Scary Stories

90

Lenny was an artist.

Many people, of course, would disagree, but he knew better. They could call his photographs silly, call his subjects abused, but those critics just didn't understand. You see, Lenny was an artist, a photographer, and his favorite models were lizards.

Yes, lizards. He had dozens of them, small green ones and large blue ones, ones that ran fast on tiny clawed toes and ones that would camouflage into their surroundings. And he loved them, each and every one. In fact, Lenny loved his lizards so very much that he used them to create his art.

First, he would place them in the refrigerator. He wouldn't let them freeze to death; he would simply wait for their blood to chill enough to still their movements. At that point, Lenny would remove them from the refrigerator and bend them into various poses. Once his precious lizards were placed just so, he would take out his box of tiny costumes and dress them up. His favorite outfits were the tiny Victorian suits he had sewn for them. He thought the lizards looked dashing in long tails and top hats.

Once his lizards were properly outfitted, Lenny would finally snap the pictures. Every day he would send them in to the local newspaper. The people in the offices would receive his submissions and sigh, or roll their eyes, muttering about the crazy lizard man. Needless to say, not a single one of his pictures was ever published. That didn't stop the submissions, though.

One day, however, the local newspaper's office received absolutely nothing from Lenny. The columnist who usually dealt with the horrible photos just shrugged it off, figuring he was in for double trouble the next day. But the next day, there were no pictures. The columnist began to feel uneasy. On the third day with no submissions, he called the police.

The responding officers, the medical personnel, and later, the coroner, never managed to explain what truly happened to the unfortunate Lenny. According to the police report, two police officers reported to his house for a well-being check, and found a horrible sight awaiting them in Lenny's studio.

Lenny's body had been propped upright in a desk chair. His skin, tinged blue, was garlanded with frost. His eyes were open, and his face was twisted in a mask of terror. He had been dressed in a Victorian suit, complete with a top hat, an outfit that had been rented anonymously from a costume shop in a nearby town. His whole body had been twisted to face the tripod on which his prized camera sat. But by far the most macabre element of the scene was the framed photograph that was gripped tightly in Lenny's frozen hands. The killer, the police would come to decide, had taken the picture, but the one thing they couldn't figure out was why the murderer had posed so many lizards in the snapshot.

It would remain a mystery.