Disrupted

Ainsley breathed a sigh of relief as they entered the Mad Utopia Cafe, grateful to get out of the early May thunderstorm outside. As a poor college student, they couldn’t afford a car or a parking pass, but the Mad Utopia was closer to campus than their apartment, and they had wanted to come here once their Sociology class let out, anyway. Ainsley’s noisy roommates made it impossible for them to focus on studying in the apartment, and something about this cafe spoke to them.

The Mad Utopia Cafe served a variety of coffee, tea, soups, sandwiches, salads, and gourmet desserts. The entire interior was themed in an Alice in Wonderland motif, with mushroom stools and giant flower murals on the walls. Vibrant colors filled the space and mismatched teacups and coffee mugs dangled from the ceiling. Quirky chill music played at a low volume in the background, just loud enough to be heard despite the quiet conversations of other cafe-goers and the pattering of rain on the roof and windows. Ainsley’s drab blue and gray plaid flannel, torn black skinny jeans, and well-worn Converse almost stood out in the whimsical setting, but the other patrons were similarly attired in street clothes, easing Ainsley’s anxiety. There was one middle-aged woman with pitch-black hair in a Karen-style angled bob and gothic clothing, impatiently tapping her pointed-toed shoe while she stood near the counter, but Ainsley ignored her. There was always at least one weirdo in every college kid hangout near campus. They just made a mental note to ignore Goth Karen as they approached the counter, rehearsing their order in their head.

The Mad Utopia Menu was scrawled in multicolored chalk across a giant black chalkboard above and behind the counter. Ainsley stared up at it, their lips moving but no sound escaping as they read over the options. Every single restaurant in town, it seemed to Ainsley, had too many menu options, making ordering food overwhelming.

“Can I help you?” a sweet-looking blonde girl in a pink apron asked Ainsley from behind the counter.

“Um. Yes. Could I please have…a chai latte with oat milk and…a Caesar salad?” Ainsley asked, hating the way they had to pause between items and the way the barista had to lean forward to hear them.

“Absolutely! That’s one chai with oat milk and a Caesar salad, right?”

Ainsley nodded in reply, their cheeks heating up. They completed the transaction without speaking further, despite the barista’s bubbly demeanor and bright smile. After struggling with the card reader and fumbling with their table number, Ainsley was more than ready to find a table and settle in for a few hours. They had a complicated paper to write on the causes of the 100 Years’ War for their history class, and since it was due by midnight, they didn’t have time to waste on beating themselves up over being socially awkward.

A small table in a secluded corner of the cafe, partially covered by a fake wisteria tree with a real fluffy white cat snoring in the branches, caught Ainsley’s eye. They started walking towards the table, but a blur of black in their peripheral vision caught their eye. They turned and–

“GAH!” a woman’s voice yelps as something plowed into Ainsley. They stumble backwards and run into something. Hot cappuccino showers over them. They land roughly in an empty chair. Furniture screeches on the tile floor. A woman in black was sprawled across the floor at Ainsley’s feet. Cappuccino flowed from the cups that tumbled from her outstretched hands.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” Ainsley exclaimed, stumbling to their feet only to slip on the cappuccino-drenched tile and nearly fall again. They look down at themselves; their shirt was stained with coffee splatter, but their laptop satchel was still closed, protecting the electronics within. “Are you all right?” Ainsley crouched next to the woman in black.

She pushed herself up and glowered at Ainsley with startling green eyes. Ainsley leaned back, wretchedly uncomfortable.

“I’m really sorry–” Ainsley started again.

“My coffee is ruined!” the woman interrupted, streaking her face and hair with cappuccino as she tried to fix her disheveled hair. “My DAY is ruined!”

“I’m really, really sorry. I don’t know how this happened. Can I help you up?” Ainsley offered the woman a hand, doing their best to try to defuse the situation. “I can buy you another–”

“Silence! There is no atonement! BE THOU DISRUPTED, as revenge for disrupting me!” The woman took Ainsley’s offered hand and pulled them roughly down into a puddle of cappuccino. Air gushed out of Ainsley’s lungs as the black-clad stranger got to her feet and barreled out of the Mad Utopia.

