FantaFlash

“This is it! The perfect look!” Katryn beams at her phone and presses the button to take a selfie. A blinding flash fills her studio apartment as her phone clicks, imitating a camera shutter. The phone screen reveals Katryn’s face featuring a sharp graphic eyeliner that blends through the rainbow from red at the inner corners of her eyes to violet at the tip of the wings near the ends of her eyebrows. Long black lashes, impossible to achieve without falsies, frame her hazel eyes. “Ooooo, this one’s going to get so many likes! This new FantaFlash app has some incredible filters! If I tag the company, maybe they’ll give me a sponsorship?”

Katryn continues to chatter to herself in this vein as she uploads the new selfie to all of her social media profiles. All she’s ever wanted, since the first time she saw the Kardashians, is to become a famous influencer. Working a standard nine to five job for the rest of her life sounds like torture to her. Every time she posts a new selfie or reel, she hopes that it will be the one to go viral and catapult her into the luxurious spotlight she craves. She spends all of her spare time researching how to optimize her socials and looking for new ways to enhance her content, which is how she stumbled across this FantaFlash app in the first place. She doesn’t know how much longer she can last living as a normie in her cramped, dingy space and making ends meet with multiple barista jobs around town.

“Shit, I’m gonna be late for work,” Katryn realizes as she gets the new selfie uploaded to her final profile. She puts her phone down and looks in the mirror to fix her long blonde hair, then freezes, staring at her reflection open-mouthed.

Her hazel eyes are framed by impossibly long black lashes and a glittering rainbow graphic liner.

“What the fuck?!” she whispers, touching the eyeliner wing at the corner of her left eye. The texture of her skin there feels like she’s actually wearing makeup, but she knows she didn’t put any on today except foundation and concealer. Weirder still, when she pulls her hand away the liner isn’t smudged at all.

“How is this possible?” she wonders aloud, but no logical explanations present themselves, and she doesn’t have time to keep thinking about it. Her phone starts vibrating and blasting an alarm. The words “GO TO WORK NOW” flash across her screen.

“Well, at least I look fabulous,” she smiles to herself, doing a little twirl in front of the mirror before throwing on her shoes to complete her work uniform, grabbing her phone and purse, and rushing out the door.

From the moment she walks through the door of the Brewed Awakening Coffee Shop, where she works weekday lunch rush shifts, colleagues and customers alike are complimenting her.

“Oh my god, I love your makeup!”

“Girrrrrrrrl, you are looking Fresh A F! Check that liner!”

“That must have taken so long! What products did you use?”

“Girl, those lashes! They almost look real!”

Katryn smiles, blushes, and tells people who ask about her products to try Ulta or Sephora, she doesn’t remember where she bought the products. She isn’t about to tell them that an app on her phone is responsible for her look. She tries to focus on making lattes and frappucinos, but she can’t help admiring her reflection every time she passes a shiny surface and catches a glimpse of her sparkling eyeliner. All she can think about is getting home so that she can play with FantaFlash some more. What other incredible filters is the app hiding?

And then she notices the calendar on the wall while she’s making the seventeenth pumpkin spice latte of the day and remembers that it’s October. Halloween is just a few short weeks away! Katryn grins as she envisions the selfies and videos she’ll be able to make with the help of FantaFlash filters. This will be her ticket to influencer fame and fortune, for sure! She just has to make it through the day and get home to start planning and experimenting. Normally Katryn spends October in a blur of coffee shop shifts, trips to costume shops and makeup stores, and late nights perfecting looks and taking selfies. But this year, thanks to FantaFlash, she might be able to do all of her Halloween costume work without setting foot in Spirit Halloween once!

The rest of the day passes by in a blur for Katryn. Although cantankerous Mrs. Burns throws a scalding dark roast past her head because she didn’t add enough sugar, and she has to remake the same latte for Mrs. Loman five times because of inconsistencies in the whipped topping, her smile rarely leaves her lips. She knows she won’t have to endure this place much longer. Remembering that she doesn’t work at any of her jobs tomorrow–sweet serendipity!–brings her even more joy. A whole day of planning her Halloween content, scrolling her socials, and experimenting with brand new filters–what could be better than that?

As soon as her shift ends, Katryn rushes back to her apartment. From the moment she gets home until around midnight, she flurries through the tiny space, trying to prepare for her full day of Halloweening tomorrow. By the time she collapses into her bed, she’s cleaned every square inch of the studio apartment and every costume-y article of clothing she owns has made it into the most accessible section of her closet.

The next morning, Katryn wakes up with the sun pouring through her only window. She darts into the bathroom to shower and get ready for the fun day she has planned. Only then does she catch sight of her reflection again and stop short. Her foundation is mostly gone, and what’s left is smudged, but yesterday’s lashes and graphic liner are still flawless.

