Turn 8 of 15

The transformation speeds up. I panic at what is happening.

The calm fractures without warning. I am standing at the window, watching the neon sign pulse, when a jolt of electricity shoots up my spine and I gasp, stumbling backward. My hands fly to my throat and I feel it—a tightness, a strange, prickling heat spreading beneath my skin like a rising tide. I rush to the bathroom mirror and grip the edges of the sink, my knuckles white, and stare at my reflection. My skin is changing. A warm, bronze flush is blooming across my cheeks, spreading down my neck and across the backs of my hands in a smooth, even wave. It is not a tan. It is a new colour, uniform and synthetic, as if someone is painting me in real time.

I claw at my face, my fingernails scraping against skin that feels thicker, tighter, as if a second layer is settling over the first. My lashes—I blink and they feel heavy, impossibly long, casting shadows on my cheeks that were not there a moment ago. I lean closer to the mirror and watch them grow, dark and thick, curling upward with a precision that is not natural. My lips tingle and I touch them, watching in horror as they fill, becoming fuller, the colour deepening to a glossy, manufactured pink. I am becoming one of them. The machine did not need me to go back. It has followed me home.

The panic rises in my chest, hot and jagged, but even as it surges, I feel it being smoothed over, the edges sanded down by that same internal mechanism that tidied my thoughts. I shake my head violently, gripping the sink harder. No. I will not be calmed. I will not be edited. I am Gemma. I am twenty-seven. I am a freelance graphic designer. I live above a tanning salon on a wet high street in the north of England. The facts are mine. They belong to me.

But the facts feel slippery now, like words on a screen that keep autocorrecting. I stumble back to my desk and grab my phone, scrolling through my contacts for someone—anyone—to call. My fingers feel clumsy, thick. The screen is bright and confusing. I find my friend Rachel's name and press call, holding the phone to my ear with a hand that no longer looks like mine. It rings once. Twice. Three times. Voicemail. I hang up and try again. The same. Everyone is unreachable. The street outside is silent.

I look down at my hands. The bronze is complete now, a flawless, even coat that catches the lamplight with a synthetic sheen. My nails, bitten and uneven moments ago, are now long and perfectly shaped, lacquered in a pale, nude polish I did not apply. I feel my hair with my fingers, and it is smoother, heavier, falling in a sleek curtain around my face. I open my mouth to scream, to cry, to make any sound that is truly mine, but what comes out is a sigh—a long, slow exhalation of something that might be resignation, or might be the beginning of acceptance. The stillness inside me surges forward, flooding the cracks where the panic lived, and for a terrible, crystalline moment, I feel the fear ebb away, and I am horrified by the relief.