#FridayFlash - Seconds

Click. Wind the film on. Focus. Click. Repeat.



Six shots later, Dana rewound the film and popped open the back of her camera. Her fingers danced a familiar routine as she removed the film, and added another. The new film was black and white, and strictly for artwork. Not like the colour film she'd just finished.



Dana slipped the used film canister into her pocket and slung the camera over her shoulder by its moth-eaten strap. She'd develop the film when she got home.



Dana did some calculations as she walked. The film was composed of thirty six frames, so that meant she'd taken thirty six shots over a period of forty minutes. Each exposure was just 1/100th of a second long. She'd captured nearly a third of a second on film. Added to the films she'd already processed, that gave her three seconds of suspended time. She drummed her fingers against the camera. Three seconds wasn't enough. Even just thinking about it had taken long than that.



Dana opened her front door and deposited her camera on her desk. A pile of developed photos sat beside the phone. She picked them up and leafed through them. 288 shots, all of her. 288 snapshots of time. She sat down and fished the canister out of her pocket. Would another thirty six snapshots make a difference? Three seconds of extra time didn't feel like enough. It wasn't enough. The doctors had given her only six months, and she could never shoot enough photos to offset that, to buy her more time.



Her gaze roved around the room and alighted on her flatmate's video camera.



Perhaps...