"Sign here. Here. And here. Please hand over your phone and any other devices. You'll have 60 minutes."

The printer ink hasn't completely dried. The title before my name smudges a little when the correctional officer slips my ID card into a clear plastic sheath and hands it to me.

I hang up my raincoat and leave my umbrella on a stand.

I follow a guard out and down a long corridor. The visitor's badge now clipped to my sweater bobs in time with my steps.

This administrative wing of the prison is being revamped. Caulking guns and masonry tools lie atop stacked sheets of plywood. Yellow "Caution: Fresh Paint" signs are taped to almost every door jamb.

The yellow tape flutters in the breeze. Police Line - Do Not Cross. The broken body of a man lies in a pool of congealed blood on the sidewalk.

I look up.

The dead man is alive once more, but not for long. His arms pinwheel in his 9.81 m/s² freefall. The man who just pushed him off an apartment building roof is leaning over the parapet, grinning and waving.

The scene loops back and plays out again. The tape, the body... the killer's chilling grin.

I slam my eyes shut and reopen them to fixate on the guard's back. I force myself to concentrate on the smells in the corridor as I keep walking, whiffs of volatile organic compounds from the paint, the vinegary stink of fresh shellac on wooden benches along the walls, pockets of stale air.

The inside of a coffin would be like this. Closed, stifled. Eternal rest, ensconced in an oak-style veneer laminated onto chipboard. Sawdust and glue and... a head resting on a foam wedge covered in satin. Tangled red hair upon a silk pillow.

There are roses strewn across the nightgown-clad woman's corpse on the bed. 'Flowers for a blue lady'' the man scrawls on the notepad by the phone on the night table.

The scene shifts. I already know how it plays out at the start, having watched it before. The man crushes a pillow over the woman's face. Her legs thrash, her fingernails claw at his forearms... until suffocation robs her of life's breath and her arms fall aside.

I draw a deep lungful of air, counting out the seconds in silence.

One...

Two...

Three...

I exhale and level my stare forward again.

We pass an open passageway that angles off in the distance. From its depths, I hear voices. Ones echoing within the barred concrete cells beyond, not the bone-enclosed space of my skull.

Bone shards and brain matter trickle down the floral wallpaper. A single bullet hole, a bullseye in a faux daisy. The female shooter spins on her heels and flees out the sliding glass doors. Sheer curtains flap in her wake like a cape upon her exit. A man's body is sprawled on the rug.

I squeeze my hands tight. Dig the tips of my nails into my palms. I must be more stressed than I realise given the barrage–or should that be a mirage–of afterimages bombarding me.

We're approaching a metal door at the end of the corridor. The guard reaches for a passcard tucked halfway into his uniform shirt pocket. The lanyard it's attached to is sweat-stained where it lies across the back of his neck. The strap hangs like a noose.

I do my best to ignore the man hanging from the pipe overhe–.

The leather belt wrapped around his neck is sweat-stained. His body swings gently to and fro. The trio of men who strung him up stare at the pendulating shadow as if marking the passing seconds.

I know it was them, for my mind's eye now observes how they force their victim up on a chair at gunpoint, tie the belt end around the pipe, then kick the chair away with a clatter.

"Miss, are you ok?"

I blink and the silhouette's gone.

"Sorry, bit of a headache." I rub my temple and the guard offers me a sympathetic smile.

I take another deep breath, re-anchoring myself with the scents of the present. That's something the photographs don't convey. No scratch & sniff there. Only sights... and sounds. How the latter is possible from something I've only seen? No clue.

Ever since I've viewed those crime scene photographs from the camera. However, I've come to learn the murdered may be rendered silent but their death sounds echo loudly from within the frames of their images.

I have to stay focused. Like the camera, I have to seize the present moment. Unlike its photos, I mustn't revisit it ad infinitum. Ad nauseam.

Scents. Concentrate on scents, I think to myself. What do I smell around me right here, right now?

The guard's sweat and deodorant. Chemical lemon of industrial floor cleaner. The dank, tepid air blowing through vents.

We stop before the metal door. The guard picks up a phone beside it and begins punching in a code on a pad.

I shift on my feet and a squelch from my wet soles makes me look down. I glance behind me at the trail of dark puddles that pooled with my every step.

The bathmat he's crouched on is soaked and his shoes squelch as he rocks on the balls of his feet.

Bloated features rise from the bathwater. Strings of the drowned woman's hair spread out from her face. Her eyes are locked on a point of eternity above her whilst her killer dips his fingers in and flicks water onto the back tiles before rising to his feet.

Enough.

By force of will I lock my eyes on the overhead lights and grimace so as not to blink. The glare is blinding, which is the point. The flood of photons acts like bleach upon my retinas. Removing the stains. My pupils constrict to the maximum and thus my visual cortex is put in a time-out.

Blinking through the splotches floating before my retinas, I hear rather than see the passcard being swiped through a reader. An electronic buzzer goes off.

With a heavy clank, the metal door swings open. The guard gestures for me to go through.

"The room is video monitored. He's standing by on the other side. Once you're seated, he'll be allowed in. Just press the call button by the door when you're ready to leave. "

"Thank you."

