Snapshots
By Ellie Dauber

This is another of my older stories, appearing on Big Closet for the first time. I hope you enjoy it.

* * * * *

Retirement is a time to pull back, to take a much-earned and welcome rest after more than forty years work. But for those people whose work has become their life, it's an early death, the end to any useful purpose, while they still have the minds and the heart to continue.

For Lillian Wagner, it meant the sorrow of watching her newly retired husband, Ed, sink into the despair of imagined uselessness. Things, however, aren't always as bad as they seem. Ed and Lil will find a reprieve in a very common place that just happens to lie at the edge of... the Twilight Zone.

* * * * *

The sky was a deep, almost slate gray.

The Harbor Heights Community Center moved its annual Fall Flea Market into the Center auditorium because of the threat of rain. A chipper young woman in a blue "Volunteer" t-shirt sat behind a table next to the open door. "Hi, and welcome to the flea market," she said, adding, "There's a $2 admission fee."

"I don't see why we have to pay money just to get in." Ed Wagner said, as he reached for his wallet. Ed was a tall, slender man with thinning gray hair cut just a bit on the long side. He wore jeans and a gray sweatshirt

"Oh, shush, Ed," said a short, slightly plump woman standing next to him in a pale yellow housedress. Lil Wagner wore her own gray hair in a ponytail that went halfway down her back. "It's for a good cause, and you know it."

"I suppose. Hell, I don't even know why I let you drag me to this thing." He handed the volunteer a $5. When she gave him the change, he quickly pushed the single into a slotted can marked "Contributions."

Lil smiled at the small charity. "Because you're bored to tears, you old fraud. You've done nothing but sit around the house, since you retired last month. You need to get out and do things. Retirement isn't the end of the world."

"Next thing, you'll be telling me that I've still got my health."

"Well you have." She squeezed his arm. "You're still my big strong 'Mr. Man.'"

Ed took her hand in his. "And you're still my 'Sweet Lilly'... but, if I'm so fit, why did the company force me to leave."

"Because you turned 65, and that was the mandatory retirement age."

"I know. It's just that I... I feel like I wasted my whole life, never accomplished a damned thing at work. I'm like that guy Jack Nicholson played in that SCHMIDT movie."

"Now that is nonsense. Didn't they make you spend your last three months with the company training Andy Becker and Matt O'Hara, the men they picked to take over for you? How can your work have been a waste, if you had to train two men to replace you?"

"I don't know, but don't think that I haven't been tempted to drive over and check out the company's dumpsters."

"At least that would have gotten you out of the house."

"You're one thing that I didn't waste my time on." He paused. "I can't think of a better way to have spent my life than being married to you." He gently squeezed her hand.

"Nor I." She squeezed his back. By now they were inside the auditorium. "Now, let's see what sort of 'treasures' we can find."

"Shall we stay together?" he asked after a moment that they both spent looking at the number of tables. "Ned Royce has some fishing lures for sale over that way." He pointed off to the right.

"I don't think so. I see a table full of cookbooks that I want to look at. You go buy a better way to catch 'em, and I'll see about getting some new ways to cook 'em up.

Before they could separate, she added, "Let's meet at the food booth..." she pointed to an area near the front of the room where volunteers were selling hot dogs, burgers, and soda, "...in an hour."

"Fine. We'll show each other what we found, and I'll treat you to lunch."

She kissed his cheek. "You always did know how to show a girl a good time, you big spender."

"Anything… for the right girl."

* * * * *

Ed took a sip of coke -- diet coke at Lil's insistence. "So what did you find?"

"A cookbook on indoor grilling, and it has a big chapter on fish, so that new lure of yours better work. I got another one on Thai cooking, so brace yourself for something new at mealtime." Cooking was a longtime hobby of Lil's, one that Ed had learned to put up with through the years. Only about one new recipe in four actually tasted good to him, but it made her happy.

Another hobby of hers was collecting salt and pepper sets. She had about sixty, sixty-one, now, and she held the newest one up for him. "See, Mickey Mouse is the salt shaker, and, Donald Duck is the pepper, of course."

