The nights wouldn’t hurt so much if I could just get the pictures out of my head.

Sherryl with her boyfriend at the mall, one of her hands holding a cinnamon Auntie Anne’s, the other one wrapped around his arm. Sherryl in those salmon bib overalls I always liked, waiting for someone (who?) outside an office building downtown. Sherryl picking up towels from the dry cleaner. I just can’t stop them flashing before my eyes, each one a little twist of the knife. Sometimes I wonder why I ever loaded them into my Kodak P720 7” Digital Picture Frame.

But hey, I haven’t been following her around with my camera all these months for nothing. I’m the kind of guy who faces reality, no matter how devastating. And the truth is, she has apparently been brainwashed by my enemies into believing that I’m “a nice guy and everything, but really just not someone I made a connection with.” The Sherryl I know would never say something that cruel.

Besides, you can see it right there on the Kodak P720’s 7” screen, even at its modest 480×234 resolution. That laugh she’s sharing with her so-called friend Julie in the women’s restroom at Steak ‘n’ Shake? That was a laugh of terror. Trust me, I was there. Where most people might look at this picture of her jogging and think she looks like a woman jogging, I can see the truth: she’s running for her life. And not in a cardiovascular-health sense.

I should just quit. Stop sneaking around with my camera. Stop obsessing over the pictures. Stop programming the Kodak P720’s timer so it turns on right before bedtime. And maybe put the frame somewhere other than my nightstand. After all, it’s not like I can do anything directly about her mental enslavement. The restraining order saw to that. And I’ve learned by now that you can’t really unbrainwash someone unless they want to be unbrainwashed. Better for me to just move on.

But who am I kidding? With its smudge-avoiding Quick Touch Border, Kodak Easyshare software, and 2 memory card slots, the Kodak P720 makes it too easy to torment myself with these heartbreaking photos. And someday, Sherryl will be free to pursue the transcendent love we were meant to share. She’ll go to the judge and tell him the truth and she’ll unblock my phone number and we’ll fall into each other’s arms like Ed Harris and Melanie Griffith in Milk Money. Until then, my mind-controlled soulmate, I’ll be seeing you around. But you won’t see me.

Back to top