The Final Shot ( Kind of a short story I wrote)

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. 

Final Shot

Matt would stage this as a scene. He’d call it a “quiet rupture.” Low lighting. Kitchen table. Woman standing with a backpack. A man at a laptop. I imagine how he'd write the direction:

INT. FLAT – EARLY MORNING

 She hesitates. He types. Steam curls from untouched mugs.

Only, I’m holding the chipped beetle print mug. We bought it at that weird garden fair 2 years ago, the one where he mistook a compost bin for a sculpture and argued with the artist for 15 minutes. It was the first time I saw him flustered.

 I’d taken a photo of him then—shoulders hunched, eyes darting. I called it "Portrait of a Man Losing a Debate With Fertiliser."

Now he’s hunched again but different…more inward…shrinking by the week.

I set his coffee next to his elbow. He doesn’t notice. 

“I’m leaving” I say.

He nods, still typing. No kiss. Not the usual absent minded “Stay alive, ok?” he used to mutter. Not even the faint smile he used to give, the one I always called his soft exit face. Just nods like a man who’s heard the same dialogue too many times to respond.

This would be the second beat in the scene, Matt would say—

—- The woman leaves. The audience feels it. The man doesn’t.

It’s a long drive to the trailhead. I hum to myself to fill the silence, the way I used to as a kid on family trips when my dad refused to turn the radio on, saying “silence builds character.”

I haven’t seen my dad in 3 years. He has retired and  lives on a boat now.  Though he still sends me pictures of sunsets like I don’t already chase them for a living.

The forest arrives like a held breath finally exhaled.

 I hike the first hour quick, trying to outpace the thoughts. My phone buzzed earlier with an email from Mom - some wildlife photography competition she'd forwarded "just in case." I'd archived it unread. Wildlife work is just a hobby I can't afford.  

The trail narrows. I walk faster

There’s a rock shaped like a badger. A tree that creaks when the wind hits it just right. I name it Theodore.

"You should’ve seen Matt’s face," I tell Theodore, fingers brushing bark. "The night Nat Geo picked up my wildfire series. He made lamb vindaloo—a dish he gags at but I love but his voice that night was all whisky and despair ‘Your work breathes life. Mine just echoes.’"

The wildfire shots live in a drawer now. These days, it is brides blinking against the sun, their hems trailing pollen and compromise. 

This is what solitude does. It gives things names. It turns trees into therapists. 

I talked to Theo  until my voice grew hoarse and the shadows stretched long between us. When the wind shook his branches one last time, I pressed my palm to his trunk—the closest thing to a hug you can give a tree.

I steadied Nikki, the old Nikon against my shoulder, I turned just as a  Peregrine falcon tore through the sky’s canvas—

Click.

Too fast. The shot came out blurred—a streak of wings, a smudge of sky

“Come on, Nikki" I muttered, wiping the lens with my sleeve. "We used to be faster than this.”

I cursed under my breath and kept walking, boots crunching on dry leaves. The forest hummed around me, indifferent to my missed shot.

Then—a mushroom. Its gills spiraled too perfectly… like nature’s first draft of a cinnamon roll.

I crouched, knee pressing into damp earth and framed it.

Click

Click

One moment, I’m adjusting the aperture, the smell of soil thick in my nose. The next—the ground tilts. A root snakes around my ankle. My stomach lurches before I do.

And then—

—the world drops away.

If Matt were writing this, it would be – INT. DITCH – LATER

The fall was not dramatic. It was stupid  and slow and jarring.

My leg lands twisted. My hip aches like it’s aged 20 years in 5 seconds.

But I don’t panic. I’m good at stillness. Years of waiting for the right light will teach you that.

I check Nikki first—because– instincts. The lens cap cracked but the body’s fine. Like me, it survives dumb luck and poor footing.

Phone - 42%. I call emergency.

A calm voice. Sarah Mason. Fire and Rescue.

She keeps me talking through the pinged location and help dispatch. I asked her how long.

“3  hours, give or take.”

She asks who to contact.

“My boyfriend” I say.  After a deep breath, I added  “Matt Neville.”

There’s a pause on her end. Then:

“No way. The Matt Neville? He did Winter Will Wait, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I cried for like an hour after that ending.”

“He cried for 3 months writing it”  My face made a wobbly smile.

She laughs through the static.  “I love his stuff. Very... slow. And sad. But smart.”

However they could not reach him. The calls went to voicemail.

Of course. It’s Script Reading Day. The holy pilgrimage. He’s at some converted pub with fairy lights and folded chairs where aspiring actors mumble his lines and he watches like a silent god.

So I call Issy.

“You fell off a cliff again?” she says, deadpan.

“It’s a ditch this time.”