"Oh, of course." He tried not to smile at her earnestness. "Anything else?"

"Well..." Her voice trailed off as she reached into the paper shopping bag that held her purchases. "I did get this."

"An instant camera? Now why did you buy this?" He took the pale gray camera case from her hand.

"Because they're fun," Lil said stubbornly. "And we never did replace the one that accidentally fell off the dock at Dingman's Lake last year."

"That was an accident. Besides, I got Harry to take the blame." Harry was their son, a chemical engineer, who lived way out on the West Coast near San Francisco. "By the way, I'm thinking of taking him and Charlotte up on their offer to fly us both out there for Xmas."

"Oh, let's do it. We haven't seen them or the kids in so long."

"I thought you'd say that. How about we call them tonight and say yes?"

"Now I'm really glad I brought that camera. We can use it on the trip. It'd be terrible to get home and then discover that none of the pictures we took there came out."

"Hmmm, I'd better test it first." He looked closely at the camera case. "It's a knock-off. I never even heard of the name, 'Polasruid', probably doesn't even work worth a damn."

"Maybe... but the man I bought it from said that we'd be amazed by the pictures it could take." She shrugged. "And if it doesn't work, I'm only out $1.50."

"That's probably $2 too much, but we'll try it when we get home."

* * * * *

"Okay," Ed said. "You just sit there on the steps and give me a big smile."

Lil walked over and used her handkerchief to dust the three steps up to the back porch. When she was satisfied, she sat on the top step. "How's this?" she asked, looking up at him demurely.

"Perfect." He focused on her through the viewer and pressed the button. As he did, he saw her quickly stick out her tongue at him. "Just lovely," he added.

Lil stood up and took the other packages into the house. Ed counted to thirty, as the directions in the camera case explained. Then he pulled out the film packet and put the developing photo face-up on the step to finish its processing.

At first, there was only a blur. Slowly shapes appeared, and, after a few more seconds, the scene was almost recognizable. He could see Lil sitting on the step, but her image was that half-finished, washed-out metallic image that photographers call "solarized."

At that moment, Lil came back outside. "How did --" She froze in place. In an instant, her body took on the same half-done look as the photo.

"Lil!" Ed dropped the camera and ran to her. She couldn't be moved. It was as if she were a part of the porch. She just stared at him with unseeing eyes. "Oh, Lord, what have I done?" Ed collapsed down onto the step next to the picture.

As he sat, trying to figure out what to do, he glanced down at the picture. It was changing; color was starting to leak back into the silvery areas. He looked quickly at Lil. Yes, he could see traces of color on her, too. "It's... it's still developing," he whispered in amazement. "And when it's done, Lil will be normal again."

He leaned back against the step, waiting for it to be over.

Colors were coming back into Lil, but they weren't the colors that had been there before. Her skirt had changed from yellow to a dark green, and it seemed to be cut tighter against her figure than before. It made her hips look rounder; her legs looked better, too. Lil had always been slender, now, she seemed more... curvy.

She looked taller, too. Ed stood next to her. Yes, she was. Lil had been a head shorted than he was, but now, she seemed to be almost as tall. He looked closely at her face. As the silver faded away, so did her glasses. Her face was a bit rounder, her nose smaller.

And she looked so... so young.

"What?" The silvery effect was gone. Lil, whatever she had become, was moving again. "Da... Ed, what just happened to me? I... I feel so strange."

"I can't even begin to guess, hon. Go in the house and take a look at yourself in a mirror."

"Okay." She gave her hair a flip. It was shorter now, hanging free down around her shoulders, and the gray he was used to had given way to a deep chestnut. Lil had been a blonde when she was young.

Ed's hair had been that very shade of brown. And she hadn't noticed that her hair had changed. If was as if she'd always worn it like that. What was going on? He followed her into the house.

"Dad, I'm young again. I... I can't be much past thirty." She was standing in front of the mirrored wall in the dining room, posing her new body.

Ed was confused. "Lil, why did you call me 'Dad', and when... when did the wall get mirrored?"

