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Camera Lucida

Wake up Iris.

By Brayden M. WilcoxPublished 3 years ago 9 min read
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Camera Lucida
Photo by HONG FENG on Unsplash

"Hey what're you drawing there, Sophi?" a young girl says to her sister, well laying on her bed.

The older sister Leaning back against the bed the responds "oh nothing Iris, just some flowers I saw today well walking in our-"

"oooh are they pretty flowers, let me see, let me see".

Sophia looks at her younger sister and giggles "okay I'll show you, how do they look?"

as she raises her black notebook onto the bed towards her sister, Iris wakes up. Iris bolts up and regains herself as she looks around her small apartment complex, her alarm has been going off for a while now.

"Oh shit, I'm late!"

she rushes towards her washroom and gets ready as fast as she can, coming out almost two minutes later with messy hair and poorly done eyeliner. She throws some toast into the toaster and continues to get dressed so she's not late to class. She hears the Toast pop and bolts out of her apartment with toast in her mouth, grabbing her bag on her way out the door. She rushes to the bus stop and luckily makes it before the bus goes on its route without her.

"Hey," she says to the driver, tapping on the glass of the bus door before he begins to drive away from the stop.

"Get on," he says after he opens the door,

"Sorry, thank you for stopping"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah Just get in already," he says as he closes the door and she makes her way towards the back of the bus.

As she makes her way to an open seat on the bus she can't help feeling a slight discomfort from the interaction that just transpired. Iris always managed to find a way to feel insecure and stressed when it came to the most meaningless confrontations. She knows that she shouldn't feel this way but something deep in her mind always manages to make her feel as if the way she thinks was comparable to putting on a boot with a small rock inside it and walking. Iris always seems to hold herself to a higher standard and when she doesn't meet it, she tends to be greeted by this feeling of being less than herself. upon sitting down she grabs her bag and digs through it for a black notebook. The notebook is almost completely covered in sketches, and despite the lines that distinguish it from a sketchbook, Iris feels as if it adds a lot of character to her sketches though. Pulling out a pen along with her sketchbook she opens the notebook and a flyer accidentally slips out. On it read:

"LOOKING FOR UP INCOMING ILLUSTRATORS

TrulyWorks is looking for upcoming illustrators and animators for future projects, to do so we will be hosting a contest. Portfolios that contain unique and creative designs will have a chance to win $20,000! we will also have a big second and third place prize along with runner-up awards. Jobs will only be offered to the most creative and talented individuals who entered, so give it your all! PLEASE BOOK AN AUDITION AND HAVE A PORTFOLIO READY FOR IT, AUDITIONS CAN BE BOOKED AT..."

Iris had seen this posting in her college the other day and taken it, even though she only sketched and worked on art in her free time. She always dreamt of having a job in the illustration field, hell she even wanted to work on her own graphic novel growing up but never had the skills needed for that type of thing so she never pursued it full-heartedly, but now she took this contest as a sign of fate calling out her name. For the past, two months she's been working day in, day out on a portfolio to present for her audition which happened to be the last day they were accepting applicants. She hurried to put the note back into her bag and began to sketch in between the lines of the notebook her early older sister had to give to her as a present when she was younger, though she only got a brief time doing so before she arrived at her school.

Iris makes her way off the bus...

the bus stop leaves her around a ten-minute walk away from her school, which isn't too bad in the summer months but the temperature around January makes this ten minutes feel like an eternity, but more importantly to her the walk always entails that she passes by something very important. She comes to a halt and turns to the direction of the house left to her, the cold air breathing heavily on her neck and the snow lightly brewing on the ground beneath her. She thinks to herself about the memories she's made there and the troubled past that the house has left her with, that she continuously struggles to come to terms with. All she can build up the courage to do is to turn away from the house and make her way to the school.

Iris makes her way to the school and goes to her class...

she sits near the back of the class, far enough away that the teacher rarely bothers her, and she doesn't mind that rather she believes that it helps her learn better not having someone next to you telling you every step of the way.

30 minutes pass and Iris managed to pass out at her desk ...

"Iris, Iris! Wake up, wake up! It's your birthday!" a familiar voice cries.

Iris begins to wake up, scratching at her eyes with clumsily held together fists "Sophi is that you?"

"Who else would it be?" she says looking back at her sister sitting on top of the bed.

"What time is it?"

"Six in the morning."

"What?! Why so early it's a weekend?" Iris says as she's getting off the bed.

"Oh I never fell asleep, I've been transferring all my drawings from my notebook over to my sketchbook last night," Sophia says then shows Iris her sketchbook "pretty neat, huh?"

