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  ...presents...                  The Darkroom
                                                         by Mark Vaxlov

                      >>> a cDc publication.......1993 <<<
                        -cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc-
  ____       _     ____       _       ____       _     ____       _       ____
 |____digital_media____digital_culture____digital_media____digital_culture____|

                                    Prologue

     I was seventeen, in my fourth year of high school, when it happened.  I
didn't expect them to react the way they did.  I didn't expect fights, and I
didn't expect to be continually harassed in class every time the teacher turned
his back.  Unfortunately, that is what began to happen.  Even the teachers
contributed to the situation by turning a blind eye to my situation as often as
possible.

     I once thought of bringing a gun to class and killing every one of them,
including the teachers, but decided that it would be more "mature" to put up
with it.  I figured that this situation would die out when I reached high
school.  For the most part, I was right.  However, a certain animosity remained
and left me confused and uncertain.  Girls liked popular guys and they also
liked guys who displayed confidence.  I never scored in high school 'till that
wonderful night when I got an unfair advantage.

                                     Spring

     It was spring, and I was getting behind on my photography project.  It was
close to year's end and I figured that if I came in one night and really worked
hard at getting the job done, I would raise my grade.  I felt it would also
help boost an average that was starting to sag because of some other courses I
was taking then.

     I chose a Friday because there was also a dance on that night and I
figured it would be better to work on my project at school than to stay at
home, listening to music and thinking about how every one else is out having
fun (like I usually did).  The teacher gave me the keys to the building and
warned me that I would be held responsible if any damage was incurred in that
section of the building.  He knew I was a good kid, but probably just couldn't
forget the time I detonated a firecracker during his class.

                                  The Big Night

     It was a bit chilly out that night so I had to wear my maroon jacket.  It
was a strange looking thing, a hand-me down from my grandpa.  The stars
twinkled with leering madness as I roamed the streets on my way to school.  I
felt like a spectre crossing into another place, a place of deserted streets
and empty houses.  I was a bit shaken by the chill wind and overall quiet, and
alternately scanned the streets and sky as I walked.  I heard some voices off
to one side.  Jackalish leering noises, women screaming, shit-faced laughter.
Ahhh!  I thought, with recognition.  The joys of living in a neighborhood
infested with student vermin!  Actually, something happened after I passed the
student's party.  A shiver ran up my spine.  It was like I accidentally
intersected an invisible boundary.  To this day I can't account for it.  I just
had a feeling that I was suddenly in new territory where normal laws no longer
apply.

     I was approaching the school and noticed a noisy line outside the
building.  I was a bit surprised that they hadn't gone in yet, as it was after
eight o'clock and decided to wait off to one side in the field until the lineup
was gone.

     I was wearing a black shirt with dark jeans under my open jacket and was
almost invisible as I stood waiting in the shadow of some pine trees.  I
scanned the waiting teens with some amusement.  Up against the school wall I
could see chubby, blonde-haired, big-titted Cathy necking with her thirty year
old boyfriend.  He was a big monster in tattered jeans, with tattoos up his
arms.  I heard he made a "good" living pumping gas.  I watched as he palmed her
floppy breasts and pressed her against the wall.  Cathy liked to be watched.
She knew that screwing an older man would improve her social status a bit at
school, and this was her proof of conquest.

     She conveniently snubbed her friends (huddled together, off to one side)
to be with her "man."  I could see Cindy and two other girls I couldn't
recognize rolling in the grass beside the school wall.  They were apparently
pissed, or at least thought they were.  A few guys I didn't recognize wearing
baseball caps came over and slipped them a joint, which they passed around.
Then they  began to act sillier than ever.  When the guys started to paw them,
the girls told them to fuck off.  One of the guys came up behind Cindy, reached
around her neck and held a switchblade to her throat.  He pulled her up and
faced her away from the lineup so no one else could see.  It happened too
suddenly, and her friends were too shitfaced to notice.  The guys led her off,
alone and frightened to a secluded corner behind the big blue garbage bin.  We
never saw her again.

