The Chameleon Effect

This is the third version of a story that could either be classified as Science Fiction, creative writing, or just plain weird.

Kagami attracted chaos like a picnic draws ants.  Strange things happened to her throughout her life.  She could not imagine anything different, for she felt a boring life would kill her.  Extremely rare occurrences torpedoed her life like rain fell in the state of Washington. She lost  both of her parents in a car crash as a baby, she won second place in the national spelling bee at age twelve, a dragon fly kept her from her first taste of sake on her twenty-first birthday, and at twenty-six  she was left at the altar.  Despite the oddities in her life, Kagami never attracted much attention.  

Kagami had a really significant aversion to plastic shopping bags.  She thought they were unnatural, blamed them for many unnecessary animal deaths, and suspected they contained carcinogens.  What was really ironic was Kagami worked as a cashier at a grocery store, where they only used plastic bags and would not let you bring in your own reusable ones. One time, Kagami asked what was the reason for this lack of concern for the environment.  Her manager explained, “Germs.  Germs and allergens.  If people kept bringing back their own bags they would be covered in germs, pet hair, tobacco ash, and microscopic things I don’t even want to fathom.”  Kagami refused to use the shopping bags for her own shopping.  Since she could not use reusable bags at the supermarket where she worked, she would grab a box, or just buy a couple things at a time.   

Instead of thinking about the plastic shopping bags that bothered her so much, Kagami’s inner dialog dealt a lot with the people around her.  She saw a woman with a butterfly tattoo on her face.  It was a cheap looking tattoo, just a black outline of a butterfly.  Kagami felt sad for this woman having that permanent, ugly artwork on her forever.  Kagami vowed to herself she would never have a tattoo on her face.

When she  walked to her car in the parking lot, she saw a grocery bag on the ground.  She picked it up and took it inside where there was a recycling bin.    Then, when she was about halfway to her car, she looked up and saw another bag hanging from a tree branch.  Soon our planet will be covered in these things, and I will be the only one to notice, she thought.

The next morning was Kagami’s twenty-eighth birthday.  She was having a very vivid dream in which she was helping the customer with the butterfly tattoo.  All of a sudden, a monarch butterfly landed on the woman’s face and then melded itself there, looking more beautiful than any tattoo Kagami had ever seen.  Then, she saw the black outlined butterfly flying around her own face.  She felt scared, but just then a little teacup chihuahua ran to her side.  He barked and the  ugly butterfly flew down by his face.  He ate it.  Then, Kagami awakened to her alarm.  When she stretched, she saw the dragon fly tattoo on her forearm.  

“Obaasan,” Kagami said to her grandmother, “do you believe dreams are important?”

“Yes, of course, child.  As I have always told you, the baku, those strange, dog-like creatures control your dreams.  They have the power to make them more vivid or devour the nightmares.”

“Oh, Obaasan, what would I do without you?”  Kagami asked as she enveloped her frail little grandmother in her arms.

********

At work, Kagami did not remind anyone it was her birthday.  Maybe some friends would have noticed on a social network page that it was Kagami’s birthday.  She would love it if someone other than her grandmother wished her a happy day.  The strange pattern that Kagami noted at her job that special day was that every single one of her customers insisted on a dreaded plastic bag, no matter how small the purchase.  When she told someone the store was out of small bags, the man said to put his pack of gum, his only purchase, in a regular sized shopping bag.  Ridiculous, thought Kagami.  Then, remembering it was her birthday, Kagami fantasized in her mind that this was all a joke, a prank by her coworkers who knew how she detested the unnatural plastic grocery bags.  One of those bag-demanding customers was the one from the previous day, The one with the butterfly tattoo.  Kagami noted that the woman still had the black outline of a butterfly.  She told herself to ignore the bad tattoo, and try to see the real beauty in this woman.  Then she was disgusted by the fact that the woman wanted a bag for her small purchase that she could have just put in her handbag.

