Spellspam

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Chapter One

From: Claire S. Kin < Claireskin@whatyouaskfor.com >
Subject: Have the clearest skin you can possibly imagine!

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*****

To: anyone@openthisnow.com
From: Steph Happens < sh@freeincorporated.com >
Subject: FREE!

Free gifts—just for reading this e-mail! How can you go wrong?

The first hint of serious trouble came, as trouble always does, unlooked for, stealthily, catching everyone by surprise. It was the day that LaTasha Jackson suddenly turned into an Anatomy teacher's aid.

Things came to a head during a free-study hour in the comfortable, plush silence of the school library, each student to his or her own cubicle, some finishing homework, others reading. Still others sat furtively hunched over their desks, loose hair covering contraband earphones, trying to hide a music-player-shaped bulge in their pocket. One or two, bored, drew cartoons or wrote snatches of deathless prose that they imagined would turn into a novel someday. The incorrigible chatterboxes whispered and giggled softly to one another from adjoining cubicles. But, on the whole, everything was quiet, and Thea liked it that way. She wasn't doing anything particularly scholastic, but that wasn't because she was goofing off—she usually managed to have most of her work done in reasonable time, and hardly ever needed to resort to trying to write an essay five minutes before it was due. What she used her free study periods for was simply reading. She would meander down the library stacks at the beginning of the hour, pulling out a book here and there to check it out as a title caught her eye, and finally settle on something that interested her.

She was engrossed in a book about the social customs of chimpanzees when a bloodcurdling scream rent the air from the north corner of the library, where the computers slated for student use were situated. Thea jumped, dropping her book on the desk with a thump and losing her place, pushing her chair back on its castors to peer around the edges of her cubicle.

Dozens of other heads were popping out from other cubicles, watching in appalled horror as something ghastly leaped back from a computer screen, overturning a chair and sending it flying, and raced down the length of the library and out through the double doors at the far end.

The only reason Thea even remotely recognized this apparition was LaTasha's trademark hairstyle, dozens of tiny braids finished off with trade beads in garish shades of pink and mustard yellow. The face beneath those braids, however, was something else indeed.

She looks like she's been skinned! was the first thought that came swimming into Thea's astonished mind. And then she shuddered as she realized that this was precisely what LaTasha was. Skinned. Or at least looking like a reasonably good imitation of it. But there was no blood, Thea thought, frowning. Surely there should have been . . . but no . . . there was just . . .

That was it, in a nutshell. Instead of LaTasha's skin, which typically was the color of coffee lightened with a touch of cream, her face was a complicated mass of red muscle, striated bands coming down from her temples to wrap around her mouth, neat folds across her nose and cupping her chin, round orbs around her alarmingly protruding eyeballs, with startling and somewhat unnerving glimpses of stark bone structure underneath it all. Her hands, held out in front of her, looked the same way—a naked, tangled mass of tendon and sinew. But no blood. It was like her skin had just gone see-through, somehow, revealing the building blocks of the body that lay beneath.

There was a swelling of noise in the library as students surged out of their chairs, clustered in tight little knots, the librarian on duty frantically whispering something into a telephone, her hand cupped protectively around the mouthpiece.

For some reason it was only Thea who backed away from the pandemonium and edged almost furtively toward the computer LaTasha had been using.

An e-mail was open on the screen, an e-mail that LaTasha should have known better than to open—anything addressed to person@thisaddress.com should have been immediately suspect, at the very least as an advertisement, unwanted junk mail, spam. But what followed was not merely spam:

Having trouble keeping your skin blemish-free? Troubled by zits, lines, old scars? Try our incredible product for 30 days for free! We guarantee that we will leave your skin clearer than you could ever have dreamed of. . . .

LaTasha was fourteen years old, and painfully self-conscious of the imperfections of her skin, which was cursed with large pores and periodic zit infestations that made her look like she was coming down with the measles—and that was in addition to an unfortunate scar left behind by her brush with the real measles, which she had had as a toddler. It sat, a small but (to LaTasha) eye-wateringly obvious pit, underneath and to the outside of her left eye.

"It makes my eye droop," she had often complained to friends. "Look, it makes me look like a Saint Bernard puppy, all mournful and woebegone. Who'd want to date that? They probably all think I'm going to bore them silly with family tragedies. Like I'd had a twin who was stolen by the Faele or something and never came home. Oh, it's hopeless!"

Perfect skin. The thing had offered perfect skin. That would have been irresistible to someone like LaTasha, who blamed hers for all the injustices in her life—if she could only get perfect skin, she'd be happy, she knew she'd be happy.

Something surfaced briefly in Thea's mind, and then submerged again before she'd had a chance to grab at it. Instead, she sighed and reached out instinctively to clear the screen, as though that e-mail could be used as some sort of evidence against poor LaTasha. Her hand hovered above the red X that would close the e-mail screen; then she hesitated.

---

Excerpted from Spellspam by Alma Alexander
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.