De-gen-erate

Claire had always been the good one. The responsible one. The boring one.

At thirty-two, she'd built a modest life—a decent flat, a stable job in accounting, a sensible wardrobe of muted colours. She was the kind of woman who brought casseroles to neighbours and never forgot birthdays. A proper Millennial success story, if you ignored the crippling student debt and the fact she'd never own property.

Her brother Kyle, however, was a different story entirely.

Twenty-nine and perpetually unemployed, Kyle had been crashing on her sofa for eight months. Eight. Months. Of energy drink cans littering her coffee table, of him staying up until 4 AM playing video games, of listening to him complain about how the world was unfair and how his generation had it so hard.

She loved him. She really did. But God, she wanted to strangle him sometimes.

"I found something," Claire said one evening, placing a small pink vial on the kitchen counter. The liquid inside shimmered like liquid bubblegum, tiny sparkles catching the overhead light.

Kyle barely looked up from his phone. "What is it?"

"It's called De-Gen-Erate. It's… look, I know it sounds mad, but there's this underground alchemist who makes potions that can change your generation. Like, actually shift when you were born, give you the mindset and advantages of a different cohort."

That got his attention. Kyle's bloodshot eyes finally met hers. "You're taking the piss."

"I'm not. I spent three hundred quid on this." She pushed the vial toward him. "I thought maybe… if you became Gen X, you'd have that work ethic, you know? That 'just get on with it' attitude. Might help you find a job, get sorted."

Kyle picked up the vial, turning it in his pale, soft fingers. "Gen X, huh?"

"It's just a thought. The dose is calibrated for—"

But Kyle had already uncorked it.

"Kyle, wait—!"

He downed the entire thing in one gulp, his Adam's apple bobbing. When he lowered the empty vial, his lips were stained cotton-candy pink.

"What the fuck," Claire breathed. "That was meant to be measured out! You can't just—if you take too much it will knock you back to Gen Z!"

Kyle grinned. A strange, sharp grin she'd never seen on his face before.

"Gen Z," he said. "I think I'd like to be the ultimate Gen Z. Main character energy, you know? I want to be young and hot and have everyone worship me and—"

His voice cracked. Not cracked like puberty—cracked like glass, shattering into something higher, breathier.

"Kyle?"

"I—" His hands flew to his throat. "What's happening to my voice? It's so—mmmh—"

The sound that escaped him was almost a moan. His whole body shuddered, and Claire watched in horror as his shoulders began to narrow, pulling inward with a series of wet pops that made her stomach lurch.

"Oh my God." Claire backed against the refrigerator. "Oh my God, Kyle, we need to—we need to call someone—"

"No." Kyle's voice was fully feminine now, a bratty soprano dripping with something like pleasure. "No, this feels… ooooh… this feels so fucking good, actually?"

His hips cracked outward—CRACK-CRACK—swelling wider, his jeans suddenly straining at the seams. Claire could see the denim bulging obscenely as flesh redistributed, as fat and muscle migrated to places it had no business being.

"Kyle, please—"

"Don't call me that." The person who had been her brother was shrinking now, losing nearly half a foot of height in a series of sickening compressions. Bones grinding, reforming, reshaping. "That name is, like, so tragic."

The face was the worst part.

Claire watched her brother's features melt and reform like hot wax. His weak jaw sharpened into something delicate and cruel. His nose narrowed. His lips plumped outward, swelling into a perfect pout that glistened as if freshly glossed. Cheekbones rose high and sharp beneath skin that was smoothing, clearing, becoming porcelain-perfect.

"Yesss…" The creature groaned, and the sound was pure sex—throaty and satisfied. "I can feel it, like… I can feel myself becoming her. The baddest bitch. The main character."

Hair erupted from his—her—scalp, tumbling down in golden waves that seemed to grow lighter with each passing second. Blonde highlights threading through like sunlight, curling at the ends, reaching past slender shoulders.

"I'm so fucking pretty." She laughed, and it was a cruel sound, a mean-girl cackle that Claire had heard in a hundred high school movies. "Oh my God, I'm literally so hot? Like, I can just tell."

The body finished its reshaping with one final, obscene surge. Breasts swelled against the stretched fabric of Kyle's gaming t-shirt—which was somehow transforming too, the black cotton bleaching to pink, shrinking, reforming into a tight crop top that barely contained her new assets. The graphic shifted and warped until it showed three cartoon girls in pink, with the word "BETTER" emblazoned across her chest.

"I'm—" Claire couldn't process what she was seeing. "You're—"

"I'm her." The girl admired her new body with shameless appreciation, running manicured hands down her flat, toned stomach. Her nails were pink now, perfectly done. "I'm, like, the hottest version of myself that could ever exist? And you're…"

Those blue eyes—had Kyle's eyes always been that blue? That cold?—swept over Claire with undisguised contempt.

"…you're my boring older sister. Ew."

"What? No, I'm—Kyle, you're my brother—"

But even as she said it, the words felt wrong in her mouth. Like trying to remember a dream that was already fading.

The room shimmered.

Reality shifted.

And suddenly Claire was standing in a different kitchen—same layout, but the decor had changed. More pink. More modern. A TikTok ring light was set up in the corner. A pink furry jacket hung on a hook by the door.

"Ugh, Claire, you're staring." The girl—the girl who had never been Kyle, who had always been her younger sister Kylie—rolled her eyes dramatically. "It's giving obsessed? It's giving jealous? Can you, like, not?"

Claire's head spun. She could remember—she could almost remember—

No.

No, she'd always had a younger sister. Kylie, twenty-one, influencer, the family favourite. The pretty one. The successful one. The one their parents actually liked.

But something felt wrong.

"I…" Claire pressed a hand to her temple. "I thought… didn't you used to be…"

"What? A loser like you?" Kylie snorted, checking her reflection in her phone camera. She adjusted her blonde waves, pouted her glossy lips. "As if. I've literally been iconic since birth, babes. Some of us are just better."

She said the word the same way it was written on her shirt. Dripping with superiority.

"Now move, I have a content call with my brand partners. Some of us have, like, actual careers?" Kylie pushed past her, and Claire caught a whiff of something—vanilla and sugar and something darker underneath. Something that made her feel small and plain and less.

"Oh, and Bradley's coming over later." Kylie paused at the doorway, throwing a smirk over her shoulder. "My boyfriend? The one who used to have a crush on you in secondary school? Yeah, he's mine now. Has been for months. He says I give the best head he's ever had. Isn't that, like, so cute?"

She disappeared into her bedroom—the master bedroom, Claire realised, the one that used to be hers—and the door slammed shut.

Claire stood alone in the kitchen.

Something wet slid down her cheek. A tear, she realised. She was crying.

Because deep down, in some locked room of her mind, she knew the truth. She knew what she'd lost. She knew that the cruel, beautiful creature preening in the other room had once been someone she loved, someone she'd tried to help.

And now?

Now she was just the plain older sister. The boring one. The one who would spend the rest of her life watching Kylie succeed, watching Kylie glow, watching Kylie take everything and everyone she wanted with a flip of her blonde hair and a flash of her perfect smile.

Life's a bitch, isn't it?