Shuddering breaths jerk unsteadily from my lips. Every breath, every slight movement causes a flash fire of pain to rip over my body, burning and sinking in deeply at specific points, intensifying and sizzling into my flesh and bones. But I have to keep breathing. That’s all I have now. A misplaced sound, a girl’s pleased giggle, comes faintly to me through the thick fog of anguish surrounding me, enveloping me, smothering me.
“Only one left to go!” her chipper, bright voice stings sharply and pulses in my ears, barely registering in my roiling mind, feeling and showing all the agony that I refuse to let show on the outside. I can’t let her know that it hurts. She can’t know. No weakness. Just breathe. Suddenly, I’m incapable of even drawing in air as another metal pin is hammered into my jaw, near my ringing ear. A wave, both physical and mental, rushes over me, turning my hearing to muffled silence, what is left of my sight to bloody darkness, setting me on fire again. But I don’t let it show. I shudder slightly, holding it in as much as I possibly can, and choke down a pain-induced gag. I am not breathing. Breathe, make yourself breathe.
“Oh, wait,” she pauses, and I hear the tools on the table next to me clink. “One last thing, so be a good boy and hold still…” She trails off, focusing on whatever grotesque thing she’s going to do to me next. I have finally gotten control of my lungs again, and I focus on the sound of my ragged breaths, the rhythm, keeping it going. The next thing that I experience trumps it all. The pain of every metal pin she forced into my bones, every cut it took to slice open my cheeks, every pain she had ever caused me, was completely different than this. Those things made me hurt. This makes me suffer. Breathing isn’t even an option anymore, for a crushing, piercing pain has taken hold of my chest, growing deeper and deeper, more and more agonizing. A half-formed scream is slowly shoving its way to my throat, but I force it down, fighting the ever growing terror as I realize how deep she is going. This is no mere cutting of flesh, no regular scar. This is going beyond repair, deep into my chest. A thought flickers through my mind, of what she could be doing, but for fear of completely panicking, I shove it aside. Despite my efforts, it comes back. Why else would she be going so deep? She wouldn’t. She would. She couldn’t. She could. Breathe, why can’t I breathe?
The pain surges deeper, and even thought is impossible. Bones crack, splinter, my back arches and I clench my teeth so hard I think they will break. Nothing but pain fills my mind, my body, shrieking for release. And then, the pain is gone. Replaced by utter anguish. I faintly hear a horrific ripping and tearing noise, and the combination of the agony and the terror turn me into an animal. I begin to thrash violently, but I am unable to escape the rough chains on my wrists. This vain attempt at freedom only fuels the fire, and it begins to feel as if a beast covered in razors is forcing its way out of my chest. Perhaps it is. My wild, bloodshot eyes briefly shoot down to my chest, the source of this torture, but I don’t see what I expect. All I can see is a hole. A gory, shredded, heart sized hole filled and overflowing with blood. The pain reaches a peak as it mixes with the sickening horror, and the scream fighting for liberation finally wins the upper hand. Vaguely, almost as if it is outside of me, I hear an unearthly howl, a scream distorted by such utter agony that it becomes almost unbearable to hear. It is not the first, it is not the last, but it is one of the multitudes of true screams that have passed my lips since I was drug into this hellhole eight years ago.
Chapter One
Amadeus
It’s just another morning in the funhouse. The start of a new day, nothing to do, deceptively quiet and mundane as I sit on my neat little bed staring through the television. There’s never anything good on TV on a Tuesday morning. Is it Tuesday? Really there isn’t ever anything good so it’s irrelevant. At least it’s one of those ridiculously dramatic series this morning. They can sometimes make me chuckle. I think someone is about to have a baby, and no one seems to be happy about it. Isn’t that strange? I had always believed that birth was supposed to be a somewhat joyous occasion. New life, new beginnings and all that.