The guard nods and closes the door behind me.

I cross the open space and head towards a row of booths. Each has a chair and counter facing a plexiglass divide. An opposing chair and counter are on the other side.

I take a seat.

Another buzzer. Another clank. A door on the far wall beyond my plexiglassed perch opens.

And there he is.

The 86-year-old man in the orange jumpsuit shuffles forward. The rattle of his ankle shackles grows louder as he approaches the chair opposite me. The craggy lines of his face are drawn in confusion. He pauses before taking a seat.

I lean forward on my elbows without speaking.

His gaze bores into mine. He has remarkably clear eyes for his age. No clouding of the lenses at all. Woolly brows knit together tighter, until...

They shoot up.

He may not know me but he sure as hell recognizes my stare. It's a younger, albeit female version of the one he sees for himself, of himself, every time he looks in a mirror. His eyes roam my face and head. He'll be noting my rectangular chin, the low cheekbones. The curls that are hers, the daughter he hasn't seen in 47 years.

I return his scrutiny. Yes, his eyes are my own. An ocular reflection. The same grey with central heterochromia creating an inner ring of green. A colour so rare that less than 2% of the world's population has it.

Need I wonder any longer if my grandfather's visual cortex also shares the same anomalies as mine? Or rather, mine as his? A particular hyperconnectivity between certain brain regions –specifically those involved in visual processing, memory, and spatial attention. The result of a neurological disorder that creates flickering dots within one's visual field.

Visual snow. A sort of white noise of the eyes.

Its sudden onset is the cause of the out-of-the-blue–or should that be grey?–migraines I've started to be plagued by. At least that's what a neuro-ophthalmologist concluded last week from my MRI scan

The migraines began when I started using the camera. Not that the neuro knows anything about that. Or how the "flurries" of what he termed a "neuroimaging biomarker" coalesce to form the endless looping of scenes I see from the photos.

The man who is my grandfather continues to regard me in silence. Stunned silence, perhaps.

Interesting how nothing is appearing to my mind's eye at the moment.

"I'm Maria's daughter. My name is Alice. I'm your granddaughter."

He fixates on my visitor's badge. My family name would mean nothing to him. My mother had taken on her husband when she got married before I was born. Maybe he was impressed by the Dr. before it?

"Why are you here?"

Ok, maybe not.

The voice behind the question does not match the frail body housing it. The former crime scene photographer is still made of stern stuff. It takes backbone and nerves of steel to photograph the aftermath of violent death, doesn't it...as well as see the afterimages of such.

"Two reasons. First, a promise to Grandma. And second... I have your old camera."

An emotion flickers in his gaze. An emotion I can't read. Then he lifts his face to the ceiling, his eyes shifting from left to right, as if watching something moving.

I ignore what he's doing for now.

"She tells me you told her never to come here. My grandmother. Your wife. She says you told her you would refuse to see her.

"She ended up moving to another town six months after your incarceration. But Mom went out of her way to move as far out of state as she could once she finished school. Got married, I think more for the name change than any chemistry. My father was never the wiser.

"Grandma had a stroke two months ago."

His face goes blank as he looks back down at me.

"She had to go into assisted living. I got her into a great private place. Mom and I have been taking turns going through her old house to get it ready for sale. I'm the one who found the boxes of newspaper articles and envelopes with court documents she'd kept. Mom doesn't know. I haven't said anything to her about any of this. I brought the stuff I'd found home with me and went to see Grandma straightaway. That's when she told me all about you."

I lean back in my chair. My grandfather hasn't changed position, doesn't say anything, so I continue.

"Grandma says she promised Mom long ago she would never speak of you to me, that she would maintain the lie Mom told my father that you had died in a car accident when she was young. That's why neither he nor I knew about you. For me, serial killer was a homonym for the breakfast kind who snap-crackle-popped their victims."

He's still focused on the ceiling. His hands clench and unclench on the counter.

"Do you see the snow?"

He stills at my question. Then glances out the barred window near the ceiling. It's a rainy April day. Not a flake in sight.

"Not that kind of snow. But you already know that."

His huff is the only sound I hear for a moment. His eyes return to mine.

I'm reminded of the Silence of the Lambs. Clarice and Hannibal engaged in talk. Who is the lamb and who is the cannibal in this encounter?

"How old are you, Alice?"

"I'm 34."

"Your eyes are like mine. You see snow too?"

I nod.

"You've looked at photographs from that camera, haven't you." Not a question.

I nod again.

"What do you do for a living?" He takes in my visitor's badge once again. I know he's lingering on the Dr. now.

"I'm a forensic scientist. I specialise in the reconstruction of crime scenes."

He barks out a laugh before rubbing his face hard. "Reconstruction of crime scenes?! So that's it."

"How did your camera get shattered into pieces?" My question comes out rather blunt. I suspect I know the answer but want to ask anyway. "Grandma says she found the pieces all over the floor of the garage."

He ignores my question. "Does your grandmother want to get you involved now in order to clear my name? Too late. There's no helping me. What is, is. Life without chance of parole. They locked me up and threw away the key. Do you know how often I wish this state still had the death penalty?"

