Pro Foto 1.8.2
by Paul Revis
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
Back home, Teddy finally gave up on his quest to discover the disappearance of his original picture of the family car, which had ultimately faded to a white square on his screen and, with it, the entire file. Only the enhanced version remained: red, shiny and beautiful.
“Oh well, I never liked that car anyway. The new one is much nicer.”
Then he began working on his favorite photograph of his mother. To the young boy, his mother was the most beautiful woman in the world, but the camera, despite its limited quality, showed every flaw in her face, the circles under her eyes, the sadness and overwork, the wrinkles, and the scar, a leftover from the tragic car accident that had taken his father from them, everything.
The picture had been taken late one evening after she had removed the make-up from her face following a particularly rough day in the restaurant. It wasn’t a flattering photograph, to be sure, but it was a true picture of the way Teddy saw his mother and was therefore a favorite of his.
He let the picture load onto the screen, zoomed into it and began to work his magic. Gone were the wrinkles, smoothed over with the magic of the computer; gone, too, were the dark circles, the scar and even the sadness, replaced by a smooth smile, and a twinkle in the dark green eyes. The boy knew his mother well enough to know how she felt about herself, so he pulled in her waist, gave her the bust she wanted and lessened the posterior she didn’t like. Leaning back from the screen, he scrutinized his work.
“Wow,” he thought, “now you are the most beautiful woman in town!” Teddy chose “Save As” and wrote in the little box: “My beautiful Mom” then hit “Enter.” Immediately the original photograph began to fade, even faster than the photograph of the Crapmobile. But the hour was late, and the boy hardly noticed. He shut the computer down and began his bedtime routine.
* * *
“Man, this bra is tight,” thought Teddy’s Mom as she hustled a half-dozen plates of hot food to the table. “This thing is going back to the store in the morning. Cheap crap! Just what I need, another complication in my life.”
“Looking good, Alice!” commented Jim Beckins, one of her regulars and a man Alice would have liked to date, if only...
“Thanks, Jim. The cook does the best with what he has,” she replied with a rare genuine smile.
“I don’t mean the food. I mean you! Looking very good. Been working out or something?”
“No more than the usual scrambling to keep food on the table and the mortgage paid,” she replied. He never flirts. What the heck is that all about? she wondered.
“Do you date the customers?”
“Don’t get asked very often, and never by the kind of guy I’d want to date. At least not until now,” she replied cautiously.
“Hey, cutie! How about some service over here?” came the call from two tables over, a handsome stranger in an expensive suit was smiling a stunning smile at her.
What the hell is going on with these people today?
“Alice, come into the office when you get a free minute,” called Jack, the owner of the restaurant.
“On my way, boss!” Finally some intelligent escape. Wonder what I did now? She took the stranger’s order, ignoring his flashing smile and obvious flirtations before dashing into the tiny office.
“What has happened to you, Alice?” asked Jack, cutting to the chase as was his custom.
“Nothing!” she replied. “I think the customers have gone a little round the bend, though. I never get flirted with, and today everybody seems to be hitting on me.”
“I should think so,” said the older man with a smile. “And if I were twenty-five years younger, so would I. Have you actually looked at yourself in a mirror today?”
“Just when I got ready to come to work.”
“Go. Look,” he said, shaking his head.
And she did, slipping into the ladies room and stared into the mirror, not sure exactly who it was she was looking at, but rather sure it wasn’t her. The scar she hated so much, the dark circles on her smooth face were gone. The hair soft and silky, and her bosom full and round, just as she had dreamed of since she was a teenager. The woman in the mirror looked eighteen, and a darn nice-looking eighteen, too.
“This isn’t possible!” she whispered. “What the heck has happened to me? I’m getting too old to look this good.”
“Jack,” she said, peeking into her boss’s office, “I think I should go home. Something’s not right with me.”
“You might want to give that idea another thought, unless you’re actually not feeling well. The reason you work here is for the tips, and I have a feeling that your tips couldn’t get much better if you stayed. Men tend to tip pretty waitresses very well, despite their wives or girlfriends. Your call, though.”
Alice did give it another thought and stayed, finding Jack’s words rather prophetic. With somewhat fewer customers than usual, she ended the shift with three times the cash she usually made, as well as the phone numbers of three attractive men.
Less exhausted than she normally was following her shift, she made her way to where she had parked the Crapmobile, finding in its place an almost luminescent red sport coupe sitting on four high-tech wheels unlike any she had ever seen. The car was beautiful, but there was something familiar about it that made her try her key in the door. It worked, and it worked in the ignition.
She opened the glove box and found all her own things, including the registration with her name on it. He heart pounding, she put the gear selector in reverse and pulled out, engaged first gear and let out the clutch. The engine roared like a hungry puma, the tires boiled, and Alice grinned. She hoped for the police weren’t watching when she hit second gear and the rear of the car threatened to switch places with the front.
“Damn!” she breathed, and let off the accelerator. Still smiling like a schoolgirl in her father’s Corvette, she headed home, only the slightest hint of worry nagging at the back of her mind. Her own thoughts ringing in her ears: “Something’s not right.”
* * *
Stripping off the uniform in her tiny bedroom, she looked at her reflection in the full-length mirror. She studied herself for several minutes. Suddenly the seed of possible truth blossomed in her brain.
“Teddy! Wake up, Teddy!”
Startled and fearful, the boy leaped out of bed and ran to his mother, who was still riveted to her reflection in the giant mirror.
