Flesh-Colored Horror - Dying Young

Dying Young

• Originally appeared in "Monthly Magazine Halloween" September 1991

The story starts with three girls in a bathroom. The main speaker, Ayako, talks about her friend, Chizuru, who suddenly went from ugly, like them, to beautiful in a month. She used to be one of the 'Ugly Trio' and the story flashes around to people around her noting how beautiful she looked, but how she also looked very anemic. A month later, she became even more beautiful, and turned every head. But two and half months later, she collapsed and died from a heart attack while running track at school.

At the funeral, Chizuru's family has a picture of her showing a lumpy clay faced girl who looked nothing like the Chizuru the reader first saw. The two girls talk about how different she looked and someone shush's them. Later on they continue to talk about what they would do if they suddenly became pretty like Chizuru had.

A little while later, Hiroko, the other girl in the trio, begins to change. Also fat and lumpy, she suddenly become thin and beautiful. Girls in her class ask for her secret, sitting beside her in hopes that they will 'catch' her beauty. She mentions that she isn't doing anything, and that it's happening to her little sister too. She doesn't seem concerned about the change, but the remaining ugly girl catches a lot of flack for being the only ugly one left.

Hiroko still talks with Ayako, commenting on how boys only like her now that she's beautiful and that Ayako could be beautiful too. The girls who touched and were around Hiroko suddenly seem to be coming down with the 'beautiful' disease, and they flock around each other trying to spread it. Ayako doesn't get it and is teased even more for being immune. There's a scene with two boys talking about how 1/4 of the girls at the school were suddenly beautiful, and that it's happening because the end of the century is coming.

Hiroko and a boy are walking along when she sees her younger sister, Kaori, in the shade of a tree. They walk over and Kaori says she feels sick - and falls over dead. Over the next few weeks, all of the beautiful girls begin to die starting a rumor that they were infected with a disease that makes the infected beautiful before they die.

Ayako, still plain and ugly, meets up with Hiroko. Hiroko laughs and says she'd rather die young and beautiful than old and ugly. She then mentions that a new rumor has started - that if you're a beautiful infected girl the only way to survive is to kill a girl your age on the third Friday of every month. Ayako laughs it off.

Ayako looks out her window one night and sees Hiroko with two other beautiful girls roaming the street below. Ayako follows them down and overhears Hiroko asking the others to please let her go first, since she's been feeling sick for so long. Ayako wonders if they're really out looking for girls to kill when the trio come across two friends parting ways in the alley after shopping. A girl with glasses walks towards them, and Hiroko pulls a knife to kill her. Ayako jumps out and tells her to stop, but the other girls go after her, one of them faster and killing the girl. Hiroko turns on Ayako, telling the remaining girl to hold her down so she can kill her, but the girl won't do it. Ayako pleads with her former friend to come to her senses but Hiroko screams that it's a girl like Ayako who should be dying, not her. She runs towards Ayako with a knife - but falls down dead before she reaches her. The story ends with a picture of a beautiful girl's face surrounded by the words: 'The end of the 20th Century... ...And a strange sickness was going around....'