The Fatal Frame

Clara

“Well, look what we have here.”

The voice slices through the stink of wet garbage and rust. It’s slick, coated in an arrogance so thick I can almost taste it over the bile climbing my throat. My body is a statue, crammed between a overflowing dumpster and the grimy brick wall of the alley. Every muscle screams, locked in place by a terror so pure it feels like ice water in my veins.

“A little rat, hiding in the shadows.”

I see his shoes first. Polished leather, gleaming under the single, flickering safety light. They cost more than my entire semester’s tuition. They take a slow, deliberate step closer. I squeeze my eyes shut, as if not seeing him will make me invisible. It’s a child’s logic, pathetic and useless.

The camera in my lap feels like a block of lead. My thesis. My project on ‘unseen cityscapes,’ the beauty in the decay. This alley was perfect. The way the late afternoon light cut through the fire escapes, the graffiti that looked like a wounded rainbow bleeding down the brick. I had the shot perfectly framed. Then they came.

It was supposed to be a drug deal. That’s what I told myself. Gritty, real, the kind of footage that would make my professor forget I was the quiet girl who always sat in the back. I kept filming through my long lens from my hiding spot, my heart hammering a filmmaker’s thrill. A man in a cheap suit, sweating. A man in a tailored coat, his face a mask of cold boredom. Then the sound. A soft thud, nothing like the gunshots in movies. The man in the cheap suit just… folded. A puppet with its strings cut. No drama. No final words. Just a quiet, efficient deletion.

Now the clean up crew is here. And they found me.

“Come on out, sweetheart. We don’t bite. Much.” The voice is closer now. I can smell his cologne, something sharp and expensive that can’t quite cover the metallic tang of blood in the air.

A second pair of shoes enters my sliver of a view. Black, practical boots. They are worn, but clean. They stop a few feet away from the polished leather ones. They make no sound.

“What is it, Leo?” A new voice. Deeper. Calmer. It’s the kind of voice that doesn’t need to be loud to be heard. It carries an authority that chills me more than the first man’s taunts.

“We’ve got a witness, Ghost.” The first man, Leo, lets out a low chuckle. “And you’re not gonna believe it. It’s the coffee girl.”

My blood runs cold. Coffee girl. He knows me. My mind flashes to the cafe, to the endless parade of faces I serve every day. The polite ones, the rude ones, the ones who look through me like I’m part of the furniture. And him. Leo. Always with the flashy watch and the smirk. He orders a macchiato, extra foam, never makes eye contact, and never, ever tips.

He crouches down, and I’m forced to meet his gaze. His eyes are bright, amused. He sees my uniform under my thin jacket, the familiar green apron stained with a bit of chocolate syrup. His smirk widens. “See? Serves me that overpriced garbage every morning. Probably got a little camera, making one of her student films.”

He reaches for my camera. My hands tighten on it instinctively.

“Tsk, tsk.” He wags a finger. “Don’t be like that. Just let me see what you’ve been shooting, you little pest.”

Behind him, the man called Ghost remains silent. I can’t see his face, only his boots, planted firm on the wet asphalt. He is a presence. A block of granite in the middle of this filthy alley.

“Leave her,” Ghost says. The words are clipped, final.

Leo stills. He glances over his shoulder. “What? Are you kidding me? She saw it all. She’s a loose end. A nobody. We snip it, we go. It takes two seconds.”

Snip it. The casual cruelty of his words makes my stomach clench. He’s talking about my life like it’s a stray thread on his designer suit.

“I said, leave her.”

“Adrian, be reasonable.” Leo stands up, turning to face the other man. His voice drops, a conspiratorial whisper that carries in the quiet alley. “Marcus wants these things clean. No witnesses. You know the protocol. A barista with a camera is not part of a clean scene.”

Adrian. Ghost. The names don’t fit together. One is normal, the other is a threat.

My hand is shaking so badly I’m afraid I’ll drop the camera. It’s my life’s work. Everything I’ve saved for, everything I’ve dreamed of. And inside it, on a tiny plastic chip, is proof. Proof of what they did. The footage. My thumb, slick with sweat, fumbles along the side of the camera body. It finds the slight indentation of the memory card slot.

Leo is still arguing. “Look at her. She’s terrified. She’s nobody. We pop her, dump her in the bin with the rest of the trash, and we’re gone. Problem solved.”

The man in the boots takes a step forward. Now I can see him. He’s tall, dressed in a simple dark jacket. His face is all sharp angles and shadows, his expression unreadable. But his eyes. His eyes are a pale, piercing gray, and they are locked on me. They don’t hold the sadistic amusement Leo’s do. They hold a terrifying stillness, an intelligent assessment. He’s not looking at a problem. He’s looking at me.

My thumb presses the edge of the SD card. It makes a tiny, satisfying click as it pops from its slot.

