#NoFilter
Photo by Alexey Demidov / Pexels
Author: Ria Hill
Card: Two of Wands
On my second day at Weatherford Prep, Kara Bailey pulled me into the girl’s bathroom.
“You look basic as hell,” she said. “Why be drab when you could be sparkling?”
I’d seen the way Kara and her friends looked, and it wasn’t a bit like sparkling. There was a bruise on her cheek and blood smeared across her lips. A drop of it was slipping down her chin.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.
She laughed like I was the single least cool person she’d ever met.
“Your mom thinks you’re fine,” she said. “You have to make her stop.”
For the next three weeks, I ignored her advice. I let my mom love me the way she did. I didn’t get up to anything. But three weeks is a long time in exile, and I still couldn’t understand the compliments other girls gave Kara on her split lips and black eyes. I was sure the school administration knew, but when I asked Kara why they never did any checks she just laughed.
“Like they’d ever set foot on campus,” she said. “Everything they need to do they do online. It may be the Wild West in here, but you can’t be cool without a Filter.”
I started acting out on week four. I didn’t return my mom’s texts for two days at a time, and when she finally called me, I told her all the ways I was doing the wrong things. I told her I was considering drugs, and that I was making eyes at a boy who lived down the hall. I told her living with other teens had made me angry, and horny, and scared.
One Monday morning, I woke up to find my room transformed. Every carpet stain had a sheen. When I flipped through my school books, all the curse words were replaced with a blur—like someone had rubbed the obscenity away with a wet thumb. Even my own naked body looked misty in my dry bathroom mirror. What had they done to me that I couldn’t see my own nipples?
When I stepped outside of my room at last, my peers glittered and shone. Kara caught my eye and knew at once. She pulled me into the bathroom again, laughing warmly at my awe.
“What happened to me?” I wondered if I should have been worried. I wasn’t.
“It’s the chip they give you when you enroll,” she said. “Your mom activated the parental controls—your Filter.”
I traced a finger over a line of glitter that dazzled on her cheekbone. Traces of it stayed on my fingertip. I put it in my mouth and it tasted like cotton candy.
“Mama’s gotta protect her baby’s fragile fee-fees,” Kara said, tapping one sparkling fingertip against my chest. “Are you ready to look magnificent?”
I nodded, and her fist slammed into my nose.
I expected it to hurt, but when the blow fell I couldn’t stop laughing. I pulled myself up off the linoleum and staggered to the bathroom mirror. There I was, beautiful, with streaks of glitter spilling from my nostrils.
“Here,” Kara said. She pushed my hands away from my face and spread the sparkles around, trailing intricate patterns of vibrant glow across my cheeks and lips.
I could barely take my eyes off myself. I was iridescent.
“How’s that?”
“I look like a princess,” I said, and Kara giggled.
“And you always will,” she said.
The next day, Maxine came to class in a crop top with dazzling streaks across her stomach and her hair done in twists that looked diamond-encrusted. We all went over to coo, of course. But I felt a pang. I finally looked like a princess, and Maxine had to go and make herself a queen. Somehow, even as my other emotions dulled to a whisper, that jealous longing stayed sharp.
“How did you do it?” Hailey whined.
Maxine slipped a single glossy finger into one of the sparkling vortexes near her navel.
“It doesn’t even hurt,” she said.
I followed her to her room that night. There was nothing else I could have done. Her voice was so musical as I put my stolen kitchen knife into her belly that I wasn’t sure if she was screaming in fear or crying out in ecstasy. I wasn’t sure whether the stimulus was being altered by her Filter or mine.
Everything inside her could be worn, or used. I draped myself in the glittering scarves I pulled from her core. I painted my face and hair with sparkles. Everything I could lift I found a way to incorporate into my ensemble. It took me days to finish my creation. I’d missed class and ignored my phone. I was transforming my image. That was worth taking the time to get right.
I stepped out of her room, radiant. Kara, passing by, froze in her tracks. She shrieked as she took me in, called others to come see. I wanted them to see. I needed them to see what I’d become. When my mother stepped around the corner with the principal, I barely noticed. I didn’t see that Kara had covered her eyes, or the bandage that had appeared on her brow. What they thought barely mattered anymore.
I closed my eyes and let the dull pain wash over me. I knew that Filters had been shut off for the others, and the pain in my nose and jaw meant it was fading for me too. I knew my shining time was over, and now was the time of my mom’s favorite word: consequences. But for now, before horror clocked in to stay, I had a few seconds left to see myself as I wasn’t. Until I opened my eyes to understand the carnage I’d draped over my body, I was the most beautiful girl in the world.
Author’s Note & Bio
This story, in a fashion (pun intended), is about a young woman experiencing a technologically-assisted change in perspective and using what she learns to make a firm decision and achieve a goal she’s created for herself. Passion and creativity? Oh, certainly. Probably not to anyone’s benefit though.
Ria Hill is a writer, librarian, and nonbinary horror who lives in Toronto. They spend the majority of their non-work hours maintaining their recreational spreadsheet collection and DMing their friends and loved ones with deeply worrying story pitches. They can be found online at riahill.weebly.com and on Bluesky, Instagram, and Threads @riawritten.
“#NoFilter” copyright © 2024 by Ria Hill
