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Captioned Images Series: Could Have Been Worse
Created: 08/11/2025
The first thing Marcus noticed was the cardigan.
It wasn’t his cardigan. His were all synthetic blends, machine-washable, chosen for their ability to survive his microwave dinners and late-night coding sessions. This one was cream-colored wool, soft as a cloud, with mother-of-pearl buttons that glinted in the fluorescent light of his studio apartment. He reached up to adjust his glasses—a nervous habit—and found his arm heavier, the veins beneath paper-thin skin mapping blue rivers he didn’t recognize.
“Ahem.”
The sound came from his own throat but wasn’t his voice. It was a warm, slightly raspy contralto, like a vinyl record left in the sun. Marcus stumbled to the bathroom, his hips swaying in a way that felt both foreign and oddly elegant. The mirror reflected a stranger: a woman in her seventies, her silver hair styled in a meticulous bob that framed a face mapped with laugh lines. Her lips—now painted a muted rose—parted to reveal a perfect set of dentures, pearly and even.
“You just have to smile…with your dentures…” The entity’s words echoed in his skull, its voice a chorus of rustling pages and static. It had appeared hours earlier while he’d been debugging code, a shifting silhouette made of shadows and the faint smell of ozone. “Think it could be worse.”
Marcus—now she—pressed a hand to the mirror. The woman in the reflection mimicked her, her cardigan slipping slightly off one shoulder. Beneath it, a cream blouse with a Peter Pan collar, a tiered skirt grazing her knees, opaque tights, and black pumps with sensible two-inch heels. Everything fit as if tailored, down to the wedding band on her left hand (but no, she’d never married).
Panic clawed up her throat. She fumbled for her phone—her old phone, now too large for her hands—and Googled “stroke symptoms.” But her fingers, now gnarled at the joints, kept mistyping. The screen’s blue light hurt her eyes.
Think it could be worse.
She sank onto the toilet lid, her knees creaking. The entity hadn’t explained why, or how, or if this was permanent. But it had left her a gift: the dentures. Not just prosthetics, but tools. She could feel their edges, sharp and precise, holding the shape of a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
---
By dawn, Marcus—or Margaret, as she’d begun to think of herself—had rearranged the apartment. The entity’s words looped in her mind as she folded her (his?) hoodies into boxes. The cardigan stayed on; it was cold, suddenly, in a way her 30-year-old body had never noticed.
At the grocery store, she moved slowly, savoring the way her hips carried her weight, the way her pumps clicked against linoleum. A teenage cashier called her “ma’am” and she didn’t flinch. At the pharmacy, she bought Polident and a magnifying mirror.
That night, she practiced smiling in the bathroom. The dentures gleamed under the LED lights. It could be worse, she thought. She could’ve been turned into something that couldn’t taste food, or hear music, or feel the absurd joy of a perfectly tailored skirt swishing around her ankles.
---
The entity returned on the seventh day.
“You’re… adapting,” it said, materializing as a flicker in the hallway mirror.
Margaret sipped Earl Grey from a porcelain cup (she’d bought it that morning, along with a tin of shortbread). “I’m writing a memoir,” she said. Her voice was steadier now. “About a man who became a woman who became herself.”
The entity’s form shifted, pixels resolving into a face like crumpled parchment. “Why?”
She tapped her dentures together. They made a sound like wind chimes. “Because it’s better than the alternative.”
The entity paused. Then, as if satisfied, it dissolved into the hum of the refrigerator.
---
On the sixtieth day, Margaret hosted a dinner party. Her friends—confused, concerned, then charmed by her newfound knack for baking scones—didn’t ask questions. They didn’t notice her hands trembled as she passed the sugar bowl, or that she sometimes forgot her own name.
But when she smiled, they saw only the dentures: bright, unbreakable, and absolutely hers.
It could be worse, she thought, and this time, she meant it.
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