“She’s a loose end, Adrian,” Leo insists, his voice rising in frustration.

“No,” Adrian says, his gaze never leaving mine. “She isn’t.”

He sees something. I don’t know what. Maybe it’s the way I’m not crying. Maybe it’s the way my knuckles are white around my camera. Maybe he sees the defiance I’m trying so hard to hide beneath the fear. My heart is a trapped bird beating against my ribs, but my jaw is set.

He takes another step. He’s in front of me now, blocking my view of Leo. He crouches down, his movements fluid and precise, like a predator. He smells of cold night air and something clean, like soap. It’s a strange contrast to the filth around us.

“What’s your name?” he asks. His voice is low, almost gentle, which is somehow more frightening than Leo’s shouting.

My throat is sandpaper. “Clara.”

“Clara.” He says my name like he’s testing it, tasting it. “You’re a film student.” It’s not a question. He glances at the professional-grade camera, the worn strap, the way I’m holding it like it’s a shield.

I nod, a tiny, jerky movement.

My fingers close around the warm plastic of the memory card in my palm. My other hand, still clutching the camera, is a decoy. Leo is fidgeting behind Adrian, radiating impatience.

“We don’t have time for this, J,” Leo snaps. “Just let me handle it.”

Adrian ignores him completely. His focus is entirely on me. “You saw what happened.” Again, not a question.

I just stare at him. The image is burned into my mind. The slump of the body, the dark pool spreading slowly on the pavement, the killer’s face as he turned away, utterly blank.

“She’s got it all on film, man!” Leo’s voice is sharp with panic now. “This is a massive risk. Let’s just go.”

Adrian’s gray eyes hold mine. I see a flicker of something in them. Curiosity? Annoyance? I can’t tell. My palm is sweating around the tiny card. My jeans have a small watch pocket, tight and deep. It’s a stupid, desperate move, but it’s the only one I have. While his eyes are on my face, my hand moves, a slow, trembling journey from my camera to my hip. The plastic square scrapes against the denim. It’s in. Hidden.

“Get up,” Adrian says softly.

I don’t move. My legs are water.

He sighs, a sound of faint exasperation. “Leo is right about one thing. We are out of time.” He reaches for me. I flinch back, pressing myself harder against the brick. His hand stops. He doesn’t touch me. He holds his hand out, palm up.

“The camera bag,” he says.

My worn canvas messenger bag is slung over my shoulder. It holds my lenses, my spare batteries, my wallet, a half-eaten granola bar. It’s my life in a bag. Reluctantly, I shrug it off my shoulder and hand it to him.

He takes it, then looks at the camera still in my hands.

“That too, Clara.”

My fingers refuse to unclench. This camera is an extension of my arm. I worked double shifts for a year to buy it. It’s my voice. My future.

“Don’t make this difficult.” His voice is still quiet, but there’s a new edge to it. A warning.

Slowly, my fingers uncurl. I offer it to him. Our fingers brush as he takes it. His skin is cold.

“What are you doing?” Leo demands, stepping forward. “We’re just taking her stuff now? That’s the plan?”

Adrian stands up, placing my camera carefully inside my bag. He slings the strap over his own shoulder. It looks absurdly out of place against his dark, expensive jacket. “She’s not a loose end,” he says, turning to face Leo. “She’s an asset.”

Leo stares at him, dumbfounded. “An asset? An asset for what? Making cappuccinos? She’s a student. A nobody. She’s a liability is what she is.”

“And I say she’s an asset,” Adrian repeats, and the tone in his voice makes the air crackle. It’s the voice of a man who is not used to being questioned. “We’re taking her with us. We can control what we have. We can’t control a body that gets found by some beat cop in the morning.”

“This is insane,” Leo sputters, gesturing wildly. “Marcus will have your head for this.”

“I’ll handle Marcus.” Adrian turns his back on Leo, his attention once again on me. It feels like the world has shrunk to the space between us. “Let’s go.”

He reaches down and this time his grip is firm on my upper arm. He pulls me to my feet. My legs wobble, but they hold. The alley seems to spin around me. The stench of the dumpster, the flickering yellow light, the silhouette of a dead man being loaded into an unmarked van at the far end.

“Come on, coffee girl,” Leo snarls from behind me. “You heard the man. You’re an asset now. Lucky you.”

Adrian’s grip tightens, steering me away from the wall, towards the mouth of the alley and the waiting black car I hadn’t noticed before. He is strong, his pull undeniable. I stumble along beside him, a captive. My camera is gone. My freedom is gone. My life as I knew it ended five minutes ago.

But as he pushes me toward the dark, tinted windows of the car, I press my hand against my pocket. My fingers feel the faint, hard outline of the SD card. They have my camera. They have me.

But they don’t have the truth. I have it, pressed against my skin. A tiny, ticking time bomb.