Curse of ages

Hello Readers,

This one is again leaning towards horror...but I feel you'll find it different from the other Horror stories I've written previously. Hope you like it :)

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It was fate…definitely! No two ways about it…this is a pre-planned act by the Gods..The day she found the …thing. I cannot bring myself to call it what it actually is.. instead I’ll call it what it seems be – a camera.

She found it in the most unlikeliest of places – near the abandoned well which everyone avoids as it was spewing a weird smelling gas which made the person who inhales it extremely suicidal!

Anybody else, anybody sane, would have deemed the thing suspicious and would be wary to approach it, let alone touch it!

She saw it sitting near the well and willing her to come to it. She walked towards it hands outstretched as if hypnotized. When she neared it she could feel a kind of vibration from it..as if …as if it was alive! As if it was getting excited as she came near it! She didn’t hesitate for a second as she touched it…and suddenly…realization! Of a long forgotten past! It hit her like a jolt..she had to steady herself by leaning against the well..the realization was that substantial!

She was reeling from the aftermath of the realization and didn’t grasp that she had inhaled the weird smelling gas! That too a huge mouthful as she had gasped! With the comprehension came fear! But the gas had absolutely no effect on her! She felt a jolt run through her and had a look at the innocent looking camera in her hand…did this thing just save my life??  Whatever apprehensions she had about the camera vanished and a bond was forged between them that would never be broken.

She shared a past with this thing. She was connected to it across lifetimes. She acknowledged the bond for she could feel it, but could not remember the exact liaison of the past. But the feeling of the bond was good enough for her.

She always had her new companion with her. She never really used it for it’s apparent purpose for a long time. Then, one day, she decided to click the house help who had worked in her family for several decades. He was unaware that she had snapped a photograph of him watering the rose beds. She was astonished to see what her companion had captured. Apart from the physical attributes that it had so perfectly captured, it had also bared his very soul. What one’s made of, would be replicated in the photo. Others would just see hazy colours all around the actual photo but she…she could understand them .

She could see loyalty written all over the photograph of the elderly help. She just couldn’t stop clicking after that. Her companion disclosed the innermost secrets of everyone she subjected to be photographed. She saw it all – rage, passion, turmoil, suicidal, joy, etc… She had a clue on what some would project, while others came as a shocker. After clicking hundreds of candid shots of close ones, loved ones, friends, frenemies, strangers…..Then came the fateful day, when she finally had the guts to click herself. She set the …thing on auto and ran to the place that she had targeted. She waited for a few seconds during which it blinked (warningly?) red and finally….. **Click**

Her hands trembled as she went near the thing. She picked it up staring at the lens. She slowly rotated it and had to stop because her breathing had hitched to an alarming rate and she almost dropped it. She steadied herself and pressed the little button with a triangle on it. The thing had rendered the photograph taken which was the latest in chronological order, but she just sees darkness. That is because she has closed her eyes. With a huge effort she opens them and stares at the photo of herself. The horror! It all comes back to her! She now remembers what was the exact relationship between herself and the thing! She has made a mistake! Their relationship was not that of love or friendship but of mutual annihilation! And she has realized it now! When time has betrayed her! She had been so long in this form, she had forgotten the past!  This will cost her, her life..no…her eternity. By the time these thoughts had run in her head, she had already started to transform. From organic to inorganic, from living to non living, from flesh to stone.

The thing that is pretending to be what it’s not, is the Adamantine sword which has manifested as a camera to safely hide in a modern era for the cursed one was reborn in the very same era.

She was totally unaware of her legacy and her power had lied dormant within her. It was only when she saw the fateful photograph of herself that her powers were invoked but the very first victim of her terrible curse was herself.

She is Medusa. Medusa reborn in an modern era. Medusa reborn to unleash the wrath of the hells on earth. But she is thwarted by the sword of the Gods.

The world is safe…for now. Until the unspeakable one is reborn again.