I watch the fake tears and the out of place ranting of the drama through eyes that are tired and heavy and red. My back rests against the wall behind me, and my hands are in loose fists resting near my legs. I haven’t moved from this exact spot for, by my internal estimate, six hours. I haven’t left this room in nearly fourteen. I am tired and I am hungry and I am really in a very terrible mood. All I want to do is sleep. Is that so much to ask? Really? Air slowly pulls into my lungs, and I release it in a deep sigh. The flashbacks of the day before continue to barrage me in sudden, swift, and unprompted attacks of images and sensations. I’ve been hurt, tortured, and abused since I can remember, but never has something broken me so much. Or made me so angry. I am angry. It seems ridiculous and silly, but I am incredibly angry. I don’t get angry when she shoots me, when she stabs me, when she insults me, but apparently this is enough to stir some feeling in me. A smile pulls up one side of my lips as I think of this, and that twinge of aching soreness, right there in the corner of my mouth, makes me cringe. Images in my mind now, images of blood and holes and a smile and wire and knives. I shake my head once, hard, trying to clear them out. I’m haunted. It’s only been a day and I’m already so haunted and messed up. And so, so, angry. I take in another deep breath, and I raise up my hand, fingers spread and palm facing me. It still hurts to stretch them, but I do, flexing them closed into a fist, then open again, as I turn it over and look at the back. It shakes a lot more than I would like it to, my hand, my hand that suddenly now looks so unfamiliar and alien and wrong. The metal sparkles in the light, the foreign material hammered into my unwilling body. This cannot be my hand. My body suddenly twitches violently, blood, screaming, knives. Images barrage me. Blood, screaming, knives. My mind, I am being drug into a sucking, surging, sticky hole of blood, and screaming, and knives. My body violently shakes, the real world, the now, blurring with the memory. It begins to replay, shining and shimmering and hardly real. In my mind, I am strapped down. In the world, I tremble.
I was so ready to die then, right there on that surgical table, slick with blood and echoing with my screams. I was ready. I was willing, even. I had often before thanked whatever freak mutation it was that had given me immortality, but I cursed it then for not letting me die. Not even after losing my heart. I was still here. When I had finally stopped screaming and was no longer hysterical with pain, Brittany had actually forced me to look and see my heart, resting on a table along with some bloody surgical equipment.
Somewhere far away, in the real world, sitting on my bed, I twitch.
She told me to stand up and follow her, which in itself was a ridiculous request. I couldn’t move, what was she thinking? I still could hardly breathe.
The real me, sitting and watching this sick film, can’t breathe either.
Being the thoughtful person she is, however, she gave me a little boost by screaming in my face and shoving me off the table. I hit the ground hard, and an almost comical amount of blood poured out of the new hole in my chest where it had been conveniently pooling. My stomach lurched and I was promptly sick all over the floor. Brittany, of course, was furious, and we spent a long, pleasant time with her screaming obscenities at me and me just attempting to stand up. Finally I managed to hold myself up and she stormed out of the room, barking at me to hurry up and follow her, before I “ruined everything”. I did, shakily, and I began to feel some strange pricks and pains in my body that I had not known before. It was rather like the effect of hearing a very small sound for a long period of time; it in itself was not horrible, but past a certain point, it drove me mad.
I don’t realize it yet, but as I’m sitting on my bed, I am now not only rocking back and forth and shaking my head, but I am scratching at the metal buried into my knuckles. They have just begun to bleed.
Adapting to having no heart, however, was more like suddenly losing all hearing whatsoever. My body was doing everything in its power to adjust to the lack of tissue, but it was rejecting it furiously, causing many painful and strange effects on me. Even the simple lack of a heartbeat, while not painful, was unnerving. And blood wouldn’t stop pouring out and I was starting to get ridiculously lightheaded. We finally reached a room after what seemed like days due to the confusion, pain, and dizziness, and a disturbing smile had settled on Brittany’s lips.
“I decided to give you a makeover,” she had said, mock-sweetly, her words dripping with sarcasm and malice, contrasting greatly with her choice of words. “Go ahead, take a look, see what you think!” That scared me. I’ll admit it. That particular person saying those particular words made my stomach drop through the floor. She could have done anything to me.
A lot of blood is now dripping down my hand and pooling on the white tile floor under my bed.
Chapter Two
Elizabeth
“Elizabeth! It is time to wake up, darling!” my mother’s voice calls up the stairs, light and lovely, her still-remaining Spanish lilt always pleasing to the ear. I smile slightly, hitting the x in the corner of the browser containing the article I had been poring over. It surprises me that she still doesn’t realize how early I get up every morning. She thinks that I actually wake up when my alarm goes off, at 7:45, so that I can get an “early start on the day”. I’m taking online college classes, so there’s really no need for me to rise early at all, but I get up every morning at 5:30. My routine calls for it: I get up, get dressed, go for a long run, take a shower, get dressed again, and read all of the latest crime and news reports on several sites and in the newspaper. I also check multiple news stations on the television. The alarm is more of a checkpoint, a time when I should be finishing up my personal studies. By the time she calls up the stairs, I’m usually nearly through with all of my background researching and studying up on the latest breaking stories, and so, I go downstairs for breakfast.
