Fashion Victim

My original name was Grace McNulty. I've had many names since, and I couldn't begin to say how long it's been since anyone called me that, but that was my original name. I was born in the year 1998, if you know what that means. The story I'm telling now took place in the summer of the year 2015, when I was 17. I was enjoying my free time before beginning my senior year of high school (If you know what that was!). At the time, I was a white girl, on the shortish side, with blue eyes and what my mother always used to call "dirty blonde" hair. I had an average figure, and if I wasn't any beauty contest winner, I was, though I say so myself, not bad-looking, either.

At the time in question, I was living in a town called Seaville, on what was called Long Island, in the State of New York, in the United States of America. None of those places exist anymore, and none of the people involved are still alive and able to speak, except me.

On the day it all started, I was hanging out with my two best friends, Janice Harper and Mary-Anne Schultz. Janice was a genial, heavy-set girl with dark hair and brown eyes. Mary-Anne was taller and wore very thick eyeglasses. We had plenty of time to hang out together, since we were all dateless wonders. We were talking about our plans for the rest of the summer when a harsh voice cut across our conversation.

"Well, if it isn't Disgrace McNutty and her pals, Porky and Four-Eyes." This was Tiffany Van Ruysdale, daughter of one of the richest families in town. She was a statuesque, well-built girl with platinum hair. She was accompanied by three or four of her usual group of hangers-on. Tiffany was my particular nemesis, going out of her way to demean me and my friends at every opportunity. She especially liked to make fun of the way I dressed, saying it was a shame that my family was too poor to dress me properly. (We weren't really all that poor, but compared to her family we were.) "Smart move", she continued, "surrounding yourself with the only girls in school uglier than you, but it still won't distract anyone from those rags you're wearing."

I saw red and replied with an anatomically unlikely suggestion as to what she should go do with herself, spiced with several words of ancient Anglo-Saxon lineage, but they merely laughed and walked on. Janice and Mary-Anne moved to calm me down.

"Don't let her get to you, kid", said Janice. "She's not worth the effort."

"I know, I know", I replied, "I'd just really like to shut her up, someday." It burned me up. I was no rocket scientist, but compared to Tiffany, I was a brain surgeon. If her family hadn't been rich, she'd've been waiting tables somewhere, or, knowing her, working a street corner.

We chatted for a while longer, but, feeling disgruntled, I took my leave of my friends and headed home. Without having paid much attention to where I was going, I found myself on the bridge over the Pegastic River, which was more a narrow, muddy stream than a river. Something made me look down, and a glint of light in the water caught my eye. Another day, another time, I would've just ignored it and gone home. But on that day, I decided to find out what it was. That decision changed my life - and a number of others - forever.

I scooted down to the river's edge. Fortunately, whatever it was wasn't far from the bank, so I didn't have to go wading to get it. I just had to bend over and pull it out of the water. I looked at it in mild surprise. It looked almost exactly like Aladdin's lamp. (Aladdin's Lamp was an old story even in those days. They still tell variations on it some places, even now.) I didn't imagine it was worth any money, I couldn't imagine it was a genuine antique, something like that would never have ended up in the river. I decided to take it home and clean it up - it make might an interesting ornament to put up on my bookshelf in my room. I dried it off as best I could and stuck it in my backpack.

Once I got home, I took the lamp out of my pack and set it on my desk. I got out a dustcloth and began rubbing the side of the lamp, trying to shine it up. To my astonishment, the lamp began to shake, and smoke began to pour out of it.

No, I thought, this is not happening! But it was! The smoke poured out for a while, and then solidified into the form of a dark-skinned young man dressed in a Polo shirt, blue jeans and sneakers.

"Hello", he said, in ever so slightly accented English. "I am the genie of the lamp."

"Really?", I said, an expression of disbelief on my face.

"After an entrance like that, you still have doubts?", he said, incredulous.

"Well, yeah", I said. "Two things - one, I don't believe in magic, and two, you don't look much like a genie."

"Well", he said, "There isn't much magic left in this world. I'm pretty sure I'm the last magical being, here. As for not looking like a genie, we're not actually required to go around looking like a refugee from The Arabian Nights, you know."

"Uh-huh", I said. "So what, I get three wishes now?"

"No, just one", he replied.

I thought about what he'd said. "'The last magical being here'? Where'd all the others, go, and how come you got left behind?"

He looked wistful. "Centuries ago, it was realized that science was going to win out over sorcery on this world. So, the other magical beings began moving to other worlds, other planes of reality. I got left behind because, well...Did you ever hear of the sinking of Atlantis? That was me."

"Yes", I replied. "Wait, Atlantis was real?"

