Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful?
Lana Del Rey
A fingernail. She turned it over in her hand, examining it. She had seen it lying on the bathroom floor, odd and out of place. Feeling a small rise in her stomach, she covered her mouth, willing the nausea to subside. That only made her more nervous.
What was happening?
Then she saw it. Her pinky finger, without a nail.
The vomit came so suddenly she couldn’t even turn her head in time to get it in the toilet. The gray and yellow Spanish-style tiles that covered the floor now glistened with stomach acid.
She understood now. It was her time.
She was dead in 26 minutes.
***
When BeautifulTimeTM began their publicity campaign, they promised what every human wanted: beauty, agelessness, health, and love — for your entire life. Complete the BeautifulTime regimen, and you will have everything you desire in life — beauty, agelessness, health, and love. You have a limited time in this life. Why not make it beautiful?
The regimen was not so simple, of course, but it was worth it, they said. The truth was, it was painful and exhausting and took 30 days. Only one session a day, but clients would need to stay in the facility the entire time for monitoring. They would be sleeping most of the time anyway, so there was no need to try to have a life. Really it was just a month of your life to become your very best self — for the rest of your life. For Allison, it seemed a small price to pay. And anyway don’t they always say that beauty is pain?
When Allison stepped into the office for the consultation, she was immediately impressed. Fresh cut lilies in clear glass vases, red cinnamon candies in glossy ceramic bowls, a hand-painted abstract mural on the wall — it gave off an air of professionalism, money, and beauty. Allison was in the right place.
During her consultation, she flipped through the binder of clients’ before-and-afters, seeing in their faces joy, happiness, contentment, even love. She could see it — understand it — just by looking at the photos.
Frankly, she couldn’t think of a better way to spend her inheritance from her parents’ deaths. She only wished they had had this chance. Instead, both of them slowly and excruciatingly succumbed to cancer. She watched, over the course of a year for her mom and two for her dad, their bodies shrinking and shriveling, their hair coming out in clumps, their skin turning gray — death wrapping up their bodies in yellowed cling wrap until their breath was static and then silent.
She shuddered. Blinked. Took out her wallet.
“When can I begin?”
***
The real selling point to the skeptics and to the religious was that BT wasn’t playing God. They didn’t give immortality. They didn’t even extend your life. Simplicity, they’d say. Simply, for the life that you have, you get beauty and health. You will die when you would have died anyway, just without all the sickness, decay, and exhaustion leading up to the death. It’s nothing crazy, they said.
It’s a brave new beautiful world, they said.
Of course, there were still skeptics. Death doulas, for one. They said BT was disrespecting the process of death. BT said there didn’t need to be a process of death. Back and forth.
But ultimately, it was the vanity that won. People wanted to be beautiful. People wanted to stay young.
And so they did, after 30 sessions of needling and prodding and full body scanning. But how will my body know when to die, clients would ask. Well that was the company secret. The golden patent. The medical technology that allowed BT access to the body’s internal death regulator, as they called it. And when it was time, the body simply shut down.
In 30 minutes, to be exact.
As with most things, there was a level of trust put into this technology. That enough medical trials had been conducted. That the clients weren’t the guinea pigs. That they’d have the happy ending they wanted.
That they’d die when they were supposed to.
***
After Allison’s final session, she was wheeled out of her room that she had called home for the last month. Down a seemingly interminable hallway until finally back in the front office, where she had flipped through the binder amidst lilies and red candies, she was handed a huge bouquet of white lilies and a cellophane baggie of cinnamon candies. Fitting, she thought. And what was that other emotion she felt — irritation? Something soft pushed it out of her brain.
Helped into her Uber, she was headed home at last. They told her another 30 days of recuperation and she’d be ready to take the world by storm. And be beautiful and healthy doing it!
***
Allison felt foggy for the next 30 days, but she was patient with herself. She re-binged her favorite shows and ate boxed mac and cheese. It didn’t matter if she ate garbage every day — her health was guaranteed. Moving mostly from the bed to the couch with brief trips to the kitchen and bathroom, she felt her skin tightening, her face arranging into symmetry, fat dripping internally (though no one had told her how disgusting her bowel movements would be — she was literally shitting her own fat). She didn’t want visitors. The stink from her own excrement permeated the entire apartment. She had to wear adult diapers, as sometimes she couldn’t make it to the bathroom in time. She had to keep a bucket nearby at all times for the nausea.
It was not a beautiful life. Not yet.
But each time she looked in the mirror, she could see it coming. Every day that passed was a day closer to that beautiful life.
And then.
***
Allison opened the front door. She was her beautiful best self. She looked up at the sky. Blue with cotton ball clouds. She felt like she was forgetting something, but the softness pushed it out of her brain again. One step forward. Then another. To the sidewalk. Then a short walk around the neighborhood. Hopefully everyone would see.
She was her best self.
She was her best self and she walked and she looked at things and she thought of sweet nothings and she was happy.
***
Only a short walk on Day 1 of your beautiful best self, they had said. So she went home. Didn’t want to overdo it. Looked at herself in the mirror. Couldn’t believe. It was worth it. Best self! Best—
And then something strange happened inside of her brain. She could feel it moving and working and processing. She remembered that last day in the facility with clarity. She felt incredibly irritated about that bouquet and bag of candies. Was that the best they could do after 30 days of hell? Wheeling her out like a cancer patient at her own funeral holding her condolence lilies? And the candies to mask the near constant nausea she’d have over the course of the next 30 days? It wasn’t right. She made up her mind to go back to the facility tomorrow when she had time.
The slightest sound of something brittle hitting gray and yellow tiles.
Life, Love, and Sentences 