     I saw Jane standing by the doorway with a bunch of her friends.  They were
talking excitedly about something, gum-popping, staring at boys, all dressed in
those idiotic bermuda shorts, showing off their abnormally thin legs.  I
remember my sister telling me about how she caught one of them throwing up in
the bathroom at school; purging her lunch, keeping skinny.  Watching them made
ME feel like tossing my cookies.  "Cover those legs!" I felt like shouting.
Their figures looked like the figures of little boys.

     I heard some rustling, whispering, and giggles off to my left.  There was
something white moving on the grass about fifteen feet away.  I cautiously
approached.  To my surprise the white "sheet" resolved itself into two
interlocked partially-dressed human forms.  They were wildly rutting, lost in
their own little world.  They didn't notice me as I stood watching less than
six feet away.  I recognized them both.  The guy was Rob, a pretty-boy senior
jerk who treated women like shit but who nevertheless always had a girlfriend.
"If you want me, you'll get down on all fours!" he yelled to Tula in a crowded
hallway once.  She was a cute junior who gave herself to him at a party one
night, thinking that he'd respect the sacrifice.  Tula was sobbing.  We were
horrified.  She dropped to her knees, crying, falling forward onto her hands -
to the correct position.  He picked her up gently, after calling her a "good
doggie" and walked her out of the hall.  He dumped her the next week.  Now he
was with another.  This girl's name was Mira and she was a cute fifteen year
old cheerleader.  I left them to their fucking when a loud disturbance by the
school doors diverted my attention.  Two guys were fighting over some girl -
hunched forward, switchblades drawn, circling, looking for openings.  The girl
was standing disinterested in the background, popping gum, with a vacant stare
in her eyes.  Now and then I would see a flash of light off one of the blades
as a thrust was made.  It vaguely reminded me of a fist-fight I had seen a year
ago.  It was between two older guys reducing each other's faces to unrecog-
nizable bloody masks.  But this was different; the other fight took hours...
this would take only a few minutes.  A cop car pulled into the yard, probably
for some other reason, and both guys disappeared into the lineup.  The doors
opened and people began filing in.  When the line was gone a lone figure lay
where the crowd had been.  It was one of the boys, stabbed in the back.  The
cop car just missed seeing him on its way out of the yard but I had to go by
him on my way into the building.

                                Inside the School

     As I passed by the gym, I had to wade through a noisy sea of teenage
"excreta," smoking and giving me condescending glances outside the dance area.
It was like those first few sunny days of spring on campus.  The arts and
business students would suddenly appear out of nowhere, sunning their pale
bodies, smoking, listening to ghetto-blasters on the patio outside the
building.  There were hundreds of them.  They wore 60's style clothes... jeans
with multiple patches, John Lennon glasses, all that crap.  They gave me the
same look.  "Did you see all those girls outside?," a friend asked.  Girls?  I
was confused.  I thought the sewer had backed up.  The voices and music faded
in the distance as I walked up the ramp and entered through the fire-doors that
led into the North wing of the building.  This was where all the technical
courses were taught: graphic arts, auto-body, shop, electronics, etc.  There
was also a room that doubled as a photography classroom.  Up ahead I could hear
the janitors laughing, exchanging dirty jokes.  They had a room off on a wing
to one side.  Their loud talk reverberated around the dark halls.

     "A bit tight, but what do you expect from a twelve year old!" one of them
said.  Raucous laughter followed.  I remembered the day I discovered that the
boiler room was above the girl's washroom.  I couldn't believe it!  Now I
understood why the washrooms on the second floor were reversed from the ones
on the first.  I could just imagine them up there, peeping through holes at
girls squatting on toilets, jacking off into dirty clenched fists.  Laughter.
Maybe occasionally, they would come down and scoop a girl from below, drag her
screaming and kicking into the darkness above, never to be heard from again.  I
still wonder what happened to Lynda.  She disappeared like that: without a
trace.