After the butterfly woman, the next person in her line was a big man.  His shopping cart was overflowing with frozen  and cold food.  Kagami zipped through the food and bagged the groceries quite efficiently when she was interrupted by the man’s surprisingly high pitched voice.  He requested that everything be double-bagged.  Even though Kagami shook her head in the affirmative,  and said, “If that’s what you want...” she wished with all her heart she could say, “Sorry, that’s against the rules here at this store.”  The double-bagging and extra-sagging customer followed behind the young man who came to help him to his car, which for some reason Kagami imagined was a pink gas-guzzling monstrosity.

Kagami was thinking about the woman with the flower tattoo as well as the  infuriating double-bagging customer while she got more bags out of a box below her register.  Suddenly, she heard screaming.  She looked up and saw her coworker was the one screaming and  she was pointing right at her!  Kagami exclaimed, “What?  What’s wrong?”

Then, the screaming cashier ran away from her register.  Others started to gather to see what was the reason for the commotion.  Everyone was staring at Kagami.  Nobody said anything.  Then, from the back of the crowd, a young cashier got a very small mirror out of her pocket, and handed it to Kagami.  “Look at your face,” she gently instructed.  Kagami hoped she was dreaming, and uttered aloud, “Well, where are you baku?  I need you now!”  The crowd stood silent, their faces blank.

Kagami remembered reading about controlling a dream by trying to solve things as you would in real life.  Often, her unusual life seemed like a dream.  Kagami looked in the tiny mirror and saw exactly half of her face was covered in red puffy lines in the formation of hexagons.  “What the hell?”  Kagami questioned.

“It’s probably a rash.  Did you put chicken wire on your face and get sunburned?” someone logical from the crowd asked.

“No.  I don’t make a habit of such things.  I was just working.  These lines just appeared!”

“Wow!  That’s crazy,” responded a cashier with purple hair and a pink stripe down the middle of her head. She had a silver nose ring.

“Everybody, back to work!” announced the short, bald, and paunchy manger.

“But what happened to her face?” asked a customer.

“Well...” began the manager, “it’s uh, it’s, uh...it’s poison ivy.  No worries, she can go home now to care for herself.”

Minutes later, it was as though everyone had forgotten about Kagami.  Almost everyone was carrying on as usual.  Except of course, for Kagami.  She was not even glad to be going home.  On that warm sunny day, when Kagami got to her car, she found a gray hooded sweat jacket in the hatchback of her small economy car.  She threw it on the passenger seat next to her.  When  she got home, she figured she would cover her face with the hood before her grandmother died of shock at the sight of her.

When Kagami looked in the rear view mirror above her, she was horrified to see that the “poison ivy” was spreading.  What had been halves of hexagons were now entire shapes.  By the time she reached the apartment where she and her grandmother lived, her face and neck, and possibly other parts of her skin had a red puffy tattooed-looking rash.

“Obaasan, I’m home.”

“Oh, my dear, you are early.  I have not done a thing to prepare for your birthday supper.”

“That’s okay.  My birthday is nothing to celebrate.  I am a freak of nature.”

“Child, whatever would make you say such a thing?  Why are you wearing a jacket in this heat?  Do you have a fever? Why are you hiding your face?”

“I have a rash.  A horrible rash.”

“Let me see, child.”

“No. It is horrible.”

“ Please, child, I have seen plenty of rashes.”

“Not like this one.”

“Please, trust me, child.”

Kagami pulled the hood away from her head. 

The grandmother let out a gasp of disbelief.  Then she finally spoke, “ That is not a rash.”

“What is it?”

“I have no idea.”

********

Kagami trusted her Japanese grandmother, even though she thought it was strange that in this time of crisis, her beloved obaasan took her to a Chinese acupuncturist.  Her grandmother explained, “Japanese acupuncturists learned their practices from the Chinese.  Besides, there are not any Japanese acupuncturists I know.  Also, you do not like regular doctors, and this will be very different than going to an American doctor.”

