A Short Story
When Dean Weathers uses his antique Brownie camera to take photographs he discovers something strange. A small black gerbil mysteriously appears in snapshots of animals about to die. But seeing the gerbil in his latest photo is both unexpected and unnerving.
Average Reading Time: 8 – 12 minutes (about 3,000 words)
The Death Gerbil
Chuck Heintzelman
Copyright © 2011 by Chuck Heintzelman
Dean Weathers pulled the string for the overhead light in his darkroom and examined the still wet prints. The latest photos also had the anomaly. Not good.
He grabbed the dry prints, left the wet ones hanging, and pulled aside the black curtain over the darkroom’s entrance, a large hole in the wall one had to both step over and duck under. He reached through the entrance, pulled aside the outer curtain, and stepped from the darkroom into the spare bedroom. He went down the hallway to the kitchen.
He slapped the photos onto the kitchen table. “Carol, take a look at these.”
His wife, back to him, stirred a pot on the stove. She didn’t turn. “Just a minute.”
He snatched up the photos, marched across the room, and thrust them into her face. “Look.”
She ducked under his hand. “Keep your pants on. I’m almost done.”
He glared at her for a moment, went back to the table, yanked the chair out and sat. “You’d think after thirty-three years of marriage—“
“Thirty four.”
“Thirty four—whatever. This is important but you won’t give me two minutes.”
“I can’t just stop, Dean, or the sugar will clump and ruin the whole batch.”
“I don’t give a damn about your stupid candies. It’s a picture of the gerbil again.”
She stopped stirring and turned. White goo dripped from the wooden spoon now clenched tight in her hand. “From that old camera?”
“Yep. The Brownie.”
“Let me get my glasses.” She turned off the stove’s burner and disappeared to the living room, in a few moments returned, and took the seat next to him.
Dean pointed to the top photo. “This is where I first noticed it. Behind the dog on the left. The little dark spot.”
“Oh my God. It’s Champ.”
“Yep. Weekend before he died, in the park with James and the kids. I got a good roll, but only a couple with Champ.” He moved the top photo aside, revealing the next one in the stack. “Now the dark spot is on the right.”
He moved to the next photo. “That’s the two shots I have with Champ, but here I’ve enlarged the dark spot.”
Carol gasped. Dean nodded gravely. The blurry photo showed a black gerbil and, although the picture was black and white, Dean imagined the eyes as fiery red.
“My God. It’s just—“
“Like the cat. I know.”
Carol picked up the photo. “It has to be a coincidence. Maybe it’s a field mouse.”
“No, look at the tail. Gerbils have a little tuft of hair on their tails, mice don’t. It’s clearer in the next one.” He pulled out the last photo. The gerbil stood in profile, tail extended.
“What does it mean?”
“Think about it. I take Fluffy’s picture and this weird gerbil ends up in the frame. Two days later Fluffy’s dead. I get Champ in a shot, same gerbil, and a few days later he’s dead. It’s got to be a death gerbil.”
“Ridiculous. What’s a death gerbil?”
“Okay, Miss I-Know-Everything, you tell me what it is.”
“Maybe it’s the camera. Oh wait. I took some pictures at the park, too.” She rose and went to the living room.
Dean followed, leaving the photos splayed across the kitchen table. He stood behind her, arms across chest, while she rummaged through her purse. She produced a small digital camera.
He looked up to the sky, raising hands in mock supplication. “Lord help me.”
She scrolled through pictures on the camera. “Sorry, I know you hate gadgets.”
“I don’t hate gadgets. I hate digital cameras. They got no heart. They’re tacky. People who use them have no respect for the medium.”
“Found one.” She showed him.
“I don’t see anything.” He squinted. “Can you make it bigger?”
“I don’t know. Maybe James can.”
“I don’t think there’s anything there and I don’t want to bother James. Doesn’t matter anyway. Come with me. I’ve got something worse to show you.”
She followed him down the hall to the spare bedroom. Inside, he ripped the outer curtain off the darkroom’s entrance, and tossed it behind him. He reached through the hole in the wall, pulled down the inner curtain, and threw it on the floor on top of the other one.
“Calm down,” she said. “What on earth has gotten into you?”
“Doesn’t matter. I won’t be using this room again.” He stepped into the darkroom. “Come on.”
She followed him, crowding close in the small space. She wrinkled her nose. “You need better ventilation in here. The chemicals smell awful.”
