Content warning:Blood, knives, self-mutilation, hospital bills, cardboard
The skull is very easy to see, if you know where to look.
The bone, under the flesh of the face— shaping the way that it stretches, bending it and keeping it taut in some places, making it slack and hang sagging in others, covering the skull in a kind of veil— mostly hidden, but shaping the folds.
Only mostly hidden, of course— I smiled, or at least approximated a smile.
Lips stretched out and upwards, twitching and twisting my muscles, letting the teeth out. Shaped like hard little knobs and scalpels. Little bits of bone.
I let my lips fall back, face back into a passive shape.
I turned from the mirror, and reached for the thing which rested besides the sink. My hand flinched from it at the last second, and I turned back to the mirror without picking it up.
The flesh, the flesh of course— very stringy, not that you could tell. Sheets of muscle, little ropes of meat, twitching and not entirely underneath my control. A knowledge of facial anatomy will strip away the covering effect of the skin, revealing the true nature of the flesh beneath.
The eyes, too, are there— not the best, but nothing I could do about them. They flickered back to the thing beside the sink. The pupils contracted.
I shaded them with my hands, and I could see them dilate again. It disappoints me that there is nothing that I can do about the eyes. The other things I have a modicum of control over— not enough, not nearly enough, a puppet’s face very loosely strung.
Ah, the skin, yes, that was certainly… there.
Sometimes I can’t even believe that it’s mine. It simply doesn’t work— horrible, horrible thing. I mean, yes, it does its job- but to think that it is always there, hugging my face, tight against my body. Tight, but sagging.
I glanced back at the thing beside the sink. Very small, very—
Shiny.
I had a brief mental image of someone removing a pair of gloves. Dirty, gritty, ugly gloves. Reveal what is beneath, fix the problem.
But that’s for another day.
Have you ever looked at your skin? I mean a really, really good look at it. A close, surgical, medical inspection to look for the blemishes it always has. It is disgusting, I must say. Valleys of creases and oil and flaking skin, little pits and rough hairs. Ever seen skin under a microscope? You don’t want to. A horrible landscape of death and grime. Pimples and boils like mountains, disrupting the plains and plateaus of what should be smooth. Wrinkles, deep gullies and winding canyons signs of age and decay. The horrible and loathsome geography of the outside of our bodies.
I look at it all the time, and I can’t understand why people don’t look at theirs, and why they don’t look at mine. I mean, if I care about it, why shouldn’t they? They should all be very concerned. I find it disconcerting that I care about my skin more than other people care about it. It seems like they should look at it more. I can’t understand why they don’t.
I stack boxes for a living. It pays rather well, for a job stacking boxes. Which is to say, still not that much.
I hope to get out of it, but it’s not what I’m worrying about. I get enough money to buy things, like a little thing which rests beside the sink.
I stack boxes for a living. I hate it. It reminds me of the fact that I have this horrible— this horrible skin, this flesh— and that there’s nothing I can do about it. Every time I touch something, it reminds me that I have this covering. Every time I lift something up, it reminds me of the meat hanging on my bones.
Nothing I can do about the meat, I guess, other than what I already do.
When I get home, from a long day at work, I like to turn the lights off and sit very still in the middle of the floor, closing windows and turning off fans. I like to close my eyes and not feel anything, not move at all, to pretend for a moment that there is just me in the room.
And not this horrible skin that I drag along, sagging and flapping— so loud I can almost HEAR it— or is that just me? I can hear it in my soul, a thick and heavy and stifling cloth. I can hear it in my soul, and that is all that matters.
I stack boxes for a living, and so does my coworker. I don’t know his name. He has the uniform, and all that, and has had it so long that the name tag has faded out. It might start with a “P”. Maybe.
He’s very good at stacking boxes, I’ll give him that. He is very good at the whole— well, the whole “touching things” thing. I can’t understand it. Surely everyone else must hate their skin, the way that it clings to you.
I watch him, occasionally, and his face. I wonder about it, sometimes— about everyone, really.
