1000 Days

Yes, yes. Thursday I served up crap.

“Take another then.”

Cyril turned the camera sideways to get both Bogdan and the Terminus sign in the picture together.

“Nyet, nyet. I vant bus and people in picture too.” Bodgan waved his hand over his shoulder to the bus just loading in the street behind him. Cyril complied. It was Bogdan’s camera after all.

Bogdan Grigoriu and Cyril Rockandhammer stood at the center of Terminus: the bus stop. Well, Cyril squated because he thought it made a better picture of his traveling companion, nor was the bus stop precisely the center it was more the heart of Terminus. [I swear I’ll fix that]

“Stop waving dude. There’s no flash. Just hold still.” Cyril dropped from his squat to a kneel to get a steadier hand. Light from the bus backlit Bogdan and made it difficult to see the man in anything but a silhouette. Cyril exhaled and squeezed the button halfway till the mirror locked up. He pushed the rest of the way till the shutter popped open then clacked shut a noticeable portion of a second later. He checked the screen.

“This one’s good dude. Take a look,” Cyril groaned to upright and handed the camera to Bogdan.

The short man looked at himself and liked how the low angle made him look tall, made him look like an adventurer. Like his Father before The Skip. He held his cane—Cryil called ia a walking hammer—in his right hand not leaning on it. The long canvas jacket hung in such a way as to make him look stout not fat as he was. Even the buckled shoulder strap looked like he might have a rifle slung when nothing more than a satchel hung from it.

Even the people were well captured. A group of men and women waiting to load the penultimate bus out of Terminus tonight stood to his left. The interior lights of the behemoth fish of a vehicle illuminated the first man in line quite nicely. Atop the bus the pilot loaded crates of chickens and yegs along the back. The front two tires slayed out like bulbous rubber fins. Behind and above the last bus hovered waiting to land.

To the right a man stood in a doorway backlit by coal fire. Bogdan looked up fromt he camera screen to see the man was gone. In fact, three of the four people to that side of the picture were gone. Only the ticket man with the umbrella was still there. HE stubbed out his cigarette and vacated the alley too.

“Spaseeba. Ees good picture.”

“Dude,” Cyril gestured to the bus. The pilot hung out the cockpit door but his foot was inside stomping the accelerator. Steam flushed from the sides and rear like the breath of a dragon. “Let’s get out of the way.”

485 words on day 560