'Meanie Geenie'

While looking at my self in the changing room mirror, I examined my face and wondered how I'd let my skin get so shabby looking. I'd normally taken such great care of it with all the exfoliating and moisturizing, while also being careful to dab my face dry and never stretch my precious skin by rubbing it even when crying. I take proper care to ensure a healthy diet and regular sleep schedule to prevent greasy skin and eye bags, yet there they are underneath my eyes; two ugly gray shadows sagging there.

"Are you done staring at yourself yet in there, Geenie?" my best friend, Lily, called out from the other side of the curtain.

"Sorry, I'll be right out!" I snapped back to reality and changed back into my original clothes, leaving the stall. I met a pair of bored, blue eyes gazing back at me.

"Can we go get something to eat now please?" Lily asked impatiently, which was expected since I did spend two hours deciding on one outfit before who knows how long in that dressing room.

"Just let me pay for this dress and we can go to the food court," I told her pulling out my wallet. As we walked towards the malls center, I heard a voice calling out.

"Regina?" I turned towards the sound and saw a familiar girl with old feathers braided into her hair, "Regina, is that you?"

No one called me by that name since elementary school before my family and I had moved to a different district: Regina Watson. After my parents split up, my mother remarried a rich stockbroker and since I met Geoff Masterson, he had been calling me little 'Geenie'. I started going by Geenie Masterson after we moved to embrace the move and start fresh. My real father had run off somewhere in Canada and hardly calls once a year anyways. I didn't really recognize the strange girl who stood before me, looking around I noticed she was into some interesting things. She was standing in front of a store full of creepy shrunken heads and what I believe were stuffed reptiles in the front, passed that I was scared to look, but she was holding a sign that read, "Free Palm Reading!" She was dressed in baggy denim clothing and her hair was unkempt, despite the best efforts of her nappy-looking pleats. I tried my best to recover a name but nothing came to mind.

"It's Sara Topin from Barts Elementary!" an image of a little auburn-haired girl flashed into my mind as she said that and I remembered when we used to play make-believe when we were kids. She looked so different now.

"I'm sorry." I feigned ignorance, "I don't know who any of those people are."

As I tried to turn back around with Lily, a hand wrapped around my arm and yanked me back suddenly.

"Wait, Regina!" she tried pulling me back around, "Why are you being like this?"

"Don't touch me!" I snapped pushing her off of me, "I don't know you and I don't know any 'Regina'. My name is Geenie Masterson, got it?"

The girl, Sara, looked at me hurt. I left her with her jaw on the floor as I proceeded to leave with Lily, but not before I heard one last thing from behind me.

"I curse you, 'Geenie Masterson'." Came a taunting whisper, "May your outside look as hideous as your inside."

Sitting on my bed at home later, I laughed with Lily about what had happened over the phone. Holding my phone in one hand as I wiped the dirty oil from my pores with a blotting tissue in the other, I noticed my skin begin to crack on the bridge of my nose. As I put my finger to it some began to flake of revealing a rougher texture underneath.

"I'm going to have to call you back." I hung up and dug through my hundreds of skincare products, applying one after another trying to cover up the blemish, but the more I tried to remedy the situation the bigger the unsightly blotch would spread. Eventually I got a good look at myself in the mirror and seen the damage. It was as if the surface of my face was covered in some sort of dried, leathery material. I opened my mouth to scream but found it full of jagged, yellow teeth and my tongue had turned black.

"What's happening to me?" I ran my hands through my hair only to find myself losing strands and strands at once. When I went to school the next days the stares and whispers in the hallways were unbearable, even though I'd covered up most of the balding with a hat and wrapped an oversized scarf around my neck in an attempt to cover my face, everyone could see how repulsive I'd become. Lily was waiting for me by my locker, but when she took one look at me she ran off with a horrified expression gracing her perfect face. As I cried to myself at the girls' bathroom sink, I looked at my new form and my crooked, overgrown fingernails that were jutting out at me as I tried to wipe away the tears and I heard a voice behind me. It was the same eerily taunting whisper from before. In the mirror behind me stood the same very girl from the mall.

"Sara Topin." I didn't take my eyes off of her as chills ran down my spine.

"Oh, so now you know who I am?" her voice was louder but still held the same harshness that it had when it was softer, "You didn't seem to remember me yesterday, 'Geenie'."

As she said my name, she dragged out the sound mockingly and let out a laugh like a dying cat.

"Please, Sara!" I pleaded, not wanting to be tormented like this anymore, "I'm begging you to change me back."

"You deserve to be as ugly as you are on the inside, 'Meanie Geenie'." she smiled and displayed a flawless set of pearlie whites, "You don't deserve the beauty that you've been gifted with, but I will."

It was then that I took note of her flowing auburn hair, that just yesterday was unmanageable and dusty, and there wasn't a single mark on her untainted skin. I spun around as fast as I could wondering if my eyes were playing tricks on me, but was only met with empty stalls. Her voice was still engraved in the back of my mind though:

"You deserve to look as ugly as you do on the inside, 'Meanie Geenie'."

Walking alone in the halls I knew I was already long before I changed though, a monster named 'Meanie Geenie Masterson'.