My mom loved taking pictures. Or let's just say my entire family did. They'd put on the fake smiles and poses in front of the camera, and the second it turned off, they revealed their ugly, angry, and depressing faces behind them.
They’d miss no opportunity to take pictures. Birthday parties, anniversaries, New Year’s, Christmas, at restaurants, and even at funerals. They’d stop at nothing. Their phones were full of pictures of each and every event of their lives, as if they feared the moments would slip away if not captured.
I hated it when they forced me to be part of this madness. To smile even in my darkest times, just for what? To be seen by one or two people for a fraction of a second? The weight of those forced smiles felt like a thousand needles pricking at my skin.
Today was no different. My parents had been saving money for quite a while now to finally rent a private jet so we could visit my grandparents back in India. They hired two pilot for a suspiciously cheap price.
The entire trip consisted of 14 people: me, my mom and dad, and all my relatives. It should’ve been an exciting experience, but instead, it felt like a chore—a grim obligation dressed up as a grand adventure.
The morning was a rush. My mom woke me up four hours earlier, and I spent most of the time gaming anyway. But my parents were acting unusually weird today. When I was in the shower, I heard my mom shouting, "Take some pictures in the shower, Nathan." At first, I didn’t hear her clearly, so I shouted back asking her to repeat, but no answer came.
When I was done showering, I reached my mom, who was packing at the time, and asked what she was yelling.
She looked up, her eyes full of emptiness, and said, “You must still be half asleep so early in the morning.” Her voice was hollow, like she was speaking from somewhere far away.
I asked no more of this and went back to my room to get dressed. I removed my towel and grabbed my underwear, but stopped dead in my place when I heard a 'ClIcK' sound, like a photograph being taken, coming from the door.
I immediately wrapped the towel back around me and ran to the door, finding my dad sitting all the way across the hall on the couch with his phone in his hands.
“What was that, Father?” I asked, huffing slightly from the sudden rush of adrenaline.
“What?” My father replied in an aggressive manner, his usual calmness replaced by an edge I hadn’t heard before.
“I thought I heard some sound just now and was jus—”
“There’s no sound here, boy,” he cut me off, glaring at me with eyes that seemed almost... vacant. “Go back and change before you make us miss our damn flight.”
This was the first time in many years he had yelled at me, and his anger over something so trivial didn’t make any sense. A cold, creeping dread began to settle in my gut, but I pushed it aside and quietly went back to my room to change.
The rest of the time at home was way too weird to describe. The house was usually full of chatter from my mom and dad, and I constantly threw in lame jokes to add to the environment, but today it was dead silent. The only noise was the rustling of their packing.
As we made our way to the airport, I kept my head down, replaying the events of the morning in my mind. Something felt off—like we were all pretending to be something we weren’t, but the act was slipping.
We met up with all our relatives at the airport, and I’ve never been happier to see my cousins. For a brief moment, their presence seemed to dispel the heavy, oppressive atmosphere that had been weighing on me.
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We slowly boarded the plane, and I sat next to my cousin, Ziyush.
“Your first time?” I asked, trying to shake off the unease.
“Yep,” Ziyush replied, his voice quieter than usual.
“Mine too. We’ll switch for the window seat every 30 minutes if that’s fine with you.”
“Sure,” he agreed, but there was a flatness in his tone that I couldn’t quite place.
It had been the first time in my 14 years of life that I’d been in the open and wide skies. The view outside was astounding, almost enough to make me forget the strange events of the morning. Ziyush was sleeping for most of the time on the plane, so I took the window seat for more than 30 minutes. He can cry me a river for it, I thought, trying to lighten my mood.
Soon, I fell asleep myself. I dreamt of the cat my grandma used to have. In the dream, the cat lay on my lap, meowing softly. Suddenly, she jumped on my grandma's shoulders and started hissing, her eyes glowing with a strange, malevolent light. I tried to take her away, but before I could do anything, she slashed at my grandma’s eyes with her sharp nails. Blood gushed from the wounds as my grandma screamed, but when I tried to stand up to save her, I realized I had no legs. I had no hands. I had nothing. I was nothing.
I woke up with a huge gasp, my heart pounding in my chest. Everyone in the plane was staring at me with wide, unblinking eyes.
“I’m sorry, everyone. Uh, just a... bad dream,” I said, feeling extremely weakened and more than a little embarrassed. I reached for some water, trying to shake off the lingering terror of the dream.
But as I looked around, I realized something was terribly wrong. No one in the plane had taken their eyes off me. Everyone kept staring, their expressions blank and unnerving. For a second, I looked behind me, convinced there was something or someone they were really looking at, but behind me was what i had left behind.
“Umm, is everything okay?” I asked nervously, my voice trembling.
No one said a thing. That wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that everyone in the plane—all 13 other passengers, including Ziyush—took out their phones and started continuously taking pictures of me.
ClIcK. ClIcK. ClIcK.
“What the hell, Ziyush? What is everyone doing?” I yelled, a yell full of nothing but horror and confusion.
ClIcK. ClIcK. ClIcK.
I unbuckled my seatbelt and stood up, panic rising in my throat. “What is wrong with everybody? Why are you all clicking pictures?” I screamed, shaking. “Is this a prank? Mom, Dad, please, can someone explain?”
ClIcK. ClIcK. ClIcK.
I ran to the side of the seats, and everyone’s camera followed me wherever I went, their expressions unchanged, their movements eerily synchronized.
Their eyes unmoved, they were completely empty. Their faces had no emotions nor expression. Nothing but emptiness and coldness.
ClIcK. ClIcK. ClIcK.
“It’s not funny, you all!” I shouted, tears welling up in my eyes. The terror was consuming me, a suffocating fog that clouded my thoughts.
ClIcK. ClIcK. ClIcK.
Their reply was nothing but the continuous snapping of pictures, their faces expressionless, full of terror and emptiness. I ran to the cockpit door, desperate for some semblance of sanity. Everyone stood up and followed, their cameras pointed at me, the relentless ClIcK. ClIcK. ClIcK echoing in my ears.
I had no other option but to burst into the cockpit. I slammed the door shut behind me and turned to the pilots, my heart racing. But what I saw made the blood in my veins turn to ice.
The pilots were staring at me with the same emotionless faces, their eyes devoid of any humanity.
“Everyone outside has gone crazy! They keep taking pictures without saying anything, and I ca—” I tried to explain, my voice breaking with fear, but before I could finish, the pilots pulled out their phones.
ClIcK. ClIcK. ClIcK.
My mind snapped. I lunged at one of the pilots, ripping the phone out of his hand and throwing it at his face. The phone hit him hard, and he fell forward, slamming into the controls. The plane lurched violently, pitching downward at a terrifying angle.
I fell against the glass, struggling to get my hands on what looked like the steering wheel of the plane, but I couldn’t reach it. Beyond the clouds was a town. From the looks of it, it was the town of Haven. We were falling there with no control whatsoever.
From behind me came the sound of ClIcK. ClIcK. ClIcK. The pilot, in his final moments, did nothing but take pictures of me as I struggled in vain.
I waited for the inevitable to come. Tears streamed down my face, but it didn’t help. I wondered what those pictures would capture in my last seconds—fear, despair, or something else entirely.
But the answer didn’t matter. Because in a few moments, there would be nothing left to capture. For the final moments of my small journey, i thought of life, love and death.