The birds, whistling away in the trees; the insects, buzzing all around me in the air; the stream, burbling away, the current fast; the camera, in my hands, beeping as I navigate through the recent photos I have taken. After I finish reviewing my photos, I hold the camera up to my eye, waiting for the right scene to come in.
After a while; there it is. I see a kingfisher fluttering down to drink from the stream. I quietly snap the photo, the noise startling the bird slightly, making it flutter into the air again. It comes down from the branches again to dive into the water. I wait, and then, the kingfisher surfaces, holding a small fish in its claws, and that's when I snap another picture. The perfect moment; the kingfisher holding a fish, with water droplets spraying out behind it, and the woods as a background to the subject.
I review the photo, glancing over it. It's quite good, captured at just the right moment. A cool wind blows through me, and I shiver. I think it's time to go home now. 40 photos per day are quite enough.
I stand up from my crouching position and brush all the dried autumn leaves off my coat. I jog back to my car, hidden in a shroud of bushes at the edge of the woods. The sun is just beginning to set below the horizon, and the sky is turning a nice pink colour. I decide to snap one more picture of the colourful sky. Then, I get into my car, turn the key, and start backing out of the bushes, and onto the road that will take me home.
As I enter the highway, with cars rushing back and forth on the multiple lanes, I notice the droplets of rain splattering on the windscreen. It's nighttime, the darkness being covered by thick clouds. Soon, it's pouring. Rain hammers down onto the roof of the car, filling my ears with a metallic sound that accompanies me all the way into town.
As I enter my (yes, I consider it to be my own) town, the lightning starts. I navigate the tiny streets, as thunder crashes in my ears. As the storm continues, I notice that my windscreen is fogging up with my breath, obstructing my view of the road, so I wipe some off with my sleeve, just as another flash of lightning illuminates the world around me.
And that's when I see it. A tallish figure standing in the middle of the road. I swear under my breath, and swerve the car to the side, just missing the curb and slowing to a halt in a restaurant parking lot.
"What the hell?" I exclaim.
What was that? Was that a hallucination? Or was it a real person?
I look back to where the figure had been standing, but there was no one there. I shake my head. There was nothing there, it was just my wild and photographic imagination running away with me.
I continue driving, making my way to Hill Street, which is the house I lived in, my mind still on the figure in the road. I slide into the driveway, get out of my car, shut the door, and went into the house.
A hallway leads into the lounge room where I go and slump down on the couch. The kitchen, where I suppose Mum and Dad are, is behind me, and the light from it shines into the lounge. I hear muffled chatting going on there. "Mum, Dad! I'm home!"
Dad enters the lounge and stares down at me disapprovingly. "And why may you be home so late, huh?"
"I was out photographing," I say.
"After school? For that long?" Mum says, following Dad.
"Yeah, there's a lot of waiting involved in it."
"Waiting for what exactly?" Dad asks.
"The right moment to photograph," I sigh. "It's not like photography comes to you like that." I snap my fingers to illustrate my point.
"Mmmm hmmm", my Dad says, in an unconvinced tone.
I roll my eyes as hard as I can.
- - -
We sit down to eat dinner.
"So, what photographs have you taken today?" Mum asks, clearly trying to make up for the earlier conversation.
I get my camera to show them the photos. As I scroll through them, I notice something in each of them. But before I can take a closer inspection, Dad says, "Well, you are certainly talented at capturing 'the right moment'."
I smile at his compliment. "Thanks, Dad."
After dinner is finished, I turn on the TV in the lounge room and start watching, with the lights down low, but I wasn't really absorbing what was going on, on the screen. I was looking through the photos, trying to find out what I had seen before, at dinner. But, since the lights were quite low, I couldn't see anything, so, after a while, I just put my camera down and start another show.
- - -
In bed, I lie on my mattress, thinking about the figure in the road. I can't help it. I know it was just a figment of my imagination, but my mind still won't rest, so I decide to turn the light on and go through my older photos, just to take my mind off the figure.
But then, just as I switch my bedroom light on, I see the figure, the same figure that I had seen in the road, in my bedroom. I only can see it for a fraction of a second before I flinch, my fingers accidentally turning the switch off in the race to put my hands over my mouth to stifle my scream. It had had a long, slender body. It had appeared to be made of shadows, black and imposing.
I take a shaky breath, then walk slowly over to where it had been standing, and swiped my hand through where I thought it was. There was nothing there. I sighed with relief. It was just my imagination. It had been so focused on the figure in the road, it conjured the figure up here. That was what I told myself as I crawled into bed.
But, one part of my mind niggled at me. It said, "It's real."
