Turn 7 of 15

Leave the salon and go home. At home, the slow transformation starts.

I nod at the receptionist, who gives me a small wave as I push through the glass door and back onto the high street. The afternoon light seems brighter than it should be, or perhaps my eyes have simply been recalibrated. The grey velour women outside the salon watch me pass, their expressions unreadable, and I feel a strange kinship with them now that I did not feel before. They are not threatening. They are simply waiting, patient and still, like pieces on a board. One of them, a woman with dark hair and immaculate lashes, catches my eye and gives me a slow, deliberate nod of recognition. I nod back, though I do not know why.

The walk upstairs to my flat feels different, the narrow staircase less claustrophobic than usual. I unlock my door and step inside, dropping my keys on the hall table. The flat is exactly as I left it: my laptop open on the desk, a cold cup of tea on the coaster, a pile of design briefs I should be working on. I stand in the middle of the room and listen. There is no hum here, no ozone. Just the familiar creak of the building and the distant rumble of traffic on the ring road. I am home. I am safe. And yet something has shifted, like a picture hanging slightly crooked on the wall.

I go to the bathroom and stand in front of my own mirror, the one above the sink with the chip in the corner. My reflection stares back at me, unchanged, unremarkable. I lean closer, examining my skin, my eyes, my hair. Still no tan. Still no lashes. I run my hands through my hair and feel the familiar texture, the slight frizz from the damp. I am the same. I am entirely, completely the same. And yet the thought arrives in a smooth, measured sequence, and I notice that I am not alarmed by this. I should be alarmed. I should be terrified. The machine did something to me, rewrote something, edited a paragraph of who I am. But the alarm, when I search for it, is distant, muffled, like a fire alarm heard through thick walls.

I make another cup of tea, because that is what I do. I sit at my desk and open the design brief, because that is what I do. The cursor blinks on the screen, patient and steady. I stare at it for a long time, waiting for the creative impulse to strike, the familiar spark of an idea taking shape. Nothing comes. The space where the spark should be is not empty, exactly. It is tidy, swept clean, a blank canvas waiting for instruction. I realise, with a strange, distant clarity, that I do not know what to draw. I have always known what to draw. The uncertainty should frighten me. Instead, it feels like a question I will answer later, when the time is right.

Outside, the light fades. The high street goes quiet. I hear the 214 pull away from the stop, its diesel engine growling into the evening. I stand at my window and look down at the salon. The sign is lit now, Glow & Go glowing in soft, white neon against the darkening sky. The grey velour women have gone, scattered to their homes and their lives, but I know they will be back tomorrow. They are always back. I watch the light until it blurs, and I feel the new stillness inside me settle deeper, like sediment in a glass. I am the same. I am entirely, completely the same. And I am not afraid.