"Yes, and I caused its destruction. It was an accident. Even the King of the Genies accepted that it was an accident. But still, a million people died, so I had to be punished. So, I was confined to the lamp, not to be allowed my freedom until I had granted one million people one wish each."

"How many wishes have you granted?"

"999,999."

"So, I'm your last one?"

"Yup. So, not to pressure you, but the sooner you make your wish, the sooner I get to go, so what is your wish?"

Now, you must understand, I still wasn't taking the situation seriously, or I would have wished for something else. Maybe something noble like world peace, or something selfish like making my family rich. Instead I focused on how mad I was at Tiffany and her pals.

"OK, fine", I said. "I wish for revenge on Tiffany Van Ruysdale and her friends."

I explained to the genie who they were.

"So, they make fun of the way you dress, eh? Women haven't changed much over the past ten thousand years, have they? Alright, what kind of revenge would you like, ironic revenge or epic revenge?"

"What's the difference?"

"Ironic revenge is something that is somehow appropriate to the offence. Epic revenge is something that will somehow reverberate for the rest of time. So, which would you like?"

"Gosh", I said, still not taking it seriously. "They both sound good!"

"Alright, then", he said. "Since it's my last wish, I'll give you both! It'll be Epic Ironic Revenge Day, today on The Grace McNulty Show! Of course, for a wish this epic, there will be personal consequences for you. Sorry, but it can't be helped. Well, no time like the present!"

"Wait, what -?", I said, but before I could say anything, he gestured, and there was a bright flash of light. When my eyes cleared, I found myself standing stark naked in what I realized was the back yard of a large, expansive house - practically a mansion. There was a large in-ground pool right next to me - I was lucky I hadn't fallen into it! I looked up, and sitting in a semi-circle of lawn chairs facing away from me were eight girls. They must have heard me, because they instantly turned around and stared at me. With a shock, I recognized them - they were Tiffany, and seven of her pals: Margaret Hillshire, a statuesque redhead and Tiffany's best friend, Barbara Di Giorgio, dark-haired and devious-eyed, Agnes and Hillary Tanizaki, twin porcelain dolls, Leona Waterford, a large-eyed slow-witted brunette, Danitra Wilson, who I always believed was part of Tiffany's clique to fill the role of "black friend", and finally, Amelia Vasquez, who'd been friends with me in grade school, but who had dropped me when Tiffany allowed her to join her little group. In some ways, I hated her worse than Tiffany. A traitor is always worse than a plain old enemy. This must be Tiffany's back yard! , I thought. The genie had dropped me down naked in the midst of my worst enemies! They shot up from the chairs and surrounded me.

"It's that little freak, McNulty - and she's naked!", said Margaret. "What the hell is she doing here?"

"I don't know", said Tiffany, "But I bet it's going to be a real interesting story. I can't wait to hear her tell it to the police. In the meanwhile, who's got a camera? This image just needs to be on the internet."

All of a sudden, there was another flash of light. When my eyes cleared, all eight girls around me were now also stark naked! Several of the girls shrieked in surprise.

"Oh, my God", said Leona. "How did that happen? Did she do that? How did she do that?"

"I don't know", said Tiffany, angrily. "But I'm going to -" She stopped, looking puzzled. "My feet - I can't move my feet! It's like they're stuck to the ground!"

She bent over, and pulled at her feet.

"Mine are stuck, too!", said Margaret. It soon became obvious that all of the girls' feet were stuck to the ground.

"OK, McNulty, What are you up to?", said Tiffany, a trace of fear entering her voice. " I- Eek!"

Tiffany gaped in horror as she rose from the ground, spinning around so that her back was facing me. She then lowered to the ground in front of me so that her shoulders were pressed against my crotch, a position which was not pleasant to me, as you can imagine. Suddenly, Tiffany reached around and clasped her hands behind my back.

"W-what are you doing?", I demanded.

"I-I'm not doing it!", she said, almost hysterically.

"What do you mean? Let go!"

"I can't", she said. "I-I can't even feel my hands!"

I reached around with my own hands, and gasped in shock. I couldn't find her hands, either! All I felt was a solid band of flesh from elbow to elbow! Even as I grasped her arm I could feel it getting narrower, smaller, thinner, more - elastic, somehow. Tiffany screamed again.

"My legs! What's happening to my legs?"

