The pursuit of beauty was what Emma’s entire life revolved around. It was the one thing she craved above all else, yet to her, it felt like it had always remained out of reach—just an elusive dream she could not realize. Not due to a lack of trying, though, for Emma had sampled every product that promised allure—every cream, treatment, cosmetic, and drug—and still, she was left unsatisfied. She found her appearance ordinary. Mediocre. This was not what Emma wanted. Being ordinary was something meant for peasants, and she fancied herself a queen. Even so, whenever she studied her reflection, she saw a face with too many freckles, eyes that were too narrow, lips that were too thin, and hair that fell too flat. It disappointed her beyond measure.
Emma had a flourishing career, a loving partner, a comfortable home, and a good-natured dog who was her best friend. She had a large social circle and a wonderful family, but everywhere she went, all she could ever focus on were the other women in the room and the way she perceived each one of them to be prettier than herself: a woman with rich brown skin that Emma coveted, a girl with the perfectly sculpted nose she longed for, someone with striking green eyes that Emma wished she could swap her dull blue ones for. There seemed to be beauty everywhere she looked, except in the mirror.
Her boyfriend was frustrated by her obsession with her looks. No matter how many times he told her that he thought she was absolutely perfect just the way she was, and that there was nothing about her he would change, Emma didn’t listen. There had been many occasions when she would cancel their plans to go out because she didn’t feel that she looked good enough, and she didn’t want people to see her unless she looked her best—or at least the best her mediocrity would allow. He had pleaded with her to quit caring what strangers thought of her, telling her that it didn’t matter, but it mattered to Emma.
She spent her days endlessly paging through fashion magazines and scrolling through social media sites on her phone, jealousy making her loathe her own visage ever more. The magazines and the photos posted to the sites Emma frequented all depicted women who were so effortlessly beautiful, and she couldn’t fathom how it could be so easy for them, yet so hard for her. Vanity kept her from being able to enjoy anything in her life, and she was always on the lookout for the next miracle skincare routine or the next miracle makeup brand.
Therefore, she could not curb her curiosity when she found a mysterious note in her mailbox advertising a new apothecary that had opened in town. What was so mysterious about it was that the advertisement seemed handwritten, and it didn’t give any details on products or pricing. It simply contained a street address, and under the heading “New Apothecary Opening,” it said, “We have exactly what you are looking for.”
Oh, really? she thought, half-mockingly, very sceptical that they would have what she had been yearning for as long as she could remember: beauty in a bottle. Still, her curiosity won, and before she knew what she was doing, she’d put on her shoes and headed straight for the shop.
***
Standing on the sidewalk and looking at the apothecary, Emma was quite disappointed. She’d expected a big, street-facing window revealing bright lights and glass cases containing endless lotions, perfumes, and balms—all the things that already filled her cupboards, and still which she could never seem to get enough of. Instead of this imagined heaven she’d thought she’d find, she found a plain brick building with a heavy wooden door. When she knocked, there was no answer, so she pushed open the door and stepped inside. A bell hanging above the door rang at her entrance, jarring Emma as the sound echoed around the dusty space.
There were only a few shelves scattered around the room, and on them stood a small collection of glass bottles—all unlabelled. Emma thought she must be in the wrong place and was just about to leave when an old man appeared in the doorway behind the counter. He was bald, his back slightly bent with age, and he was dressed in a long robe. In a papery voice, he asked what she was looking for, to which she replied that she sought anything that would make her more attractive. He regarded her for a while, his watery eyes studying her intently, and finally he motioned for her to follow him.
He led her through the doorway from which he’d come and down a flight of slippery stone stairs. They reached what looked to Emma like his workshop in the basement. In stark contrast to the empty room upstairs, this one was so cluttered that it was hard for her to move. There was only a narrow pathway winding through the mountains of shelving on either side, all containing what must have been thousands of bottles, tubs, and jugs. The place was lit only by a few scattered candles, and it smelled as though a perfumer’s distillery had exploded—scents of every fashion assaulted her senses.