“Must’ve forgotten to take it off,” she shrugs before getting into the shower. She makes sure to scrub her face extra well; she wants a blank slate for today’s projects. But when she emerges from the shower and clears a window in the steam-covered mirror, rainbow graphic liner-rimmed eyes stare back at her framed by long black lashes.

“Well, that’s annoying. But there has to be a reset or something in the app,” Katryn tells herself. She dresses in a plain white tank top and her favorite comfy shorts, deciding to browse filters before she starts working with costume pieces.

FantaFlash has an incredible array of options at her fingertips, Katryn realizes with delight as she starts to scroll. She can search the app by different keywords and get all sorts of different filters. “Making Your Imaginings Reality,” the app promises on each loading screen, and Katryn believes that FantaFlash has filters to cover every idea she could possibly think of. And the filters don’t stop at the face, she discovers as she scrolls further; there are options for filters that give the effect of manicures, pedicures, wings, tails, and more. Oddly enough, though, she’s not finding any more filters for eye makeup, no matter what she searches, although there are plenty of color contact type options available. She stops short at a filter that makes her eyes look completely black from edge to edge, like the demons’ eyes in Supernatural, which has always been one of her favorite shows. She can’t help herself from snapping a selfie with the filter applied. A blinding flash fills the room and her phone clicks merrily. Her eyes sting a little, and when the flash fades, the room still seems too bright. Katryn shakes her head, rubs her eyes, sets her phone down, and looks in the mirror.

Pitch-black eyes with no whites visible stare back at her from her face, still ringed with perfect rainbow eyeliner.

“Wow. That’s…hella cool looking, actually,” she muses, turning this way and that, admiring her reflection. The Broadway dressing room lights around her mirror make her wince with pain after just a few moments. She’s loved them since she moved in, but now they’re too bright. She turns away from the mirror and sighs.

“Maybe I just have to wait until these eye makeup looks expire to try new ones,” Katryn guesses. “I mean, this can’t be permanent.” She pushes down a twinge of panic. She can absolutely create a set of killer Halloween looks today incorporating the rainbow liner she’s already wearing. It doesn’t really lend itself to the witch look she’d been envisioning, but witches are cliché and overdone anyway. With these eyes, she’s sure she can create an incredible mermaid look.

Still, something tells her to start small, and so Katryn starts perusing the lip filters. Some of them include teeth, as well, and curiosity fights with caution for control of Katryn’s final selection as she debates whether she wants her mermaid to be more mystical or frightening.

“You don’t know how long these last,” she reminds herself, and with a sigh she taps the mystical option, giving herself a blue-purple ombre lip. A slider appears on the screen, allowing her to play with her lip volume. Katryn has always felt her lips weren’t full enough, but she saw enough horror stories in her feeds about the Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge years ago that she never dared to try it. But this could be her chance to have the lips she’s always dreamed of!

Carefully, she nudges the slider towards the fuller side, one millimeter at a time, until she’s got it exactly where she wants it. “Finally,” she breathes, and taps the button to take the photo. As she does, her finger brushes the slider, inflating her lips more on the screen. “Wait no–”

A blinding flash fills her studio apartment and her phone clicks. Her lips feel loose and then tingly. When the flash fades and her eyes adjust, Katryn squints into the mirror to find that her lips are a perfect, beautiful blue-purple ombre–and also at least three sizes too big for her face. “No no no! This is worse than if I’d just done that fucking challenge! There has to be a way to fix this!” The size of her lips makes it more difficult for her to talk. Panic rises in her chest and she starts to sweat. She scrolls and searches frantically through the app, but no lip filter options meet her eyes.

“Goddammit. God fucking dammit,” Katryn huffs, tossing her phone to the side and flopping backwards onto her bed. But she can only stare at the ceiling for a few seconds before her phone addiction has called the device back into her hand and in front of her face. She wanted to scroll TikTok, but FantaFlash is now featuring hair looks, which she hasn’t looked at before. In the eye of her phone camera, her hair now looks a bit worse for wear as it spills around her head on the bed like a bleach-damaged halo.

“Maybe I can at least get a new hairstyle for free? For at least as long as these last?” she muses, scrolling through the options. But none of the hairstyles seem targeted to normal influencer types; the filters are all very much in Halloween land, mostly under-the-sea or demon looks. She stops to admire a filter that makes her hair look like seething tentacles in a variety of blues and greens.

“This would actually be great for my costume, if it weren’t for my lips…” she muses, and before she realizes what she’s doing, she’s hit the button. Another blinding flash, and for a few moments Katryn’s scalp feels like it’s on fire. She yelps with pain and puts her hands to her head, only to jerk them away as slimy tendrils wrap around her fingers and grab her with hundreds of tiny suction cups. She screams and runs to the mirror, leaving her phone on the bed. Just as she’d feared, her hair has been replaced with dozens of octopus tentacles in vibrant blues and greens and teals, all moving of their own accord. With her tentacle hair, she can almost overlook her lips. A plan starts to form in her mind.

