Upon the world

Mark thumbed the shoulder strap of his camera, feeling the technological marvel’s weight as it swayed against his hip. Every second his fingers itched to whisk the lumping thing out, whip it around and snap away some perfect instant of frozen reality. Some particular collection of small town angles that immediately encapsulated everything he was feeling. Everything relatable about being a young teen reject in nowheresville being driven half mad by just this one particular girl who…

In the next instant he wanted to throw the expensive hunk of crap to the ground. Nothing jumped out at him. No square window to the soul. The streets were as dull and empty as they ever were. Photography was just another short burning hobby for him… same as playing guitar and surfing were. It was just dumb luck that he’d spotted that ad on the wall asking for a studio assistant when he’d needed a work placement. Monica had only taken him on because no-one else had answered it. She seemed just as unsure what to do with him when he was there as he did. He just turned up every week and bumbled through her emails, tried to work out her printer. Booked in a few clients. Pointless stuff. The teen sighed. It would all be over in a few more weeks. Their placements only had to last a month or two, unless they really wanted to keep going. He highly doubted Monica would extend her offer. She barely let him take part in the business as it was...

Clattering through the nondescript door down the alleyway between two other shops, Mark was greeted cheerily enough by the woman herself. Tall, tanned and tattooed, the twenty-something was a terrifyingly attractive young woman. She dressed like a biker chick, all tight-leather jackets and frayed-denim jean-shorts. But she had always been very open and friendly with him… just not about her business. There was more busy-work to be done. In truth, the studio’s filing and booking system were an utter mess. Rose seemed utterly incapable of caring about keeping her calendar and receipts straight, knew next to nothing about computers apart from image editing software and hardly seemed to remember to eat unless Mark reminded her. So at least he was actually helping in some way, by slowly wading into all that chaos and sorting it out. Yet it was in doing that that he caught glimpses of what he was not participating in:

Despite being an accountant or would-be secretary’s worst nightmare. Monica’s one-woman business certainly seemed to tick along on it’s own merits alright. Clients just seemed to wander in, from miles around, to be whisked away into a back room conspiratorially. It was only then that Mark caught a glimpse of the enthusiastic dedication Monica had for her work. She would chat with them for hours, the murmur of excited voices chiming through the wall, without a single photo being taken. The session would be booked over an entire day, or two… in studio or ‘out and about’. All without Mark being allowed to know what the project was, any hope of being present, or a glimpse of the resulting images. He would simply collect the rather large down-payment from an nervously-excited looking customer and record it in the new log book he’d started. It was all a bit weird really. And sent his mind racing as to what was being arranged. The clients were all a… colorful lot, to say the least. Though, all-black and piercings was as common as pink feather-boas and luminescent dresses.

He was allowed to use the studio’s equipment, of course, and ask any technical question he wished of Rose. She certainly knew her stuff, and, for the first few days it had been awesome enough just to chat camera settings and tips with her. However once he’d nervously shown her a few old pictures of his own… it had become clear to both of them there was only so much she could do for him…

He wasn’t surprised. They were crap. Just any old rubbish he’d managed to dig up. But… that was because the only photo’s he’d ever taken that he’d actually cared about were of… Her. The teen thought back to lying side by side with that muse of his and being happily granted permission to show off her cum-splattered form. His laptop was in his bag…

But that’s exactly where it stayed, for the entire day.