They carefully picked their way through to the very back of the workshop, where the old man gestured to an ancient-looking wooden desk. She took a seat on the bench placed in front of it while he sat in the high-backed, medieval-style chair facing her. At last, he introduced himself as an alchemist, and Emma snickered. Alchemy? In this day and age? She jokingly asked him if he’d succeeded yet in turning lead into gold, but the man didn’t laugh. He smiled a knowing smile and told her that his focus lay more with potions. Having studied the art of ancient alchemy his entire life, he said he would be able to provide her with what she was looking for. She was suspicious. She asked him about the shop, and about the mysterious handwritten note she’d received in her mailbox. He only answered that this was not a shop; rather, it was a place to meet his hand-picked clientele and give them what they desired. How did he know her? Why did he pick her? Emma received no answers to these questions.
Instead, he asked a question of his own. The beauty that Emma sought would come at a price, so what would she be willing to sacrifice in order to obtain it? Emma’s answer was simple: Anything. When he raised his thick eyebrows at her, asking for confirmation, Emma nodded. Yes. Anything.
The alchemist rose from his chair and started rifling through the contents on one of the shelves. At last, he produced a glass vial containing a red, luminescent fluid, shimmering in the weak candlelight of the otherwise dark workshop. He handed it to her and gave just one instruction: one drop per week, placed under the tongue.
With the vial tucked securely in her handbag, Emma left the strange shop and the peculiar old man behind and went home. She had a lot of doubts. She didn’t believe that this red-coloured potion would actually work. The alchemist hadn’t even charged her for it and had refused any money she offered. The only payment he wanted, he’d said, was for her to make the trade. What trade, she didn’t know, and he went on to tell her that if she made this trade, he would be released from his duties and could finally rest. He’d never been able to find a client who could see this venture through, and he hoped that she would be the one. None of what he’d said made any sense to Emma, and he would offer no further explanation.
When she arrived back at her house, she took the vial from her bag and studied it. She shook it and watched as the red potion shimmered, looking as if it were made of glitter dust. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what ingredients the concoction contained, but seeing as the old man had apparently sought her out specifically to make her dreams become reality, it was worth giving it a try. She removed the stopper from the neck of the vial, watching a red mist drift up from it and disperse into the air. It smelled like chlorine, nevertheless Emma was not deterred. She did as instructed and placed a single drop of the liquid under her tongue. The taste was horrid—harsh and bitter—but she swallowed it down. Replacing the stopper, she stowed her magic potion in her cupboard among all the other medicine bottles that promised their contents would give her anything from shinier hair to better-looking skin. None of those drugs had ever been able to give her the results she was so desperate for, though, and she hoped that this foul-tasting new one would.
***
A few days later, Emma awoke to a severely stinging and burning scalp. It felt as though she were being pricked by a thousand needles. She jumped in the shower and frantically washed her hair, and it did nothing to alleviate the sensation. Stepping out, she went over to the sink to peer into the mirror that hung on the wall. She angled her head and used her fingers to comb through her hair, trying to see if she could identify what was causing this painful reaction. Lice? A rash? As she leaned in closer to get a better look at the skin on her scalp, Emma let out a scream and jumped back from her reflection. She couldn’t believe what she had just seen…
New hairs were sprouting from her scalp, breaking through the skin and growing longer at an impossible rate. In shock, she stood watching as her hair grew longer and thicker by the second, and before long, she had a lustrous auburn mane cascading in waves down her back.
Emma was dumbstruck. Was this even real? It couldn’t possibly be true, and yet here she stood as living proof that the alchemist’s potion was really doing what he’d promised it would. Emma’s boyfriend was equally surprised, and he complimented her on her new hairstyle. He couldn’t have begun to imagine that this was not the work of a stylist. This was magic. This small piece of validation from him afforded her extreme satisfaction, and she couldn’t wait to take her next dose.
***
The following week proved to be a bit of a disappointment. The only further changes in her appearance that Emma could observe were that her hair became a little shinier and gained some more volume. That was all. She started to grow impatient. Toying with the idea of increasing her dosage to two drops a week to hurry up the process, she thought it best to revisit the alchemist. She wanted to be sure that it would be safe to transition to a higher dose than he had instructed. This was magic, after all, and she didn’t know how magic worked.
She took the same route to the apothecary as she had the first time; only, when she reached the brick building and entered through the wooden door, the place was empty. She took the stairs down to the workshop and saw that it, too, had been cleared out. The old man was gone.
Emma wasn’t going to let this stop her, she decided. She was resolute in her choice to double the number of drops she would take per week. If anything untoward happened as a result of this, she would revert to taking just the recommended single dose.
