Content Warnings: mild body horror, racist/xenophobic themes, harm to children
Sherry woke up that morning to a clear summer sky and a headache.
Groaning, she stuck a hand out of her bedding and flailed it around until she found her bedside table, where her AIR UP bottle (the pink one) and a pack of ibuprofen sat. She forced herself up, squinting to shield her eyes from the glare sneaking through her curtains, popped a pill in her mouth and took a swig of water.
Gross. Room temperature plain water wasn’t what she wanted to wake up to. She kept forgetting to put flavour capsules in her bottles (and the flavour capsules didn’t do too much anyway). Maybe she should start keeping her draw of capsules upstairs rather than in her kitchen, but she wasn’t convinced all of them would fit in her bedside drawer, and besides, moving them after she’d meticulously put them away just seemed like such a hassle.
Whatever. She had a couple dozen cans of various brands of pop downstairs just waiting for her, including a couple of that pink 7-UP she’d been so excited to try. She kept her eyes shut and laid still until her headache dissipated, then dragged herself out of bed.
Breakfast was a can of pop (she tried the pink 7-UP, but as she had feared she didn’t like the raspberry flavour so she poured it down the sink and switched to her favourite diet coke) and an almond croissant she had Deliveroo-ed to her door from the nearest Gali’s, which she enjoyed in comfort – or at least tried to. There was a persistent itch behind her eyes, an edge that ibuprofen didn’t always take off. Or at least didn’t always take off immediately. All it took for relief was another pill found in a kitchen cupboard, but she was annoyed that she had to get up off the sofa in the middle of her meal to get it. Maybe she should start keeping a pack on the coffee table, but she didn’t like clutter.
She switched on the TV for a bit, but everything that was on was either boring – who even cared about Antique Roadshow – or depressing – because yeah, she felt bad for those poor little bodies with dark faces and darker eye sockets, but did she really need to see that when she was eating her breakfast – so she switched it off and scrolled TikTok while she ate instead.
Lilly Davis had posted her first video of the day, a haul of some of the cutest cottagecore clothes that Sherry had ever seen, from H&M’s newest line. There was a H&M nearby – Sherry could probably snag a few of those herself.
Of course a part of the whole effect was how cute Lilly herself was, with her soft blonde hair and her freckles and her huge brown eyes, deep and doe-like and gorgeous. That was the thing everybody talked about when talking about how pretty Lilly was, those beautiful brown eyes. It was honestly pretty progressive. Went against Western beauty standards and all.
What time was it? 9:27am. Sherry had plans to meet her friends that afternoon, so if she wanted time to go to H&M and change into whatever she got, she’d need to leave the house soonish. Time to get a move on.
Today she was feeling like a blue theme. Handily she kept her clothes colour coded, so when she entered her walk-in closet she beelined to the blue section, flicking through shirts and jeans. This shirt was ugly. That one was cute, but she wore it last week. That one was cute too, but she’d bought it six months ago and it was falling apart a little – she should throw it out, but she didn’t have the heart too. This shirt?
It would do.
She spent another few minutes choosing a pair of jeans, took an ibuprofen to dull the ache reignited by physical exertion, then spent quite a few more minutes picking out her accessories. Picked a bag – one of her many blue bags, this one a cute little number with a silver chain – and a jacket, because it was warm out but not that warm.
The outfit was almost complete. Now for make-up.
She grabbed her favourite foundation and a blender she hadn’t used for a while, layered on a pretty shade of blush, a subtle eyeshadow, a lipliner chosen from her draw full of the cutest colours and the lip gloss she’d bought yesterday and hadn’t had a chance to wear yet. She’d picked out her mascara and eyeliner too, but there was something she needed to do first.
Underneath her dressing table was a small chrome fridge. Keeping it there was sort of annoying – now she couldn’t plug her hairdryer in and was obligated to dry her hair elsewhere, further from a mirror – but ultimately worth it.
She swung the door open. Usually she’d spend a while perusing its contents, but today, after seeing Lilly looking so cute, she knew exactly what she wanted.
Nestled in one of the shelves on the door were the containers that held the gorgeous brown eyes she was looking for. She skimmed her hand over a few of the containers holding the lighter shades, eventually coming to rest on the pair with that deep, endless shade. Sherry loved the way these eyes looked on her – loved the way they popped against her pale skin. Which wasn’t to say she didn’t like the way any of the other eyes she had looked on her. Quite the contrary, actually – she thought all of them were beautiful and that was why she needed them all.
She swung the door shut with her foot as she stood, gingerly pulling one eye out of her socket, placing the new one within, then repeating the process. She stuck the container now holding her original eyes back in the fridge and set a timer on her phone for eight hours. It wasn’t recommended for one to wear foreign eyes for longer than that, which was one of the reasons why some people still championed the use of contact lenses. Sherry had plenty of those too, but these days everyone could tell the difference between contacts and the real thing.
The other reason, of course, was the ethical concerns, and Sherry did understand – those poor eyeless kids in third world countries, it made her heart ache. But the companies were going to be doing it anyway, so her spending her money on them didn’t make one lick of difference. Besides, it wasn’t like they were forced to undergo enucleation. They were paid for it too. If anything, it was a good thing that Sherry was spending her money on this so that the companies could afford to pay them.
10:10. She would be late if she kept this pace.
Sherry popped another ibuprofen, then stuck the rest of the pack inside of her bag for the road.
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