I can’t really look at people in the same way anymore— can’t look at their faces. I can’t look at them without seeing something inhuman. The nose seems a beak fit more for a vulture, or a little pig snout, or a little retrousse stub like the remnants of some greater limb. The mouth is thin and cruel, or thick and bloated, or some other horrible aspect of a worm. The anatomy breaks down into geometric shapes and then is twisted into forms more fitting animal biology. I can’t look at people without seeing muzzles, pulled from the face like clay, extended, long, horrible.
I asked him about it, once, in a round-about way— what he thought about it, in general. I wasn’t that talkative— I didn’t like talking.
“What, faces? I wouldn’t worry about it— yours is fine, and even if it wasn’t, it's not the kind of thing you should care about. Everybody has worries like that—” and he caught the expression on my face, and realized that I was giving this more thought than most, and thought me crazy or something, and said, “but if it’s really bad, it can’t hurt to see a therapist or something. Besides, I know you’ve had problems before.”
Can’t hurt to get lied to, I suppose. Can’t hurt, can’t hurt— but of course, it will, because my worry will be denied when there is a perfectly reliable cure, a perfectly wonderful cure that sits beside my sink.
I shudder, but this time I think of the alternative, and how I couldn’t stand to live with this grime and horror for the rest of my life.
Fear returns when I see it again, as I stand in the middle of the bathroom door. Fear, and a kind of grim joy.
A smile writhed its way onto my face, my lips twitching and twisting like fat, bloated, pinkish worms around the bone beneath, hiding the little drips and drops of saliva kept in the pit of my mouth. My mouth was dry. It could never be wet when I decided to look at myself in the mirror again.
The smile kept on writhing, I tried to banish it but it writhed still. Soon it will writhe off of my face again, the horrid fat little grimace.
Contrary to my will for my lips to sag back into their droopy shape again, the corners of my mouth tightened, little creases formed by the tightening of the muscles— I could feel it, and could feel the shape of my face as I hurriedly tried to press my cheeks back into shape.
Disgusting. Oh, well. No time like the present.
I had drawn on my face with a black marker. I do it on most nights, little guiding lines, preparations, but tonight was different. The well-practiced markings, the outward sign of an inward dream, something so familiar to me I could do it in my sleep. They served to show where I could begin my work.
Trying not to think about it, I placed the palm of my hand on the handle of the thing by the sink. What I am touching is innocuous— the handle, at least. The rest has a cruel air about it, a simple air, an uncaring, efficient, clinical air that promises: I will be your savior, I will deliver you from your problem, I will cut you from your bonds, I will make you perfect with this unliving and uncaring instrument.
It was the kind of thing that promised, in low, hushed tones: I work wonders, I work miracles, I work painlessly and when I slice it will be a whisper.
The thing I am looking at has no real color of its own— it is polished to such a high degree that it is seen more as a distortion than an object, a twisting in your vision instead of a thing to hang your eyes upon. But I look at it still.
Very carefully, hands shaking, I placed it up against my cheek. Surgical knowledge helped here, and I managed to control my hands enough to make the long, winding cut. A few little snips here, working it under. Move it up, along the line here, a cut here, a wiggling motion to let it hang off, sharpness beneath, freeing myself, what had I done, no going back now, press onward and press under, hurts so much, head growing dizzy, continuing anyway, there was so much, there was simply so much of it everywhere, good thing that I decided to call an ambulance before this, good thing that I can make the little snips and then as I black out and then as I fall and then as I stumble downwards onto my knees with a crack that can’t be good I think to myself and I don’t want it back so I drop the thing and then I raised my hands to my face and I tear, I fling it away into the shower and then darkness
I woke up in a hospital. From the numbness on my face I could tell that I was very heavily anesthetized. I felt dizzy— whether that was from blood loss or from the anesthetic I couldn’t tell, but it was probably both, I guess. From the numbness I remembered that it had worked, and I nearly shouted for joy before I realized that I could hardly move, such a shame, oh well, no matter, I was free, yes, finally, and I could get rid of the distasteful item beside the sink, or rather on the floor now, I guess, or probably in a small little plastic bag in a freezer somewhere getting analyzed.
