The last photograph of his father was taken on the summer porch, a simple, black-and-white picture capturing a moment of quiet contentment. In the photo, his father is smiling faintly, holding a small wooden bird carved from a block of oak. Ethan had found the photograph after the accident, a relic of a life now gone. He placed it on his nightstand, a small anchor in the storm of grief.
The first change was almost imperceptible. A tiny, faint line appeared on the photo, a splinter of what looked like wood dust on his father's cheek. Ethan brushed it off, but the next day, it was back. Then, the splinter grew into a small chip, a piece of the wooden bird in his father's hand. The splinter was no longer on the picture; it was in the picture.Ethan, an artist by trade, became obsessed. He'd stare at the photo for hours, convinced his mind was playing tricks on him.
He began to trace the patterns of the chip with his finger, the texture a rough, splintered edge that his own fingers should not have been able to feel. He took the photograph to a restorer, but they saw nothing. The picture was perfectly fine. Only Ethan could see the splintered wood, the growing rot.The photograph became a window into a morbid transformation. Each day, another piece of the image would turn to wood. His father's smile would flatten, his lips becoming a faint, thin line of bark. His eyes, once full of a familiar warmth, would become two knots of dense, dark wood. The transformation was slow, agonizingly so, a process of petrification that seemed to mirror the slow, agonizing process of his grief. The last remnants of the man he knew were being replaced by a silent, cold effigy.
One night, he awoke to the sound of soft, rhythmic scratching coming from his nightstand. He sat up, his heart pounding against his ribs, and watched in horror. The photograph was vibrating, the once-still image now a scene of violent, slow-motion change. The sound was the sound of a thousand tiny, wooden fibers tearing, a quiet but relentless destruction. His father's hand, still clutching the bird, was now a solid block of oak, the fingers merging into the uncarved wood.Ethan felt a terrible, cold certainty settle over him. His father, he knew, had not died in the accident. He had been taken, his form, his very essence, turned into wood. The bird he had been carving had not been a hobby; it had been a vessel, a curse, a terrible exchange.The scratching stopped. The photograph was still. Ethan, trembling, reached out to touch the image. The texture was rough, like bark. The image was now a solid, three-dimensional block of wood, the carving of his father's face and hands eerily perfect, impossibly real.
The wooden bird, so lovingly held in the photo, was now a hollow cavity in the block of wood that was his father's hand.And then, from within the cavity, a soft, familiar sound. It was the sound of a thousand tiny splinters scratching, of something small and wooden and hungry trying to get out. Ethan stared, paralyzed, as a single splinter of wood pushed its way out of the hollow, landing on his nightstand with a soft, final thud. It was a perfect, miniature carving of his own face, screaming.