I need to become a wrinkly, bitter old person immediately.
Adolescence is such a bore. My friends obsess over boys, gossip, and grades. I’m shorter than my peers (which would be a perfect height for an old woman), but I still look down on them.
I’m walking to school with my friends. Gretchen the Witch passes by. Her hunched posture and raggedy bones are delightful. I’ve been trying to get a nose piercing shaped like the massive wart on her nose. Nobody seems to sell them.
“Curse you, smooth-skinned wenches!” Gretchen croaks, shaking her serpentine cane at us.
“Fuck off, freak,” says one of my friends while flipping her glistening hair.
Gretchen and I go in opposite directions–me to school and Gretchen to her shack by the swamp. Each step I take hurts, as if my life would be better if I followed Gretchen. “I forgot something,” I lie to my friends. I flash my upsettingly pearly whites. “I’ll meet you in class.”
I jog down the street and through the swamp, imagining myself in communion with its most wretched animals.
I’ve read pretty much every fairytale, and the characters I identify with are old women envious of youthful beauty. That’s what it’s all about. People grow up and realize that. I realized it early and want to skip to the most important part of life.
I arrive at Gretchen’s shack and bang on the door. I hear her hobbling toward me until she opens it. “What the hell do you want?”
I barge into her home. Clutter sprinkles the floor. There’s a boiling cauldron in the middle. “I want to be like you.”
“Like me?”
“Turn me into an old ass ugly hag.”
Her eyes narrow into seething slits. “No.”
I go to her kitchen and find a knife. I hold it to her throat. “Either wrinkles or your blood decorates my face.”
She swallows her fear. “Fine. I’ll get my spellbook.” She returns with the book and sits on a peeling throne chair.
“Give me a wart like yours. And make my hair really stringy with bald patches.”
“You sure you want this?”
“Less yapping, more spellcasting.”
She chants gibberish, and a light surrounds me. My skin becomes flabby, my joints stiffen, and I thankfully feel a wart on my nose. I grab a dusty mirror from the floor and look at it. Gretchen nailed my transformation!
“Thank you.” My voice got much huskier. I hobble to class. I admire the rhythm of my cracking knees paired with my whistling breaths.
I arrive at school. Math class has already started. My teacher is too old to be envied and too young for me to feel kinship. I sit at my desk during his talk about square roots.
“Excuse me, ma’am?” he asks. “You’re not a student.”
“It’s Holly,” I say. “I got that witch to transform me. So stop staring, you middle-aged nothing, and continue your agonizing lecture!”
Everyone in class laughs.
One of my friends asks, “Holly, why did you want to turn into an old lady? That’s silly.”
“Silly? What a good word. Silly describes all of you. Nothing but running from triviality to triviality.”
“I like running games of trivia, too!”
“Your face is young, but your ears must be ancient, you deaf cretin!”
My teacher speaks up. “Settle down, class. Holly, I’ll excuse your lateness this one time. Let’s get back to math.”
During class, I keep getting messages from my classmates’ group chats. People invite me to parties and crack jokes like nothing has changed. These people are my enemies, and they’re too dense to realize.
When lunch break arrives, I head for the dank corner in the basement to stew in isolation, but my friends follow.
“How does it feel to be old but not?” one friend asks without bitterness. “That’s amazing!”
“Can we help you get a cane? I passed a shop selling a great one,” another says.
“Imbecilic leeches in buxom figures!” I shout at them.
“You really think I’m buxom?” asks my insecure friend, smiling and looking reassured for the first time since I’ve known her.
Cody, the most popular and fit jock in school, approaches me. My friends back up, giving me space and swooning at the view. “H-h-hey,” Cody stammers, fidgeting and avoiding eye contact. He summons the courage to look me in the eye. “The saggy skin folds by your mouth look like dimples. I think you’re a cutie.”
“Argh!” I shout. This is all wrong. I hobble back to Gretchen’s shack. Maybe she has a spell to fix this.
I ram my fists on her door. Gretchen opens. “Go away. I gave you what you wanted!”
“No, you didn’t. My friends are nice, and the man of my dreams is probably in love with me.”
Gretchen sighs. “I thought this might happen. Come in.”
I walk in. “What now?”
“Now you live completely beloved.”
“But look at me. I’m supposed to receive scorn and give more in return.”
“You’re forcing it, and everyone can tell. People like me have deep resentment that builds after decades of disappointment.”
“You’re saying I must wait to be fucked over by life to be convincing?”
“And that might not come. Many old folks thrive.” Gretchen winces, as if stabbed with jealousy.
I put my head in my hands. “But this transformation…all it’s given me are stiff joints!”
“You’re special now. A girl in an old body. That uniqueness attracts others and repels resentment. If I discovered my witchy powers at your age, I would’ve been pretty popular.”
“And you wouldn’t be a cursing asshole?”
“Maybe. No more questions. I’ve used up all the charity I can give!”
I stare at my reflection in Gretchen’s boiling cauldron. I look hot.
__________
Sean Dowie is a Queer, slightly eccentric writer from Toronto, Canada. His fiction has appeared in HAD, Maudlin House, and hex. He’s a 2024 Tin House Winter Workshop Participant and a 2022 Lambda Literary Fellow. Find more of his stories at sean-dowie.com.