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When I say I can construct a whole look from a single piece, I mean it.
As a teenager, my driving force was desperation—for something to douse all the wordless emotions inside me and, more immediately, to replace my utter lack of confidence. I got good at mimicry.
That is, until my grandmother sensed I was hiding something, found the apothecary bottles at the bottom of the trash bin. The resulting humiliation was enough. She never brought it up again, except when I came out to her nine years later, and she asked if that was why I was trying to be all those different people.
And, yes, I guess that does kind of explain it. But I don’t have to steal anymore.
†
Anyway, this creep—I first saw him while walking home from a friend’s place in July, the day’s high pushing 100 degrees Fahrenheit. I’d dressed light, but I could still feel my mind frying.
He stood on a corner between old rowhouses, the drugstore and an impassive new apartment building with all the glass, its neon-vested security guards drifting around in a miasma of gentrification. He wore athletic shorts, scuffed sneakers, a red-and-gray checkerboard-patterned shirt and a crisp white cast on his arm. Heat shimmered off the asphalt, and sweat gleamed off of him while the flowers and grasses wilted in people’s front yards. He stared off into it all with a dazed, desolate expression.
His eyes slid over toward me as I neared him.
I gave him a little nod. “You all right?”
He looked at me, still all dazed and desolate, just long enough for an uncertainty to waver through me, before busting into the biggest grin.
“Oh, I’m fine,” he said. “I’m just fine.” His eyes tracked me as I passed.
†
Next time I saw him, on my way to the grocery store, he was still grinning.
I nodded at him again, relieved, at least, to see him looking a little more alive than last time.
He widened his eyes and raised his eyebrows.
“Do you think I’m beautiful?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said with all my possible nonchalance, insofar as I think everybody’s beautiful, you know? It’s no big deal, man. I didn’t stop walking.
“I think you’re beautiful.” He made a loud kissing sound with his lips.
My stomach twisted.
“You want to kiss me?”
I shot him my best bewildered but unfazed look.
“Can I get a cigarette?”
I walked on.
“Hey,” he yelled, his tone different now. “Is that a man or a woman? Is that a woman or a motherfucking man?”
He called it out to the street like he expected the sky to answer, or the pigeons. My heart sulked in my chest.
†
Next time, he tried to grab at me. I swerved away and hurried down the street. He threw his drink at me, the lip popping off the plastic cup, ice scattering in my wake. My heart thudded like a frog trying to escape my skeleton. I kept looking back to make sure he wasn’t following, trying to breathe evenly.
†
I saw him, but he didn’t see me, on that same corner outside the glassy apartment building, the rowhouses, the drugstore, smoking a cigarette. He dropped his cig and crushed it with his heel. Something fell from his hand and clinked on the sidewalk. He didn’t notice. He turned slowly, and went into the pharmacy.
Passing by the pharmacy, a ring gleamed on the ground, silver, with a small silver skull molded into it. I bent to tie my shoe and scooped it up, an old reflex still kicking after all. I also picked up the cigarette butt, still damp with saliva. Gross, but the truth is, anything you can get helps.
†
The 7-Eleven was on the same street where it had been when I was a teenager, and the same witch sat behind the counter. I wasn’t sure if they recognized me, but either way, they sold me what I needed without asking questions.
†
In my apartment bathroom, smoke swirling from burnt offerings, I held the man’s ring, focusing my intention on it. I placed old clothes of mine into the tub and filled it with water. Added the ring with a shake of transmogrification powder—the nostalgic smell sharp in my nose, making my eyes water. Reached in and gave several thorough swirls clockwise, then counterclockwise. I fished it all back out.
My black high-tops had transformed into scuffed sneakers like his. My moth-eaten white T-shirt had acquired a gray-and-red checkerboard pattern. My own athletic shorts were similar to start with, but the texture had changed. Maybe a higher percentage of polyester. I squeezed each item out, hung them on a line over the tub to dry, and drained the water.
†
The next day, I took the clothes down and put them on. I opened the disguise palette from the apothecary and set the guy’s squished cigarette butt in the shallow collection chamber. After the palette colors swirled and changed, I painted my face. It went on completely transparent, but when I looked in the mirror, there he was looking back at me. I smiled, and it was his smile. I raised my hands to my face, and they were his hands, his face.
I didn’t get far before I found him meandering, maybe looking for another place to smoke, more people to harass—I don’t know what other interests he had.
He stopped in the shade of that glass apartment building.
I stopped too, just a short distance away, an exact replica. His wide grin broke across my face. Yeah, it was still a fucking trip. I stood in silence, held him in my sight and waited for him to turn around.
© 2023 Tianran Li-Harkness
About the Author
Tianran Li-Harkness is usually not writing and has been trying to learn as much as possible about their local ecology, especially plants. They wrote this story at a time when they felt differently about magic, with love for all fellow shapeshifters of the world.