“Better. Less dramatic. I’m coming.”

Sarah calls me after that. She asks about my job and I tell her I freelance—nature and wildlife photography mostly, though lately, I’ve taken up small wedding gigs.

"Mr. Neville's lucky" she says. "Creative couple, right?"

I let the words hang. The truth is, his award—some niche indie festival in Denmark—was framed nicely but it didn’t pay the rent. His films win accolades not distribution.

He’s respected. Recognised. Even quoted in Little White Lies . I am proud of him but  when the fridge leaks or the Wi-Fi fails, it’s my *** the landlord messages, not his.

Sarah doesn’t need to know that. I just say “We make it work.”

She tells me about her daughter Rory who is 6 and currently threatening to sue the neighbour for cutting down her “emotional support rose bush.”

 I laugh. Then wince.

“What’s Mr. Neville working on now?” she asks.

I pause.

“There’s a character with a limp” I offer. “He says it’s metaphorical.”

She replies with enthusiasm “Of course it is. He’s the master of metaphors.”

“He is” I say. “He talks in layers.”

I try to recall what the story’s about. A house? A mother? I remember a scene where the main character stares at a spoon for two full pages. Matt said it was “about memory.”

Memories

 I had memorized his sleep schedule. The brand of tea he buys in bulk. That he can’t stand blinking lights or coriander. I know when he’s anxious because he rubs the back of his neck. But I don’t  remember what his story’s about.

And I realise he doesn’t ask about mine anymore, either.

When we first met, he used to  leave Post-It notes on my windshield after night shoots– “Saw a fox on my run. You’d have gotten the shot better.” Or —“The moon looked like a thumbnail tonight.”

Somewhere along the way, the notes stopped. 

The daylight started to fade.

The Fire and Rescue reached me just after dusk. A fireman named Garret  climbs down, muttering insults at the terrain. He hands me a granola bar and looks at me like I’m a toddler who put a fork in a socket.

“You and gravity need to talk,” he jokes.

The next scene is the hospital.

Quiet and sterile in a comforting way. A nurse with purple hair hums Landslide under her breath as she wraps my leg with surprising gentleness. The bandage is warm from her hands. Issy stands nearby, pretending not to fidget. She did not ask about Matt. We do not talk about Matt. 

My gaze drifts to the window. Night presses against the glass but the city refuses the dark. Across the gap, high on the ledge of an office building, a shape resolves in the spill of streetlight: a falcon’s nest. I stare at the harsh angles, the soft chaos, a home built on a ledge. Click, my mind whispers—

Then Issy leans in and knocks gently on my forehead.

“Ow!” I yelp, more from surprise than hurt.

She looks almost sorry. Then she mutters, “I’ll go handle the bills. Try not to fall off the bed while I’m gone.”

“My backpack—” I start, already feeling useless.

She waves it off. “Consider it even for that one time you helped me take a profile picture.”

The nurse snorts softly behind her mask.

Issy disappears down the corridor before I can protest again. I watch the door swing shut.

Matt arrives ten minutes later. Out of breath. Like the late 3rd Act. Shoes untied. Sweater on inside out. His face is a storm of panic and guilt.

He looks at me like I’m glass. Like one wrong word might splinter me.

“Does it hurt?” he asks.

It’s such a filler dialogue. A placeholder line. Lorem ipsum.

And then the script ends.

Not literally. 

But the part of me that’s been narrating my life in his style—beats, scenes, camera angles—goes silent.

And something older kicks in. The photographer.

I study the lines on his face, the way his mouth pulls slightly down on one side. The hospital light makes his skin look cold, almost silver. I notice his eyes are fogged with concern.

And I know.

This is the decisive moment. The one Cartier-Bresson talked about.

 The instant you click the shutter.

 The point of no return.

I take a deep  breath. My ribs sting.

“I always took pride in being someone who doesn’t get hurt easily.”

I stop. Not because the sentence is over but because the tears fill my eyes so fast,“This hurts too much.”

His face is a smear now.

 A blotch of colour through wet glass.

 I wipe my eyes with the heel of my hand and look at him. The blurry lens, turning his familiar features into something distant and unrecognizable.

"I can’t do this anymore." My voice doesn’t shake.

Matt opens his mouth—to argue, to beg, to spin it into another metaphor—but nothing comes. 

For once, the writer has no words. 

Then the tears came. He sat beside my bed and cried—not the pretty, cinematic kind but the messy, shuddering kind that leaves his sweater sleeves damp

And that’s how I know it’s real and not a script.

I turn my face toward the window. No quiet rupture. Just an ending.

Somewhere beyond the glass, a falcon cuts through the dark—unseen, but back to its nest. This time, I don’t need a camera to know the shot has already landed.

Click.