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"Simon?"
"Yeah, Clary?"
"Will you tell me a story?"
"We should be asleep..."
"I can't sleep. I'm - I'm scared."
"Okay. I don't know any stories, though, except one, but it'll just scare you even more. So."
"Tell me anyways."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah."
"Okay."
...
"Are you gonna tell me?"
...
"Once upon a time, there were two boys who lived by the city..."
The man enters the shop—
The man falls into the shop, and Simon turns. He looks too fashionably dressed for this part of town; most men that can afford suits do not come to Simon Lewis for cameras. Something else, though, maybe, but that is never discussed. This man doesn’t belong here. He doesn’t.
But there’s something about him that feels familiar. It’s the chilling kind of feeling that you get when you look at an old picture, or when you look into a mirror, or when you look at your reflection in the seawater.
Simon cannot kick him out.
“You lost?”
He picks himself up off of the ground. “No,” he says. “I don’t think so.”
“I don’t see many people like you around here,” Simon tells him. “If you’re not sure, I’ve got a friend who can help. She’s upstairs, I’ll get her—”
“No.”
The man’s voice is firm.
“Okay… well, I sell cameras. Obviously. I’ll give you a discount if you stop being creepy.”
“I’m being creepy?”
“Just a little.”
He sighs. “I do need a camera.”
He walks around the shop slowly, at a pace that makes Simon feel like there’s a knife pressed up against his throat. He seems to be studying every camera available in complete depth, running his fingers over them, holding them up to his eyes. He does it like he already knows the intricacies of a camera, like he’s doing this specifically to make Simon uncomfortable.
And then he turns, points to the camera on the wall behind Simon, and says: “I’m strangely drawn to that one. Can I take a look at it?”
“It’s not for sale, sorry,” Simon says. “Big part of Lewis family history.”
“Is there a story to that?”
Simon takes a deep breath. “It belonged to a friend of our family, about fifty years ago. They don’t tell me much about him. All I know is that he died when he was like, twenty, and I think my mom said his name was Raphael, but I could be wrong. Anyway, it’s pretty meaningless to me, personally, but I can’t sell it to you.”
The man looks like a ghost. “Interesting,” he says. “My name is Raphael. I like your story, Simon Lewis.”
Simon grows cold for a moment, thinks about Raphael and the camera and familiarity, but then he stops. He gives a false smile. “It’s a nice name, isn’t it? And, yeah, thanks.”
“I’ve always liked it. You’re welcome.”
The man, who is ostensibly named Raphael, who can’t be named Raphael, walks out of the shop.
Simon never sees him again.
“There were two boys who lived near the city,” says Simon’s mother. He’s eighteen years old and she’s still telling him bedtime stories.
“I like this one.”
She kisses his forehead. “I know you do.”
“But you’ve been telling it to me for years and you’ve never gotten to the ending.”
“It’s a circular story,” she says, winking at him.
“What does that mean, though?”
“So, the ending goes like this—”
It is 1966 and he’s taking a picture of Simon while he looks down at the water. Simon, strangely, does not have a reflection here.
“You look beautiful,” says Raphael.
Simon looks over at him; his face is damp from the sea’s air. Raphael looks more beautiful under this moonlight than anything Simon has ever seen.
“Not as beautiful as you.”
Raphael laughs at this. “I’m not anything even resembling beautiful.”
Simon pulls the camera from his hands. “I’ll show you.”
He takes a picture of Raphael. It does not capture his beauty well enough; in the photograph, he looks a little bit too pale.
Clary is the one who informs him of Raphael’s death, days later.
Simon holds onto Raphael’s camera and cries.
He pulls Simon right out of the fire. He has pulled many people from many fires. Simon is not different.
Until he speaks. “You saved my life,” he says. Something inside of Raphael shivers – part of him had expected Simon to say you’re a monster. “You could have left me to die.”
“I have gotten used to death,” he tells Simon. “I would never let anyone die. Why would I leave you to die?”
He’s known the Lewis family for five weeks. Rebecca is not the best cook, still learning and always burning things, but it was never intense until now. Now: their house is ash. Raphael feels sorry for them.
“I thought you hated me.”
Raphael scoffs.
“Thank you,” Simon says, and Simon is different.
He takes them all in. Simon is sweet and kisses like creating a halo. He has to continually remind Rebecca to sleep – she is always up talking to someone, or writing, or doing something so beautifully Rebecca. And Elaine is warm, kind.
“I love you,” he says, one night. Simon’s room is right next to his.
“I love you, too,” Simon replies.
In the morning, the entire Lewis family is gone.
“Do you trust me?”
Raphael nods. More than anything, he trusts Simon. He has never loved anything as much as Simon Lewis.
“You have my full trust.”
Simon trips over his shoelace and Raphael stumbles; they are playing by the road. Raphael’s family told them to stop playing by the road. They are too old to be playing outside. It seems like they have been alive for centuries.
Raphael stumbles into the road. He had been holding Simon’s hand, but now—
Simon does nothing. He takes Raphael’s camera from his pocket and cries.
“When I kill you,” Raphael growls, “I will miss you.”
There’s no truth to it. Raphael will not kill him.
But he dies. He dies anyway. They all die. He has been alive for too long and he always dies, or Simon dies, or the world ends.
Maybe this will be his last incarnation. Maybe he will finally be able to rest.
It is his last incarnation.
He has been so many people: the ghost, the photographer, the firefighter, the soldier, the victim. It’s tiring. It is tiring.
Simon does not remember any of their previous lives.
Raphael falls in love with him in every life, and Simon doesn’t remember. The blood does not make him remember. This was never supposed to happen.
He starts to tell Raphael about the apocalypse – it is a story that Raphael has heard before.
This time, at the end, he will have Simon.
In this life - this horrible, extended life - he tells himself that he will never touch a camera.
In every other life, Simon loved him back.
In this life—
“There were two boys who lived near the city,” he tells Clary. “In every life, they loved each other. But one of them—”
“This is a weird story.”
“I know,” Simon says. “It’s the only one I can remember.”