“Good morning, mamá,” I say as I reach the bottom of the stairs, hugging her and traditionally kissing her on both cheeks. She pulls away, beaming at me. People always tell me that my mother and I look alike. I see what they’re talking about, of course, both of our dark, straight hair, dark olive skin, green eyes. We do, technically, look very similar, but…my mother glows. She is radiant. Her beauty shines inside and out. I hope one day to look like her, but my face is too set and stern for now. She always tells me I need to smile more.
“Good morning, my hermosa hija,” she responds, smiling that sunny smile. “I made you breakfast!” I can’t help but smile back. Only she and my father can make me smile. No one else, nobody gets to me like they do. I glance over at the table and see the perfectly portioned little plate of pancakes and fruit with sugar and scrambled eggs, and a beam of gratitude shines through me, followed by a bitter dash of shame. My mother is, in essence, perfect. Why can’t I be what she wants me to be? Why can’t I just be happy and make her happy? Why am I so much like my father? Not that there’s anything wrong with my father, I think to myself as I sit down and begin to eat. My father is the bravest man I know. He’s the reason I do almost everything that I do. He’s a policeman, an incredible policeman, and I fully intend to follow in his footsteps. I smile slightly to myself, putting another sweet strawberry in my mouth. I’m so proud of my father. This is why I disappoint my mother. We’re both so serious, my father and I, and we spend so much time studying such “horrible, sad things”, as she always says. Her mind just isn’t built like ours. We were made to hunt down criminals, essentially, logical, calculative brains and extreme emotional detachment from situations. My mother sometimes cries when she has to kill bugs. Not because she’s afraid of them, but because she feels bad for taking its life. Completely different.
“Are you needing anything else?” my mother asks, brushing my hair behind my ear, and I shake my head, mouth full. I chew quickly, trying to hurry up so I can speak, putting my hand up to my mouth.
“No, I’m fine. Thank you, mamá,” I say, words slightly muffled, hugging her quickly. “I’m going to go check the news again. There may be an update on the Mills story by now.” I hear her exasperated sigh as I turn away to go back up the stairs.
“Elizabeth,” she sighs, and I stop, not quite turning back to look at her. “Why do you do this? Why do you watch these sad things? It makes you so…dark. It will bring you down. Like your father.” I shake my head and let out a sharp sigh. I hate having this conversation, and so does she, but it reoccurred far too often, and so I had learned how to deal with it quickly and without emotion.
“I’m sorry, mamá, but it’s what I do. This is what I’m interested in, it’s for my future career, and I’m not going to stop,” I say shortly, the near-rehearsed response I always had to recite. “I’m sorry.” And as I walk back up the stairs, I am unable to turn and see that face, dejected and sad. I can never be what she wants me to be, and I’m okay with that. I just wish it wasn’t so hard on her. Reaching my room, I scoop the remote up off of my desk and flip on the flat-screen, preparing to whisk myself away into the world of crime and punishment rather than deal with my own problems. Seeing other people get hurt is always easier than being hurt yourself.
Chapter Three
Amadeus
I almost break out of the memory. I jerk and realize that I am breathing really hard, unsteady, ragged, needy breaths. The real world flashes back for a moment, my white room. I blink and I blink and I blink, but it’s gone. The images are still there. My body, taught with terror, trembles.
With a parting smile, Brittany had sauntered out the door. After watching her go, my focus went to the room. There wasn’t much in it, only a window letting in the dim light of the moon through dusty curtains and a large, rectangular object under a sheet. A mirror, of course. She had probably prepared this room specifically for this purpose and none else, for the sake of the drama of it all. Although I wanted no part in her sick role-play, I was still morbidly curious. I walked slowly over to the covered mirror and took the cloth in my hands, getting more and more nervous by the second, more and more dread filling my stomach. My gaze landed on my hands, and I started and dropped the sheet. Metal circles glinted dully all over my fingers. I thought back, remembering the small but very sharp pains in my hands. She had hammered nails into my hands.
I twitch, sitting there on my bed, and dig my nails deeper into my flesh, trying to get them out.
