The Seven Ochre Sisters

THE SEVEN OCHRE SISTERS

by Meg Frances

In the not so distant, post-socially distant future, a 15-year-old Black girl passes out in AP Bio.

While lying unconscious on the floor, I daydreamed about The Sisters, as I usually do whenever I get some free time. I imagined they’d DMed me an exclusive invitation to their annual Beauty & The Brunch event, one of the last things they did that I was still too young to experience. Bright, wet sunset mimosas were passed around on trays wrapped in designer logo vinyl wrap. People from all over the world were present, dressed in The Sisters’ flowy and fun #Enflowerment clothing line, chit-chatting at giant round tables polka dotting a long rectangular garden full of flowers of every shade of orange. Bursts of begonias, cheeky California poppies, delicate ruffles of carnations, full and bold chrysanthemums; the collective scent almost weighed the air down, making the room feel as if it were full of clouds. On the wall behind the tables was a projected waterfall animation of even more flowers.

I was seated at the very front table with The Sisters overlooking the crowd of wannabes that had merely paid to be in their presence. I wasn’t a fan. I was a close friend, the kind who might be quoted in an article on any third-rate gossip site:

“A close friend dished to The Sun that The Sisters do, indeed, consume bread and enjoy it. Although, they prefer mini baguettes over suburban dinner rolls.”

I didn’t know yet what was to come so I dreamed of them as they were in the time before they shed their skins. When I think of that day now, my brain starts up with these sepia scenes, rising up from the sides of my skull. They make you think in “S”es, like their names. Slowly, the mimic of murmuring cicadas began to fill the space previously occupied by silence in all our heads; that’s how we should have known.

But they were so glamorous, and we were all mundane, dull. They existed as animated statues of Greek goddesses floating past us, the endless rows of lumpy clay still bound to the earth under the marble halls of their exquisitely sculpted asses. Carefully curated button noses and all.

We thought that the children they kept having were adorable, perfect little sidekicks or mascots for Team Them. Every product they created or endorsed or flippantly slapped a label with their names across, we bought on sight, on pure concept alone. Their merch sold out before overseas factories full of underpaid, overworked employees even clocked in for the day to make the in-demand lip pout pills and edible emoji nail polish and vajayjay rejuvenation juice cleanses. 

At the end of their pastel fairytale forest of delights was a glittering road which led to an ordinary, creaking American-made bridge. And we all jumped from it like the beautiful little lemmings that they knew we, at our most human core, always were. We were committed to being their sustenance. We would happily make a boat of bones they could sail away on.

On the cold and dusty linoleum floor I felt light and liberated, able to explore my inner fantasy life with The Sisters. I had no clue that I would one day soon get a real chance to be in the same room as them. First, I had to be slapped back into consciousness; a second birth.

•••

It was a normal Tuesday that turned into the strangest collective moment of our lives. Those of us who were among The Chosen were the first to find out. In AP Biology, Brandon Townsend was doing that annoying thing again where he takes the metal tip of his cowboy boot and pulls my stool inch by inch towards him until, by the end of class, I’m practically sitting on his lap. It was getting to the critical moment when I had to turn around and assert myself by yelling or moving to another lab table when I fell to the floor instead. 

“She’s ODing!” screamed Jazi, the girl who sat across from me. I had never taken a drug in my life (save for The Seven Sister Thin is In supplements.) Jazi jumped on the floor and started clearing out space around me, thinking the others would soon come to her side to my aide. No one was looking at me. Nothing would ever be about just me ever again.

Everyone was staring at their phones instead, which had all started spontaneously and concurrently flashing. Except for me, Tara, Luna, Nicolette, and… Brandon? We were all writhing on the floor in an agonizing stupor. Mrs. Krauss was rushing around the room, asking us what was wrong. The school secretary came over the loudspeaker to announce a Stage Five lockdown. Only the principals and teachers knew what all six stages were, but we’d heard the rumors. This one was used to indicate mass medical emergencies, like E. coli or mono outbreaks.

