What’s something your teacher said to you that changed your life?

The Descent into Extreme Beauty

My best friend became obsessed with extreme beauty treatments, and when she crossed the line, she went to prison. Now she’s out, her face ruined by dangerous experiments, stalking me, determined to finish what she started.

Ashley and I were your typical ugly besties. I’d made peace with it early on, but Ashley was always comparing herself to other girls. She felt like she came up short.

I spent years telling her we’re beautiful in our own way, but I could tell she never believed me. Everything changed when Ashley discovered Korean influencers.

She found this YouTube channel that broke down 15-step routines, and suddenly she was obsessed. Within a month, her skin was clearer.

She learned subtle makeup techniques that made her eyes look bigger. She wasn’t Tik Tok pretty, but she’d become what people called Pinterest pretty.

For the first time ever, guys were liking her Instagram posts. She’d walk into my room with bags from Sephora showing me her haul, and I’d sit there grinning.

“I’m so happy you finally see what I always saw,” I told her one day.

She just hugged me and said I was the best friend ever. Her parents were thrilled, too. Everyone kept commenting on her transformation and newfound confidence.

After about six months, Ashley started getting into more extreme treatments. She discovered vampire facials, where they inject your own blood back into your face.

Then, she found out about placenta treatments. She’d send me articles at 3:00 a.m. about how celebrities use stem cells to look younger.

I thought it was just her new hobby until things got weird. I went to her apartment one day and found her in the bathroom with a syringe drawing her own blood.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She looked excited and explained she was making DIY serums.

Storebought stuff is diluted.

This is organic.

She had this whole setup with test tubes and everything. I told her it seemed dangerous, but she waved me off saying she’d done tons of research.

The next few months were a blur of Ashley’s experiments getting more extreme. She started paying this sketchy esthetician for blood facials.

Her face was constantly swollen and infected, but she called it cellular renewal. One day, I was looking for ice cream in her freezer and found rows of labeled blood vials.

When I confronted her, she explained super calmly that she was reverse aging at the cellular level. She even showed me her journal where she tracked her treatments.

The worst part was when my used period products started disappearing from the trash. A few months later, I found them in a plastic bag in her bathroom drawer.

I literally wanted to throw up right there and then. When I confronted her, she said,

“You throw them away anyway.

I’m just harvesting what you waste.

I wanted to tell my parents, but I was scared of what they do. So instead, I started distancing myself.

But Ashley was non-stop texting me updates about her progress. She’d send selfies of her swollen face, saying things like,

“The inflammation means it’s working.”

I tried talking to her mom, but she thought I was just jealous. Nobody else saw how far Ashley had fallen into this obsession.

Everything came to a head when I was babysitting my neighbor’s newborn. Ashley knew I’d be there and showed up unannounced. She said she missed me.

She wanted to see the baby. I was lonely and caved, letting her in. While I was warming a bottle, she disappeared.

I later found her in the nursery with medical supplies spread on the changing table. She had a band on the baby’s tiny arm and was filling a syringe with blood.

The baby was screaming and Ashley was just calmly drawing vial after vial. She explained like she was teaching a science class.

Newborn blood has the highest concentration of growth factors.

Just a little from the heel like they do at hospitals.

She already had one and a half vials filled and was going for a third. The baby was getting pale and lethargic.

Ashley kept talking about how babies produce excess blood and she was just harvesting the surplus. She pulled out another syringe filled with cloudy liquid.

Look, I already injected some.

Her face was swelling grotesquely as we stood there. One eye was almost swollen shut.

I almost screamed, “Can’t you see I’m already looking younger?”

She actually believed it. I managed to grab the baby while she was preparing another syringe.

I ran to call 911 while Ashley followed, begging me to understand. She kept saying,

“The beauty industry doesn’t want us to know the truth.”

Even as the paramedics took the baby away, she was explaining her theories to them. The baby survived but needed a transfusion.

Ashley was arrested and was released five years later, and in her eyes, I was the one to ruin her beauty, and she was ready to make me pay.

I stood frozen at my apartment mailbox, staring at the photo on my phone. Ashley’s face filled the screen, swollen and distorted from what looked like fresh injections.

Her left eye was completely shut, the skin around it purple and stretched tight. The text underneath made my hands shake.

I never stopped my research.

Five years. She’d been locked up for five years, and this was the first thing she sent me.

I dropped my mail and ran up the stairs to my apartment, fumbling with my keys. My boyfriend Jake was on the couch watching TV when I burst through the door.

I shoved my phone in his face, my whole body trembling. He squinted at the screen, then shrugged.

Your old friend got out of prison and wants to reconnect.

Maybe she’s changed.

The next morning at work, I couldn’t focus. Every time someone walked past my cubicle, I jumped.