Everything But The Cameras

He vomited when he first saw the pictures, throwing them on the
B&;B bed, and covering the white rug next to the dressing table with
a garishly orange pile of sick. Man after man, face after face, all
different, but all young and pretty, like him, and her. There was a
pattern, a rhythm to the photos. Him naked, her naked, then both of
them, flushed and sweating, presumably taken by them holding a side of
the camera each. Afterwards. Next. Him naked, her
naked&;#8230;
The last set of pictures had made him cry, simply because of the final
few. Her solemn face, her eyes hard, her lips pulled in tight and thin.
A close up picture of her vaginal area, which made him flinch. And then
a picture of his own hapless face, baggy and soggy.

Steffan had thought at first that he'd somehow walked into the wrong
flat, had the wrong key, had got lost. The door, the door they'd
painted blue with red skeletons in comedy sexual poses around the edge
of the frame, slammed shut behind him but he didn't notice. His lips
slowly parted, forming a ring through which he began to breathe,
controlled and deep, closing his eyes, and slumping down onto the
floor. He thought about the first time they'd met, on the beach. Both
alone, both reading, each needing another half to rub suntan lotion
into their pale backs. He'd thought he had her, and had slowly leaned
towards her freckled face for a kiss, when she'd burst into teasing
laughter and jumped up, ran into the sea, diving in and skimming its
surface as she did so. When she surfaced two minutes later, she ran out
with the same ferocity, and ploughed up the beach and jumped on him,
showering him with sand that stuck to the hair on his forearms. She
tasted of salt, she tingled.

He took one more breath, in through the nose and blowing out hard
through the mouth, then opened his eyes. Everything was hazy and too
bright, and he didn't feel he could stand just yet, so he put his arms
on the floor in front of his feet and pulled himself forward, crawling
to meet the tide. The space he had to move around was very limited.
She'd left a small space for the door to open and, he thought bitterly,
for him to collapse in exactly the way she'd imagined. The rest of the
room was devastated. He felt like he should have a picture to show
anyone who might ever use that word in front of him in the future, so
he could take it out, slowly bring it up in front of their eyes. "This
is devastated. This is what it looks like, tastes like, feels like,
sounds like, smells like."

It was basically a pile of rubbish, a mountain of useless and broken
things. She didn't seem to have left anything intact. Even the
curtains, he noticed, the seventies style floral curtains they'd picked
out together on a big trip to Habitat, were shredded, cut up into long
strips like the first stage in making a Chinese lantern. He looked in
front of him, to the edge of the pile, its lowest point, wondering if
he'd find anything of his he could hold onto, anything that was not
ruined, to use as a comfort. The corner of a gas bill poke out from
underneath an old teddy bear of hers, its stomach slashed and its eyes
cut out, leaking triangles of stuffing. He could see 'Mr. S&;#8230;'
With a burst of energy he grabbed at it, dislodging some broken glass
from the pint glass his mum had bought him for his twenty-first, with
'sexy' printed all over it. Holding the paper in his hands he looked
away, disappointed. It had 'cuckoo' written in red marker letters
across it. He remembered, and it made him start to feel angry. Until
now, he'd just been numb, accepting, waiting for something to happen
next, but now he was properly angry, his stomach burning, his fists
rapidly clenching and unclenching. That fucking bitch, that wanking
fucking whore, he wanted to kill her. Laugh at the bloom of fear in her
eyes as his hands closed tightly onto her neck. Where the fuck was she?
He never should have got involved&;#8230;

The first warning sign for Steffan had been in the second year of
their relationship, about two months after they'd moved in together.
He'd been awoken at six-thirty by her excitement, as she bounced on her
knees on the bed, patting at his face and pulling at the covers.
"Steff, come on, you gotta hear it: come on, it's a cuckoo, a real
cuckoo!" He'd mumbled something and turned over to bury his face in the
warm pillow, and so he didn't see he facial features tense or the
darkness in her eyes. When he finally stumbled into the living room,
she was nonchalantly reading an old copy of Vogue. She'd cut her
beautiful blonde hair off; the full two feet of it was lying in tangles
on the carpet around the living room. A few threads hung down the side
of her face. The rest had been hacked into a rough and uneven fur on
her head. She didn't even look up. He worried for weeks after that but
she seemed fine, went to a hairdressers the next day and got it shaved
properly, then didn't mention it again. He couldn't give her up; he was
too far gone. He'd wanted to marry her.

Steffan took out his rage on what was left of his stuff, kicking at it,
sending shards and scraps flying everywhere. He screamed profanities
until his throat was sore and he couldn't stop coughing. He scrabbled
furiously with his hands, until they were covered with cuts from the
sharp bits of things. He found a card she'd made him, all torn up, a
huge affair she'd made from scratch with I LOVE YOUs marbled all over
it, and because it was already torn up, he put pieces of it into his
mouth, chewed them as fast as he could and spat them out at the walls.
He lifted up his red and green golfing umbrella, its spokes like broken
limbs all twisted and hanging the wrong way, to smash it against the
wall, and then he stopped instantly, all his fury completely
dissipated. She'd left her black box untouched, except for, he noticed,
something tippexed on the top. He knelt down in the mess to look more
closely. A date: 4/5/97-14/11/01. Three months into their relationship,
to now. He saw that the padlock on the front of the wooden box was
hanging open, for the first time ever. He sat a while, thinking of the
last time he'd seen her, how she'd grinned and sucked his lip as she
pecked him goodbye, telling him to have a great day and, yeah, she'd be
fine. His hands shook as he freed the latch form the padlock, and he
opened the lid, slowly flipping it up, with closed eyes. When he opened
them, expecting to see all her secrets, to find out carefully hidden
things at last, to be given an answer, he was disappointed. The only
things in the box were some instant cameras, flash ones, with party
spelled out on them in bright colours. He counted them. Seven. He took
three out, handling them carefully, and looked them over for clues
then, frowning, took out the other four and examined them. They were
all used except the one that had been on the bottom of the pile - that
was on twenty-three.