The Last Picture by Jillian Brooks

A short story by Vanessa Nevarez

The young girl perched on a rooftop had black hair, fair skin and long legs that dangled tentatively over the edge. Many people said she was a living tragedy.

While they say her smile was a beacon of light so bright that it lit up even the darkest of places, more often than not her mind wandered to those dark places.

Her eyes held the universe; her veiled galaxy of words falling from space. Once in a while, however, asteroids would collide with her world and corrode her sanity until she was nothing but a spiraling star hurtling toward the void.

No one knew her name or where she came from; all they really knew was that delicate wings stretched out from her back. One set of wings was made up of pure white feathers, the color of a dove. The other the color of a crow, midnight black.

Those of the superstitious kind believed the feathers indicated either a blessing or a curse, a fact the girl bearing the wings knew too well.

Sometimes a feather would fall and the wind would carry it away. On those occasions, she supposed it had something to do with people. Every day when she complimented someone or smiled at a stranger walking by, one of the black feathers fell away.

But every time someone angered her or did something to point out one of her many flaws, she was unable to control her temper. That’s when a soft white feather fell from her back.

A star seemed to blink out of existence when she let dark thoughts get the best of her. She thought about the colors of each of her two set of wings, but she rarely looked in a mirror.

One day, she had the sudden urge to see what they looked like. She lifted her eyes and saw her reflection on a window from the building opposite of her.

Despite having feathers fall off every day, the wings were unchanged. It seemed that new ones were growing in its place each time one fell away.

She had always hoped that the wings would eventually disappear and that she would become a normal girl.

But, suddenly a thought she never had occurred to her. If she tried, could she fly?

Both doves and crows fly after all. Deciding to forget the struggle to control her emotions and actions for a moment, she stood up. Standing on the very edge of the roof, she looked down and fear set in.

But, she was tired of overthinking everything and she slowly let go. It was a long way down and the street below seemed to be getting closer as she fell.

In one quick motion, she spread her wings and the unimaginable happened. She soared and the sky greeted her.

Among the clouds she thought about the colors again and realized for the first time that the wings were a part of her.

One might be black and the other white, but it didn’t matter. The wings told the story of who she was, and to her they were a blessing not a curse.