Trigger Warning: Self-Harm, Body Horror, Rotting, Scars, Blood, Self-Hate, Pharmaceuticals, Self-Mutilation

It started off with something small. I’d scratch at the marks on my skin until they’d come off. They would grow back.

So I’d scratch again, until they would scar over. It was better. The scars matched my skin enough to be covered with makeup. I wanted perfect skin like they’d shop for in all the ads. 

I didn’t have the money for the creams, tighteners, serums that could undo signs of imperfections. So I made do.

I would save my money to get myself fixed. I stopped leaving the house. I ordered everything I would ever need. What a wonderful thing. I stopped seeing other people, they only made me more upset that I could not achieve what they had. 

I remember the first time I punched the mirror. 

My hand was bleeding, it stung from the impact with the wall. But that red running from my hand gave me an idea.

I picked up one of the shards of glass and started to cut. I worked on getting one of the more stubborn marks of skin out. I remember that pain. That stinging searing pain. Compared to now, it was nothing but a tickle.

Looking back, I wish that was where I had stopped.

I stopped spending so much on food, I could last on water and supplements for a while while I brought my weight under three digits. 

I have no idea how I stayed alive. Blood loss and no food. It did a number on me.

I saved up enough money from my remote job to buy a cream to remove my scars. 

They said it would hurt. They never said the pain would last.

The second I knew that cream was coming in I picked up that old sharp crafting blade I had and worked on my body. Every little mark, every old scar, all the imperfections from growing up had to go.

I remember I was a mess. Covered in blood, starving and shaking. But the blade stopped hurting after a while.

The scar remover cream came in. The logo on the packaging was odd, the tail of the S curling around itself, almost like it was a human lying in the fetal position. I pulled myself to the door. I had just started on fixing my feet. It said not to use on open wounds or scabs. I listened at first. Then I saw someone online, one of the most perfect people I had ever seen, talk about how they used it on openly bleeding spots and how fast they would heal. So, I broke down and used it.

Simply walking has been hell ever since. Every step feels like I am being burned, cut, frozen, and rotting away. I learned later it was an AI post, like most things had become.

I wish I had learned then what I know now, but I kept going.

I started taking pills to numb the ever throbbing pain. I started feeling sick. I blamed everything but what I had done to myself. I went outside for the first time in weeks. I covered myself in a hoodie, not an uncommon thing to do. I waited for hours to be seen. I told them I was in pain, all the time. They gave me a life long prescription that I could ask for a higher dosage at any point. 

They never told me it would numb everything. 

I would take it everyday. Every morning, afternoon, and before bed. I would wake up in pain in the middle of the night and take more. I would get a higher dose, to help me sleep.

I went back to my old ways. The cutting, the healing, the scar cream. I made my body perfect. I was confident in myself, or at least I think I was, the pills made it very hard to feel.

Then the news came out about side effects.

By then it was too late for me, that logo was a warning. 

They told us the lab tested animals were fine. They were not lying, but after long term exposure to the creams, injections, pills, and whatever else people would use. The rats. They changed. Becoming something other. I, thankfully, was out of the pill haze when this came on. I remember the fear welling inside me. It was just the rats, I told myself. 

Then the human reports came in. 

Reports of melting skin, rotting limbs, bones deforming. 

I saw someone once, they were fine. Then they started screaming in pain. I watched as their body started to snap, and twist. The skin on their face peeling off, I could see the bone underneath. I dropped my things and went home as fast as possible. I started to cut into my skin with a desperation I had never felt before. I had to cut it all out of me. I couldn’t remember where the scars had once been but I could still feel them. I sliced myself open once again hoping that maybe I could save myself from that fate. 

Then I felt it. In my hand. I hadn’t touched my hand, I needed it to open myself up again. It started to turn colors, I watched as my own skin started to decay. It was like no other pain I had ever felt. I watched as my skin rotted and melted away, revealing the bones of my fingers, I felt the muscles rip and burn as the rot took them, I watched my bones, lose color and turn brittle as one by one, my fingers fell apart. The exposed, rotted bones fell to the floor and shattered. I fell to the floor in agony as the rot started to take my arm. Then it stopped. I only had half my forearm, my hand was gone.

The pain stopped, and I watched as the skin from my arm covered the end of my limb, making a perfect nub. I marvelled at it, then pains started again. My face. I felt parts of it start to peel off. I curled into a ball on the floor. I laid in my own blood for hours while my body changed.

When the mind shattering pain ended, I pulled myself up. I wasn’t bleeding anymore. But I felt different. I limped to the last mirror in my house. It was horrible. My hair was perfect, the blood that had been covering it turned it to a beautiful orange shade. My face suffered. My left eye was gone. Smooth skin covered what was once my left eye, my nose split down the middle, one half looked rotted away, smooth skin covering where the hole should be. The other half was something I could never achieve.

Half of my lips were a missing; a smooth patch of skin running straight down. A line where my mouth splits, the sight was akin to a burn victim. The right side, a perfectly full set of lips. My face is split down the middle, one side a horrifyingly smooth featureless mess, the other, what I was trying to achieve for years. Or was it what had always been there.

My body too, a mess. I removed my shirt and looked at a mass of random scars, and parched of smooth skin, some parts looked like I had been burned, other parts were as if nothing had happened. My hand was gone. And the remaining one was curled in a strange manner, but I can still use it. My legs and arms followed the patch work look of my chest and I can only assume my back is the same. My feet, one is missing all but one toe, and the other seems fine, but it is in constant pain, so I don’t use it much. 

It took me days to bring myself to go outside. When I did, I found people dead, bodies perfect, but they never lived to see it. I found more like me. Half monstrous, half perfect. 

The hold the companies had over everything fell. Something about causing the deaths and severe deformities in people. Sometimes I’ll still hear people trying to sell the shit that did all of this. It’s pitiful. I don’t think this is the end. I think they changed us. I’ve started to hear rumors of even more changes. I believe them, I can feel my spine warping again…

I am starting to grow a tail. 

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featured image graphic by EMILY STEPHENS