Fate Developing

It knows us all, every one of us. Our faces, our habits. Our future. It knows everything about us.1

It does not remember when life began, or even a beginning to the endless process. It does not remember developing the first photograph, or why it did. All it knows is that it spends all of time bending and soaking and drying the film. 2

The film fills up the basket in the back of the dark stone cave. It never see’s the film arrive, or who puts the film there, but it has never seen the basket empty. It is flooded with film always.3

It does not know much, it thinks sometimes. And it is true. It does not know how, but it knows that the photographs it develops are the fate of things. There are photographs of love and hate and pain. They decide everything, from the next president to whether a flower freezes before it has a chance to bloom. After each picture comes out, it peers into it, holding it up to the light. It holds the photograph in its shaky hands, its rough gray skin almost blending into the stone behind it. It knows the future. It see’s the solutions to all problems, deaths that come before their time. It comes to know the people, the animals pictured there. It knows them all; no one can hide from it.4

The skin on its hands turned red long ago. The skin peels away painfully, and it winces every time it holds a photograph beneath the stinging liquid. Sometimes it wonders what would happen if it stopped developing the photographs, just let them pile up in the basket and lie down in the dusty bed. The bed. It has not used the bed in so long. It is so tired, just so tired that sometimes while developing a picture things turn black and its head hurts and hurts but it just keeps on working because that is all it knows.5

If I changed the photographs, it thinks, what would happen? I could blot out parts, make things good in the world. I could make a difference, be in control of fate.6

But it has never tried. It does not know what will happen if it does and that scares it. It always knows what will happen years and years before. Secretly, it knows it is afraid of what will happen to it. There was never a fated photograph of it, bending over the trays, or keeling over, lying cold on the floor. It cannot defy fate. It knows, though, that its time will come. In time, all things have a photograph.7

So it goes on, developing your future. It knows, it always knows.8

One day it takes a roll of fragile film from the basket and holds it down, drowning it in the harsh fluid. It hangs the photographs up to dry and when they are over, like every other day, it holds them up to what light fights its way down to its cave.9

For the first time, the photograph falls from its stinging hands. The pictures, before just pictures, are sharper now, the images more solid, more real. It can see the people screaming, the grief echoed on people’s faces as they sit; alone, trapped in their minds. It can almost hear the tortured screams of the wolves as they run from their homes, their cubs left behind to burn. Everything gone, just blank nothing. No trees, no world, no cave deep under life and forgotten.10

Now. Now is the time, it thinks. No, it knows. Surely nothing more horrible than this can come from what it does. Now is the time to act.11

“I am the only one who can defy fate,” it says out loud. “I know fate and it cannot control me.”12

It takes the film from the basket first, and tears it in its hurting hands. This is one pain it can handle. It shreds them, thinking of the future’s lost. It turns, expecting the basket to be full again like it has always been, but there is no film. The basket looks lost and bewildered without a purpose.13

It turns to the photographs it has developed before. It has kept them on the wall’s, pictures of everything. It never looks back at the pictures from before. Now, though, it takes them down and laughs as he shreds them apart.14

There are millions of them, hundreds, but time warps and slows in that place beneath life and it gets them all down, all shredded. 15

At last it takes the newest photographs of the destruction. It cries as it tears them very carefully into pieces. It has never cried before.16

“I have defied fate!” it shouts. “I have changed the future.”17

Its aching hands are burning. It ignores them, it is used. It closes its eyes and waits for something to happen. Something big, something that will change the future.18

It thinks suddenly, what if me developing the pictures doesn’t matter? What if the future is the same and the photographs were only that- photographs. Documenting time, not dictating it.19

The burning is too intense, too much. Something is wrong. It opens its eyes and screams shrilly. 20

It’s hands are on fire. Hot, furious flame is eating at his gray skin. It is unnaturally fast, it burns too quickly. It tries to put it out but there is nothing in the room but the developing fluid. It sticks in its hands but they catch and suddenly flame is latching onto its shoulders and its bare skull. It is all over it and it is burning away at it, destroying it.21

From far, far above noise reaches the cave for the first time. It can hear the screams of wolves and the weeping of children as the same supernatural fire eats at their world.22

It cries again but it is too hot for tears. It see’s something on the floor and, even as the fire is killing it, it reaches down to pick it up.23

It is the last photo, the last photo of them all. The last photograph of the future. It shows a hunched, white eyed gray creature covered in flame, its hands clutching a photograph.24

The last picture falls to the ground, slowly, to rest beside the pile of gray, gray ash.25