“Maybe it’s not too late to save this Halloween look,” she decides, and she returns to her phone with new energy. A couple flashes later, and her French tip manicure has been exchanged for long, claw-like nails in glittering ocean blue with little fish swimming across them. Then, to her surprise, lip filters have come back into the rotation on FantaFlash. She doesn’t hesitate to search them, hoping to fix her mistake. But the exact filter she’s wearing isn’t there anymore; the closest thing is a magenta-purple ombre that comes with fangs.

“Better this than balloon lips,” she tells herself as she applies the filter and takes the selfie. For a second, her upper jaw feels like two knives are stabbing it, but the sensation leaves before she has time to scream. Her reflection reveals perfectly sized lips, and the fangs are almost cute. “Perfect. Now, does it have anything for ears?”

To Katryn’s delight, FantaFlash seems to have heard her question and pulls up several options for ears. None of them quite fit the look she’s going for, though, and several of them come with nose options, as well. She starts swiping faster and faster, losing her patience. As she swipes, her thumb hits the selfie button, and yet another blinding flash fills her tiny room. Her nose and ears feel like they’re melting off her head.

As the light fades, Katryn shrieks in horror, staring wide-eyed at her reflection. A glittery orange elephant trunk has replaced her cute button nose in the middle of her face, and enormous matching elephant ears flap amongst her tentacle-hair.

“NOOOOOOOOO!!!!” she wails, snatching her phone from where it’s fallen to the floor. “CHANGE ME BACK! YOU HAVE TO CHANGE ME BACK!” She slams her phone repeatedly against her kitchen counter and the walls, cursing FantaFlash and demanding that it give her ear and nose options again.  Her heart races and her palms sweat. Elephant snorts punctuate her rage, making inky black tears trail down her cheeks as the app stubbornly refuses to give her what she wants.

“I can’t be stuck like this! This ruins everything!” she howls, swiping through FantaFlash with furious desperation and hitting every button she finds that looks like it might be “settings” or “help.” Her phone camera starts flashing and clicking, rapid-fire. Katryn’s whole body stiffens as electricity courses through her–and then her world goes black.

***~O~***

Katryn’s eyes open to reveal a poshly furnished room. Her head is pounding and her mouth feels like it’s full of cotton candy. She groans and sits up, finding that she’s been lying on a posh velvet chaise lounge. But she can’t sit comfortably; something is weird about her butt. She turns to look behind her and catches a glimpse of a long, scaly black lizard tail protruding from her rear end before something glittery and orange fills her vision.

“What the fuck?!” she demands.

A man laughs and the rest of her words die in her mouth. “Hello, Katryn,” he greets her from the other side of the golden bars that form one wall of the room. His ears are pointed, his features sharp, and his hair an oily dark purple. Something about him screams danger.

“Who are you? Where am I?” she demands.

“Welcome to…Fantasia.” He gestures all around him. Katryn looks around and finds that the wall behind her is all mirrors except for a sign declaring “Influencer Gone Wild.” She stares in horror at a monstrous creature sitting on a chaise lounge and looking back at her with pitch black eyes. It has tentacles for hair, elephant ears, purple bat wings– “Have you been enjoying FantaFlash?”

Memories of her Halloween selfies gone wrong flood back to Katryn. “WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!” She tries to stand but fails; her head is spinning and something’s wrong with her feet.

The man grins, revealing a blinding white set of unsettling sharp teeth. “You mean what you did to you.”

“I’m sorry, what–”

“We told you exactly what we were doing in our tagline.” Katryn’s mind flashes back to the FantaFlash loading screen. FantaFlash: Making Your Imaginings Reality. Her stomach sinks like a stone. “Everything is spelled out quite clearly in the Terms and Conditions of the app. Did you not read them?

She shakes her head. “Who reads that shit? What kind of–”

“Then I shall enlighten you. Applying a filter from our app to your phone camera is the trial period for that filter. When you take a picture with one of our filters applied to your phone camera, the filter is transferred to your physical, real-life self, outside of the camera. Thus, the filter becomes part of your real self. The app updates automatically to reflect each change you make.”

“But why in the hell would anyone want an app like that?”

“You wanted it, didn’t you? You were thrilled with that original makeup look.”

“Yeah, as something temporary! I didn’t want to wear it for the rest of my life! And there’s no “reversal” or “undo” feature! What if I changed my mind? What if this isn’t what I want to look like?”

“Well. You can always try another filter.” He tosses Katryn’s phone in its bedazzled case through the bars of her cage with a torrent of manic cackling. The phone clatters across the cement floor to rest at her Barbie-pink glittery goat hooves. She doesn’t remember taking any pictures of her feet, let alone with a filter like that, but who’s to say? Nothing makes sense anymore.

“But there is no going backward,” he continues with a terrifying, malevolent smile. “There is only what Is, and what Could Be. What Was no longer exists.”