She owed me three thousand dollars, but on the phone, she told me to stop being so “transactional” and be grateful for the exposure.
Her name is Seraphina Monet, an influencer with a perfect online life and millions of adoring fans. I was just the photographer she hired, the one who was supposed to be invisible.
I took the insults. I chased the unpaid invoices. I played by her rules.
But she made one mistake. She let her perfect mask slip, just for a second, and my camera was still on.
Now she’s planning a huge gallery opening to celebrate her flawless career, but she doesn’t know I’ve already printed the headline photo, and it’s going to be a complete surprise.
A Smile for the Camera: The Golden Ticket
The email arrived on a Tuesday, sandwiched between a 20% off coupon for a pizza place we never order from and a late notice for our mortgage. I saw the name in the subject line—Collaboration Inquiry: Seraphina Monet—and my heart did a frantic little stutter-step.
“Mark, you’re not going to believe this,” I called out, my voice tight with a hope I hadn’t felt in months.
He came into the kitchen, wiping his hands on his jeans. Mark’s a carpenter, and he always smells faintly of sawdust and varnish, a scent that normally grounds me. Right now, I was anything but grounded. “What’s up, Len?”
“Seraphina Monet wants to hire me.”
He blinked. “The… Instagram lady? With the teeth?”
“She has three million followers, Mark. And perfect teeth.” I reread the email, the words blurring. She wanted an event photographer for a multi-gig package leading up to her big gallery opening. The fee she proposed made the air leave my lungs. It wasn’t just enough to cover the mortgage; it was enough to cover the next three, plus the new transmission the minivan desperately needed. It was a lifeline.
My son, Leo, clattered into the room, holding up a Lego creation with a missing wing. “Mom, the spaceship is broken again.” I looked from his earnest, smudged face to the glowing screen. This wasn’t just about paying bills. It was about showing him his mom could still build things, too. An hour later, I had signed and returned the contract, a clean, professional PDF that masked the trembling of my hands.
The Thousand Tiny Cuts
The first set of photos was for a simple “day in the life” shoot at her penthouse. I thought they were good. Strong, even. I’d captured the morning light hitting the ridiculous floor-to-ceiling windows, the artful mess of a $500 throw blanket on her sofa. I sent the files over, proud.
Her reply came at 2 AM. There was no greeting.
A few notes on the first batch, it began. The notes were not few. They were a detailed, single-spaced manifesto of my failures. Image 3045: The reflection in the chrome coffee maker makes my jaw look weak. Please soften. Image 3087: The texture of the cashmere sweater isn’t coming through. It looks like wool. Can you make it look more expensive? Image 3102: My smile here is too… eager. It needs to feel more organic, like I just thought of something profound.
It went on for two pages. She wanted me to change the color of the sky outside her window because it was “too suburban blue.” She asked if I could digitally remove a single dog hair from a white rug. She called my lighting “aggressively commercial” and my composition “a little dated.”
I spent six hours making the edits, my neck aching, my eyes burning. I drank three cups of coffee and felt the acid churn in my stomach. When I finally sent the revised folder, her only response was a terse, “Better.” The first invoice, for a third of the total fee, went unanswered.
The Invisible Woman
The main event was a sponsored launch for a ludicrously priced line of sparkling water infused with “botanicals.” It was held in a SoHo loft that had been painted entirely white, from the floors to the exposed brick. It smelled like money and lilies. Seraphina floated through the room in a silk dress, her laughter like tiny, curated bells. She was magnetic.
To me, she was a ghost. She didn’t make eye contact once. When I needed her to pose with the CEO of the water company, I had to ask her manager, who then relayed the request as if I were speaking a different language. I was a piece of equipment, less important than the tripod I was setting up.
For ten hours, I orbited her world. I photographed her laughing with other influencers, her head tilted just so. I captured her holding the sparkling water bottle as if it were the Holy Grail. I documented her curated perfection while my stomach growled and my feet swelled in my sensible shoes.
Mark texted me around hour eight. How’s it going? Leo misses you. I looked across the room at Seraphina, who was taking a selfie with a fan, her face a mask of radiant warmth and accessibility. I typed back, It’s fine. Almost done. A complete and total lie.
An Unplanned Exposure
The party finally wound down around midnight. The beautiful people evaporated, leaving behind a mess of half-empty glasses and discarded napkins. I was packing my gear in the back alley, the city air cold and sharp against my flushed skin, when I heard the voices.
“I cannot believe you would say that to me, Julian!” It was Seraphina. Her voice was stripped of all its bell-like charm. It was raw, ugly.
“You’re delusional, Sera. You spend money like it’s water,” a man’s voice shot back. Julian, her boyfriend. The handsome, silent accessory from her Instagram feed. “You think the brands are going to stick around when they find out you’re leveraged up to your eyeballs?”
My camera was still hanging from my neck, its settings still on burst mode from the party—high-speed, silent shutter. A reflex honed over fifteen years took over. I raised it, my eye finding the viewfinder. They were under a single, harsh security light. Seraphina’s face, usually a study in placid beauty, was twisted into a mask of pure fury. Tears streamed down her cheeks, cutting paths through her perfect makeup.
“You’re stealing from me!” she shrieked, jabbing a finger into his chest.
My finger depressed the shutter. It didn’t make a sound. It just fired, a silent, rapid-fire succession of images, capturing the entire vicious, unfiltered exchange. It was over in seconds. They stormed off in opposite directions, leaving me alone in the alley, the cold seeping into my bones.
Later that night, in the quiet of my home office, I downloaded the memory card. I scrolled past hundreds of photos of a smiling goddess. And then I got to the end of the roll. Image 5012. Image 5013. 5014. 5015. Five frames. Five pictures of the real Seraphina Monet. I clicked on one, and it filled my screen. Her mouth was open in a silent scream, her eyes wild. This wasn’t a weak jawline or a cheap-looking sweater. This was a complete and total train wreck.
I leaned back in my chair, the silence of the house pressing in on me. “Oh my God,” I whispered to the empty room. “These could ruin her.”
The Price of Perfection: Radio Silence and Red Ink
Two weeks bled into three. My emails about the outstanding invoices—now totaling a staggering three thousand dollars—were met with a wall of silence. Each one I sent was professional, polite, a masterpiece of restrained anxiety. Hi Seraphina, Just following up on Invoice #1023 and #1024. Please let me know if you have any questions. Best, Lena. Nothing.
The second mortgage notice arrived, this time with a bold, red stamp that screamed OVERDUE. It sat on our kitchen counter like a small, rectangular bomb.
“Anything?” Mark asked that night, not looking at me. He was staring at the notice, his shoulders slumped.
“I’m sure it’s just an oversight,” I said, the lie tasting like ash in my mouth. “Her manager handles the finances. They’re probably just swamped.”
He finally looked at me, his eyes full of a gentle pity that made me feel even worse. “Len, we can’t float this for much longer. The credit card is almost maxed out from the van repair.”
Three thousand dollars. It had gone from being a safety net to a critical piece of our survival. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that red stamp. Every time I opened my laptop, the hidden folder of photos from the alley felt heavier, like a physical weight on my hard drive.
About the Author