Beverlane, my lab partner, bent down to wipe my bangs from my forehead. My hair was dyed half blonde and half silver, like The Sisters all had in their latest Monday makeover video, which I had watched the night before. Since my mother was a digital esthetician—choosing products virtually for her clients and then mailing them out—I had access to all kinds of materials to change my look faster than my peers could even pick up the phone to book an appointment at one of the three sad salons in our podunk town.

I opened my eyes and saw the dependable pencils stuck in the ceiling. I still couldn’t move.

“Guys,” Beverlane whispered. “KaTrice’s eyes are turning orange!”

•••

I woke up later that day barricaded in the nurse's office. Brandon, Nicolette, Luna, and Tara were all staring at me with the same new irises, glowing pumpkin-coloured. 

“What the fuck is happening?” I asked while trying to move my legs. At least I had my body back. Everyone looked pissed and shook. Brandon somehow appeared attractive to me for the first time in our grade school lives. I placed a hand on my head, assuming I was feverish to even have thought that.

“Watch this first. Then we’ll talk.” Luna shoved her phone in my face while pressing play with her thumb. She had a crisp matte black stiletto manicure. I did what she said.

On the screen were the Samrammian sisters, all seven of them; Savannah, Sirena, Sage, Sofie, Stella, Scarlett, and Serenity. They stared directly into the camera of the recording. Auto-subtitles in your default language setting popped up at the bottom of the screen. For some reason, they were standing. It looked like their Balenciaga silver leather boots were stepping all over their words. (I made a note to put them on my online wish list.) The voiceover sounded like a recording of each of their voices all mixed up as if they were speaking as one person. They wore these long, silky-looking apricot caftans. They honestly looked amazing.

“We have a very special announcement to make to all of our followers, haters, and the world. Now is the time for us to show you what we are. Do not be afraid. Like always, we are here to help you become the best version of yourselves. Behold our truth!”

They simultaneously started to shake back and forth, to vibrate really. An upbeat song from one of their latest boyfriend’s bands played in the background. I recognized it from a commercial for a skin peel retreat in The Maldives that I begged my dad to gift me last Christmas. He refused.

“Sssssssss.” 

I looked around the nurse’s office. Everyone was hissing with a look on their face that indicated they couldn’t help it. It seemed to be a reaction to the light hum of vibration that could be heard even over, or under, the music. My gooseflesh pricked to attention.

My hand shot up to my mouth. I was horrified to feel a soft mist of spit flying from it. I was hissing too! 

As The Sisters shook, their delicate outfits fell off, and they were stark naked for a few seconds. Then, their skin, their petal-like and thoroughly hydrated skin, began to… molt? Peel? Slide? There was no frame of reference through which I could accurately describe what I was seeing. It was jaw-droppingly gorgeous to behold and also terrifying to watch. After the swirl of skin and a searing cascade of light beams, they had transformed. My eyelids felt warm.

They looked like bald Barbies with translucent lips holding back endless rows of teeth. I’m ashamed now that after my initial shock my thought was that I just had to shave my head as soon as I got home from school. They were slightly smaller now, without the aid of those heels, but still just as thin and curvy in all the spots their human celebrity-selves were. And in those new-old faces, all seven of them, were two large citrus eyes. The same eyes I now saw them through.

The Sisters, or whatever they were now, levitated, leaving whichever LA studio they were filming in. The screen went black and a series of bold numbers flashed across it in a neon green font. The anchor color of their latest summer swimsuit collection.

29.9792° N, 31.1342° E

“What… does it mean?” I managed to exhale between the fingers of my hands, both of which were covering my lower face. I could feel my heart thumping against my satin Sweet Sisters’ bralette.

“They’re the coordinates of The Great Pyramid,” said Luna, snatching her phone back. She seemed more tired than afraid. I wondered if she was also thinking of going bald.

“In Egypt,” added Brandon. 

“I know where the fucking pyramids are, Brandon!” but it came out more like a gentle admonishment than the targeted missile I intended it to be. The fact that his eyes were now glowing just like mine somehow made it hard to be super angry with him.

