📸 Through the Same Lens

Elliot tightened his grip on his camera as he and Marcus stepped into the abandoned house. The air inside was thick, damp, and wrong, carrying a scent that wasn’t just dust and rot but something deeper—something wet.

They had spent months chasing ghost stories, but this time, they had a plan. Identical cameras, identical lenses, shooting the same thing at the same time. If something appeared in one but not the other… it meant it was real.

The first few shots were normal—peeling wallpaper, shattered glass, broken furniture. Then Marcus exhaled sharply.

“Dude. Look.”

Elliot leaned in, his stomach twisting.

In Marcus’s shot, the hallway wasn’t empty.

A figure loomed at the end, tall and grotesque, its body swollen and distended like a drowned corpse. Its skin was translucent, stretched too thin, revealing things moving underneath. Its head lolled to one side, attached by a strip of meat, and its jaw hung too wide, like a snake unhinging before a meal. But its hands—its hands weren’t hands at all. They were mouths. Dozens of them, layered over knotted muscle and bone, gaping, gasping, licking.

Elliot checked his own shot.

Nothing.

The hallway was empty.

“No. No, no, no.” Elliot’s breath came fast, panic clawing up his throat. “That’s not possible.”

Marcus snapped another shot.

The thing had moved.

It was closer now.

Its stomach was splitting apart in hairline fractures, something pressing against the skin from the inside. Tiny, malformed hands, pushing. Clawing.

Marcus swallowed hard. “One more.”

The cameras clicked in unison.

Elliot’s hands shook as he checked the screen.

The thing was right behind Marcus.

A wet shlorp echoed through the room. Elliot blinked.

Marcus was gone.

Not taken. Not dragged away.

Just… gone.

His clothes lay in a heap, still folded into the shape of a body. His camera rested on top, its strap still looped as if around an invisible neck.

A sound slithered through the air—something between a giggle and the wet crack of bones breaking.

Elliot turned slowly.

The thing was still there.

But its head had changed.

It had Marcus’s face now.

Skin sagging, eyes blank, mouth twitching in an almost-smile. Black veins pulsed beneath the surface. The mouths on its hands chewed on something.

Something red.

Elliot’s fingers numbed as he raised his camera.

Click.

The screen blinked.

The thing wasn’t in the picture.

But Elliot was.

His own reflection stared back at him, but it wasn’t him.

His skin wriggled. Something inside was moving. His mouth stretched wider, wider, too wide, tearing at the edges. His eyes sank inward, collapsing into oozing pits.

The giggling grew louder.

Something whispered his name.

He turned the camera around, desperate, hands shaking.

Click.

The final image on his camera, found the next day, showed the house from outside.

A house that hadn’t existed in over a hundred years.

And in the doorway, two figures.

Smiling.

Too wide.

Still waiting.

For someone new to look through the lens.

—————————

Author’s Note

Photography is meant to capture truth. But what if it doesn’t? What if there are things that only exist when the lens allows them to? Things that don’t just want to be seen… but want to see you back.

This story was inspired by the idea that some cameras don’t just take pictures; they take pieces of the people who use them. And once you’ve captured something that wasn’t meant to be seen, it captures you.

So next time you take a picture and something feels… off, ask yourself:

Are you looking through the lens?

Or is something looking through it at you?

Sleep tight. 😈