     I was surprised to find the door of the photography classroom unlocked.
There was a puddle of vomit on the floor in the darkened hall, which I saw only
after I turned on the classroom light.  I felt uneasy because of it and
nervously looked around the room for some sign of occupation.  There was none,
so I went in, locking the door behind me.

                            Developing the Negatives

     I had my camera with me, as it contained some exposed film.  I partly
brought it because it was safer to take the film out in the complete darkness
of the lab and partly because it would make it easier to explain my presence in
this part of the building (should someone stop me on my way to the room).  I
also had my bag with some other exposed rolls, and some photographic paper that
my dad had got from somewhere at a discount price.  After setting up the
necessary chemicals on one of the benches and getting out the plastic
developing tanks, I turned out the light and groped my way back to the bench.
About half an hour later after fumbling in the dark to get the negatives in
and finding the light switch, I turned on the light.  Everything was perfect.
I now began to measure out the chemicals into graduated cylinders.  I wanted to
do all three spools immediately.  I hit the timer after pouring the first one,
distributing it almost evenly among the three tanks.  I repeated the process
for the other stages of developing negatives.  Later, I opened the containers
and hung the negatives to dry.

                                  Rick's Sister

     I used a hand blower to dry the negatives, occasionally looking closely at
some more memorable shots.  One roll fascinated me to no end.  This was the one
that contained pictures of Rick's sister.

     Rick was a pretty good guy and his sister was really attractive.  She was
a wispy blonde-haired junior.  We managed to get her to pose naked for us,
although Rick was reluctant to persuade her.  I still remember those moments in
the room with her.  She was all nervous, her face flushed and red.  Rick
excused himself from the whole thing.  "Do you want me to do this?" she said,
laying on the bed in some imitation of a pose she may have seen in a men's
magazine once.

     She looked really unnatural doing that.  "Sure," I said from behind the
camera, madly clicking away at anything she did.  I was so nervous that I could
hardly stop my hands from shaking.  My heart was pounding wildly, and I
clutched the camera: afraid that I would drop it and make an ass out of myself.
Less than five minutes later I had exhausted all 36 exposures, winding up with
36 pictures that roughly looked the same.  I bolted from the room in wild
confusion with my prize, running, frightened by my lack of control, all the way
home.  Naturally, I had to make up a story about suddenly feeling sick to
explain my odd behavior.  I am still haunted by the thought that I may have
hurt her by leaving like that.  "Such a sweet kid," I thought sadly to myself
as I perused the pictures.  The last one seemed different, and it bothered my
conscience.  She seemed to have an odd expression on her face: an expression of
stark terror - as if in that instant she realized what I was about to do.

                                  The Dark Room

     I sat there for a moment, my head in my hands, before going into the
darkroom to make some prints.  I didn't want to print any of the ones of Rick's
sister.  Something really bothered me about them.  I decided to concentrate on
the ones related to my projects.  A glance at the clock showed that I had
already been there several hours.  I cut the rolls into proper-sized strips and
headed into the darkroom.  The darkroom was a small office-like enclosure off
to one side of the classroom with black paper covering all the glass windows on
its front face.  To further reduce light, the interior had been painted a flat
black color.  It had all the equipment needed for printing negatives: an 
enlarger, timer, developing trays, and chemicals.  I quickly set up the
negatives by the enlarger and closed the door.  It was pitch black inside, and
I flicked on the red light.  I placed one of the strips into the enlarger and
began perusing my pictures, trying to decide which ones would be printed.

     I had just set up the photographic paper and was making a test strip in
the dim red light when something happened.  A chill passed through me, causing
me to shudder and the hair stood up on the back of my neck.  A sense of horror
riveted me to the spot, my mind telling me in no uncertain terms that something
was terribly wrong here.  I was horrified.  Even before I realized what had set
me off, I knew that I was NOT ALONE IN THIS ROOM.  It took me minutes before I
could force myself to turn around - to stare into the recesses of the far
corner where the faint sound of breathing emanated.

