The Shutter

I found the camera at a church yard sale in Daphne, wedged between a cracked porcelain angel and a stack of Reader’s Digest books that smelled like heat and attic. It was heavy, black metal, with a brass plate on the bottom engraved with one word: HOLD.

The woman running the table said it had belonged to the old pastor. “He used it for special moments,” she said. “Said it could stop time.”

I laughed, handed her five dollars, and forgot about it until two weeks later when the morning light hit my kitchen just right. I pointed it at the dust hanging above my coffee and pressed the shutter.

The world went still.

Not quiet. Still. The clock hands froze mid-tick. Steam from the mug hung like glass. Even the dog on the porch stayed mid-wag, tail caught between beats. I could move, but everything else waited.

When the Polaroid slid out, it wasn’t a photo. It was a window. And when I looked through it, I stepped inside.

It was my kitchen, but not. My own reflection hovered in the toaster, unmoving. I ran my finger through the steam and felt it cling like silk. Then came a faint ticking from somewhere behind my ribs. The world jerked forward, and time resumed with a gasp.

I stood in the same kitchen, holding the same cup, coffee now cold. The photo in my hand had turned gray, the window sealed.

That should have been enough. A good story to tell at dinner. But I kept thinking about that silence, the calm between breaths.

So I tried again.

The porch. The church parking lot. The dog mid-shake. The soundless shimmer of rain over Mobile Bay. Each pause felt like pressing my thumb on God’s pulse. The world waited for me to notice it.

I told myself it was harmless.

Then came Thanksgiving at my mother’s house. She had cooked for ten though there were only three of us, me, her, and her new fiancé, Henry. She was sixty-eight and shining like a woman who had decided grief had outstayed its welcome. He had a ring box in his pocket.

When he stood up to speak, I raised the camera. Just once, I told myself. Just to remember.

Click.

Henry’s mouth froze half-open. My mother’s eyes glittered mid-tear. The steam from the gravy bowl hovered, waiting. I stepped into the photograph and walked around them like ghosts in amber. My mother’s hand trembled above the tablecloth. I traced it without touching.

Inside the pause, I felt something else. A hum beneath the stillness, like the world resenting the interruption. I stayed until the ticking came again. When time snapped back, my mother said yes.

She never noticed the tear that had already dried on her cheek.

After that, I carried the camera everywhere. I stopped pretending it was for memory. It was for control.

When I paused time, nothing could hurt me. No phone calls. No bills. No aging in the mirror. Just me and the hum.

The rules appeared slowly.

I couldn’t pause the same moment twice.

I couldn’t bring anyone else inside.

The camera refused violence. It simply wouldn’t click.

But there was one rule I learned last. The camera remembers what you crave.

The more I used it, the more the pauses began to pick me. I would raise it at nothing in particular, and it would fire on its own, when my wife laughed, when a child cried outside the grocery store, when thunder crawled over the bay. The camera chose what mattered, and it seemed to think I didn’t know anymore.

I started keeping the photos in a shoebox. They were all warm to the touch, like something alive.

Then my daughter, Emily, was born.

I swore I wouldn’t use it. I told myself the world needed to breathe. But one night she lay in her crib, mouth parted, making that soft hiccup sound babies make. My wife slept beside her, exhausted, one hand resting on the blanket. The moonlight hit her ring, and it flashed like a signal.

I pressed the shutter.

Inside the pause, Emily was perfect. Every heartbeat of her belonged to me. I stayed there too long, long enough for the ticking to falter. The edges of the photograph went dark. When the world resumed, she whimpered, and for a second I thought her eyes looked older.

After that, the photographs changed. They didn’t fade to gray anymore. They stayed open. If I stared into one long enough, I could feel myself slipping sideways. I stopped needing the camera to get there.

I would close my eyes at my desk and find myself walking through those frozen rooms, the porch, the kitchen, the hospital room where Emily first blinked. Sometimes they looked different. Colors too bright. Shapes bending at the edges. Once, I swear the paused version of me turned his head.

I told myself I was imagining it. I told myself sleep would fix it. But the hum followed me into dreams.

One evening I found a photograph that wasn’t mine. It was in the shoebox, but I hadn’t taken it. My father stood in his workshop, eyes half-closed, sawdust frozen mid-air. He had been 20 ten years.

I stepped into it before I could stop myself.

The workshop smelled of oil and cedar. My father didn’t move, but his mouth was curved, as if he had been about to say my name. The hum grew louder, pressing behind my eyes. I reached toward him, and his chest shifted, just barely, but enough. The world convulsed, and I fell backward out of the photograph.

When I woke, it was morning. The camera sat on my chest. The brass plate was warm enough to burn. The word HOLD had deepened into the metal, letters gouged like fingernail marks.

I tried to stop. I put it in the attic. But every night I dreamed in still frames. People held mid-smile. Trees locked mid-wind. The hum always calling, Just one more.

Eventually, I gave in.

I took the camera to the bay at dusk, the same place I had first tested it. The sky was a bruise over the water. My wife and Emily sat behind me on the blanket, their laughter fading with the light. I lifted the camera toward them, and the shutter clicked on its own.

The world froze.

They were statues of love, her head bent toward the child, Emily’s hand reaching for her hair. I stepped inside and stood among them. The hum became words, faint but clear.

Stay.

I felt it in my bones. If I stayed long enough, I could be part of this stillness forever. No aging. No forgetting. No loss. Just an endless hush.

But something in the pause moved. Behind me.

At first I thought it was the reflection on the bay. Then I realized it was me, another version, walking across the sand toward the frozen scene, camera in hand, eyes dark and hollow. He smiled like he already knew how it would end.

The ticking started again, but slower. Like a heart giving up.

I ran back toward the edge of the photograph, but the air thickened, syrup-slow. The hum climbed into a shriek. The other me raised his camera.

I pressed mine first.

Now, when people ask why my eyes don’t quite focus, I tell them I’m tired. That is true. I am very tired.

Because somewhere, inside a picture hidden under the pier on Mobile Bay, there is a man who never left the pause. He is still holding a camera. And he is smiling at a world that will not move until he does.