365 Ficlets - #151 ~ "Camera"

It felt cold in his hands as he picked it up and turned it over and over. Leaning back into the soft leather back of the chair he traced the tip of his finger over the magic word that he had been told by his father since childhood was synonymous with the word camera; Leica. Since growing up, finally, and leaving home, the petty jealousies that a boy holds for his father’s posessions had passed. Even so, sitting there he could clearly remember the teenage frustration he had felt at being denied the chance to even borrow it. Now it was sitting in his grasp; unhappily.

When his mother called, he had known. Dad had been slipping away for weeks. Now, thinking of that slow wane into the darkness, absently fiddling with his M7, James realised that his cheeks were wet with silent tears. After thirty-eight years of life, the only connection that he felt to his dead father was a long-past coveting of a favourite camera. There was nothing more sad, to him, than that realisation. That and the absence of time to change it.

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