Click

Written in February 2008. Somehow I really like this story. It might not be the best thing I have ever written, but I like it. It was originally significantly longer, and described Baylis' traipsing around Los Angeles all day beforehand, but it ended up being too long for the assignment and I had to cut it.


Click. Katie Baylis' camera snapped, and she had captured the image of a woman in the courtyard of a church, sweeping the walkway with an old straw broom and humming what had to be an old hymn.
The woman looked up from her sweeping. She was pretty; she had a very dark black skin tone, and she looked to be around her 30s or so. She smiled a warm, wide grin that almost invited Katie to come in the gates and pray. Or something.
“You're so pretty...” said Katie, and she stepped a little closer, but then she looked at the gate. There was a heavy chain and padlock holding the gate shut, looking very unwelcoming to prospective worshipers. The woman looked back down and continued sweeping.
“Can't have you comin' in here and foulin' things up, now can we, white?” she said with a heavy swing to her voice. “All you folk ever do is mess things up. I know,” she said. She looked back up at Katie, and then walked into the church doors.
Katie stared for a second. What just happened? She was not entirely sure until she heard the bell at the top of the church ring, and saw the woman from a second ago up next to the bell. She waited for the bell to quiet, and then began to yell from the top of the belfry.
“Y'all have been treatin' me like dirt for too long!” she began. Some passers by stopped and looked up at her, talking behind their hands and pointing. “Y'all treat me different because of who I am! I ain't gonna take no more of this!”
Katie suddenly realized it-- This woman must be trying to kill herself! Was she going to jump from there? So high up, she'd definitely be killed if she jumped. She cupped her hands around her mouth.
“Hey, get down from there, you'll fall!” she yelled up. The woman laughed.
“That's just what I'm gonna do, white! Just you watch, I'll get down all right.”
“Look, I don't know what's wrong right now, but if you come down here we can talk about it.”
“What, and have you ridicule me for being black some more, white? You just keep your mouth shut and watch!” said the woman, and laughed again.
“You're a Catholic, aren't you? If you kill yourself, you'll go to hell, won't you?” yelled Katie. By this time a crowd had begun to gather around the church and her, and a good deal of people looked genuinely worried. “Isn't that what you believe?”
As she shouted up to the woman, three words kept flashing through her head. Take a picture. Take a picture. She still held her camera in her left hand, it would be easy, and it would be a beautiful picture, to be sure. A woman in black and white standing on top of a church in the noontime sun. The clouds in the sky seemed to beckon her on. Take a picture.
She shook her head, as the woman spoke again. “If I'm going to hell, I'll see all of you whites there, lady!”
Katie raised the camera up to her eyes. As she looked through the viewfinder, she saw the woman staring back at her, saw her step off the roof, saw her begin to fall.
She fell for what seemed like hours, the crowd gasping and crying out in alarm. The woman's face was bright and clear, not at all the face of a mad woman. She fell from the top of the belfry to the concrete she had been sweeping earlier, a sickening crack echoing through Katie's mind as the woman's head smashed against the ground. She lay still for a moment, and then a dark red pool began to form around her. Police were called, people started running away, screams filled the air.
Click.