“Oh my goodness, are you okay? That woman is awful,” the blonde barista exclaimed as the front door closed behind the irritable stranger. She rushed to Ainsley’s side with a bucket of damp rags. “Let me help you get cleaned up.”

Ainsley nodded with a dazed expression as they surveyed the mess around them. What had they done to deserve one stranger’s ire and another’s kindness? They just wanted to move through the world without being perceived. With shaking hands, they took a rag from the barista’s hand and started scrubbing at the cappuccino splatters on the floor.

“Oh, don’t worry about that! Becky’s bringing a mop for the floor. These are for your clothes and stuff,” the barista explained. She took the dirty cloth from Ainsley and handed them another one, which they started using to tackle the stains on their shirt. “Are you hurt at all?”

Ainsley shook their head no. Their knee was probably bruised from landing on it when the witch pulled them to the floor, and their head ached like their brain had bounced around too much during the collision and the aftermath, but they didn’t want to say any of that to this barista. The only thing they wanted in that moment was to disappear, or else to go back in time and avoid this situation completely.

“Are you sure? You look really rattled,” the barista pressed. Ainsley forced a smile and struggled to their feet.

“I’m fine, thank you,” Ainsley mouthed, then frowned. They wanted to speak. They had every intention of speaking. But no sound came out when they tried. Ainsley’s face turned bright red and they hurried away from the barista towards the table in the corner, embarrassed and ashamed. Why won’t the words come out?! They demanded internally, but their voice was still absent. What the fuck is wrong with me?! Ainsley was sweating and trembling. They felt like a panic attack was imminent. Finally, they reached the table they’d identified as a safe place and took off their satchel to set it on the table. As they pulled out a chair to sit down, they accidentally bumped into another chair nearby.

“Ouch!” Ainsley squeaked, then smiled in relief–they made a sound! Maybe their voicelessness earlier was just a fluke. But their smile fled in the next moment as a vibrant rainbow of hair tumbled into Ainsley’s face.

“What the fuck?!” they whispered as they touched the hair. It felt like it was attached to their head. But that couldn’t be right; Ainsley just had a haircut last week and their plain, dark brown hair wasn’t more than 3 inches long. This hair was at least a foot long and contained every imaginable color in its strands. Ainsley tugged on the hair and then yelped in pain. They looked around to see if anyone noticed. A couple people nearby are staring at them. Ainsley’s face felt like it was on fire.

“I can’t stay here. It doesn’t matter that I’ve paid for food. I have to get out of here,” Ainsley decided aloud. They grabbed their things and rushed out of the Mad Utopia Cafe, hoping that they’d actually fallen asleep in class and that all of this was just a nightmare.

***~O~***

Unfortunately for Ainsley, the rainbow hair seemed to very much be theirs, and nothing they tried changed it. The rain on their walk home didn’t dull any of the color or make it run. When they tried to cut their hair short, the next time Ainsley blinked, it was back to its long, Technicolor self. Ainsley locked themself in their room for the night and wrote the worst paper they’d ever written despite their roommates’ blasting of Nicki Minaj and Cardi B in the living room. They didn’t think their professor would believe them if they told him what happened and asked for an extension. They didn’t think anyone would believe them, period.

The one thing Ainsley was sure about was that somehow, the woman in black from the Mad Utopia Cafe was to blame for their current misfortune. Nothing like this had ever happened to them before the collision in the cafe.

“Maybe she really was a witch,” Ainsley muttered to themself before falling asleep once their history paper was turned in. Magic seemed like the only possible explanation for what they were experiencing.

The next morning Ainsley freaked out all over again because their hair was still a horrifying shock of rainbow vibrance. It was impossible for them to be anything other than the center of attention with hair like this. But they really needed to go to their statistics class because they were barely passing, so they threw on jeans and an oversized hoodie and hoped that they could keep their hood on and their hair hidden. After a cup of coffee and a cold pop tart, they grabbed their satchel and headed out the door for class–and ran straight into one of the guys from the apartment next door.