He pointed to a drying print hanging on the drip line.
“Oh my God,” she said.
The picture showed Dean taking a picture of himself in the mirror. It was a reflection of him, head bent down, looking into his Brownie box camera. In front of his chest, inches away from the camera, hovered the black gerbil.
~
Dean had almost accepted his fate—a death sentence—but Carol hadn’t.
“Maybe it’s just a fluke,” she said. “We don’t know this foretells anything.”
“Maybe, but I got an appointment with Jason just in case.”
Jason Phillips was the attorney who had drawn up their wills.
“Let me use the camera and take a picture of you,” Carol said. “Just to make sure.”
Dean didn’t want to, but the faster Carol accepted his death, the better. Then they could plan things out, spend some time with James and the grandkids. God, why did this have to happen now. Dean wasn’t old, not even sixty. When you were a kid, fifty was ancient, but in your fifties you weren’t old until you hit eighty, maybe ninety.
He explained how to use the Brownie. “Hold the camera at waist level. Hold your breath while you take the picture.” She took several shots of him, exposing just a few frames on the roll of 620 film, but it didn’t matter. He’d develop what he had, wasting the extra.
Dean put the darkroom curtains back up. The brace holding the inside curtain rod had ripped from the wall, leaving a hole in the sheetrock. He attached it a couple inches above the original spot. Then he developed the film, sitting the empty spool aside to wind fresh film onto. Why? Just habit.
An hour later, after the negative had dried, Dean examined the film with a magnifying glass. He couldn’t see any anomalies in the negative so went through the process of producing prints. Once complete, he grabbed the wet prints, still dripping, and left the darkroom.
Carol sat on the bed in the spare bedroom. She stood as Dean approached.
“Nothing.” He handed her the prints.
She took the photos, examined them, then looked at him, eyes questioning.
“I don’t know what it means,” he said. “Maybe I have to be the one to take the photos?”
She took his hand in hers. “I think this is a good sign.”
They sat on the bed together, still holding hands. Quiet for a moment.
“I have an idea,” she said. “Let’s go to the animal shelter. Both of us take photographs of animals about to be put down. If this gerbil is going to appear again, it’ll be on those pictures. We’ll see if it shows up for both of us.”
He flung her hand from him and stood. “Would you give it a rest? I’m as good as dead. The quicker you accept it, the better.” He stormed from the room.
~
In retrospect, Carol’s idea hadn’t been bad. Especially if it shut her up and got her to accept things. But Dean didn’t want to drive anywhere. What if he died in a car accident? He was a great driver, but you can’t control the other guy on the road.
She called the dog pound and made some excuse about doing a flyer for the Humane Society. “To raise neighborhood awareness,” Carol had said. The Animal Shelter said they’d be glad to have them.
“You sure you don’t want me to drive?” Carol asked, as they went into the garage to leave.
“Hell no.” Behind the wheel he’d have some control.
Dean triple-head-checked while backing out of the driveway. He planned on driving as safely as possible.
“How do you want to work it?” she asked.
“What?”
“Taking the pictures. Maybe if we alternate, you take one then I take one.”
“That’s got to be the stupidest idea you’ve ever had. I don’t have all day to switch off and on with you. I’ll take the first half of the roll, you take the second half.”
“Well you don’t have to get all huffy.”
He glared at her, realized his eyes were off the road, and focused forward again.
“Maybe afterward we can grab a bite to eat,” she said. “Sylvia Bennet said that new steak place, Shenanigans, has the tastiest prime rib she’s ever had.”
Dean grunted. Would she ever stop talking? He tuned her out.
There was so much he still wanted to do. Run a marathon for instance. Funny, since he was so out of shape a flight of stairs made him breathe hard, but the idea had been in the back of his mind for years. Someday he’d get fit, maybe run a marathon.
Dean never had made a bucket list. He should have. He should have done lots of things.
A cigarette sounded good. He pulled into a 7-11.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He got out of the car, ignoring her. Inside, he asked for a pack of Marlboro Reds and snagged a disposable lighter.
“That’ll be $9.72,” the cashier said.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Dean said.
The cashier shrugged. Dean tossed a ten on the counter and didn’t wait for change. The pack was open, a lit cigarette in his mouth, before he got back to the car.
He stood in front of the car and inhaled deeply. Lightheadedness washed over him. Smoking was a friend who never let you down. Carol glowered at him through the windshield.