The office of the the acupuncturist was not medical-like at all.  It was actually the enclosed porch of the woman’s home.   There were lots of hanging plants, all thriving and by far the healthiest Kagami had ever seen.  There were red and green lanterns hanging as well.  It did not give a cluttered feeling, but the sensation of being embraced by all of the plants and lanterns, which had characters Kagami could not read.

When the acupuncturist examined Kagami’s body, she did look a little amazed to see the development of the design by the morning after it had begun. “I must admit, I have never seen anything like this.  The purple is so beautiful.  Now, you say it all began with the red puffy hexagons?”

“Yes, and it began on my face and has worked its way down my body.  What do you think this is?”

“We need lots of tests, but my initial guesses would be parasites or a severe allergic reaction.  Not to scare you, but it could be some sort of virus or  even cancer.”

  

“Sick!  It’s living things on me?  Get them off!  Get them off!”

“It is probably not in the way you are thinking.  We all have microscopic parasites inside us.  If these are indeed parasites they are just on the outside of your body.  The purple coloring might be bruising.  I am honestly not sure what I am seeing.  Do you feel any pain or itching?”

“No, not really.  My chest hurts a little, like it does when I am very, very sad.”

“Interesting.”  The acupuncturist listened to Kagami’s breathing and heartbeat.  “Well, rest assured I only hear one heartbeat.”

“Is it going to go below my navel?”  Kagami asked with a look of horror.

“We do not know.  Let’s do the tests, and when we have better theories what we are facing, we can try different herbal treatments to try to stop the growth.  I would also like to quarantine you and your grandmother until we know more.  You can stay here, and I will not see any other patients for the time being.  I will devote my expertise to you, and I will also offer my hospitality to you and your grandmother.” 

“Thank you...” Kagami’s voice cracked as she began to cry, “for your kindness.”

“Of course.  Thank you for your trust in me.”   

********

Kagami was the first documented case of what the Center for Disease Control referred to as, “ZX222,” and what the press called “The Chameleon Effect.”  Though Kagami could no longer work, she and her grandmother made a lot of money selling her story and pictures to the press.  They would never again have to worry about money.  For most of the first year following contracting the disorder or disease, Kagami looked like she was made of purple quilted leather.  Her dragon fly tattoo was no longer visible.  Most people saw it as a tragic story.  Even a former friend of Kagami remarked, “She looks hideous.  She’s not human.”  Doctors and scientists scrambled to find answers about the condition, as more and more cases were occurring though the exact manifestations varied from person to person.  The second case was not in the United States, but in Cuba. The person’s outbreak occurred a month after Kagami’s birthday.  The subject had red puffy triangles appear on the bottom of his feet.  Doctors there told him to tape aspirin to the afflicted area. Despite the fact that he tried to follow their instructions, the lines grew, but in an upwards direction on his body.  However, in the next stage of ZX222, the Cubano’s  skin turned orange.  The third patient was in Canada, and the color of her skin was red.  The next seven documented cases, and the majority thereafter occurred in the United States.  Still not certain this was not an alien parasite, NASA was asked to get involved in the investigations.  

Then, one day after Kagami’s twenty-ninth birthday, the purple tone seemed to wash off in the shower along with her long dark hair.  Kagami cried after her hair fell off of her head into her hands, but her grandmother and acupuncturist told her she was beautiful with skin that was now metallic gold and also wrinkle-free.  A few weeks later, the Cubano was reported to have taken a turn for the worse.  The orange tone to his skin had washed away as well as his dark, thick hair. but his skin had become like white “nylon” which someone described as a white shopping bag.  In contrast to Kagami’s skin quality, the man had severe wrinkling.  As the reports of wrinkly plastic skin increased, Kagami started to have panic attacks, because she worried she would have that side effect later.  However, acupuncture helped her nerves, and she never had skin that resembled plastic. 

