“You honestly think I have time to listen to some boyscout campfire bullshit?” Jen scoffed, brushing her hair out of her eyes. “my time is more valuable than you. Just like I am,” she hung up. Or, at least, she tried to. She knew that she thought about doing it, but it was definitely still on. She'd bought this iPhone new two weeks ago, it couldn't have been playing up already! she looked at her reflection, to see that her hand was firmly against her cheek, phone still pressed to her ear.
“Oh, Jenny Jenny Jenny,” Kyle tutted in mock-exasperation. “If you value your time so much then why did you waste it not responding? You’re minute’s up. What did the ‘campfire bullshit’ say that meant?”
“…Fail to choose before a minute passes and you get both,” she muttered, more focused on why she couldn’t move.
“That’s right, well done!” he was patronising her, and it made her furious.
“Listen up you little pitstain, get to the point or I swear to God I’m gonna-“
Kyle cut her off, barking with false laughter. “You’re gonna what? You can’t even move!”
Her face blanched. It was real, it was all real. “Oh fuck,”
“Fuck indeed. And now, while you’re at my mercy, I’ll explain the consequences for your actions. For your transformation, you will slowly, unstoppably lose all this class and status you’ve earned yourself. After only a week in this town, there’s one thing I learned everyone agreed on: Jen Smith is a stuck up, arrogant, condescending bitch. So now you’ll lose that. All of that. Until you and the rest of your family are nothing more than trailer park white trash. Your hair will lose its lustrous color and feel, your tits will lose their youthful perkiness, your skin will lose its natural smoothness, and your hard-earned pencil of a waistline will burst out into a muffin top, then a pot belly, then a spare tire, until finally you’re fatter than anyone you’ve ever seen,”
Jen was crying now, tears smudging her perfectly applied makeup. “Please, don’t do it, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, for everything!”
“Liar!” Kyle screeched, breathing heavily. “You’re not sorry, you’re proud of everything you did, if I let you off you wouldn’t change how you think, or act, or feel. So I’m going to change all that for you. Every time you notice a change in your life that pushes you closer towards looking like white trash, your personality will change to match, little by little. Could be your fashion sense that goes first, or maybe your diet, or your spending habits, or your friends, interests, hygiene, sex drive, standards, anything, but it’ll all turn you into the trailer park trash that you deserve to be. Now, normally, folks who get this done to them don’t remember the curse, but I want you to, but only once you’re so far gone that there’s nothing you can do about it. When you’re on your futon, watching Springer, flicking through bills and job rejection letters, chugging cheap booze in a pigsty garbage dump of a trailer, your gut spilling out of your tank top, stained, like you, after a week without washing, I want you to remember this morning in excruciating detail. I want you to think about how awful you were, how far you fell, and I want you to remember most clearly of all, that it was me who made it happen. Enjoy the ride, Smith.”
Jen heard the dial tone, and in an instant, she forgot why she was crying. She put her secondhand iPhone 4s into her bag, looked into her mirror and groaned. "Great, now I've got to redo my makeup," She scrutinised her reflection, looked at her watch, and shrugged. She could go without, make it some political statement about true beauty not being in a bottle or some shit like that. She closed her makeup back and headed downstairs.