I looked on in shock as Tiffany's legs begin to meld together, and then to flatten. At the same time they began to lose all color, turning white. As the flattening effect moved up her legs, Tifffany began screaming steadily, only stopping when the flattening reached her torso. Soon, all of her body below her head had transformed into a long strip of white material like silk. By this time, her arms had shrunk into an elastic band like a waistband. I suddenly began to realize what was happening! The strip of cloth began shrinking becoming shorter before finally folding between my legs. At the same time, her head began to dwindle, turning pink and ultimately morphing into a little bow. Tiffany Van Ruysdale was gone, transformed into what I had to admit was the most stylish - and comfortable - undergarment that I had ever worn.

The eight of us stood there speechless. I was horrified at what the genie had done.

"I never wanted this!", I said. "I never imagined this!"

"What?", said Margaret. "What are you talking abooouuu -?"

Margaret had been spun around so that she was standing with her back to me. She screamed as her legs twisted behind my back at an unnatural angle. Her arms reached back over my shoulders, growing thinner, whiter, becoming what I realized would soon be bra straps. Her body dwindled, morphed, thinned, shaping itself to my breasts. As Tiffany's had, her head dwindled to become a little pink bow. Margaret had become a lacy bra out of a lingerie catalog. Two girls gone, and I looked like a Victoria's Secret wannabe. I looked at the others. The Tanizaki sisters were weeping in each other's arms, Barbara, her head in her hands, was muttering "This can't be happening" over and over again, Leona was making wordless sounds, and Amelia was looking at me fearfully. Only Danitra looked calm, or perhaps stoic, as though resigned to await whatever was going to happen to her.

Suddenly, the Tanizaki sisters went rigid, their arms by their sides as though standing to attention. Their heads leaned back in unison, their mouths agape. Their arms began to melt into their sides, and their legs and feet began to merge together. Their mouths grew larger and larger, even as the rest of their heads began to dwindle. They began to turn blue, even as the curves of their bodies began to smooth out. They looked like a giant pair of stockings. As they began to shrink, I realized that that was what they were becoming. I gasped as I felt myself being gently lifted into the air. I hovered a few feet off the ground as the two stockings pulled themselves over my feet, reaching up to my thighs.

Next, it was apparently Leona and Danitra's turn. They rose into the air, flipped so that they were horizontal to the ground.

"Oh, God!', said Leona. "I never even liked any of you bitches, I just wanted to be part of the 'in' group!"

"Oh, shut up!", said Danitra, angrily. "Try and have some dignity while you still can!"

The duo floated over until their stomachs were right under my feet. Whatever was holding me up lowered me onto them. My feet sank into their bellies, their flesh flowing around mine. Their bodies began to turn blue, and shrink and re-shape themselves. I watched their faces until they disappeared. I'll never forget their expressions. They shrank and morphed, finally becoming a pair of elegant pumps.

Next, Barbara's legs began to shrink and finally disappear, leaving her hovering in the air, still saying "This can't be happening" over and over. Next her hands vanished, and I could see that her arms were hollowing out. Her body quickly turned light blue. Her voice faded and stopped as her head began to change and shrink, becoming a shirt collar. What had been her torso split up the front, a row of buttons popping into existence along one side. Barbara's remains hovered around behind me. I felt my arms pulled back, and what was now a lovely blouse pulled itself onto me, the buttons buttoning themselves up.

I looked at Amelia, the last one left. She looked at me, and half-smiled.

"Grace, I - I...There's nothing to say, is there?"

"No", I replied.

"I am sorry", she said.

"So am I."

Her body began to flatten, turning dark blue at the same time. It morphed into a rectangular strip of cloth, which hovered over and wrapped itself around my waist, becoming a skirt.

I stood alone in the yard, as well-dressed as I'd ever been in my life. I felt ghoulish, wearing clothing made from dead people. At least it was over. I could go home, and take the clothes off, and burn them or bury them or something, and then try not to go insane.

I looked at the house. It occurred to me to wonder why no one in the house had come out to investigate all the screaming and crying that had been going on. Part of the genie's magic, I supposed.

I snapped out of my reverie as my legs began to carry me towards the house, moving of their own accord. What now? It's over! It has to be over! I thought.

My legs propelled me into the house, doors opening at my approach. I saw various servants, but they all seemed to ignore my presence. I walked to a room on the second floor and went in. Inside was a spacious, well-appointed bedroom. Three women in their early 20's sat around a small table. One, a tall blonde, was obviously Willemina, Tiffany's older sister. I didn't know much about her, except that she was supposedly even more stuck-up than Tiffany was. The two others I recognized as Charlotte Poiteau, a haughty brunette, and Jennifer Chung, petite and tired-looking. Both of them had younger brothers in my class at school.

Willemina looked up sharply as I entered.

"Haven't you head of knocking?", she said. "You must be one of my idiot sister's little friends. Her room's down the hall. Now - huh?"