Kagami did not understand what had happened to her world.  She prayed for the baku to eat her nightmare, but it just never did, and she never woke up from the horror.  Eventually, sixty-percent of Americans were infected.  Many tried to contact her, to find out what she did that the Wrinkly Bag People did not.  She became the Golden Woman.  Everyone wanted to be like her.  

Before Kagami’s grandmother died of natural causes, her last words were to Kagami, “One day, you will understand your gift, and why it was given to you.”  When Kagami cried at the loss of her grandmother, her tears made a metallic golden puddle on the floor that hardened to metal which was later analyzed to be 24 carat gold.

The saggy double-bagger not only contracted the condition, but he also blamed Kagami for infecting him, though he did not have “the chameleon effect” until  days after Kagami turned to gold.  Not long after her grandmother’s death, Kagami received the summons to go to court, because she was being sued by Buck Grant, who turned out to be the double-bagger.  After Kagami’s lawyer, David Sato won the case, he then proposed to Kagami.  

As the population of those infected by ZX222 continued to increase, eventually more manifested into metals, though Kagami was the only pure gold being.  Those affected by ZX222 that turned to plastic skin seemed to become sterile.  At the time of their marriage, no pregnancies of anyone with what would eventually be called “Plastic Cancer” had been recorded.  However, since David was uninfected, the couple tried to have children.  They were successful having thirteen healthy children, including three sets of twins.  All of David and Kagami’s children cried tears of 10 carat gold.  Meanwhile, all over the world, iron, silver, copper, brass, and even aluminum babies were born.      

Following the world-wide  infection of Wrinkly Plastic Bag People, the popularity of plastic shopping bags died off very quickly.  Also, plastic in general was regarded as a bad thing.  Most people considered plastic as far worse than the tobacco industry.  Plastic companies merged with metal and glass businesses. 

Eventually, the race of Wrinkly Plastic Bag People came to an end.  This was after the deaths of Kagami and David, who died together peacefully of unknown causes at ages 99 and 102.    People became vegetarians and vegans.  In most countries, it was illegal to consume animals, and there were even places where a person could not legally eat animal products like milk or eggs.  Life on Planet Earth changed for the better, as technology for cleaning the oceans and air became the primary concern to humans.

Author's Note

If you think environmentalists are stupid, then you probably will not care for this story.

Reviews

[Navidson]

This reminded me a little of Phillip.K.Dick. Although the prose, I felt, was a little too simplified at times and didn't flow as well as it might, I really liked the actual story, the way it stands out in it's oddness and the message you get across. I will read more of you. Keep it up!

[E.A. Rubin]

Thank you for your thoughts. I have never heard of Phillip K. Dick. Sometimes the reason I write in a simplified manner is because I am afraid of being grammatically incorrect. Maybe I just want my sentences to be easy to diagram! j/k. Anyway, thanks for the review.

[Layley Lu]

I like this story. I'm happy to have stopped in to read it. Only one thing I would advise on: be careful of over doing the similies, i,e: the 1st paragraph contains 2 of them in just the first three lines. "Kagami" feels a bit over used aswell... That's all.
I think I could read more of you ^-^

[E.A. Rubin]

Thanks for your thoughts.

[Irfan Bashir Shah]

How does one go about reviewing this one....
It's intricate and that's for sure.....
You try to deliver a message in most novel way that i have ever seen........
I thought it would all be Kagami's dream but it turned the other way around....
You perfectly pen down the whole life of Kagami in just a few race..... And i think you just invented a new term "Plastic Cancer"....
This piece deserves to be widely read but if truth be told, i for sure know that people here hardly spend time reading stories.... Writers cafe is basically a poetry site......
The intricacy that you have woven around this piece deserves appreciation.... Very well done!

[E.A. Rubin]

Wow! Thank you for your thoughtful review!