He got into the car and cracked the window to let the smoke out.
“Dean Alan Weathers, you should not be smoking. Put that out now.”
He ignored her and backed out of the parking space.
“What has it been, fifteen years since you quit?”
He ignored her and merged into traffic.
“It’s a dirty habit and not very healthy!”
He looked at her, squinting one eye in the curling smoke. “Maybe I’ll get lucky and die of cancer.”
That shut her up.
~
Behind the counter at the animal shelter a teen-age boy with a mop of greasy hair, looked up from a Rolling Stone magazine.
“We’re here to take some pictures of your animals,” Dean said.
“Cool. Ah, which ones?”
“The ones scheduled to be put to sleep.”
“Oh man, I don’t know. I’m the only one here now and, uh, I don’t know.”
“I talked to a Shirley,” Carol said. “She said it would be quite alright.”
“Well, uh, she’s at lunch and …” He trailed off, staring at the space between Dean and Carol, as if an invisible third person stood between them. After a moment he continued. “Whatever, follow me.”
He grabbed a clipboard and led them through a wooden door with a tiny rectangle window in it, into a large room with a concrete floor. Wire cages lined the left. Each cage spanned floor to ceiling and all but the front cage contained one or more dogs. Along the room’s right side extended a metal wash table merging into large utility sink with overhead cabinets. Stacked next to the sink were several smaller kennels, the plastic kind people use for traveling their pets.
The boy looked at the clipboard. “There’s the sad little dudes. The ones at the end, numbers 348, 349 and 352 need rescuing before tomorrow night or –“ He made a motion across his throat like a knife cutting and made a squelching sound.
Several dogs barked. The smaller ones yipped. Dean walked past the boy and examined the dogs. There were labs, black and yellow, and a shepherd and collie, a schnauzer and hound, but most were mutts. Over a dozen dogs of different colors and sizes, each wore a collar with a black number written on a white tag. Most of the dogs seemed somber, with big round sad eyes, as if aware of their fate.
“You want cats they’re through that door.” He pointed to a door next to the sink. “You’re not supposed to be back here without someone present, but I kinda have to hang out in front in case anybody comes in. If Shirley said it’s okay …” He trailed off again.
“She said it was fine. Thanks,” Carol said.
Dean focused his camera on the dogs.
“No prob. Whoa! Awesome camera, man. You build that yourself?”
Dean glared at the boy. “You can’t build these. It’s a classic.”
The boy bobbed his head up and down, goofy grin on his face. “Nice.”
Dean looked back into the camera. “I’ll shoot the dogs here, Carol. Then a few cats. Then you do the same.”
“I gotta go out front in case the warden comes back,” the boy said. “Need anything just holler.” He disappeared through the door.
Carol approached Dean, put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I know you’re stressed. I don’t want to fight.”
Dean looked at her. “Me either.” He smiled. He looked past her and his lips curved downward.
“What?” Carol looked around.
The teenage boy stared at them through the small window in the door, nose pressed against the glass, one eye filled up most of the space. When he saw Dean and Carol looking, he removed his face from the window and showed them his fist, giving them the thumbs-up sign.
~
Dean and Carol photographed the animals and drove back home in silence, both preoccupied with their own thoughts. Once home, Dean rushed to the dark room to develop the film. Carol wanted to join him, but he explained it’d be too crowded. So she waited, sitting on the spare bedroom’s bed, chewing her nails.
After almost an hour, Dean burst through the darkroom curtains, carrying several negative strips in one hand and magnifying glass in the other. “I didn’t do any prints. Thought you’d be curious.”
He sat on the bed next to her, held a negative up to the light, the magnifying glass in front of the second frame. “This is one I took. See the white dot next to this dog?”
Carol squinted. “Not really. I need to get my glasses.”
“It’s there, trust me.” He fished through the negatives, pulled out another one, and held the magnifying glass over the first frame. “This one you took. Same dog. Same white dot.”
“I thought the death gerbil was black.”
Dean sighed. “These are negatives. Point is, it shows up for both you and me.”
“What does it mean?”
“I think I’m safe. The gerbil wasn’t in the last photo you took of me. I want to try another test, in front of the mirror like the first time.”
He grabbed the Brownie off the spare bedroom dresser, stood in front of the full-length mirror, and took several quick shots.
