From Murder to Dust

14 - Pictures

Four months into the real world, and I had made three friends, become a multiversal criminal, and had the most fun I'd ever had in my life. Overall, we were a happy little crazy family, and we loved it that way. Nightmare still wouldn't let us call him 'Dad' yet, but we were determined to achieve that goal; it would happen, eventually.

"Dust, are you lapsing into thought again?" Nightmare asked.

"Um..maybe?" I replied, shrugging.

"Just take the picture!" Killer rushed.

"All right, I'm taking the picture!" 

"Takin' ya lon' enough." Horror complained.

"Well, I'm sorry! Hold still!"

I set the camera on a ten-second timer, let Paps levitate it, and rushed to my designated place. Taking a family picture was hard work, but at least everybody agreed to it; we were going to hang it right over the fireplace in the living room, since a lot of places hung pictures over the fireplace. I thought they did that because in the event of a fire, the picture was in the most vulnerable position, and would be one of the first things to burn; I took it as a representation of how much you valued your loved ones. The closer you placed the picture to the fire, the more you were willing to sacrifice for them. I didn't actually know if that was what it represented at all, but it made sense in my mind, and that was really all that mattered, right? The camera flashed, and the picture was taken; Nightmare, Killer, and Horror had also agreed to retries if the picture didn't come out right the first few times. When I checked the camera, the picture looked amazing. The shading was perfect, the mood was set, and nobody looked bad at all; well, we looked bad as in personality, but that was to be expected. 

"How's it look?" Killer tried to see the picture.

"Work of art." I responded.

"So how do ya get the picture out of the camera?"

"That is a secret."

"Aww, come on! Please?"

"Maybe after we get it on the wall."

"All right...let's hurry up then!"

"Right."

I received the copy of the picture from the camera with a little help from the camera's magic, and placed it in the frame I had set aside. It fit perfectly, as expected; it was a magical picture, so one would expect it to fit. Since receiving the camera, I had put a few memorable photos on a wall in my room, but I always left space for more. We took the framed photograph and hung it just above the fireplace, centering it perfectly; this would stay. 

"It do look good." Horror commented.

"That it does, that it does." Killer agreed.

"Wanna take more?" I offered. The camera had unlimited storage space, since it was magic, so we could literally take pictures of whatever we wanted! I always had the camera on me, so I could look through old pictures and take new ones whenever I pleased; I was becoming somewhat of a photographer. 

"Yes! Picture day!" Killer jumped on the couch, and I took a picture.

"Oh, this's gonna be good." Horror rubbed his hands together.

"Yes, it will be very exciting." Nightmare concurred.

"This should be fun to witness." Papyrus floated around, only his scarf visible to the others.

"Let's light it up!" I snapped some pictures of the photo above the fireplace before turning to the others. "Not literally, of course."

For the next hour, I took pictures of the absolutely random things Nightmare, Killer, and Horror were doing, even getting Papyrus in a lot of them; of course, only his scarf showed up in the photos, but he didn't mind. Some of the more memorable shots I got were Horror hanging from the ceiling, Killer juggling knives, and Nightmare taking a nap on the couch; he wasn't really up to the entire 'do craziness' thing. Horror and Killer were invested, though, and some of the stuff they did was more than enough to make up for Nightmare's lack of enthusiasm. We did manage to get Nightmare to agree to do one crazy thing, though.