There’s this chestnut that turns up in lots old movies and TV shows—which probably means it’s total racist bullshit—that primitive people won’t allow their photographs to be taken because the camera would steal their souls. The audience is supposed to laugh at how ignorant and superstitious the natives are. But I’m starting to think they’re on to something because I lost my soul to a photograph.

When I went for the job interview, I didn’t expect much. On the one hand, I was overqualified. My old job had been coding imaging software, and I was applying for a job that a monkey could do. On the other hand, I was a big risk. I lost that job, a wife, a kid, and a year of my freedom to alcohol. In jail for eleven months and twenty-nine days, I got sober. Now I needed a job, and this gig sounded good to me. It was low pressure, and I’d be working by myself. The police department had a warehouse of old case files going back decades, and they’d contracted with a firm to digitize what was still useful and toss the rest.

At the interview they asked a lot about what books I read and what TV shows I liked. It finally clicked that they were trying to weed out the true crime buffs and cold case fanatics: aspiring authors, wannabe detectives, creeps who collect crime scene photos. It was clear that my only aspiration was a paycheck and enough work to keep me out of trouble. I got the job.

The warehouse was dusty and stank of slow decay. I was set up with a computer, a scanner, and an assortment of shredders and bins for the stuff to be discarded. I’d grab a big cardboard box off the racks, carry it over to my station, and look up the case in the system. If the case was closed and anyone who was convicted had served their term, I would enter “evidence destroyed” on the computer and separate the box’s contents into the appropriate bins for disposal. I could see why they wanted to weed out the true crime fanatics. The whole process was much faster and more efficient if I didn’t read the documents, look at the photos, or dwell on suck gruesome artifacts as blood-stained knives in plastic bags.

If there was still a chance of legal action, I digitized the documents before shredding them and repackaged evidence that couldn’t be scanned.

Since I was uninterested in the debris of crime and misery I sifted through, I was very productive . . . until Laura.

Her box was unremarkable, just the next dusty cardboard box on the shelf. I looked up the case. Murder, 1974. Victim, Laura Buono, 32. Francis Buono, her husband, convicted and sentenced to twenty-five to life. Francis died in prison in 1993, heart attack. Done and done. I opened the box to sort and toss the contents.

And there she was.

On the top of the pile of documents was a Polaroid photo of a naked woman. I picked it up slowly and stared at it as if compelled to do so. She was standing against the backdrop of hideous green floral wallpaper. Her pose was slightly askew, her right shoulder pushing forward. Her hands were in front of her stomach, as if she was fighting an instinct to cover her breasts. Her skin was pale with random blemishes. Her breasts were each the size that would fill a man’s hand with nipples somewhat off-center. The photo ended at her upper thighs, just below a thick V of black pubic hair.

The black hair on her head was short and permed. One curl recklessly plunged over her forehead. It was her expression, though, that caused me to sit and stare at the photo. Her brown eyes were open wide and seemed to plead with the camera, though for what I didn’t know. Her mouth was slightly open and seemed to be strained, lost somewhere between a smile and a scream. There was a complex mixture of emotions on her face. Was she aroused by being photographed? Offended? Was she nervous? Humiliated? All that was there and more.

I sat and stared for thirty minutes or more, transfixed. I had never experienced anything like it, even when I was drinking. I wasn’t a man holding a photo of a woman who died decades ago; we were two people looking deeply into each other’s eyes, seeking something we couldn’t name but needed like oxygen.

When I put the photo aside, I was shaking. I staggered to the john and splashed cold water on my face. My knuckles turned white on the sides of the sink. An old demon inside me was screeching for bourbon. I could taste it on my tongue.

Getting sober, I’d learned out to tough my way through the cravings. Gripping the sink like the edge of a cliff, I waited for the demon to hush.

When I got back to my table, I flipped the photo over without looking at it and turned to the box. I wanted to get rid of the contents quickly before something else sucked me in. Curiosity got the better of me, though. As I fed the shredder page after page, I had to know some things. Yes, the photo was of Laura Buono, taken by the husband who strangled her to death. She was a housewife; they’d been married for four years and had no kids. The murder was an argument that got out of control. The argument was over the photos.

Photos, plural. Frank got his brand-new Polaroid camera and wanted to make some porn. There were probably a lot of guys who had the same thought back then. Every other camera had film that had to be developed. If you didn’t know how to do it yourself, you had to take your film to strangers. But the Polaroid spit out the picture into the amateur pornographer’s hot little hand. I wondered how many people find an album in grandpa’s attic that they can’t unsee.

Laura heard Frank was showing his stash of pictures to all his buddies, and she was pissed. Words got said. Plates got thrown. A throat got choked.

The other photos delicti were in a manila envelope, the kind that ties with a string. I glanced inside only once, wound the string back, and fed the whole thing into the shredder. Whoever the last guy was who dipped into the evidence box must have picked out the one photo and left it on the top. Maybe he found it as compelling as I did.

I left that day with the photo in my shirt pocket, even though taking any evidence out of the warehouse was illegal.

That night I dropped the photo on my bed and took off my clothes, looking into Laura’s eyes as I did. I wanted to undress for her. I wanted to offer myself to her the way she was offering herself to me. Naked, I laid down with her. Like before, as I stared into the photo, Laura seemed to stare into me. We were in the room together, the room with the ugly green wallpaper. We looked at each other, both awkward in our nakedness.

As I drew close, she dropped the hands which had frozen halfway to her exposed breasts, and her conflicted face settled into a smile. My insides fluttered as I reached out to touch her face and draw her lips to mine.

A universe away, on my lonely bed, my hand found my swelling penis.

Laura’s mouth melted into mine, and our bodies followed. We offered everything we were to each other, and I knew this was the purest and most powerful love I’d ever known. We collapsed into each other, both throbbing and thrusting and thrashing.

Somewhere, my hand was rubbing up and down my engorged shaft, rubbing faster and faster.

In the room with the green wallpaper, I lost track of where Laura ended and I began.

Everything burned white hot, then I felt hot, sticky drops fall on my chest. I sank back into my body, exhausted, my jizz-covered hand still on my deflated dick.

Laura was just a fading photo again, but I kissed her goodnight and laid her beside me. I’d see her again tomorrow.