Drill It
Ear
He was eleven when his best friend, stoned and with incredibly unstable hands, put a potato behind one side of his right ear and jabbed a sewing needle through the other. He had left the dirty sewing needle in for two days, until he could grab one of his little sister's earrings to feed through it instead.
In those two days, the piercing got infected. Neither he nor his friend had the foresight to sterilize the needle, the earring was cheap, crappy teenage mall metal, and the stud didn't have a long enough post. So when the lobe of Tymmie's ear expanded to the size of a quarter it became buried in his flesh, turning the skin around it purple due to the pressure, with crusted over green pus eating the metal.
His stepdad didn't notice, his mother didn't care.
His sister squealed though. First an indignant seven year old huff for him stealing one of the earrings that belonged to the two sets she owned, and second a ghastly cry of, "EW! That is SO gross Tymmie!"
When people started sending him looks, Tymmie decided enough was enough. He met up with the same friend who had done the piercing, smoked a joint, and pried it out. He blacked out, and it took four months for the swelling to go down, his lobe acquiring a jagged, crescent shaped scar that he would have for the rest of his life.
It was his first real taste of pain.
Nose
He was thirteen and drunk in the bathroom of a seedy punk club when he pulled a safety pin off of his denim vest and forced it through his left nostril. He was tired of getting the shit kicked out of him by the older anarchist kids in alleyways after shows for looking too weak, for being too scrawny and too young. The bloody, silver mess that was his nose made him look tougher, but more importantly, it made him feel stronger, better, and bigger than he was. The skin that was punched through was a dam being broken.
When his older brother, the one who had introduced him to the anarchist lifestyle in the first place, couldn't keep his eyes off his face, Tymmie smirked, running a hand over his dull, brown hair before grabbing another beer.
That night, when his mother went to slap him with a whiskey bottle, Tymmie realized he could hit back.
Eyebrow
He was fifteen when his older brother stopped coming home. The two of them were never exactly close- his brother was around their biological father too much as a kid and it made him distance himself from his younger sibling who was said to be a carbon copy of him- but the void of his presence was noticeable.
His older brother had been his role model, in a way. The first one to start taking Tymmie to shows, the one who had taught him to play guitar, the one to get him weed or, if the occasion called for it, something stronger.
He just vanished, no note, no nothing. And when Tymmie tried to explain it to his little sister, he found he couldn't say anything except that he was glad he was gone. Not because he hated him, but because it meant one day he would be able to leave too.
A few days later, Tymmie asked his sister to pierce his eyebrow with one of her earrings. This time she didn't complain too much, because she was preoccupied with her missing brother and the other one that was starting to look like a different person each time a new piece of metal was added to his face.
A few years after his brother had disappeared, Tymmie saw him for one last time in a Midwestern city, just passing through as his group made their way from his hometown of Manhattan across the country to Los Angeles. He had met his stare with his matching yellow one, and his brother didn't even halt his step as he kept walking. He didn't recognize him, the face of the man who had haunted him as a child blurred by hooks and studs.
Chin
He was nineteen when his sister asked him to go with her to a club she had been invited to. By that point in his life, he didn't live at home anymore. He didn't really live anywhere, crashing at friends' from time to time or if that failed finding a nice park or bridge to sleep under. So he felt obligated to go with her, just by the fact that she had actually put in the effort to find him.
He hated clubs. Especially now that he had become homeless. He felt unclean, self conscious as all the girls moved away from him as if he were a leper, awkward as the guys sent him disgusted looks.
But his sister had said please, so here he was.
Stupid. He was so stupid.
Pretty girls didn't ask boys who hadn't showered in weeks to dance. Pretty girls didn't waste their breath on freaks like him.
Pretty girls would never kiss someone like him.
But he wasn't thinking that night, and a pretty girl was nibbling on his lower lip when he looked into sulfur colored eyes. His last free thought was that he had finally gone to hell.
The next day, when the pretty girl had abandoned him in a dumpster somewhere, he pierced the spot where she had bit him with a rusty safety pin.
He didn't feel a thing.
Cheeks
He meets a friend when he's wandering through the back parts of Manhattan.
His name is Karyl.
And Tymmie doesn't like him very much.
"What's your problem, ass face?" The ugly sixteen year old muttered, not even looking up as he rubbed his long, pale fingers above a trashcan fire.