There was a bright flash of light, and, as before, afterwards the three girls were all naked. It occurred to me how many guys I knew would've been jealous of me getting to see so many "hot" girls naked. All I could think about was how they all had better bodies than I did.

Willemina stopped speaking as her body went rigid. It began to flatten and turn blue. It shrank until it was a strip of cloth a few inches long. The collar of my blouse turned up by itself. Willemina floated over and tied herself into a perfect bow, after which the blouse's collar flipped back down.

Charlotte and Jennifer had no time to react as their bodies went rigid next. Charlotte's left arm raised into the air, as did Jennifer's right. The rest of their bodies began to wither away until only the raised arms were left. These turned white and hollowed out, eventually becoming a pair of white silk gloves, which floated over and fitted themselves onto my hands.

My legs then carried me out of the room and down the stairs to what appeared to be the front parlor, a room large enough that I thought you could probably have fit my whole house into it. Two women were sitting in the room. Both appeared to be in their mid-40's, although one seemed to be a few years younger than the other. From their resemblance to Tiffany and Willemina, I guessed that they were the girls' mother and aunt.

Mrs. Van Ruysdale looked up as I came in.

"Hello, dear, are you here to see Tiffany? She's out back with her other friends."

Before I could reply, there was a flash of light. When it faded, the two women were naked, as I had expected. The aunt gasped as her legs began to dwindle and fade. When they were gone, her hands vanished, revealing that her arms had hollowed out, becoming sleeves. Her body turned dark blue, her now-hollow torso open up the front, and her head morphed , becoming a collar.

"Emma!" said Mrs. Van Ruysdale, as her sister completed her transformation into a stylish jacket, which floated over behind me. My arms were drawn back, as the jacket pulled itself on to me.

Next was Mrs. Van Ruysdale's turn. Her body from the neck down grew smaller and smaller until it was completely gone, leaving her a disembodied head, floating in the air. I watched as the head morphed into a broad-brimmed hat, which floated over and placed herself on my head. There was another flash of light, and this time when it faded, I was back in my room with the genie. It was over at last.

"So", he said, "Was that 'epic' enough for you? Since it's the last wish I'm going to grant in this world, I threw in a few extras."

"'Epic'?", I said. "'EPIC'? All those women...and I didn't even know the last five!"

"Yeah, don't worry about them, they were no different from Tiffany and her friends...cut from the same cloth, as it were."

"It's not funny!", I shouted. "I'm dressed in dead women!"

Huh?", said the genie. "They're not dead."

"What?", I said.

"You wanted them to suffer", he explained. "They can't suffer if they're dead. It can't be epic revenge if it's over just like that. They can still hear and see and smell and feel and think, everything except speak or move. They'll never die. They'll never wear out or tear or stain. They can't be lost or stolen or given away or damaged. They'll always feel just-washed and fresh, no matter how dirty you get yourself. They'll always feel comfortable and fit perfectly no matter how you change in size."

The fact that the clothes were still alive was somehow more horrifying to me than when I'd thought they were dead.

"You're talking like I'm going to just go on wearing these things! If they're still alive, then change them back!"

"I can't", he said. "Not even I can undo my own spells. Possibly a more powerful being than myself could break it, but there are none such left in this world, and even if there were, you're better off not meeting one of them. You could easily end up worse off, believe it or not. As for wearing them, you don't have any choice, you can't take them off."

"WHAT?"

"I told you there would be consequences for you. The clothes are bound to you."

"’Bound to me’? I have to wear these things for the rest of my life?"

"Yes, but it's not so bad as you think. Look at yourself in the mirror."

I looked in the mirror and sighed. I hadn't really been able to see the clothes all together like this. I had to admit, I'd never worn anything so beautiful in my life.

"Now", he said, "think 'casual wear'."

I did as he asked and to my astonishment, the clothes blurred and morphed, becoming a tee-shirt, designer jeans, and high-priced sneakers.

"Oh", I said. "Wait, where'd the hat, gloves and bow go?"

"Anything that doesn't suit a particular look becomes invisible and intangible, but they're still there. Now, think 'wedding gown'."

I did so, and the clothes morphed into a beautiful wedding gown.

"The clothes will become any sort of ensemble you want, always extremely stylish."

"But what if I want to take a shower or a bath or whatever?"

The genie ostentatiously turned away, and then said, "Think 'naked'."

I thought 'naked' and the clothes vanished, leaving me au naturel.

"They're gone!"

"Not gone", he replied, "just invisible and intangible."

"Could I just stay in 'naked mode', and put on other clothes?"

