(Sorry about the delay. I'm.well.in college. So you'll all have to deal.
Thanks for the reviews.)
Daylight came like an unwelcome stranger into the room, like a flood of glory that could not be dammed, that could not be held back. Daylight came like the tide against the sand. It didn't wash anything away. It just kind of stirred things up.
I had been awake all night. How could I have slept? Would you sleep with a giant block jutting out of your forehead? Surprisingly, it didn't weigh me down. It didn't even feel unnatural. It felt as though it had been there all the time and I just hadn't been observant enough to notice it. And that's entirely possible. I know my face enough already. I don't really need a mirror anymore. I can just look at a blank wall and envision my face, white, thin, sharp-boned. Thin lips and dark eyes. I wonder if I could try imagining someone else. That without a mirror I could be someone else. But then I can't think of anyone I'd want to be. Not that I'm satisfied. But when you've been looking down so long it's hard to lift your head up.
I'd found that if I didn't touch it, it didn't hurt. It didn't cause me any pain. It didn't cause me any discomfort. So long as I kept it hanging free in the air and kept my hands away. But that wasn't going to happen. Every moment it hung there, a foreigner on my own body, I needed to touch it, I needed to check if it was still there. I needed to see if it was real. And each pain was like pinching myself. And I wasn't waking up. I started wondering if all my dreams hadn't been dreams at all. If maybe they had really happened.
It was something I didn't understand, something I couldn't understand. My mind searched the dusty files of high school biology and found nothing. But that didn't mean it was impossible. It just meant that my job as a postal worker hadn't exercised my mind in as long as I can remember. Or maybe even that's not true. If I can't remember high school biology, how can I remember my own life?
It was new, it was disturbing. Now I knew what made people so conservative. Change was frightening. Change was something that the lazy and apathetic couldn't handle, especially when that change affected them. It was something they had to think about, something they had to deal with. It was a bump in the steady, straight, smooth, dull road of life. Or a sharp turn. And what it lead to could just be more straight streets, quiet faces and empty rooms. Or it could be something endlessly more terrifying. My head had changed, and I was far from prepared to accept it as reality.
I considered calling a doctor. Or going to the hospital. But as I was, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to go outside. To face the stares, to face the people whispering about me or talking to me. I couldn't face the possibility that I might exist in the crowd. It was a terrifying thought.
There was no other option. I'd just have to hide, huddled and afraid, in my apartment until it went away. Or until I wasted away. A pile of bones with a shape I couldn't figure out jutting out of my skull. Maybe no one would ever notice. Maybe I'd fade from existence like a cloud of dust on the wind. Like the steam out of the Medical Mechanica factory. Removed, incomprehensible, alone.
I lay back in bed, tightening the muscles in my neck, for it seemed my head had gotten heavier. My mind knew that that's how it was supposed to be, and that's what it became. The weight of my thoughts helped. My head was saturated, filled with a shivering, cowardly anxiety that ate away at my insides, giving me the feeling that I had just eaten a meal that was too heavy for my stomach to handle.
I turned my head to see the wreckage of last night. It all seemed so far away now. I should have just stayed in bed. I should have just gone to sleep. Then I never would have run into the deep, dark, discomfort of the outside world. I could lose myself in the discomfort of my own world. Where I knew what tortures awaited me and welcomed them with open arms.
Then suddenly it hit me. Why I had gotten out of bed in the first place. What had made me litter the floor with star-like shards of broken glass, what had made me tear the phone from the wall with a strength I didn't think I had. And the answer to these questions was the answer to a lot of things that fluttered like fleeting birds of prey through my mind.
"Aya." I whispered, but the darkness of my room could really care less.
I was supposed to meet her that day. That very night. I was supposed to emerge, a supernatural being, from the comforting loneliness of my apartment into the savagery of shocked faces and sharpened fingers. I was supposed to sit, a freak-show free of charge, the wound of the night naked and exposed to all the world. To Aya. Who would see nothing but the mark. Who would see it and turn away. Who would see it and never see me again. I felt the muscle of my heart go so tight I had to grab my chest to keep it down, to keep it from bursting forth in a spray of red and flesh that was the only thing that stood between me and death.
The thing that chewed away at my insides took another bite, and my head throbbed a bit. It felt as if the protrusion had gotten bigger. And the bigger it got to my mind, the more I hated it. I put my hand on it, scowling darkly at the tip, which was all I could see, blotting out the light to my face, bathing me in a shadow I didn't deserve. A stigma I hadn't earned. My hand tightened without me even knowing it. The pain didn't phase me. The image of the crowd, of Aya, was too much. Of all the things I'd done at our meetings, missing them was not one of them. And my mind would rather end my life than change it.