"I... I remember that it wasn't mirrored this morning, but... somehow, I remember that we had it done about a year ago. I... Dad... Ed... I remember being your daughter. I'm Lil, but I'm... I'm Leah, too, Leah Wagner, your daughter."

"If you're Leah, then where's Lil?"

Her face went white. "I'm... she's... she's dead, Dad. She had a heart attack and died in her sleep about two years ago."

There was a sudden rush of memories. Ed remembered waking up that morning and... and -- NO! -- and finding Lil dead. He remembered -- oh, Lord, please, no -- he remembered the funeral. He'd taken early retirement, and Leah had moved back in to take care of him.

"The camera!" he yelled. "Thank G-d I bought it. It changed things, changed everything." He ran for the porch. "Maybe... maybe if I take another picture..."

Leah ran after him. She'd... Mom had bought... No, she remembered now that Dad had bought the thing. It was all so confusing, but she wasn't changing back. "Dad, no."

He had the camera in his hand. "No? You... you want to be dead?"

"Dad, I'm not dead. I'm… me." She put her hand on his. "I think the Leah part of me is getting stronger. I still remember everything about... Mom, but those memories are of someone else, someone I loved, but someone else."

"Then I've lost you, lost you all over again." He collapsed down onto the step, his eyes wet with tears.

"No, you haven't, Dad." She sat down next to him and put her arms around him. "I'm young again. I've got a life. I've... I’ve even got a job." She had just realized the fact.

"A job?" His curiosity was getting the better of his grief. Just how far did this magic go? He put down the camera. The bag he had brought it home in was a foot or so away. Impulsively, he put it back in. He could always get it later when Leah -- when Lil, dammit! -- agreed to try and change back.

"Yes, I'm... I'm office manager at the Maplewood branch of the Whitmore Bank. I, hey, I make pretty good money, too."

"I'm happy for you," Ed said wryly.

"Be happy for yourself, Dad. If it can make me young, then it can do the same for you."

"For me... no, that's... that's not possible."

"Oh, sure, and I'm your daughter who used to be your wife."

"This has to be a bad dream," he said, standing up quickly.

"Where are you going?"

"If I'm dreaming -- and I know that I am -- I should be in bed." He turned and walked into the house. Leah grabbed the bag with the camera and followed him in. He headed through the house and up to the second floor.

As she walked through the house, Leah noticed other differences. Her briefcase was sitting on the dining room table, right next to her laptop. Lil had never touched a computer, but Leah suddenly was aware that she knew the entire Microsoft Office Suite. A fashionable camelhair coat – also hers -- hung on the coat track by the front door.

What amazed Leah most was the family portrait hanging on the wall over the fireplace. It had been painted almost twenty years ago, but now a young girl, her younger self, stood next to her brother, Harry.

"Where the hell is everything?" Ed's voice echoed down the stairs.

Leah ran up to her... father's bedroom. He was standing in the middle of the room, just staring at things. "Where are all your clothes, where's your make-up, and jewelry?"

The answer came to her mind. "Dad, I'm not your wife anymore. We don't sleep together. I sleep in... in my old room down the hall." She took his hand and led him down to what had been her sewing room that morning. "See."

Now the room was a woman's bedroom. The bed had a yellow chenille bedspread. A rosewood dresser was against the wall with a dressing table next to it. There was an exercise bike in a corner. Leah remembered that she tried to pedal at least fifteen miles a week. The narrow storage closet of the sewing room was now a double closet with a mirrored door.

"This can't be happening." Ed stared a moment, then sank down on her bed. "It can't. It can't."

"Yes, it can." She pulled out the camera and snapped a picture of him sitting there on the bed.

He looked up when he heard the click. "No!" he yelled. He jumped up and ran from the room.

Leah grabbed the camera and ran after him. He ran into his own bedroom, trying to close the door behind. She dodged and managed to get in. "Now we'll make you young, too." With a smile of anticipation, she pulled the film packet out and put the picture on the bed table. "You'll see, Dad; it'll be great, your being young again, too."

"I don't wa..." He froze. In an instant, his body was covered with the same silvered effect.