"No. Part of the spell is that they have to make you look stylish. They can't do that if you're wearing something else over them."

"Well, I want to try that for myself", I said. I opened my closet, but my clothes were gone! There were towels and sheets and such, and various other odds and ends, but not a scrap of clothing. I went over to my dresser. No clothes in that, either.

"What have you done with my clothes?"

"I got rid of them", said the genie. "I promise you, you could have made no further use of them."

"Won't people think it's odd that I don't have any other clothes, or that I never have any laundry to do?"

"No, that's the mental part of the spell. No one will ever question anything like that, no one will ever think to give you clothes. If you changed the clothes right in front of them, their minds will simply process it that you changed clothes, without seeing anything unusual about it. It'll fool cameras and other surveillance systems, too. Even if you flat-out tell someone, their minds won't process or retain the information. You could write it down and present it as fiction, I suppose, but no one will ever believe it"

"Wait, you said they'll never die. What happens to these clothes when I die?"

"Oh. Well, you're not going to die. You're immortal, now."

"What? Why?"

"Well, I told you, epic revenge reverberates for the rest of time. For that to work, you and the clothes have to exist for the rest of time, so that they can continue to help you look well-dressed forever."

"So, what, does that mean I'll never get any older?"

"No, you'll age normally, although you'll always look good for your age, and you'll never get sick or injured - it's harder to look stylish when you're sick of injured, after all, and when you've reached the end of a long human lifespan, your body will die and your spirit will be reborn in a new body somewhere else, and the clothes will be 're-born' there, as well."



"Will I retain my memories from life to life?"

"Yes. You'll always retain perfect memories of your first life. Once you've lived a few dozen lives, the others will probably start to blur together a bit, of course."

"Say, what happens to me if the human race dies out, like if we have a nuclear war or the sun blows up, or something?"

"There are other worlds where humans or human-like people live. You'll be re-born there. When I say 'to the end of time", I mean 'to the end of time'. Well, that's your wish, sorry it wasn't quite what you thought it'd be. I kind of went overboard, I know, but it was my last wish, and I really wanted to make it memorable. Well, I got to go, you can keep the lamp, it's just a lamp, now. It's been nice meeting you, enjoy eternity!"

Before I could speak, he vanished. Still "naked", I sat down on my bed in shock. I willed the clothes back into the stylish garments that they had initially been.

I looked at myself and them in the mirror, and began to break down. I wrapped my arms around myself as if to embrace them.

"I'm sorry", I said, beginning to cry. "I never meant for this to happen! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'M SORRY!" I sank down to my knees, sobbing loudly. I'm not sure how long I sat that way. Eventually, I heard my mother call, "Grace, dinner!"

I changed the clothes to casual wear, and then did my best to compose myself. I ducked into the bathroom and cleaned myself up. My eyes were a little red from crying, but that couldn't be helped. I did my best to appear normal during dinner, and even managed to eat a little. I went off by myself after supper. Fortunately that wasn't unusual behavior for me, so no one made much of it. I distracted myself with television until it was time for bed. I willed the clothes into pajamas, crawled into bed and turned out the lights. Big mistake. As long as I was awake and distracted and had the lights on, I could keep the situation on a low boil. Lying there in the dark, it all came rushing back at me. I started getting really paranoid. I became convinced that the clothes were waiting for me to fall asleep, so they could crush the life out of me. I willed myself "naked", but it still took me a long time to fall asleep. Once I did fall asleep, I had a horrific nightmare. The thirteen women were standing around my bed, looking at me. Not angrily, or even sadly, but dispassionately, which was somehow worst of all. Suddenly, I saw that they were all holding large, sharp pairs of scissors, and I realized what they intended - they were going to cut me up and make me into clothing, just as had been done to them. I backed away in horror, and began to scream as Tiffany began to thrust her scissors into my...my...Well, suffice it to say that my screams woke up my mother, who came rushing in to see what was wrong. I told her that it was just a nightmare, and she held me in her arms and comforted me until I drifted off to a sleep which this time was fitful but undisturbed by further dreams.

The next morning as I ate breakfast, I watched the TV news as it reported the mysterious disappearances of Mrs. Hannah Van Ruysdale, her daughters Willemina and Tiffany, her sister, Emma Cabot, and nine of her daughters' friends. I soon realized that the whole town was in an uproar. In a way, it was good for me - no one would notice if I seemed upset or out-of-sorts. The whole town was upset! A little while later, the doorbell rang. It was two policemen - well, a policeman and a policewoman. They were questioning all of Tiffany's classmates. I decided to test what the genie had said. I told the police everything about the genie and the transformations, and that I was wearing the missing women even as we spoke. As I had half-suspected, they reacted as though I had told them I was home at the time it had happened and knew nothing about it. They seemed satisfied about it and went on their way.