“Okay, you guys.” Nicolette stood up, like a self-appointed leader would in a situation like this. Being voted class president does things for a young girl’s sense of duty. I had a feeling she was about to let us all know exactly what the next step was.

“Isn’t it obvious? We’ve all been chosen to join the Samrammian family. They handpicked us to be the future of the human race!” She had always been prone to hyperbole, but now there wasn’t a lick of falseness in her tone. Nevertheless, Nicolette’s earnestness irked me.

I rolled my now coral eyes and pulled the top off my Sweetwater bottle to have a sip. Tara slapped it out of my hand before I could get out a drop. I watched the cool liquid pool on the waxed linoleum floor.

“What are you doing? Don’t you get it? Everything that they convinced us to buy was laced with their, whatever this is.” She pointed at her eyeglasses. 

“Whatever they are, we will become.” finished Luna.

“This is not what I signed up for when I caved and bought a Seven Sisters Skinny Shake subscription.” Tara, typically the quiet one, was on a rage roll, and I was very much into it.

“We have to go there.” said Nicolette, throwing her arms up in the air, each Posi Vibez eclipse-moon-charged gemstone bracelet clinking down her hairless forearms. I got those same pieces for my birthday but only wore them when I had PMS.

“Go where?” It was hard for me to keep up with the constant chatter and snappy commentary on an empty stomach. Add to that being locked in a small room with classmates I could barely stand and the fact that my favorite people on the planet were actually not from this planet and maybe not even really people and I was having the worst day of my life. At least since January, when my crush Joey Jacobs started dating Luna’s twin sister, Sola. I wondered to myself why she wasn’t here with us.

I guess twins don't share everything after all.

I slid back down to the floor and hugged my knees and thought about my mom, dad, and stupid little sister Jazlynn for the first time since I’d left them at the dinner table to go watch the Seven Sisters Show the night before.

“I don't want to go to Egypt. I just want to go home.” I sighed. 

Luna bent back down, cupping my chin with her sharp nails. Her eyes were two drops of orange juice on the counter.

“KaTrice, The Sisters are our home now.”

•••

I didn’t know it at the time, but that day and night comprised our transformation into half-full glasses of light. The other, older halves of use were still full of the putrid airs of humanity. They meant to rid us of this original sin through the power of small and irreversible changes.

•••

The first time I became aware of The Sisters I was six years old. My babysitter, Pika, had brought over a bunch of magazines so we could make Valentine’s Day cards for all her crushes.

“Make sure you clip out any sexy girls, KaTrice, but just their bodies.”

She’d brought over a sheet of sticky school photo headshots in her vintage bright pink and teal Babysitters Club backpack. Every jagged woman sliced up with my plastic scissors was given the new identity of a very normal looking teenage girl named Pika Walters.

My little fingers turned the page and I studied an ad for a new reality TV show. Momma and Daddy still closely monitored everything I watched and heard, combing every medium of entertainment for secret worldly messages or adult content. So I had never seen The Seven Sisters Show before.

Spend Tuesday Nights in Style!

The ad copy was printed in thin neon letters across the LA skyline at night. All seven of The Sisters were packed into a convertible, their long so-blonde-it-was-almost-silver wigs  twirling away from their tiny shoulders. Back before they were told to “mix it up” and “differentiate” their looks to grab a larger share of the ever-distracted tween, teen, and twenty-something market. They all wore sunglasses and looked seductively over their backs, teasing the camera, their public, me.

I knew right then and there what I wanted to be when I grew up and, more specifically, who I wanted to become.

•••

Ten minutes after we all finished watching their live-streamed revelation, we were all squeezing through the secret back door hidden behind a filing cabinet beside Nurse Osage’s desk. She’s Luna’s auntie, and so she told her all about the school’s active-shooter-planned safety routes and various trap doors built into the campus during routine renovations over the summer. Figuring her niece wasn’t the kind of kid to blab to her friends or turn postal herself, Nurse Osage had divulged this to Luna at a Labour Day family BBQ while pouring her third glass of Sipping Sisters Rosé. I wondered if she was off hissing alone somewhere, pondering those coordinates.