                                    The Doll

     It looked like a doll, a mere caricature of a human, but closer inspection
showed that it was the genuine article.  Her name was Lisa and she was also in
my photography class.  She looked sinister in the red light, dressed in a black
frilly party dress, with black stockings and dark top.  Her eye makeup was
smeared down her cheeks and her dark hair was in complete disarray.  She
smelled of puke and at first I thought she was asleep, but I was wrong.  Her
eyes were open and dilated.  She was staring sightless up at the ceiling,
irregularly breathing, her forehead beaded with a cold sweat.  I didn't really
notice it before, but the room must have gotten cold.  It was cold enough that
I could see her breath rising from her parted lips, even under the dim red
light.  I kept expecting her to move or something, but she didn't.  She looked
like a corpse or a rag doll, propped up spread-eagled in the corner.  All she
did was breathe.  It was like I wasn't there.  I stepped back, noticing a
puddle on the floor.  She must have pissed herself.

     Lisa was a real "popular" girl in our school.  I fell madly in lust with
her the first day I saw her.  Back then, I used to believe that women should be
placed on pedestals and admired.  Her snobbish ways and interesting attire only
helped re-enforce my delusion that women were somehow special and remote.  I
remember that day at Rick's house.  I was nervously pushing the buttons to call
her up.  Rick was on the extension.  I kept hanging up while dialing, afraid
that I had gotten the number wrong.  Rick was getting pissed off.  I wanted
this call to be perfect.  "Hello?" she answered.  IT WAS HER!  My voice was
suddenly hoarse and I could barely force the words out.  I really didn't have
anything planned and said the first thing that came to mind.

     "Uh...  you don't know me but I was wondering if you'd like to go out with
me tomorrow?"  My mind was reeling.  I didn't realize how idiotic that must
have sounded on the other end.  Only one thought kept repeating itself in my
mind: SAY YES, SAY YES, SAY YES.  She said something about how she had to wash
her hair tomorrow night, and wasn't able to go out.  My own inexperience must
account for the fact that I believed her.  Rick told me that he saw her at the
dance the next night.  I felt like a complete fool.

     I knew another guy that did go out with her (Rodney).  He was one of my
best friends that year.  They went to the dance together, but she didn't dance
with him.  Instead, she began hanging around with some tall guy from another
school, kissing up to him something fierce.  My friend recognized him as a
major drug dealer he'd seen doing business here before.  She left with him.
They fucked in a van right outside the school doors.  My friend was
heartbroken, crying, contemplating suicide.  He'd introduced her to his parents
and everything.  It was his first attempt at dating.  Now he was humiliated.
Not just in front of the school, but in front of his parents as well.

                                 Taking Pictures

     Now here she was, dressed like a slut and mired in her own filth.  It was
a truly disgraceful sight and I didn't feel sorry for her.  I turned on the
lights and got my camera, loading up another roll of film.  I wasn't going to
use the pics to blackmail her.  Instead, I was going to print them out,
photocopy them, and distribute them to any interested guy in the entire school.
Not just pictures of her with her clothes on either.  These were going to
feature full frontal nudity; anything I could get away with.

     I had to use my flash as the fluorescent lighting in the room was
insufficient and took a while hooking it onto my camera.  I almost freaked out
when I discovered that I didn't have any batteries in the thing.  The whole
situation had me tense enough as it was.  Luckily, I managed to find some in a
shelf in another part of the room.  I was testing the flash attachment when a
funny thing happened.  I heard a soft groan from the corner.  I watched in
horror as her body began to shake, almost as if she was being electrocuted.  It
was violent and surprisingly regular.  Her eyes rolled into her head as she
jerked slowly downward against the wall until she was sponging up the piss on
the floor.  She lay there, eyelids fluttering, her back arching a number of
times before the strange vibrations subsided.  With a start, I realized that
the whole thing could have been initiated by the flashes.

     I decided to get this over with as soon as possible and took a few
preliminary pictures of her with her clothes on, adjusting the focus and angle.
She didn't move at all as I snapped away.  I began removing her soiled clothes,
undressing her.  I put her into various poses, took pictures, then undressed
her more.  Soon she was completely naked and I had exhausted the whole roll.  I
got another one from a drawer and filled it up as well.  I began to relax and
took more time with the final pictures.  The last roll had some of the best.