The hand shook violently, fighting with the urge to tear the protrusion from my forehead, to rip it savagely from the fleshy bonds that were as fragile as that which held my hand to my arm. That held my arm to my body. My head to my body. And all these bonds felt more and more fragile. I felt like I was coming apart at the seams. I didn't realize the pain in my head was what shattered my sensations. If I had, I might have stopped.
With a howl of frustration, pain and anger, I shoved the protrusion towards my head, trying to pop it, trying to break it, trying to crush it out of existence. My palm slammed hard against my flat forehead and I cried out with a shock of pain that went up a few thousand volts as my hand bounced away and the protrusion shot forth again. I sat there, feeling the pain, like an ocean tide, sweeping up and down my body. Parts of me didn't throb. I, as a being, throbbed.
It took me a while before what happened finally made sense in a mind that struggled for air in a sea of emotions whose shallows were all I could probe into, all I could put into order from the chaos. Label and file. The protrusion had been gone for a split second. My hand had touched a forehead free of protrusions, the forehead, the flat, smooth, pale forehead of a life that felt dreamed, surreal.
Slowly, braving the pain that still echoed across the hollows that had already been eaten through my body, I raised my hand to rest on the protrusion once more.
"Everything else doesn't make sense." I thought slowly, anxiously. "Why wouldn't this work?"
With that, I took in a quick breath and pushed the protrusion slowly downward. To my surprise, it gave, the hard, bone-like shape sinking swiftly into the smooth, calm, glistening ocean of my flesh. Within seconds it was gone. I was a human being again. My head still throbbed, but the shape was gone. I tried to repress the urge to burst out of bed and cheer. My body shook with delight. For a second, I wondered if I really did hate the protrusion, because if I hadn't had it, I probably wouldn't have felt so much joy. Is the problem worth the relief of a solution?
I struggled into a sitting position, my clothes and body covered with the stale sweat I carried with me out of my dreams. The window blew a remorselessly warm air through the dirty screen. I looked out into the daytime of the city, my city, out across it, out far into the distance, where the Medical Mechanica building sat ready to burn the city off the face of the Earth. Ready to iron out all the wrinkles humanity had created in a perfect, natural world. My hand clasped over my wound suddenly lost its grip as I saw, even from so far away, the same shadow standing proud on the tip.
The protrusion burst majestically forth, my skin molding to fit it snugly, as if it had never been gone. Through the pain that blurred my vision I watched the shadow. For some reason, it felt like it was looking at me.
Daylight came like an unwelcome stranger into the room, like a flood of glory that could not be dammed, that could not be held back. Daylight came like the tide against the sand. It didn't wash anything away. It just kind of stirred things up.
I had been awake all night. How could I have slept? Would you sleep with a giant block jutting out of your forehead? Surprisingly, it didn't weigh me down. It didn't even feel unnatural. It felt as though it had been there all the time and I just hadn't been observant enough to notice it. And that's entirely possible. I know my face enough already. I don't really need a mirror anymore. I can just look at a blank wall and envision my face, white, thin, sharp-boned. Thin lips and dark eyes. I wonder if I could try imagining someone else. That without a mirror I could be someone else. But then I can't think of anyone I'd want to be. Not that I'm satisfied. But when you've been looking down so long it's hard to lift your head up.
I'd found that if I didn't touch it, it didn't hurt. It didn't cause me any pain. It didn't cause me any discomfort. So long as I kept it hanging free in the air and kept my hands away. But that wasn't going to happen. Every moment it hung there, a foreigner on my own body, I needed to touch it, I needed to check if it was still there. I needed to see if it was real. And each pain was like pinching myself. And I wasn't waking up. I started wondering if all my dreams hadn't been dreams at all. If maybe they had really happened.
It was something I didn't understand, something I couldn't understand. My mind searched the dusty files of high school biology and found nothing. But that didn't mean it was impossible. It just meant that my job as a postal worker hadn't exercised my mind in as long as I can remember. Or maybe even that's not true. If I can't remember high school biology, how can I remember my own life?
It was new, it was disturbing. Now I knew what made people so conservative. Change was frightening. Change was something that the lazy and apathetic couldn't handle, especially when that change affected them. It was something they had to think about, something they had to deal with. It was a bump in the steady, straight, smooth, dull road of life. Or a sharp turn. And what it lead to could just be more straight streets, quiet faces and empty rooms. Or it could be something endlessly more terrifying. My head had changed, and I was far from prepared to accept it as reality.
I considered calling a doctor. Or going to the hospital. But as I was, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to go outside. To face the stares, to face the people whispering about me or talking to me. I couldn't face the possibility that I might exist in the crowd. It was a terrifying thought.