Leah waited. After about thirty seconds, some color began to show on Ed. Leah glanced down. The same thing was happening to the figure in the picture. "Soon I'll have a husband again, a young, virile husband." As she said it, she felt a warmth in her groin that she hadn't felt for so very long.

Then something began to go wrong.

Ed was getting thinner, smaller. His slacks were getting tighter on his body, and as they did, they were showing curves that shouldn't be there. The silver was gone from a part of his head. His hair was the same brown she remembered, but it was longer, almost down to his back.

His face was moon-shaped now, with a small nose and much fuller lips. Was that lipstick on them? She shouldn't be... She? Leah realized now what was happening to Ed. "Oh, my Lord in Heaven, he's turning into a girl."

It was almost over, just a bit of silver left on her body, just enough to allow for a pair of breasts to grow on... her chest. Only they weren't growing much. Ed -- no, Edie -- was only fifteen, after all.

The retired man had become a young girl. She was only five foot one, with chestnut hair tied in a ponytail and hanging down almost to her waist. Ed's jeans and sweatshirt had become a pair of pale blue capri pants and a matching camisole top that showed off her blossoming figure.

As Leah watched in amazement, she suddenly realized that the room was changing, too. All of that furniture from her room was replacing her parents' bedroom set. The bed was a queen-sized one, though. She knew that she liked the extra room. She blushed as she also remembered that she occasionally shared it with someone, a Jack McGraw, whom she now remembered much too well.

"Earth to L... to Mom."

The voice shook her back to attention. Mom? She looked at Ed... Edie.

"Are you satisfied now?" The new girl stared at the person she was remembering now as her mother. "I'm my own damned granddaughter."

"Granddaughter?" This was crazy. "Why didn't you become your son -- or, better yet, your son-in-law?"

"Aw, Mom, this is magic. It -- like -- doesn't have to make sense, you know."

"I know." Leah noticed that Edie's language was becoming more like a teen's. Her body language was changing, too. She was slumping. "Maybe we can change you into a boy or something."

"No, I... I kind of like being a girl." She shook her head. It was true. She was starting to feel very comfortable in this body. A part of her didn't like it, though, but that part seemed to be getting weaker. Her memories of Ed Wagner's life were becoming something she knew third hand, not something she had lived. "Well, I guess, maybe, I could try it...for a while, anyway."

"Fine." Leah looked around. "Where... where's the camera?" There was no sign of it. "It was here a minute ago."

Edie's eyes went wide. "So was Grampa Ed. He's the one who bought the camera, but now I... I remember that he died about six months after you... after Grandma did."

"Think, Edie, what did we do this morning?" She remembered, but she wanted to see if her... her daughter had the same new memories.

"You... you did some housework, and I watched TV. You said we might go to that flea market this afternoon, but I wanted to go to the mall with Lainey." Lainey Ross lived two blocks away. An hour ago, neither of them had known of the girl's existence. Now, she was Edie's lifelong friend.

And they had never owned the camera, a polaSRUid camera with “A Picture of My Daughter” printed on the side in a florid pink scrawl.

"We're... we're stuck."

"No!" Edie panicked and instinctively ran back to the other bedroom. It was her room now, painted in wild colors with posters of boy bands up on the walls. She saw clothes, jeans, panties, blouses thrown here and there -- Mom was always on her case about that -- and her book bag on her desk, the desk with the Central Peyton Junior High banner in the wall above it.

She looked at the mirror above her dresser. A cute, young girl stared back at her. Behind the image, she saw the image of Ed Wagner... her late grampa. He just had time to wave and blow her a kiss before he faded away.

As he did, Leah and Edie felt their memories fade -- no, shift. Even the experience of changing seemed more like a dream now. They would remember Ed and Lil Wagner -- even remember being them, but now they accepted their new lives and their new chances.

* * * * *

Ed and Lil Wagner were just planning on buying some odds and ends to occupy a bit of time with their hobbies. Instead, they found the greatest of bargains, new lives at a low price, all at a very special flea market that's open every Saturday... in the Twilight Zone.

The End