Snapdragon

Don’t open the door when the light is on.

The light was on and the warning stood out in thick black letters against the red glare of the darkroom lights.

Benji Humla was the local high school art teacher, and it wasn’t his preference to be spending the first night of spring break developing his student’s film, but spending nights in the darkroom always calmed his nerves and think through issues. The students had all dropped their film off that day and it would be nice to get them ready.

The date he’d been on had started great. They’d met at the gym; she had asked for help unlocking the row machine. It turned out that she was the mother of one of his students.

“Austin, yes, he’s in my intro to photography class. Good kid, can get a little distracted at times.”

“I’m Julie Drake,” she held out her hand.

“Not Julie Knappa?” He shook her hand.

“Not since the divorce,” she smiled.

He smiled back and she began to blush.

“What is it?” He asked.

“You’re still holding my hand.”

They exchanged numbers and planned to go out the next night.

He transferred a print from the stop bath into the fixer and set a timer, folded his hands, and waited for the print to finish. He was struggling to wrap his brain around the events of the date.

The date started out normal with the usual questions: How do you like the gym? Where did you grow up? How many siblings? When is your birthday?

Then, as things usually do, conversation turned toward things in common and what Benji and Julie had in common was Austin being in his class.

“I thought, since you are such a good photography teacher, maybe you’d want to see some of my work? I may have spent the morning doing a little- click click-” she mimicked taking a picture.

“I found a one-hour developer,” she pulled out an envelope of photos.

“I’m not sure. I don't want you to think I'm critical,” Benji took the envelope hesitantly.

“Please Mr. Humla?” Julie bit her lip and batted her long lashes.

“Okay, let’s see what you got.”

The timer went off. Benji jumped from the sound, but he was safe and alone. He set up to begin rinsing the photographs in running water. He shivered when he remembered Julie's photographs.

“I was aiming for the senses. I wanted to capture a different sensation in each photo,” Julie, with animated excitement, scooted her chair closer to Benji.

The first photo was a pineapple, cut to pieces on a white cutting board with a sleek kitchen knife, bathed in barred sunlight from a half-shaded window. Dust particles floated through the lit portions of air. Despite its simplicity, it was beautiful.

“I get taste out of this photo,” Benji said, and she nodded her consent. He went on to point out her great eye for capturing the rays of sun and the angles.

The next photo was a cat, gray and fluffy, stretching with claws half extended and contrasted across the back of a white couch. It represented touch.

The next photo was a piece of shit in an open toilet.

“What the fuck,” Benji held the stack of photos away from his body.

Julie laughed, “it’s smell! Go big or go home, right?”

“Yeah, I guess it is… well done, despite subject matter,” Benji grimaced internally and flipped to the next photo.

The next photo was a cement sidewalk, cracked from side to side. Scattered across the sidewalk were several colorful flowers tossed down, each was just slightly blurry.

“I’ve seen taste, touch, smell… I am not sure if this is sight or sound.”

“Okay, so, I was originally going to do some flowers as the smell. Then I noticed that the garden was filled with bees and each bee would enter a snapdragon. When they were inside the snapdragon, I could still hear them buzzing. It was beautiful and I had to capture it.”

Benji didn’t know how to respond. He stared at Julie in silence.

“Oh, they are on the ground. Let me explain more. The bees wouldn’t stay still, so I had to staple the lips of the flowers shut while they were inside. Again, go big or go bold, so I caught about a dozen that way. They were angry. They got louder and louder. They were really shaking the flowers. I did a long exposure to show how hard they were buzzing. It’s sound. The photo represents sound,” Julie’s grinned to her ears and her eyes got wide.

“Were the bees okay?”

“I’m sure they’re okay. They’re bees. They live in flowers,” Julie laughed.

Benji couldn’t get words out, “uh, um.”

“I guess that gives away what I saved best for last. Sight!”

The timer went off and Benji jumped even harder, nearly knocking some of the chemicals off the counter. He cleared his throat, shook out his arms, and began clothes pinning photos to dry under the name of the corresponding student.

Julie’s next photo was a picture of him, zoomed into his gym shorts, taken as he left the gym yesterday.

“It was such a good sight, I had to do a little series.”

He flipped to the next photo. It was him pulling through a fast-food joint on his way home. The next photo was him exiting his car, soda straw up to his mouth, as he went into his house. The next photo was through his living room window as he unwound in front of the television. A photo of him taking out the trash. One of him, shirtless, brushing his teeth in his bathroom. There was a blurry photo zoomed in to the max, and focused on his face, through his window as he slept.

“I need to go,” Benji stood, pushing his chair back and dropping the photos. They scattered across the table and floor.

“What, no,” Julie said, immediately tearing up. She frantically began to gather the photos and bunching them back together.

“Yeah, I’m sorry, you need to stay away from me.”

“No, this was fun. It was fun! Wee had a good night. I love you, Mr. Humla. I LOVE YOU!”

Benji didn’t want to go home. She knew where he lived, he couldn’t go home. He went to the next best place: his darkroom. It was secured behind the school walls, and he could lock himself up while he considered what to do next.

He shook out the last photo and pinned it under the last student. Except that there was one student left without photos: Austin Knappa.

Benji pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed. He lifted it to his face and waited for someone to answer.

“Hey, Bethany, sorry to bother you. I just had a quick question. You have Austin Knappa in your biology class, right?”

“I did, yes.”

“Did?”

“They moved.”

“I thought you mentioned you had some issues with his parents at a parent-teacher?

“Kind of, I mean I thought his mother was a bitch, but it turns out she is just not from around here and cultural differences… you know how it goes. She ended up joining the PTA board. We worked on some proposals together. Austin hasn’t been in my class since they moved though.”

“How long did they take off to move?”

“Didn’t you get your updated class rosters? His mom took him back to Sweden two weeks ago.”

“Bethany, I need to go,” Benji hung up and started to dial the police when he heard a crash from outside the darkroom like a window in his classroom had broken. The red lights began to blink, a warning that the revolving door was beginning to spin. He dropped his phone and ran to the door, jumping inside before it could spin all the way around. He held onto the rim of the door and pressed his foot into the other side to hold it in place.

“Mr. Humla. Mr. Humla?!” Her voice was muffled by the thick plastic of the doorway.

“You can’t open the door when the lights are on,” Benji said.

“Please, Mr. Humla. I love you!”

The door spun a little more and Benji found himself in the pitch black of the circular room, “you need to leave. Please go.”

“I love you! If I can’t have you…”

“I’m calling the police,” Benji felt for his phone and remembered he’d dropped it in the darkroom. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck fuck!”

“You are so beautiful, Mr. Humla. I can capture your beauty.”

A pair of scissors thrust through the revolving door, piercing the thick plastic in both the inner and outer shell, and catching Benji in the wrist as he held the door closed. He pulled back his hand and felt a gush of flowing blood.

Benji tried to open the door, but the scissors held the door tightly jammed. He pounded his fist on the door and howled.

Another pair of scissors pierced through the door, barely missing his pounding fist. Then another. Then a scalpel.

“Stop,” Benji yelled and slammed a fist at the door, “please.”

“My best work yet,” Julie said as another pair of scissors pushed through.

Benji could smell the blood drenching his shirt and soaking into the waistline of his jeans. He gripped his arm and held it above his head, but he quickly began to grow tired. He slumped to the ground as several more scalpels and scissors sliced through the door.

“These might be my best photos yet,” he heard Julie say from his pitch-black tomb.