Everyone was talking about it, even Janice and Mary-Anne, when I met up with them, were full of theories about what had happened, until they saw that it was upsetting me. They thought it was because I felt guilty because Tifffany had disappeared so soon after I had wished her a great deal of ill. Well, they weren't far off the truth, really. The next few weeks were "interesting" for me. At night, I slept "naked", but was still haunted by bizarre dreams for a long time. For a while, I thought I might go insane, but I never did. I wondered if that was part of the genie’s spell, too. I couldn’t “enjoy” my “revenge” if I was insane. By day, I listened and watched as the story of the disappearances became a national and even an international sensation - a mystery that no one could solve. Was it foul play? No bodies were ever found. Abduction? No ransom demand was ever received. Some people even wondered if they'd all run off together. Searches turned up nothing. Mister Van Ruysdale and the servants were questioned thoroughly, but of course, they knew nothing and nothing was ever proved against them. In time, the story faded a bit, although never entirely. It became a permanent part of the town's "background noise", something that came up from time to time. People made money from it, wrote books about it, TV shows and such. Over the years, women would occasionally turn up claiming to be one or more of the missing women, but they were always debunked. In fact, I debunked a few of them myself. In time, Mister Van Ruysdale paid to have a memorial to the women erected in the town park. I went there several times so my "clothes" could get a good look at it. I thought it was quite tasteful. I wondered what they thought of it. As for me, I adjusted as best I could to never being alone, to always being watched. Oddly enough, my social standing improved. I learned just how many people judged by appearances, and since I was the best-dressed girl in school, a lot of people wanted to be seen with me. I also seemed to look better physically, although I was never quite sure whether that was part of the genie's spell or just my imagination. Of course, there was also the fact that many of the girls at the top of the social ladder were now gone. There was a big shake-up of our "social set". I actually felt bad for Tiffany when I heard people that used to suck up to her talk about how they'd never really liked her.

The next big hurdle for me came the first time I got seriously involved with a boy. I was eager enough to get "hot and heavy" with him, but the fact that I was constantly under silent observation made it difficult to "perform", at first. I had to learn to develop an "exhibitionist" streak, which took a little time. As the years went by, I learned to do so reasonably well, well enough that in time a married a boy I met in college and started a family with him. We had a good life together, and had five children and eight grandchildren. He died several days after our fifty-seventh wedding anniversary. I lived on for several years, a doting grandmother and great-grandmother. I died peacefully in my sleep when I was 97.

I "died", but after a brief moment of warm, comforting blackness, I was PUSHED out into the light, wailing in protest. Someone - a doctor, presumably - handed me to my new mother. She was a dark-haired East Asian woman. She spoke softly to me in a language that I dimly recognized to be Japanese. I soon learned that I was now Kyoko Watanabe, third daughter of Ichiro and Noriko Watanabe, living on the island of Hokkaido, in Japan. This was shortly after what history came to call "the Collapse", and things were bad in many parts of the world, but my new father was prefectural governor, so we were as well-off as anybody was in that place and time. The clothes were still with me, so I was the sharpest-dressed baby in the maternity ward. I got along reasonably well with my new older sisters Emiko and Hanako, and my younger brother Hideki and baby sister Miyuki when they came along. It was frustrating and difficult being a baby again, while hiding the fact that I had an adult's memories. Learning the Japanese language and culture took up much of my time. In way it was better for me that I was reborn into a society that was so different from that of my previous life. It helped me present the level of awkwardness appropriate to my age. As it was, my parents frequently remarked on how mature I was. When I started school, I consistently got top grades in English - I had to get some use out of my old knowledge.

And so I lived out my life as Kyoko, eventually marrying and having children again. It occurred to me that if I kept having children in life after life, then eventually most of humanity would be descended from one of my selves.