So that’s what she did, and she was amazed at the quickening pace of improvement she saw in herself. Her skin was clearer, her nails longer, her teeth whiter. She was so happy that she didn’t even notice that all of her houseplants were starting to wither, the paint on her bedroom walls was beginning to yellow and peel, or that her dog was suddenly walking with a hitch in his step.
She wanted to see admiration in her boyfriend’s eyes; she wanted him to lust after her new beauty, but all she saw there was concern. He didn’t understand what was happening or why she was looking more and more different every day. She dismissed his worries and instead revelled in her own admiration for herself.
Emma wasn’t feeling sick—in fact, she was feeling better than she ever had—and the potion didn’t seem to have any negative side effects thus far. Did she dare increase her dosage again? She didn’t want her rate of change to plateau, so to keep things moving, she reasoned that it made sense to start taking a triple dose…
…and the outcome was glorious! In just one week, Emma’s lips had grown fuller and her legs had become shapelier. However, before she could really enjoy this new step she’d taken in her quest for absolute perfection, her beloved dog fell very ill. She rushed him to the veterinary hospital, and the doctor was puzzled. Her dog was only three years old, but he was displaying symptoms of a dog succumbing to old age. He was experiencing heart and kidney failure, and he was almost completely blind, his eyes milky white with cataracts.
Emma was devastated by the diagnosis. The only thing for them to do was to show mercy and end her dog’s suffering. How could this have happened to her poor dog? Just the day before, he had been running around and playing like a puppy full of life. How had he deteriorated so rapidly?
By the time Emma got home, sans her loving dog, she could hardly see through the tears streaming from her eyes. She was completely destroyed. Her boyfriend tried to soothe her, and when he brushed her hair back from her face and looked lovingly into her eyes, she noticed that he, too, was suddenly looking much older than his thirty years. That’s when Emma looked at her surroundings and saw that it was not only her dog and her boyfriend who were suffering this strange affliction. All around her, things were starting to fall apart. Food that had just been bought was rotting, the floorboards in the living room were looking weathered and neglected, and in her yard outside, all the trees were dead. The grass had turned brown and the discolouration seemed to be spreading. Oh no.
“None can use black magic without straining the soul to the uttermost—and straining it into the bargain,” came Leiber’s quote unbidden to her mind. Truly, she had dabbled in alchemy—or rather, she should call it sorcery—and this was the consequence. Emma’s thoughts started whirring with options, reasons, and possibilities. She should stop using the potion immediately.
But… this potion might not even have anything to do with what was going on. If it did, however, it would be too risky to continue.
But… if she stopped now, she would never reach her ultimate goal of unrivalled beauty. How could she go on living knowing that it was within her grasp, yet she had let it slip through her fingers?
But… she didn’t want to put her boyfriend’s life in danger; her dog had already paid that price.
But…
But…
But…
Her mind kept going around and around, until at last it settled on one solution. She could send her boyfriend away, make up some excuse, and tell him that she needed some time on her own. That way, she could continue taking the potion without it affecting him. And if the trees and flowers died, well, then so be it. She was willing to trade a piece of the environment if it meant that she would be exquisite at the end.
Her boyfriend didn’t understand why she was asking him to leave, still he agreed and told her that he would go and stay with a friend while she took the time she needed to deal with her emotions. He was upset and assumed that he’d done something wrong, and Emma decided to let him think that. It made things a lot easier for her, knowing that he would be gone for a while. Now that her plan was in action, she didn’t want to waste another week, another day, or even a single minute waiting for the potion to take effect. She wanted physical perfection, and she wanted it now. So that night, after she was sure that her boyfriend was far enough away, Emma took the vial from the cupboard, removed the stopper, upended it, and poured the entirety of its contents down her throat.
***
The changes happened quickly. On day one, her cheekbones grew higher. On day two, her teeth straightened out into a perfect pearly line. Day three brought longer lashes and big, icy-blue eyes. By the end of the week, Emma was magnificent—a creature to be envied and admired far and wide.
She’d been so obsessed with herself and her amplifying beauty that she hardly paid any attention to the six-mile radius around her house, wherein everything had deteriorated and decayed. The pavement of the street that led up to her driveway was cracked and broken, large potholes having caved in. Trees, grass, and flowers were no more, and even birds that flew into this dead zone would crumple and fall out of the sky. Her house had turned into a ruin, the walls barely standing and the roof falling in. Yet as long as Emma had her mirror, she didn’t care about any of it.
