Mal wiped the blood off her face and thought about taking another snort of Mr. Takimura, the enthusiastic Asian tourist who’d asked her to take his picture.

It hadn’t been the best decision, not in full view of a streetlamp, but he screamed so loud once he saw her, it hurt her feelings. She was pretty sure no one had been watching when she reached out and grabbed Mr. Takimura, drug him into the alley, and broke off his head. Besides, her big leathery wings folded up so nicely under her garbage-bag dress. Everyone mistook her for a homeless person; a small one, at that. No threat there but guilt.

She pawed through his Disneyland messenger bag. He had a shiny pair of sunglasses, and for a moment, she hoped. But they were just as useless as mirrors, reflecting back a face that was angled, fanged, with large eyes and a hook nose. Mal felt her own nose, saw the reflection do the same. Her nose didn’t feel anything like that. She crushed the sunglasses and kept looking. Stupid mirrors.

She found her prize under a stack of brochures. Mal couldn’t read English, nor Japanese, and it made the menus and the buttons hieroglyphic in their mystery. Delicately, methodically, she poked each button, but the thing was dead too, apparently.

Dead, or enchanted? She slung the messenger bag over her shoulder, stuffed put the prize back inside, and pushed Mr. Takimura off the roof. Her signal was the familiar bell ring as he hit the dumpster, then she jumped, her wings catching gulps of night air. The messenger bag was a bit of added weight, she being so small, but Mal was nothing if not a hard worker.

It was nearly three a.m. There wasn’t much time. Mal felt the spike of excitement course through her. After so much time, she would finally get to see what everyone else saw. She beat back against the night air, and looked for a photographer.

Barely thirty minutes till dawn, and things were not going well. She stopped for three pedestrians. Each time, she held out the camera, made the “clicking finger” she’d seen foreign tourists do, and pointed to herself. In dim light she looked human enough, she thought.
Must not have been dim enough. Twice the humans had screamed and run, dropping the camera in the process. The fools almost broken it.

The third time it was a teenager, and he’d tried to run away with her camera. Mal was getting bulbously full, at this point.

The sun was ten minutes from rising when she found the blind man. She’d seen him before, tapping out his way in the alleys. He was really homeless, without even an eaves to sit on. Sometimes he’d play music by the church, and she liked that. The wily squeal of his harmonica was a change of pace from the long, dreary hymns she heard each night.

“Huh? Wha?” He woke quickly when she shoved hard enough. His empty, shifting eyes rolled. “What time izzit?”

“Picture.” Mal’s voice was scratchy and out of use. She cleared her throat and pushed the prize into his hands. “Please. Picture. Sir.”
The blind man felt the prize, realized what it was. “Whazzis, a Polaroid? Goddammit, I’m a blind man, I can’t take a picture of nothing.”

“Money?” Mal felt inside the messenger bag, pulled out the wallet from the teenager earlier.

“Money. Now, now, money I can take.” He grabbed the wallet, feeling for the cash, and threw the remains away. Then, fumbling, he held up the camera to his empty eyes, and said, “Am I even pointing this the right goddamnned way?”

He CLICKED the button, and nothing happened. Clicked again. “Damn camera isn’t even on.” He felt for the power button, switched it, and the prize, dragon-like, breathed out a fine green light.

Even blind, he reads the symbols! Mal thought excitedly.

“Say ‘cheese,’” said the blind man.

Mal smiled big.

“Goddammit, say ‘cheese,’ or I won’t know where the hell to point this goddamn thing.”

“Cheese,” said Mal, and smiled even wider.

The flash almost blinded her.

Mal crouched on the church roof. She pushed the Pol-a-roid’s button again and again, enjoying the sizzle of light that temporarily hardened her skin, just as the sun did. The camera spit out card after card, and she would watch each one as its surface swam with gray fury until a picture appeared. So many pretty pictures.

Her own picture, taken by the blind man, sat off to the side, face down. She couldn’t look at it.

She’d fancied herself a pretty girl, like the ones that came stumbling out of the bars just before sunrise. Looking at her picture, she understood now why people screamed. A stone monster stared back at her: all big teeth and bloodstained grinning. Her skin was dry and congealed, and in some places, cracked like old leather. Her eyes were huge and swollen, and her mouth a ragged red armory of knives and chipped edges.

Mal snuffed back tears, and pressed the button again. A sparkle of light, another picture. Her stone hand filled the frame, the fingernails she was accustomed to looking much more clawlike when frozen that way.

What do you do when you are stuck with the person you are?

Mal tossed the picture off the edge of the church, let it flutter to the gravestones below, and tried to think of something happier.

A monster, maybe. But a monster with a nice messenger bag.

The idea was silly but it made her laugh. It was something to start from. She stuffed all her lovely pictures into her bag and wiped her nose. Time for one more picture before bed.

The sun crested the horizon, and Mal turned the camera east. When she felt the skin on her knuckles start to harden, she pushed the button.