     Towards the end, I began to get horny.  "Why not?" I figured, rolling her
over onto her stomach and spreading her legs.  I pulled down my pants and began
humping away at her inert form.  It was hard at first, because she didn't
provide any lubrication but it got much better.  I was impressed by how hot
she was.  I never imagined a woman could generate such an intense heat.  It was
like sticking my cock into an oven.  I was so excited that I didn't notice her
piss soaking through my pants at the knees.  I just pumped away, grunting like
a pig, my exhalation visible in the red light.  I couldn't believe that
anything could feel this good.  It felt so good that even after I climaxed, my
body kept pumping away on its own volition for several minutes, even though I
wanted it to stop.

     Afterwards, I sat there panting and shivering in the cold red darkness.  A
trillion thoughts passing through my mind as I lay there on my side.  It was
like my whole world had been turned upside down.  On the one hand, I actually
felt (believe it or not) that I loved her or something like that, but on the
other I just wanted to get the hell out of there, as far away from her as
possible.  I stood up, noticing the piss on my knees and began picking up my
stuff, nervously shoving it into my bag.  I turned on the regular light,
exposing most of my developing paper.  I didn't care.  I just wanted to be able
to see what I was doing.  In a few minutes, I had cleared up most of my stuff
from the darkroom.

                                  Cleaning Up

     I put her clothes back on, paying attention to small details.  I was
getting really worried because she seemed to be stirring, tossing and turning,
eyes squinting, coming back to life.  After the last article of clothing was
tossed on her, I dragged her out of the room by her feet.  I deposited her just
outside the door, probably right into the puddle of vomit although I was too
distracted to notice it then.  I ducked back in and shut and locked the door
behind me.  I also turned out the main classroom lights and shoved my jacket
under the door, as I didn't want her to see them if she woke up out there.

     Working by the light coming out of the darkroom, I cleaned up the
chemicals and stuff from the bench.  I also used paper towels to clean up all
the piss she had left around the place.  I was very careful in erasing traces
of my presence from this room, even though I wasn't sure whether I intended to
say I came here tonight or not.  Everything was still uncertain.  I did this so
that all my options would be open when the moment of "truth" came.

     About an hour later, I had all my stuff and was ready to go.  I checked
the classroom and darkroom for about the hundredth time before walking out the
door.  Lisa was gone.

                                    Epilogue

     Obviously, I didn't get much work done that night.  I did develop the 
negatives for my projects and it didn't take much longer to print them up, so
it was to some benefit.  There was no ruckus about a rape the next day
(Monday).  But then again, maybe the ruckus about the stabbing death outside 
the dance overshadowed this "minor" incident.  Lisa showed up to homeroom just
like she did any day, and didn't look funny at me or anything.

     I developed the negatives at another after-school session and was
impressed by the results.  I carefully cropped out any parts of the picture
that contained any suggestion of where they were taken; for example, the corner
of the darkroom cupboard that protruded into the upper left of most of the
views.  I also had to do a bit of matting with a piece of cardboard to get rid
of the floor tile pattern that was characteristic of our school.  I began
experimenting with composites.  For example, cutting out a print of her and
placing it onto a picture of *my* bed.  It was hilarious!  The resulting
pictures were fantastic.

     One morning, bright and early, I tacked them to bulletin boards around the
school, after having copied them on the school office photocopier.  I also
shoved them under empty classroom doors, placed them in washroom stalls, you
name it.  I was going to send some to her parents, but figured this would be
enough.  I was right.

     After about three weeks of continual harassment, she disappeared, storming
red-faced out of math class in a flurry of tears.  We never saw her again. 
Many of us were grateful.
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  .ooM   |1993 cDc communications by Mark Vaxlov               12/30/93-#242|
\_______/|            Save yourself!  Go outside!  DO SOMETHING!            |