Carol held out her hand for the camera. “Let me.”
“Good idea.” He handed her the camera.
She took pictures of herself in front of the mirror.
He took the camera. “Okay, I’ll make this as quick as I can.” He disappeared into the dark room.
She sat on the bed and laid back. The minutes ticked slowly by. After thirty minutes, which seemed like two hours, she went to the darkroom curtain. “Dean?”
“What?” he hollered from inside.
“How’s it going?”
“I’m making prints just to be sure.”
“Do you see the gerbil?”
“I said I’m making prints.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. Maybe twenty minutes.”
“You hungry?” she asked. “We haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
“I could eat.”
“I’ll go make us a sandwich.”
~
Carol had just finished making two sandwiches, ham and swiss on wheat, when she heard the crash. It sounded like a sledge hammer going through a window. She ran down the hallway to the spare bedroom. Halfway there she heard another crash. She stopped just inside the door.
Dean stood panting, hair wild, face red. On the floor in front of the shattered mirror was the Brownie camera. Dean picked up the camera, a broken box now almost in two pieces, and hurled it at the broken mirror.
“What’s wrong?”
Dean looked at her, mouth moving but no sound came out.
“Oh my God, Dean, are you okay?”
He wagged his head back and forth, pointed to the dresser and rasped out one word. “Look.”
Carol went to the dresser. On top of it lay several fresh prints. With mounting horror she looked at the topmost picture. It showed Dean and the camera and a little black gerbil floating in front of Dean’s chest. The next one also showed Dean and the camera and the gerbil. The next photo caused her to gasp. It was her, looking down through the camera, and the gerbil sitting on top of it. The gerbil was in her photos now. The last photo also showed her and the gerbil, but this time gerbil was to the camera’s right.
She looked at Dean, at a loss for something to say.
She looked at the Brownie, laying in pieces on the floor. Great job Dean, she thought, destroying the camera. We’re dead. It’s dead. She laughed. The camera is dead.
“What the hell is so funny?” Dean asked.
“We had it wrong,” she said. “We’re not going to die. The gerbil appeared in pictures with the camera, not in the ones of you by yourself. The gerbil wasn’t telling us we were going to die, it was indicating the camera was going to die.”
~ The End ~
How this Story was Created
Jan 24 – I had the title “Death Gerbil” from an old piece of flash I wrote six or seven years ago. The old story was a 300 words and, really, wasn’t much of a story. So I spent about 15 minutes doing a bit of brainstorming, trying to come up with a conflict. Then I started on the story, only using the title from the my old fiction.
Another 15 minutes and I had the opening paragraph that explained why the man hated digital photography but after reading it realized it was static. Yet it was enough to start defining the character for me, so not wasted. I wrote a couple new opening paragraphs in another 10 minutes, this time with action and movement. Not many words, only 124 at this point, but this is a good stopping point. I really don’t know how this story is going to play out, but it’s enough now that I have a couple characters in a situation.
Jan 25 – Spent about 40 minutes now have a total of 743 words. I really don’t know how this story is going to end yet, but it’s pretty dang interesting so far 
Spent about an hour browsing for art and building a cover
Jan 26 – Spent about 30 minutes editing the first scene and setting it up for the F&SF critique. Then spent another 30 minutes getting the word count up to 1,366
Jan 27 – Spent about 45 minutes, up to 1,951 words now. I should be over the half-way point now. So 2-3 more days at this pace. If I wrap this story Sunday, then I’m on pace.
Jan 28 – Didn’t write.
Jan 29 – Spent about an hour got up to 2,477. I could have kept going. I did learn today that since I took yesterday off, I had to go back and re-read to check a fact. I believe if I would have written yesterday it would still have been fresh enough in my head to keep from going back. The other thought I had is that this is really a crappy looking cover. Oh well. This isn’t a “make 50 beautiful cover” challenge. I need to not get distracted.
Jan 30 – Spend about 40 minutes, got to 3,099 words and “The End.” I will need to do some pretty good editing on this story though, some of my prose is a bit crappy. Spend about 90 minutes editing. Wrapped it up at 3,023 words which was adding about 200 and subtracting about 300.
So, overall this took 7 hours and 15 minutes. A little longer than I would have liked. Overall, I really like the story there’s just two things I don’t like: 1) The cover art and 2) It’s really a a Paper Tiger … Oh well, nobody’s perfect.