“Did you do this to me, Teddy, you and that computer of yours? Did you make me look like this? The Crapmobile! It’s... well, I don’t know what it is, but it’s not the Crapmobile anymore, and you’re the one who changed it, and now it it’s a sweet red hot-rod with my name on the title.
“Teddy, this is just too damn weird to be true, and it’s a little scary. Actually it’s a lot scary, and it’s not right.” And then she took a breath. Alice never cussed, ever, and for her to even think “damn” much less say the forbidden word scared young Teddy just a little.
“I changed my favorite picture of you, Mom,” he admitted in a very quiet voice, “and the Crapmobile. I showed you that before you went to work, and you said it looked good, so I did the one of you. I’m sorry,” he said, a tear welling up in his eye although he really didn’t know why. It wasn’t like he’d done anything wrong, at least he didn’t think he had.
Alice whirled around and grabbed her startled son, hugging him close to her. “I’m not mad, Teddy, I’m ecstatic! Scared as all get out ’cause this isn’t natural. I’m thirty-four and parts of me are sagging and wrinkling, like they’re supposed to. That’s just part of getting older. But look at me, Teddy, I’ve never in my life looked this good. Nice job on the boobs, by the way; I like them a lot,” she said thrusting her chest out as she hadn’t done since high school. Alice was beginning to feel a bit giddy.
Teddy blushed like a tomato. She wasn’t mad. She liked his work. But it wasn’t his work, was it? It was the computer, and that program from Mr. Miller’s Second-Hand Shop. Two dollars it had cost them. Two dollars to change his mother into the most beautiful woman she had ever dreamed to be, to put the most lovely smile on her otherwise sad face. Two dollars. Two dollars. Sometimes, he thought, you get more than you bargain for. And that thought scared the boy as much as it did his mother when she thought it.
“This isn’t natural, Teddy, and it’s making me a little scared, but you know what? I’m going to ride it out for as long as it goes. How many times does a girl get to do it over? Back to bed, genius, I just may go out for a while.”
That’s what she did, too. Showered her new and improved body, dug the slinkiest dress she owned out from the back of the closet, hoping it didn’t smell like it had been buried there for ten years, and headed for the nearest up-scale saloon.
* * *
Several hours later she was driven home, slightly tipsier than she would admit, and with only three dollars less in her purse than when she’d left home. Magically, the Crapmobile showed up in her driveway the next morning with a note under the wiper that said: “Nice ride, sweetie. Thanks for a fun evening.” It was signed “Bill.” Alice had no idea who Bill was, and frankly didn’t care much. She was young again and beautiful and guys wanted to do things for her and to her and because of her, and she liked it. Just like she had in the old days, before Jack, her husband, and Teddy.
Her head pounding, Teddy’s mom awoke just in time to get cleaned up for another day at “Big Jack’s Road House.”
“Goin’ to work, Mom?” called Teddy.
“Yah,” came the weak reply. “How about enhancing some cash on that program?”
Ignoring the begging, he asked, “What time did you get in last night?”
“You mean this morning. You don’t want to know and, to be honest, I’m not sure I actually know myself,” although in reality she did know but was too ashamed of herself to let Teddy know.
“Did you have fun?”
“I’m pretty sure I did,” she replied with a sheepish grin. “I gotta run. See if you can do something with this place while I’m gone. I know its Saturday, and I don’t want to mess up your weekend, but just a little straightening up. Okay?”
“Okay, don’t work too hard, Mom.”
“I don’t plan to,” she intoned, and hightailed it to work.
* * *
“Do something with the house, eh?” thought Teddy. “Maybe I’ll do just that. Mom always wanted a bigger house,” he said grabbing his camera. Outside, he photographed the modest house from every angle. Inside, every room. Once the computer had ingested the camera’s memory, Teddy went to work building the new house his mom had dreamed of, and when he was finished, there were even a maid and servant.
SAVE AS: Our new house.
ENTER.
The original photograph of the outside of the house began to fade on the screen, replaced by the ever-sharpening photograph of a huge brick-walled house of indeterminate square footage. The insides of the rooms began transforming before the boy’s ever-bulging eyes.
Hurriedly, Teddy drew a wall safe into his plans, the door open, with stacks of cash visible. He ran down the new wood-paneled hallway, stopping at a particular painting that still looked a little transparent. As he watched, the painting became more distinct, more solid. Teddy hesitated before he touched the edge of the frame, as though afraid of being caught up in the transformation process somehow.
Gingerly, with an outstretched finger he nudged the frame. It moved, ever so slightly. Smiling, he grabbed the painting and pulled, the frame moving on the hinge just as he had designed it to do, revealing an electronically controlled wall safe. The boy pulled on the handle, and the heavy door swung open, revealing forty stacks of hundred-dollar bills neatly bundled in paper wrappers. Ten thousand dollars in each neat stack. Enough money to keep us in food and luxury for quite a while, he thought.
“Ahem,” came a voice discretely soft and at a respectable distance away. “May I be of assistance, young sir?”
“Hemmings?” asked Teddy, for that is what he had named his butler, at least in his mind. “Or is it Jeeves?”
“Havisham, Master Theodore,” replied the butler with the distinctive British accent one would expect. “May I be of service, sir?”
“Maybe a little something to eat would be nice.”
“I’ll see what Miss Bridget has to offer,” said Havisham as he melted into the shadows the way proper English butlers do.
Teddy closed the safe after setting the combination to a set of numbers he wouldn’t forget, and ran to explore the rest of the house he had built.
* * *
Copyright © 2020 by Paul Revis