I opened my mouth and pleasantly realized that there was no skin surrounding it. I called for a nurse, struggling to vocalize before finding my breath. It was hard to form some sounds without lips, but it was close enough.
Someone ran towards me and rapidly paled when they saw the remnants of what had been my face. I tried to smile genially before I realized I didn’t have much of a mouth to smile with.
“Hello,” I said weakly.
She quickly ran out of the room. Some people simply don’t have much of a stomach.
“Hello?” I called out again. Eventually, an older nurse walked in, one who had apparently already gotten used to me.
She coughed. “You know, the courts are going to have a lot of questions for you.”
I nodded, unperturbed. I could take it.
“And there are medical bills, you know.” She looked down at the clipboard at the end of my bed.
“I don’t suttose y insurance cowers it?” I said, unable to make some sounds due to not having any lips.
“What, covers cutting your face off with a knife? No, of course it doesn’t— to my knowledge.”
Oh, well. It was still worth it, even if I couldn’t get insurance to pay for the hospital visit.
A week later, I was home. There was food out in the kitchen, rotting. With some distaste, I cleaned it away. Nothing in the fridge. I was too tired to make anything, so I decided to get pizza. Called it up, paid reluctantly for something that was really too expensive, going to work tomorrow, time to go to the bathroom.
Contrary to my expectations, nobody had actually changed anything in the bathroom. The blood still laid dark and brown on the floor, thick and crusted and with footprints where people had been running and dragging me out. It was going to be a pain to clean.
I briefly checked myself in the mirror before trying to find the knife that I had used. I gave up after a little while.
There were flies, buzzing, black, like raindrops on the blood-splattered shower curtain. It was a rough buzzing, like eerie rain, the sound altered by the acoustics of the shower.
Inside the shower was my face, and it wasn’t pretty.
After shooing the flies away, it confirmed my thoughts- that my face had never looked that good anyway. It wasn’t pretty, and it never had been.
I picked it up, disturbing the new layer of flies, and felt part of it- the cheek- fall away, rotted.
Oh, well. It has always had a weak and pudgy look to it. This was nothing new. I’d get a plastic bag to stick it in later, then toss it in the garbage. That was probably legal.
Expectant, I checked the remnants of my face in the mirror again, in the same pose I had used to check it originally.
Oh.
Oh no.
I recoiled, shaken.
I had no face.
I had no face. I had removed it, I had cut it off, I had
torn it off—
—I looked in the mirror, and a corpse stared back at me.
I—
—no, no, this was— this was a broken promise. I had been promised. I had promised myself.
But I was gone now. There was nothing left except for a few scraps in the shower, food for maggots.
I was seized with the feeling that I was no longer a person, but a product of medicine, a product of technology, a product of a shining knife which now I hated, hated more than anything I ever had before, because it had let me have my dreams and my dreams were horrible and my dreams has always been horrible and my dreams had been this disgusting skinless faceless head, bared teeth and white shining eyes on a field of scar tissue, and I felt a little stinging on my cheek because of the tears and the salt and the burning when you don’t really have skin, just a huge massive scar where your face should be, I hated this dream, I hated this nightmare that had led me on for years and I hated the cruel and surgical efficiency of the knife that I had bought. I had been an animal, but I was now a corpse. I had hated my anatomy, but it was better to look at it than the remnants of my autopsy. I hated being artificial. I hated my cure. It was disgusting.
I very nearly changed my mind about it.
I very nearly did.
I very nearly doubted myself, second-guessed myself, accused myself, hated myself, when I was never the problem.
I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a glint of metal. I laughed. Of course! It was all so simple.
People could look at me, observe me, judge me, but why should I care? I only care about my own evaluations.
My face was not the problem.
I grabbed the knife.
I didn’t need a mirror to get rid of my eyes.