"They look good Sophia but did you have to stay up all night for them?" Iris says well looking through Sophia's sketchbook.

"Well I was just doing it but I was beginning to have so much fun seeing them on blank paper that I just kept doing it, and one thing leads to another and now I'm here."

"If you're having fun I guess there's no reason to stop you," Iris says before closing Sophia's book.

"Oh yeah!" Sophia says after digging through her bag and dragging something out "happy birthday Iris!"

Sophia hands Iris a brand new notebook along with a few other art supplies. "Wow is this all for me? Thank you, Sophi!"

Sophia looks back at Iris and smiles, but before Iris can enjoy her gifts she notices something is watching them in the corner of her eye. In just this moment alone a dark figure interrupts and rushes towards her and everything that has happened to her on that day flashes her mind.

"Sophia, Sophia, wake up!" her teacher yells at her profusely.

Sophia wakes up and bolts her back up in an upright position, so embarrassed her face turns bright red. "Sorry sir, I won't do that again."

"You should hope so," her professor says well giving her a stern look.

She rushes and begins to work on classwork to divert attention away from her, but in the back of her mind everyone is talking about her and this sound is echoing and becoming louder and louder making it almost impossible to bare. Luckily for her, the bell rings only a few minutes later and in a hurry she packs up her things and decides to head home for the day, stopping again to look at that house on the way to the bus stop.

At her apartment...

Iris begins to transfer her sketches from her notebook over her portfolio by using a camera lucida to convert the rough outlines of her sketches in her notebook to her portfolio and finalizing them. Today is the final day before her audition so she is hurrying to finish up her portfolio to present it in her audition tomorrow. For the next six hours, she works on and finishes it before passing out exhausted on her desk from the finished work.

"They're fighting again," says a young Iris to her sister Sophia.

A bottle smashes in the next room, their mother's boyfriend had smashed it to use as a means to threaten her. They always managed to get into fights but today seemed a lot more brutal than it usually is.

"We should probably leave them for a bit, Iris," Sophia said before looking down to see her younger sister missing.

"STOP HURTING HER!" Iris says stepping up to confront the drunken man.

"shud up you stupid kid, your deadbeat mum has been drinkin my booze with other blokes, there's no waaay she could be drinkin this much hers *hiccups*lf!" the drunken man says before throwing a punch in Iris' direction.

"Iris get out of the way!" Sophia says as she runs in front of Iris pushing her out of the way of the man and onto the floor.

The man had forgotten he still has a shattered glass bottle in his hand slashes it at Sophia. Blood splatters and the room is covered in blood.

"Oi, oi, oi this must be a joke, right? *hiccups* that wasn't, oh my god" the man collapses to the floor in fear of what he has done. The same black figure who appeared earlier appears behind the man, and before Iris knew what happened she stood there with her sister in her arms, too stunned to look down and realize the reality before her.

"Are you afraid? Do you blame yourself?" the mysterious black figure cried getting almost louder each time. She couldn't stand the sound as it got louder and louder and became more and more crippling.

Iris closes her eyes and falls "SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!!!" but she can't do anything no matter what the sound keeps getting louder and louder yet her words don't do anything for her. and in that moment bits of her past present themselves. She sees all the happy memories she had with her sister, and all the bad too, her staying in her room all those nights after her passing, her moving out to go pursue college, her sheltering herself away from her mom, not answering her mom's phone. Iris realizes, that almost everything she's done to this point her sister would've never wanted for her, that no matter what Sophia would never blame Iris or their mother because no matter what Sophia loved them no matter what. The room around them becomes white, and the black figure descends in front of her. Iris steps forward and embraces the figure, and before anything can be said the figure fades.

Iris wakes up in tears, she brushes them away and checks her phone, and thinks to herself I have sometime before the audition and with newly found confidence goes to the house she always stops at. She catches the bus and begins her walk to school stopping at the house that had haunted her. With a familiar smell in the air, Iris walked to the door and knocked, only to be greeted by her mother.

A few weeks passed...

"Soooooooo, how'd you do in the audition Iris?" a new friend of Iris asks

"I don't know yet Brie, it still has only been two weeks, it could take them a while before I get a callback or any-" a quick buzz interrupts her. Iris pulls out her phone.

"who's that?" Brie says standing in front of Iris.

Iris drops her phone, the screen peaking up at her only reading:

"CONGRATULATIONS IRIS WATSON FOR WINNING $20,000! We look forward to working with you."

anxiety
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About the Creator

Brayden M. Wilcox

Hi, my name's Brayden, I'm fairly new to writing but have high hopes for myself. I aspire to be a full-time author one day and create many books. Currently, I'm finishing up my high school and looking into making my own graphic novel.

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