There was no other option. I'd just have to hide, huddled and afraid, in my apartment until it went away. Or until I wasted away. A pile of bones with a shape I couldn't figure out jutting out of my skull. Maybe no one would ever notice. Maybe I'd fade from existence like a cloud of dust on the wind. Like the steam out of the Medical Mechanica factory. Removed, incomprehensible, alone.
I lay back in bed, tightening the muscles in my neck, for it seemed my head had gotten heavier. My mind knew that that's how it was supposed to be, and that's what it became. The weight of my thoughts helped. My head was saturated, filled with a shivering, cowardly anxiety that ate away at my insides, giving me the feeling that I had just eaten a meal that was too heavy for my stomach to handle.
I turned my head to see the wreckage of last night. It all seemed so far away now. I should have just stayed in bed. I should have just gone to sleep. Then I never would have run into the deep, dark, discomfort of the outside world. I could lose myself in the discomfort of my own world. Where I knew what tortures awaited me and welcomed them with open arms.
Then suddenly it hit me. Why I had gotten out of bed in the first place. What had made me litter the floor with star-like shards of broken glass, what had made me tear the phone from the wall with a strength I didn't think I had. And the answer to these questions was the answer to a lot of things that fluttered like fleeting birds of prey through my mind.
"Aya." I whispered, but the darkness of my room could really care less.
I was supposed to meet her that day. That very night. I was supposed to emerge, a supernatural being, from the comforting loneliness of my apartment into the savagery of shocked faces and sharpened fingers. I was supposed to sit, a freak-show free of charge, the wound of the night naked and exposed to all the world. To Aya. Who would see nothing but the mark. Who would see it and turn away. Who would see it and never see me again. I felt the muscle of my heart go so tight I had to grab my chest to keep it down, to keep it from bursting forth in a spray of red and flesh that was the only thing that stood between me and death.
The thing that chewed away at my insides took another bite, and my head throbbed a bit. It felt as if the protrusion had gotten bigger. And the bigger it got to my mind, the more I hated it. I put my hand on it, scowling darkly at the tip, which was all I could see, blotting out the light to my face, bathing me in a shadow I didn't deserve. A stigma I hadn't earned. My hand tightened without me even knowing it. The pain didn't phase me. The image of the crowd, of Aya, was too much. Of all the things I'd done at our meetings, missing them was not one of them. And my mind would rather end my life than change it.
The hand shook violently, fighting with the urge to tear the protrusion from my forehead, to rip it savagely from the fleshy bonds that were as fragile as that which held my hand to my arm. That held my arm to my body. My head to my body. And all these bonds felt more and more fragile. I felt like I was coming apart at the seams. I didn't realize the pain in my head was what shattered my sensations. If I had, I might have stopped.
With a howl of frustration, pain and anger, I shoved the protrusion towards my head, trying to pop it, trying to break it, trying to crush it out of existence. My palm slammed hard against my flat forehead and I cried out with a shock of pain that went up a few thousand volts as my hand bounced away and the protrusion shot forth again. I sat there, feeling the pain, like an ocean tide, sweeping up and down my body. Parts of me didn't throb. I, as a being, throbbed.
It took me a while before what happened finally made sense in a mind that struggled for air in a sea of emotions whose shallows were all I could probe into, all I could put into order from the chaos. Label and file. The protrusion had been gone for a split second. My hand had touched a forehead free of protrusions, the forehead, the flat, smooth, pale forehead of a life that felt dreamed, surreal.
Slowly, braving the pain that still echoed across the hollows that had already been eaten through my body, I raised my hand to rest on the protrusion once more.
"Everything else doesn't make sense." I thought slowly, anxiously. "Why wouldn't this work?"
With that, I took in a quick breath and pushed the protrusion slowly downward. To my surprise, it gave, the hard, bone-like shape sinking swiftly into the smooth, calm, glistening ocean of my flesh. Within seconds it was gone. I was a human being again. My head still throbbed, but the shape was gone. I tried to repress the urge to burst out of bed and cheer. My body shook with delight. For a second, I wondered if I really did hate the protrusion, because if I hadn't had it, I probably wouldn't have felt so much joy. Is the problem worth the relief of a solution?
I struggled into a sitting position, my clothes and body covered with the stale sweat I carried with me out of my dreams. The window blew a remorselessly warm air through the dirty screen. I looked out into the daytime of the city, my city, out across it, out far into the distance, where the Medical Mechanica building sat ready to burn the city off the face of the Earth. Ready to iron out all the wrinkles humanity had created in a perfect, natural world. My hand clasped over my wound suddenly lost its grip as I saw, even from so far away, the same shadow standing proud on the tip.
The protrusion burst majestically forth, my skin molding to fit it snugly, as if it had never been gone. Through the pain that blurred my vision I watched the shadow. For some reason, it felt like it was looking at me.