She felt that it was finally time for her boyfriend to see her. He would be the luckiest man alive, she thought, to have someone as ravishing as she was on his arm. So she called him and asked him to meet her at the café where they usually bought their morning coffee. There was no way she would invite him over to the house, not with the state it was in.
This would be the first time she left the house since she’d obtained perfect beauty, and she couldn’t wait to see the reactions of onlookers. Emma got dressed in her best clothes and her prettiest shoes, and readied herself to bathe in the total awe of the public. Taking a deep breath, she stepped outside and onto the dilapidated street. She was truly shocked to see the condition of her surroundings. She was probably going to have to move to a new house, she thought, and leave this decay behind. However, Emma quickly realised that relocating would be pointless, because she saw that with every step she took, the decay moved with her. She would take a couple of strides and halt, watching as everything around her blackened and died. Her heart was racing, she was looking around in a panic, and then her eyes fell on a piece of familiar-looking paper stuck to a fence just outside the boundary of her dead zone. It was the same type of parchment that the advertisement for the apothecary had been written on. Excitedly, she ran over to grab the note, sure that it was from the alchemist and desperate to get into contact with him to find a cure for whatever this was. As she made her way over to the fence, the decay followed her, killing everything within its radius.
She grabbed the note and read the words, her eyes devouring each handwritten syllable greedily: “The trade has been made, the transformation complete. I am released from my duties. Henceforth, you will be known as Pulchra Mortifera—the beautiful death-bringer. You will be contacted when they have need of you.”
Emma read and reread the words. It didn’t make any sense to her. Who were “they”? And what could they possibly need her for? Yes, she had traded life for beauty, but who was behind all of this if it wasn’t the alchemist?
Emma was terrified. She started running, trying to outrun the decay, though she would never be able to. All along her route, the pavement disintegrated under her feet, lightbulbs burst overhead, greenery turned instantly brown, and squirrels and butterflies in her vicinity dropped dead.
By the time she arrived at the café, the sounds of her destruction had alarmed some bystanders, and they came out into the street to see what all the noise was about. Upon seeing her in all her magnificent glory, each person started toward her, needing to touch her, wanting to be near her. When the first man crossed the perimeter into her dead zone, he clutched at his chest and fell to the ground. Dead.
Emma stared with widened eyes at the man lying lifeless in the street, while nobody else paid him any notice. They all just kept staring at her. Every man, woman, and child locked in on her and was drawn to her like a moth to a flame. They were captivated, helpless, mesmerised.
All around her, bodies were falling, each one the moment they crossed her boundary of death. It was as though these people had been turned into mindless zombies at the sight of her beauty, as though her sheer glamour disabled them from thinking or acting of their own accord.
Just then, Emma saw her boyfriend emerge from inside the café. As soon as he laid eyes on Emma, his face went blank, his jaw slack, and he started to approach her. She held up her hand and shouted at him to stay back, to not come any closer, but he kept advancing. She wouldn’t risk his life. She wouldn’t allow herself to risk anyone else’s life, for that matter.
As she moved backwards, trying to put more distance between her and her boyfriend to keep him from crossing into her dead zone, the words on the note became a little clearer to her now. This new ability she had to lure people in, only for them to instantly die, was like a superpower. A horrible, dark superpower. And she could think of a million uses for it. Though she didn’t know who the people were who had wanted her to gain this ability, she could imagine them wanting to use her for war, for revenge, for domination. The note said that she would be contacted when they had need of her, but Emma did not want them to ever find her.
A gut-wrenching scream tore from Emma’s throat as she realised her predicament. Her sorrow ripped through the streets, and the desperation in it could not be mistaken.
With one last look at the destruction all around her, Emma reached her verdict. She needed to leave. She needed to get as far from human civilisation as she could. Not wanting to suck the life out of every place she would ever set foot—like some environmental vampire—and not wanting to be used as a pawn in someone else’s game, she needed to isolate herself and disappear completely. Maybe in the mountains somewhere… she could retreat there, hide, and try to contain her area of decay to only one location.
And she would spend the rest of her days being the most gorgeous woman in the world, with nobody around to ever see her. Finally beautiful, and forever alone.
