Lubna and her friend Sara squeeze into an old-fashioned photo booth at the county fair, giggling and making silly faces for four quick flashes. The strip prints exactly as expected, four small photos in a neat vertical row. Except there’s a fifth frame at the very bottom, one neither of them posed for, showing someone standing directly behind them who definitely wasn’t there.
Table of Contents
Part 1: The County Fair
Lubna and Sara had wandered the county fair for nearly two hours, working their way through fried snacks and carnival games, before finally spotting the old photo booth tucked into a quiet corner near the exit, its faded curtain and old-fashioned design clearly decades older than anything else at the fair.
“This thing looks ancient,” Sara said, pulling the curtain aside to reveal a small bench and an old coin slot. “Do you think it even still works properly?”
“Only one way to find out,” Lubna said, feeding a few coins into the slot and squeezing onto the narrow bench beside her friend.
A small countdown display lit up, and they scrambled quickly into position, laughing and making increasingly silly faces as four bright flashes fired in steady succession, the machine whirring quietly as it processed their photos.
“That was actually kind of fun,” Sara said, stepping out of the booth as a photo strip slowly emerged from a slot below the curtain.
Part 2: The Extra Frame
Lubna picked up the strip, still warm from the printer, and held it up for them both to examine.
Four photos, exactly as expected, showed the two of them laughing, mid-silly-face, mid-genuine-laugh, capturing their fun perfectly well. Below the fourth photo, however, sat a fifth small frame neither of them had posed for, printed in the exact same style and quality as the others.
It showed the two of them again, though now their expressions had shifted to something closer to confusion, both slightly turned as though reacting to someone behind them. And standing directly between them, close enough to nearly touch both their shoulders, was a tall, indistinct figure, its face nothing more than a pale, featureless blur.
“What is that?” Sara asked, her earlier laughter completely gone now. “There was nobody else in that booth with us. It’s barely big enough for the two of us.”
“Maybe it’s some kind of double exposure,” Lubna suggested, though her voice sounded considerably less confident than she’d intended. “An old technical glitch, from a machine this old.”
Neither of them fully believed that explanation, though both were equally eager to accept it anyway.
Part 3: Looking Closer
Lubna kept the strip tucked in her jacket pocket for the rest of the evening, occasionally pulling it out to examine the fifth photo more closely, half expecting, half dreading, that the strange figure might somehow look different each time.
By the time she got home that night, exhausted from the long day at the fair, she propped the strip against her bedroom mirror before finally falling asleep, still faintly unsettled by the whole strange encounter.
The next morning, checking the photo again over breakfast, Lubna felt a genuine chill settle over her. The figure’s position had shifted slightly, she was almost certain, standing marginally closer to the camera than it had the night before, its blurred face now angled very slightly toward the lens itself.
“You’re imagining things,” Sara insisted over the phone that afternoon, though her voice carried an uncertain edge that suggested she wasn’t entirely convinced of her own reassurance. “Photos don’t just change on their own, Lubna.”
“Come look at it yourself, then,” Lubna said, genuinely unsettled now. “Tell me I’m imagining it.”
Part 4: Getting Closer
Sara came over that evening, and together they examined the strip carefully under bright kitchen lighting, comparing it against a photo Lubna had taken of it the previous night on her phone.
“It has moved,” Sara admitted quietly, her earlier skepticism completely gone now, replaced by genuine unease. “Just slightly. But it has.”
They sat together in tense silence for a long moment, neither entirely sure what to actually do with this information.
“We should just get rid of it,” Sara finally said. “Throw it away, burn it, whatever actually works for something like this.”
Lubna nodded slowly, though something about simply disposing of it felt insufficient somehow, incomplete. Still, lacking any better idea, she carried the strip out to her kitchen’s small metal trash can that same night and dropped it in, feeling only slightly foolish about how relieved doing so actually made her feel.
The following morning, taking out the trash before work, Lubna paused at her back door, phone in hand, snapping an unthinking, habitual photo of her quiet, empty backyard before heading out.
She didn’t look at the photo again until that evening, scrolling idly through her camera roll. In the corner of the ordinary backyard shot, barely visible against the fence line, stood a tall, indistinct figure, its blurred face angled directly toward her camera.
Lubna deleted the photo immediately, her hands trembling slightly, and resolved, quietly and firmly, never to visit that particular county fair again.
The End
Key Vocabulary
| Word | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Countdown | a count backward from a number to indicate when something will happen | “The countdown reached zero, and the fireworks began.” |
| Indistinct | not clear, hard to see or recognize clearly | “Through the fog, the shapes ahead were indistinct.” |
| Featureless | without any clear or distinct features, especially facial ones | “The old statue’s face had become featureless after years of weather damage.” |
| Skepticism | doubt about whether something is true | “She responded to the wild story with obvious skepticism.” |
| Dispose | to get rid of something | “Please dispose of the trash properly.” |
| Resolve | to make a firm decision to do something | “He resolved never to make that mistake again.” |
Quick Check
- What do Lubna and Sara do at the county fair that starts the story?
- What is strange about the fifth photo on their photo strip?
- What does Lubna notice has changed about the figure in the photo the next morning?
- What do Lubna and Sara finally decide to do with the photo strip?
- Why do you think the figure appears again in Lubna’s backyard photo, even after they got rid of the original strip? What do you think happens next?
Ready for another spine-chilling read? Continue with The Door at 3:03 AM, another B1 horror story.
