PHOTO

'Masa-kun, oh Masa-kun!’ A mother calling a young child. Hint of teacher summoning unruly student. Slightest hint of menace in the multi-coloured voice. Starts in her mid-riff. Warms to the task as it rises. ‘Masa-kun, I have given you many photos of myself.’ Seventeen at last count. Nearly twenty pieces of her to learn. ‘But I have none of you. No-one does. Only the old ones from before, but they are school photos from five years ago.’ Relics of my allocated five seconds. Step forward, turn right, smile, flash, next. Hurry hurry children, so many to get through. I have three more schools to do today. Now one of the teachers. That is a nice suit. From Aoki? How much? Really? That is a very good price indeed.

‘I want to take a photo of you. I am tired of talking to a door, Masa-kun. I know the door is very important to you, Masa, but you are skin and bone and blood, not wood. You don’t have to open the door. We can start with a foot if you like. Nothing big, just a foot. If that isn’t too bad we can keep going. Is that OK, Masa-kun?’

I don’t say anything. There is too much at stake. I have no desire for a photo. But if I don’t give her one, then what? Will she stop giving me kitty polaroids? That can’t happen. I need them to understand her. I am nearly halfway there. So much rides on this decision. A photo lets her in. Just a tiny bit. Never through the door. Not that. She can hear me thinking anyway. She must be able to. She can make me do whatever she wants. But not open the door. Maybe a photo isn’t so much. What do you think, Meika? ‘A photo can’t hurt you, Masa-kun. It just stores a little piece of you, a back-up only. It doesn’t take a part of you away with it, just a memory of you in the moment it was taken. Can you spare me a part of one moment, Masa-kun? I have three more photos for you.’ Plain bribery, a child’s trick, all dishonesty. Give me this and I’ll give you that. How the world works today. But I want those three photos. Three plus seventeen makes twenty to one. One photo of my foot by the slot. That’s all. One snap of my grimy, smelly, filth-encrusted foot. The dirt is now part of the calluses. More a paw or a pad than a foot. Long black nails curling into themselves. Almost a claw. Not the foot I remember. Not one I study through the slot. Not a part of me anymore. Not me. I can give that to her. She won’t get closer to me than that. ‘One photo, Masa-kun, that’s all I ask.’ Left or right is the only decision remaining. Toss a mental coin. Right it is.


The trapezoid of weak light by the slot. The bright invader of my gloom. Bravest of the watts surviving the entry. A frame for the claw at leg’s end. I can’t look at it. This abominable sign of what I am now. I endure it because the alternative is worse. The pain of laughter and stares outside. Cramps can disappear. Muck can be washed off. Nails can be trimmed. The world can’t see me like this. But she isn’t the world. She’s just a girl with a camera. I plant my foot in the light. Soil and light combine for growth. I imagine my foot growing if it lingers. Sprouting extra toes and broadening at the instep. Prize organic feet, are they cage or free-range? Masayuki: winner, amateur grower division, Tokyo Show, 2009. Blue ribbon feet, black ingrained skin.

The light feels warm on my feet. Dipping the toes into a weak sun. Just like being at the beach again. Flesh on show, best in show. I don’t know how it should pose. Raised or flat; front-on or side view? Front-on is easiest. No chance of her getting both feet in her shot. No two-for-the-price-of-one customer specials today. Not ever. I centre the right in the light. Five toe-claws to the fore. Left off to the side. Face inches from the door. All of me so close to outside. Two inches of wood from me to there. I haven’t been this close in five years. I can’t smell it, not past my stench. But I know it’s there. In the hall with her and her camera.

I hear more scuffling and scrabbling. ‘Are you ready, Masa-kun?’ Does it matter? ‘Are you smiling?’ For a picture of my foot? ‘The rest of you speaks when your mouth does not, Masa-kun. Hold still now.’ There are shadows in the light now. A chime as the digicam is switched on. Orange glow on my ankle from the flash. Bigger shadows: she must be focusing. ‘Ready? Ichi, ni, san!’


The flash explodes through the slot. Bursting and filling the dank air like fireworks. Bouncing off stained walls and curling posters. Dancing across the filthy floor. Split second glimpses of my world. Jarring visions of my shame. And the light is not fading or flying. Becoming impossibly stronger instead. White light arcing and spinning, weaving its web. I am still rooted to my spot. The left foot still awaits its glory times. But the light is gathering around me. Sweeping up the memories and the dust. White brilliance melting into silver. Silver rushing everywhere around me. Closing in on me, shy to the touch. No relenting now, my mind cannot function. This is impossible. The thing that can’t be happening is. The silver is settling, collapsing on itself. The mercury falls inwards, dragging me along. I am collapsing, origami in the rain. The silver speech shrinks, drawn inwards, downwards. Towards the slot, towards the camera’s lens. It is the mouth of this word. The home of this exclamation. Spat out into the world to fend alone. Now it returns with me.

She draws me in, the mouthless face getting bigger and closer. I am dreaming, falling, drowning. And stop.