Ainsley’s scalp prickled. Their hood hit their back and a torrent of rainbow hair scattered across the hallway. Their hands felt swollen and too warm.

“I’m so sorry. I’ll clean this up–” Ainsley started, but then stopped as they caught sight of furry brown bear paws where their hands should be.

“Clean what up, man? It’s all good,” the neighbor replied with an easygoing grin. “Cool gloves, by the way.” He disappeared into his own apartment without waiting for a response.

“Gloves?!” Ainsley hissed, flexing and contracting their claws. They knew it would be impossible for them to hold a pen or type with the equivalent of deadly oven mitts instead of hands.

“It happens every time I bump someone or something,” Ainsley realized aloud, thinking back over everything that happened to them after running into the witch the previous afternoon. Their brown eyes lit up and they bumped purposely into the hallway wall.

Nothing changed. They still had brown bear paws instead of hands.

Ainsley continued down the hallway, bouncing off of the walls like a desperate human pinball. But none of the bumps made the bear paws go away. Tears of frustration spilled from Ainsley’s eyes.

“So much for statistics,” they muttered. “So much for any kind of normal life, ever again.” But they can’t figure out how to use their paws to open their apartment door again, so they made their way out of the apartment building and into a nearby park. To Ainsley’s surprise, everyone around them seemed to assume that their paws were some sort of novelty gloves, just like their dopey neighbor. They started to think that maybe they could figure out how to live this way–until a passing jogger clipped Ainsley with her shoulder. Pain erupted from Ainsley’s hands and butt.

“Sorry!” the jogger called as she continued down the path away from Ainsley. Ainsley didn’t bother to answer. They were too distracted by the burst of claws and fur in front of them. Their hands emerged as the fur fell to the ground, like they’d never changed; even their anxiety-pulled hangnails and chipped black nail polish have returned.

But as Ainsley continued walking down the path, hoping they could make at least part of their statistics class, they felt something dragging behind them–something that felt like a part of them. They looked over their shoulder with dread welling up inside them.

A long, green, scaly lizard tail was protruding from Ainsley’s butt. Their jeans had torn around it, adding salt to the wound of this latest catastrophe. Ainsley wanted to scream, but the fact that they were in a public place kept them quiet. The last thing they needed was people looking at them while they had a fucking lizard tail. How did this even happen? Ainsley looked around, hoping to find some sign that this was all a dream. Instead, Ainsley’s eyes fell on a middle aged woman with a pitch-black Karen haircut and all black clothes sitting on a nearby bench, feeding bread crumbs to pigeons. Not knowing what else to do, Ainsley approached her, wringing their hands in front of them.

“Ma’am…” The woman looked up at Ainsley. Her green eyes flashed irritation at first, but then a cruel, amused smirk spread across her face. 

Ainsley shivered but continued, doing their best to be brave. “Ma’am, I’m really sorry for what happened yesterday. I was just trying to get to a table to work on a project, and I didn’t see you–”

“Ah, the brat from yesterday,” she sneered, tossing more bread crumbs to the pigeons. The birds watch Ainsley with evil little beady eyes. “Bet you think twice before running into people now, don’t you?”

“Ma’am, please. I don’t know what you did to me, or how, but can you please make it stop? I can’t live like this forever!”

The witch surveyed Ainsley for a moment with a calculating gaze. Something like pity flickered in her eyes for a split second

“I’ll have to make a potion to break that curse. And I don’t have the ingredients on hand. But if you bring me what I need, I’ll make the potion and set you free.”

Relief blossomed in Ainsley’s chest. “I’ll do it. Whatever you need.”

The witch arched a narrow black eyebrow. “Right. You will have to bring me…exactly eighteen fire ants…the E string from a Stradivarius violin…the big toenail of a 21 year old male virgin…and the casque of a cassowary.”

Ainsley blanched and swallowed hard. “I mean…I can try, but…how can I possibly…what even is a cassowary?”

A maniacal cackle escaped the witch’s deep purple lips. “My curses turn permanent after a time. Better get to work. You’ll have to figure it out by the Spring Equinox, or you’ll be stuck like this forever.”