The witch is always right. When she said the impending flood wouldn’t affect me like the others, that it would give me powers, I took my camera there to document the carnage. When the waters rushed toward me, I shut my eyes but the impact didn’t come. It flowed around me. I pushed my hand out and the water followed. From my pictures, people learned my name.
She said similar things about other disasters. When tornados ripped through the middle of the country, I gained the ability to move objects. And it made me the most well-known photographer of my time.
She was right about the mudslide, the wildfire, the avalanche. Earth, fire, snow. It all moved around me at my will and the pictures I took made me famous and rich.
And she was right about the volcano. That my photos would be like nothing anyone had ever seen. That they would immortalize me.
So when the magma didn’t move on my command, I took a self portrait—my last as a mortal—then laid down on my camera to protect it, waiting for immortality.
When I open my eyes I can’t move. People stand quietly and observe me with awe, then move on. Then more people. All day. Every day.
“Can you imagine?” one woman comments, decades later, staring directly into my portrait eyes, then glancing to her right. “And that’s the camera that took all these,” she gestures around me. “What a legend.”
The witch is always right.
Kimberly McCoy 