I shrug. "I read all the notes. Prosecutors had an open and shut case. Especially given you were able to lead them to undiscovered bodies. You knew details only the killer would have known. But what the prosecutors didn't know was that you watched the events unfold, after the fact. You saw...everything...in detail...in motion. You still do, don't you? You watch events unfold, from the photos you took at crime scenes with that camera."

He crosses his arms over his chest. Says nothing.

"I know the truth, Frank"–I use his name to drive my point–"because I viewed some of your old crime scene photographs. About two dozen's worth before I realised what was happening and stopped. They were photos from crime archives between 1963-64."

His left eye twitches. A migraine about to kick in? I know the feeling.

"So you see the moments too."

I nod.

"I tried to do right." He shakes his head. "I tried to expose the murders. No one believed me. Actually, that's not true. People did believe me. So much so they arrested and tried me as the killer. Killers. Plural."

He drops his head in his hands. Liver spots and swollen blue veins crisscross the back of his palms. Hard to imagine those gnarled hands were once agile enough to aim and snap a camera at a lightning pace.

"I smashed that camera to pieces for a reason!" He lifts his face and glares at me. "I planned to burn everything but the police stormed into the house before I could melt the pieces in the fireplace."

His head cranks to one side. And again I watch his eyes follow movement only his mind can see. Was the mention of a fireplace the trigger? What old crime scene photo of his is playing out for him now? An arson gone wrong? An immolation?

"You're right, Frank. I can't clear your name. What judge is going to believe there's a camera that takes photos, still photos, of time intervals? And that those time intervals can only be perceived by someone who has a rare chromatic aberration in their eye? No...no judge would accept that."

For how else can photos taken by an antiquated Bellows camera from the 1960s make endless loops of the scenes played in the mind? How are the minutes surrounding a moment captured by a device?

Endless loops of time focused and captured on film. How, dammit? How? Is it the lens? The aperture? The viewfinder? It couldn't be the camera film roll. Different rolls were used throughout his time working with the camera. And it had nothing to do with the development process. Or did it? I've no clue. Yet.

"So all that is the second reason why I've come. As for the first, a promise, Grandma asked me to show you something she wanted to share with you. The desk officer at sign-in said it was ok for me to show it."

I reach into my jacket inner pocket and pull out a photograph.

"I developed it from a roll I found in her jewellery case. You must've taken this when you first got the camera. Using a remote cord for test shots, I'm guessing?"

I press the image to the plexiglass. My grandfather's pupils dilate to the point where I think his eyes will turn pitch black. Black holes swallowing up the light.

His face melts. Tears well and begin streaming down his ruddy cheeks.

The photo is one of his younger self, standing alongside his pregnant wife. My grandfather's arm is draped across my grandmother's shoulders.

She is smiling shyly, as if embarrassed to pose for a remote. This was life before selfies.

Then I flip the photo so he may read the inscription on the back.

"She says Blake is one of your favourite poets."

To see a world in a grain of sand

And heaven in a wildflower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.

His head snaps to the side and he gasps. I know what he's seeing. For I can see it too. Laughter and kisses and hugs as the pair set themselves up to take the photo on a warm sunny day.

"I'm aware of your cancer diagnosis. The prison doctor says you are refusing chemo."

Through my connections, I was able to access his medical files. He had maybe three, four, months to live. Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, terminal.

"I wanted to leave you with a loop to take comfort in for the time you have left."

Light travels for eternity. It is brightest in the darkness. The man is in a prison with no bars, a black hole.

"Where did you get the camera?"

Silence. I hadn't expected an answer but figured I had to try.

"Goodbye then." I push back my chair, ready to leave. "Remember well."

His eyes narrow. Too shrewd by half.

"Destroy it right this time, Alice! Burn the pieces! Make them ash!" He jumps to his feet. Beats his fists against the glass. Guards burst through the back door. He's grabbed under the armpits, thrashing, shouting. Dragged away.

"I wish I could clear your name," I whisper as I gather the photograph I'd shown my grandfather and return it to my jacket.

I watch the door that leads back to the cell blocks close.

The guard who'd escorted me rushes in.

I assure him I'm fine.

Back at the visitor's office, I collect my things and sign out.

Exiting the building, I make my way to the parking lot. I see Grandma waiting in the passenger seat of my car. As I slip behind the steering wheel, I rub my eyes and blink at the empty seat beside me

Then I pull out the locket from beneath my vest and flick it open.

My grandmother's warm smile beams at me. Her seated in her favourite chair was a recent image I took with the camera.

I pull out my cell, swipe to my contacts and select my assistant's number from the menu.

"Jason? Yeah, did you get the spectrometer set up? Hmm. Good. Uh-huh. Alright. I've got the camera in my trunk and am headed to the lab now. See you in twenty."

I nod to myself as I turn the key in the ignition.

Grandma died yesterday, but the camera was not going to die, despite my grandfather's pleas. The lure of holding infinity in the palm of my hand–or at any rate, in my lab–was just too great.