"Who're you calling ass face, you ugly fuck?" Tymmie growled back, sitting next to the boy who he knows is a Follower like him because he doesn't feel the urge to feed off of him.
The other boy snorted, offering Tymmie a beer from the once six pack now three pack, "Karyl."
"No, it's Tymmie actually," he said, offering the only smile he can while popping the top off.
"You're a cheeky bastard, you know that?" Karyl says bitterly, taking a long drink from his beer.
He misses the contemplative look on Tymmie's face.
Tongue
He receives the news of his sister's death from Karyl, of all people. His newest and only friend comes under the bridge the pair has been sleeping under, tosses him a newspaper, and walks away, a pained look on his face.
Tymmie's dirt encrusted hands pry the paper apart, looking for what disturbed the amoral being of corruption that was Karyl, freezing when he sees a pretty blonde girl smiling from the pages of the obituaries.
She was seventeen.
She was a suicide.
When he gets sick of Karyl asking him if he wants to talk about it, he makes a dramatic gesture of shoving one of his safety pins through his tongue.
Bridge
He and Karyl are eventually picked up. Stragglers like them are always picked up. The man who takes him under his wing is someone called Stanton. He's good-looking, popular within the Follower circles, and one of the nicest people Tymmie's ever known. He makes sure sheets are on Tymmie's mattress and that warm food is in his stomach. Sometimes, he gives him white powder to put in his veins.
Being with Stanton feels like heaven.
Tymmie wants to be like him. He cleans up his act, he makes himself more attractive, he finds confidence- he even hits on girls. All of his free time is spent harnessing his telepathy, trying his damned hardest to emulate Stanton, to be worthy of respect like Stanton is. Karyl thinks he's ridiculous, Tymmie notices how Karyl's started wearing perking up whenever Stanton orders him to do something.
His opinion is vastly changed when Stanton brings home a girl. A girl that he breaks. A girl that Tymmie can't help but picture as his sister—they are the same age.
Tymmie puts a bar in between his eyes, and decides he doesn't want to be handsome anymore.
Septum
He met the Magna Mater once, and decided that she was the most beautiful person he had ever seen. She was ethereal; a picture straight out of those hokey books of mythology Karyl had forced him to read. He thought about approaching her, talking to the famous Penelope of Athens. He thought about asking for her help.
But he decided not to, instead walking down the other side of the street and getting a piercer to put a hoop in between his nostrils.
If Penelope of Athens was a Goddess, he was a Minotaur.
Tongue Web
One night, when he was lying on the floor, arms folded behind his head and his ears straining not to hear Karyl's bearish snores on the mattress next to his, he heard a ruffling from across the room. Propping himself up on his elbow, he looked across the room to where the new girl was, sitting crossed legged on top of her sleeping bag and sending her long, pale fingers up and down the skin on her arms. Her nails like tiny, little spiders trying to burrow under the flesh.
"Stop looking at me, freak," she snarled, her blue eyes narrowing as the glared at him through a curtain of maroon hair, "You should take those things out, you look like a tackle box."
Tymmie smirked, making sure his cheek piercings were more pronounced before flipping her off and burrowing under his covers.
The next day, Tymmie went to a piercing studio and asked for the strangest place to get pierced, other than anything below the belt. The piercer had smiled like a kid in a candy store, and Tymmie left the place with a bright silver barbell through the skin web underneath his tongue.
The first thing he did when he returned to the apartment was grab Cassandra by the shoulders, curl up his tongue, and smile.
She cringed and punched him in the arm. Hard.
The smile stayed on his face.
Lip
He has two hoops through the skin of his lower lip. One for his sister, one for his brother. Every time he speaks, every time he eats, or drinks, or smokes, or breathes, he feels them.
Ear (redux)
He was much older when he pierced his ears. Older, wiser, stronger, but not necessarily better. He sterilized the sewing needle, and pushed it through the skin of his lobe like a knife going through butter. It didn't hurt, just the tinniest bit of pressure before it was over and a surgical steel hoop was through his skin.
"Are you ready, Tymmie?" Came the voice of Lambert from the doorway of Tymmie's new room. He leaned against his doorframe, expectant.
Tymmie looked into his reflection, stared at the man with the holes in his face, with the metal embedded in his skin, and smiled.