Kyoko's life was a quiet, happy one, considering the times. In time, I "died" again and was reborn as Astrid, a Swedish princess. And so it went, life after life, I was reborn, always as a woman, always either middle or upper class (I guess the poor are never "stylish"), and always with the enchanted women clothing me. I was born into many different cultures, and had children with many different men. (Although, over the years, I learned to enjoy myself with women, as well. Variety is a necessary spice of life, when you're immortal. I recommend it for mortals, too!) I retained my memories from life to life, although after I'd lived a half a dozen lives, they all started to blur together. (I always had perfect recollection of my first life, however.) I retained enough knowledge that wherever I was reborn, schooling was easy for me. I became especially good at learning new languages.
I'm pretty sure I must be at least ten thousand years old. In my current life, I am Gallinn fiid-Pyehr, eldest daughter of a prosperous grain merchant in the city of Paluma in the Kingdom of Murtaine on the planet Klestis, a world settled by colonists from Earth over a thousand years before, although it is currently at about a Medieval level of civilization. People on Klestis still look human, although our skins are shades of purple ranging from lavender to plum, and our hair different shades of green or orange. My assumption is that something in the environment changed it over the years. My own skin is a dark plum that borders in navy blue, and my hair a vivid Kelly green. As always, I am very stylishly dressed. I'm writing this account in the English of my first life, a language no one speaks anymore, for my own benefit more than anything else. If anyone else reads it, they'll just think it's an odd bit of fiction. As for me, I live on. Sometimes I feel so old, other times I feel like I've just begun.

ADDENDUM:
I now know that the preceding document was originally written in the year 9713 by the calendar I knew in my first life. By that same calendar, it is now the year 987486. There have been some changes in my circumstances since my existence on Klestis.

I lived out my life on Klestis happily enough, “dying” in the year 9802. I was re-born almost immediately on the planet Novantica, another Earth colony, albeit one with a much higher level of technology than Klestis. My name was Homurree Chaan, daughter of Phen and Gara Chaan, two mid-level technicians. While I was growing up, there was a fad on Novantica for what might be called “smart” clothing. Each garment contained a microcomputer and a molecular re-assembler which could instantly re-shape your clothing to suit whatever style was necessary for the occasion. The various garments in a given ensemble could communicate with one another. So, to an extent, the clothing of that time and place could do technologically what my clothing had been doing magically for millennia. Just about everyone wore this “smart” clothing – even babies.

One day when I was 16 something occurred to me. (Really, I was ashamed that I didn’t think of it sooner!) What if the enchanted women were using the technology that was now built into them to communicate with one another? I monitored the systems that were built into the clothing (Easy enough for me - after thousands of years, I’d learned an awful lot about how things worked.). Sure enough, there was a good deal of activity on the communications circuits – far more than would have been needed for fashion purposes. It seemed inevitable that the women were using these circuits to communicate with one another – probably since shortly after my most recent birth.

“So, you’re all speaking to one another”, I said out loud, knowing that they could hear me. “But I wonder – do you want to talk to me?” I decided I had to give them the opportunity, even though I was a little afraid of what they might want to say to me. For thousands of years, they’d heard everything that I said, and seen everything that I did. I often spoke to them myself, even though they couldn’t answer.

I spent the next day constructing a communications system that would translate the signals the women were sending to one another into human speech. I programmed a viewscreen to project images of what their human faces had looked like. I programmed the speakers to sound as much like their human voices as I could. Finally, the moment came. I opened the communications channel. The screen lit up with representations of all 13 of their faces.

“H-Hello?”, I said nervously. There was a long silence. Finally, Tiffany spoke.

“Hello, Grace”, she said. “It’s been a long time.”

“Tiffany, I – after all this time, I don’t know what to say.” And I didn’t there were women who had been as close to me as could be possible for thousands of years, and yet this was my first real conversation with them. I said the only thing I could.

“I know you’ve heard me say this before, a long time ago, but I’m sorry, I never meant for this to happen.”

“We know that, Grace”, said Hannah. “It took some of us a long time to accept it, but we know that. What we would like to know is a little more of how it all happened. We’ve figured out some of it, but we’d like more details.”

So, I told them the full story of the genie and the wish. They digested this in silence. I broke it by asking, “What’s it been like for you?”

They told me their story and bits and pieces. My initial appearance had shocked the girls – they had wondered if I was drunk or on drugs. When the transformations began, they had gone into various forms of shock. For Tiffany especially, it was a chamber of horrors as she, her friends and family had been transformed. My conversation with the genie had astonished them. Tiffany and her friends at least had an idea of why I might have wanted “revenge” against them. The others had no idea who I was or why this had happened to them.

Once the shock wore off a little, their reactions turned to other emotions – sorrow, anger, fear. As had happened to me, they had flirted with insanity, but the spell prevented their trains of thought from derailing. As a consequence, they had to learn to deal with the situation. My tearful apology that first night had not impressed them much, and those early dreams of mine hadn’t been far wrong – Tiffany, at least, would have strangled me if she could have.

Instead, they’d had to deal with being held incommunicado in a bizarre form of solitary confinement, forced into extremely intimate contact with someone they either didn’t know at all or didn’t like all that much. They always had friends nearby, but friends that they were unable to speak to. As my underwear, Tiffany and Margaret had it the worst in some ways. They were often covered up, their view of the outside world obstructed. Tiffany also pointed out that for thousands of years, every time I farted I had been effectively farting in her face! (That gave me a complex for a while!)