The file cabinet weighed a shit-ton, so we pushed it just far enough to slip through the crack of the hidden door. We took the long way to the student parking lot to avoid the principal’s office. Although all the classrooms were still locked down, the principal’s office was most likely command central for how to appropriately communicate what had just happened to our parents and guardians. Specifically, how to deal with the five locked-up freaks with new sunburst eyes.

The parking lot security guard had left his post, so Nicolette drove the electro cruiser she’d inherited from her older sibling right past the gate, breaking off the thick plastic arm that had failed again, like so many times before, to keep teenagers contained within school grounds from 8:15 am to 2:35 pm. 

The first light we hit was red. She tapped her fingertips on the wheel, looked at Tara riding shotgun, and glanced into the rearview mirror back at the rest of us. Silence reverberated off our bodies. Nicolette broke it with a final grasp at normalcy.

“Are we sure about this?” 

Tara, otherwise so plain, and itching to finally be included, nodded like a ragdoll. Brandon sighed and Luna offered a curt “uh huh”. I cleared my throat.

“Yeah. Let’s go now before anyone stops us.”

 Nicolette evaluated the totality of our answers, crushed the gas pedal, and ran that light.

What else was there to do? The Sisters had summoned us.

•••

We quickly stopped at the nearest gas station to load up on trashy camo hoodies, sunglasses, hair dye, burner phones, and all other materials for fugitives-in-training. We didn’t know why they might be coming for us, only that once the dust settled on exactly what The Sisters had just done, they would try to contain all those affected. Something nefarious and government-sponsored would surely try to stop us along our path to them. I’d seen enough aliens vs. humans movies to understand that no one would let us be.

Ever since running my chubby fingers across that glossy ad on that day with my babysitter, I had always wanted to be more; taller, prettier, cooler, older. 

Glammed out. 

Bossed up.

Slimthick.

The Sisters represented a purity of body and mind. The perfect modern, self-sufficient but community-centered woman. Caring and confident. Empowered and informed. Otherworldly.

Now it looked like I was going to be a part of something bigger and greater than myself, finally. Whether I wanted to or not.

•••

As we peeled away from the gas station, everyone set to work. Without much discussion, we all just knew what to do. It was as if our brains were now in total sync. We five, who had never so much as hung out outside of school grounds before, were now completely and forever bound by our fandom.

Nicolette drove in the direction of the nearest airport, twenty miles between us and our new lives. Luna smashed our smartphones with a hammer and a textbook, tossing pieces of them on the road as we whipped past dried-out wildflowers and dead squirrels. I called the airport, old-school style, and booked tickets with my emergency credit card. First to London, so we could operate below the radar for a while. Tara sat next to me, ripping the tags off our new fast fashion looks. We would all, of course, buy something higher end before we reached The Sisters. We wouldn’t dare stand before them in rags. 

Would they really open their arms to me? To us? A group of habitually moody teenagers from the unsexiest part of the USA. Who buy their crystal creams and wear their energized extensions and constantly watch their content to feel a splash of luxury and wonder in an underwhelming town. I bet that legions of their more sophisticated fans from Europe, Asia, Africa, etc. would beat us there based on the geography alone. 

I shook the doubt from my head. It didn’t matter who we were or where we were from anymore. They would make us new, make us over. We would all be sisters now.

Brandon played around with the radio dial, finding an appropriate song to soothe us along our strange journey. It was the new hit from Devotional, a boy band whose lead singer, Jett, was dating the youngest of The Sisters. It was a bass-heavy EDM love song called “Post-Apocalyptic Muse.” This part was my favorite:

And if one day every girl on Earth

Died and went to Hell

I wouldn’t waste my time digging deep

To wake you from that spell

Because you wouldn’t be there, baby

You’re not like other girls

You’re a sexy, magic goddess

Loving you is like a blur

And even at the end of the world

You’d still be my muse

Even if the Apocalypse comes

It’s gonna be just me and you.