring ability to look incredibly beautiful, no matter what she was doing. My finger itched as she stood in front of the trees. If she dropped the pose, let her hands drop listlessly, pulled the hat off, and looked off to the right as the wind lifted her hair…
“You’re doing it again, aren’t you? Stop composing photos, and listen to me. Bali, we could do it. Daddy will pay.” Jen reached out to put a hand in front of my lens, forcing me to look at her with my own eyes.
“That bikini, the one that looks like you have to cut off your labia to wear it? No thanks, there is not enough money in the world for me to spend the day Photoshopping your stubble off your mound.”
“So prosaic. Remind me again why we’re friends?” she said, linking her arm in mine, though thankfully, not the one holding the camera.
“Because I was the only one willing to talk to you on your first day at school. Everyone was too intimidated by the rich girl with the looks.”
“Yep, everyone but you. Shall we go and grab a hot chocolate and a scone at the caf?”
“I just need to shoot one more thing…”
“Kira! It’s freezing and creepy, and I only came out here to do my daily cardio and that’s done, so let’s go,” she whined, tugging at my arm.
I heard a skitter behind me. There were plenty of critters in an area of bush like this. Lizards, mice, rats, and a whole host of things that would run away from me on tiny little feet as I tramped along, but there were some that caught at my ear. People have asked me why it was those ones, and I’ve never been able to tell them. Most noises blend in with the cacophony of hisses and clicks and skitters you usually hear, but some pricked at my ears. I took a step towards the trees, raising my camera. I had to. Things would get a little hinky when I heard the sounds. I pressed down the shutter release. Click, click, click. I listened, because I couldn’t trust my eyes.
If I’d tried to focus, I knew what I’d see. It was as if the world was a stylised glitchy bit of footage, where the image distorted and jerked in response to the editor’s tweaking, giving it an edgy look. It was a whole lot different when your eyes did the same. The trees loomed and shrank, danced and twisted as I forced my vision to blur. A sharp pain started in my temple, reminding me not to look, don’t look. Looking meant pain, looking meant being wiped out for the day as lightning bolts smashed into my skull and crackled across my eyes, even as I kept them closed. Looking meant more chats with the specialists where they bandied around terms like ‘vestibular migraine’ and ‘psychosomatic’. The camera clicked and clicked, while Jen’s hand was warm against my arm as I tried to capture whatever it was that had set me off.
“It’s OK, Ki. It’ll be OK.”
I heard her low croon as the urge left me. My eyes ached, and I was forced to drop my head down by my knees as a wave of dizziness washed over me. I was grateful when Jenny took the camera from me. It was as if all of a sudden, the world spun faster on its axis and I was at the centre of it.
“Let’s get you to the car. I didn’t walk down, it’s too damn cold. Let’s get you inside and get you to the caf. Espresso stat, right?”
I tried to nod, but the movement sent cascades of pain through my head.
“OK, let’s go.”
I became a photographer as a kid to see the truth. Sick of my little turns, my parents gave me a camera. They’d taken me to doctors and specialists, psychologists and psychiatrists, because back then, what I saw wasn’t so much of a mystery. Back then, I had a convenient explanation for my neurological interestingness. I thought I saw faeries.
“C’mon, here we go. Bit of a drop, then you’re in a seat. I made sure to keep you away from the windows,” Jenny said. I fell into the chair gratefully, the weird colours playing behind my eyes flashing bright like fireworks as I did so. The drive over, smooth as silk I’m sure, had them sparking each time we made a turn. “It’s OK, love.” She patted my hand. “Oi! You! I’ll give you fifty bucks, right now, if you get me an espresso on this table within a minute.”
“You serious?” I heard the rustle of money. “Right you are, ma’am.”
I sat there in a timeless cocoon of pain, unsure if the server took two minutes or twenty days to bring the coffee. I was just pain, until Jen grabbed my hands and pushed a hot cup into them.
“It should be OK, but test it. I added some cold water.”
“Thanks,” I croaked, my voice clogged with tears.
“It’ll be OK, love. Just get the coffee into you.”
I was powerless to resist her command, as the lilt in her voice somehow got me to lift the cup with shaking hands, and I took a sip.
It was dark and acrid and just what I needed. I could almost feel the slow relaxing of the pain receptors in my skull as I drank it down. I couldn’t afford to savour it. As soon as I felt it was safe to drink, I took great mouthfuls of the coffee, sculling it like you would a beer. I opened my eyes a crack, instantly regretting it, but saw a blurry Jen pushing another cup at me. When it was cool enough, I drank that one down too.
I leant back in my chair, carefully. The pain was beginning to recede, but my brain still felt like it was made of glass. All of the muscles in my neck were rigid and sore from bracing against it. I tried to lower my shoulders, but they protested as I forced them down.