Their only respite had been in dreams. Apparently, they slept when I slept. In their dreams, they were human again for a while, but always they would awake when I did, to face their bizarre reality. Over the course of my first life, they began to learn to accept their lives as they were. They even began to identify with me a little - since my life was the only life they could observe, they took a vicarious interest in the things I did and the things that happened to me. Tiffany and the others reflected on the lives they had lived, and while they certainly didn’t believe they deserved their fate (Even I didn’t believe that!), the ample time they had for reflection helped them to perceive the ways they could have lived their lives better. I wondered if it was a sort of “Stockholm Syndrome”.

When my life as Homurree began, they had more or less accidentally discovered that they could use the “smart” technology to “speak” to one another. After thousands of years of enforced solitude, with their only contact with the outside world being their one-way observation of me, they were at long last able to reach out to one another. They had never known such joy! They had spent months talking to one another about anything and everything, just for the sheer thrill of communication. Of a necessity, much of what they spoke about concerned me, since I had been the main focus of their lives for so long. It made me feel odd to think that my clothing had been critiquing my lives. Of course, I’d always known they were, but the fact that they were comparing notes somehow made it seem more ”immediate”.

So it was that a new phase in my life began. I was constantly in communication with the 13 women. It occurred to me that this might only last for my current lifetime. When I was next re-born, it might be someplace where they didn’t have ”smart” clothing! As it was, science on Novantica had greatly improved the human form. We were resistant to disease, physically much stronger than 21st Century humans had been, and much longer-lived. I might well live as much as 500 years, and science on Novantica was constantly progressing – by the time I reached 500, they might well have learned to extend our lifespans even further! I decided to devoted myself to helping with that, by studying human biology and physiology. As Homurree Chaan, I became a famous scientist, notable for her contributions to extending the human lifespan. I traveled across the galaxy, studying techniques on countless worlds. By the time I reached 500 years old, my colleagues and I had extended the human lifespan to a thousand years. By the time I hit a thousand, we had found a way to extend it to ten thousand years, and were working on a way to extend it indefinitely! The women and I might well have escaped the cycle of rebirth! I wondered if the genie had foreseen this possibility. As the millennia went by, I also worked on ways for the women to be returned to human form, but none of them ever worked. Apparently, even Novantican super-science couldn’t overcome the genie’s magic.
However, around the year 15,000, Novantican scientists developed techniques that would allow humans to link their minds telepathically. With a (relatively) simple physical upgrade, two human minds could share thoughts and sensations. I decided to volunteer for this upgrade. Once I possessed telepathy, I could communicate directly with the 13 women. Them through me, they could feel once more what it was like to have human flesh – to savor the taste of food and drink, to share when I satisfied other ”appetites” with various men and women. The upgrade was a total success. I was able to reach out to the women mentally, and share their joy as they once more knew what it felt like to be human after so many years. I was still in control of my body, but I indulged them, sampling a wide range of pleasures, just so they could enjoy them.

After a while, something began to happen which we probably should have foreseen. When we first linked minds, even while they were enjoying what it was like to feel human again, and I was learning what it felt like to be living clothing, each of us had kept up certain mental barriers, each retaining her own personal mental “space” where she was she. But the longer we were linked, the more we began to drop these barriers, to open up our innermost selves to one another. It seemed silly to keep secrets when we were all so intimately – and permanently – linked. Eventually, we dropped our mental barriers altogether. Then, as we might have foreseen, we began to lose the distinctions between our various selves. Our personalities began to blur together, like different liquids stored in one container. We were beginning to become something new – no longer 14 different individuals, but instead a new individual comprised of a blending of elements of all of us. By the time, we realized it was happening, it was too late for us to stop it. It was distressing at first – each of us felt like she was losing her “self”, but in time, we – I - came to see it as one final re-birth. I decided to take a new name, since I was no longer really Homurree, or even Grace. I took the name “Verranya”, from the Novantican word for “Unity”.

With my new combined intellect, I continued my scientific research. I easily worked out a method to guarantee human immortality. Barring an unforeseen catastrophe, I would live forever as Verranya, and through me all the women I had been. I wondered how my new self accorded with the genie’s curse. In a way, I was now both victim and benefactor of his spell. Again, I wondered if he had foreseen this. I decided to try and find the other realms he spoke of, one of which he had moved on to. Perhaps someday, I would even find the genie himself. Why not?, I thought. I have forever to do it!