About then was when my mind began to break. Vision blurred, balance warped, world twisted for the briefest of moments. Starting to panic, I grabbed the sheet and tore it off, the cloud of dust blurring my reflection. But slowly, the air cleared and I could see. Breath stopped, vision shifted. I was used to disliking my reflection, considering that I was born a freak with nearly white blonde hair, very fair skin, and frost blue eyes, barely dusted with any color at all, almost blending in with the whites. It was the physical manifestation of my internal mutation, if you will. Overall, a very eerie effect, rather spectral, only made worse by my various cuts and bruises. But now, instead of seeing a scarred ghost in the mirror, I saw a nightmare.
I realize now, faintly, that I’m shaking my head, rocking back and forth and shaking my head.
It wasn’t only my hands that had gotten the metal. My wrists, my elbows, my shoulders, every joint on my body had metal pins going through the bone, and most coming out the other side and ending in another metal circle. I had known about the scars cutting through my cheeks, but she had stitched them up with wire, and three pins punched through on each side, one at the top of my jaw buried into the bone, one in the middle of the scar, and one right next to my mouth. It almost seemed like she had overlapped the two sides of the cut flesh and stuck the pins through them to hold it together, then stitching up the holes left with rusty wire. And there was so much blood. My entire body was filthy with it, and a thick, starkly red line traced from the hole in my chest all the way down my torso. The hole itself had to be the most horrible thing I had ever seen, so much ragged flesh and shattered bone and frayed skin. And it was a part of me now.
I make a quiet noise in my throat, and I continue to steadily shake my head, blood now flowing freely down my arm and to the floor.
At first my mind couldn’t quite put a label on what sort of freak I looked like, but the more I stared, the clearer it became. A puppet. I looked like a cheap, twisted, bloody, horror movie puppet. The breath left me in a weird, perversely timed laugh and my knees harshly hit the ground as I collapsed, barely managing to stay up. I was torn between senselessly trying to kill myself or letting out the tears that I was fighting so hard like a child. I met my eyes in the mirror, not even recognizing them as mine. That poor boy, why can’t he breathe right? Why is he breathing so hard, why does he look like an animal? What’s wrong with his eyes, they look red, is he gonna cry? Brittany strolled back into my field of vision within the glass of the mirror, stopping to rest a hand on her hip with a smirk.
“You like?” she asked, unable to hold in a cruel laugh. I was blank. Where I would usually be spitting out some venom-laden response, instead fear, sorrow, and repulsion had me in a cold, harsh grip and would not let me go. Brittany laughed again, stepping between me and the mirror and crouching in front of me.
“Aww. Poor little Ammy can’t even talk, huh?” she cooed, enjoying every second of her cruel teasing as I could barely even hold in tears of pain, terror, hatred. “You want to know why I did it, don’t you?” She waited for a response, but I stared blankly. Her fake smile fell into anger, and she grabbed my face in her hand, nails right on the still-fresh scars, forcing me to nod. Never had such a simple, annoying gesture been so burningly painful. She shoved my face away and stood up as I choked back the pain and slowly stood as well.
“I’m testing your limits again,” she explained, the smile coming back as she observed my struggling. “Both physically and mentally this time. Let’s see how you can handle being a monster. God knows you look the part!” This statement brought her to peals of laughter. She enjoys listening to herself talk far too much. A demonic, overjoyed smile lit her face, and she walked out again, leaving me in that cold, dark room to steep in my horror.
Back in my room, in the real world that seems like such a different place from that sickening memory, I let out a cry and bolt up from my bed. It breaks me out of my stupor and I take in a huge breath, lungs aching. My breathing is rapid and shallow and I shake my head, hard, as I reach and turn off the television. A smear of blood is left on the button, and I move shakily over to the crude sink stuck into the wall across the room. I think about splashing off my face, and I start to turn on the faucet, but I startle as I see my hand again. My hand. No. Whose hand is this? I lift it up, looking at it closely, the veins, the joints, the metal, the blood, then shift my gaze to the mirror behind. Paler than ever. My eyes are shadowed and sunk back deeper than ever. The jagged scars of my permanent grin are redder than ever. And my sad little mind is closer to madness than ever.
Chapter Four
Elizabeth
Several hours pass before I remember that I have an assignment to do for my college criminal justice class, which startles me out of my uncharacteristic streak of listlessly staring through the television screen. I’ve gotten up, moved chairs, laid on my bed, and returned to my desk chair, but never torn my eyes away from the screen. There’s nothing good on today, but I can’t stop staring. Until, of course, I suddenly remember the assignment.
“Oh, right,” I mutter, shaking my head slightly and swiveling my chair back to my computer. A quick check of the small clock on the screen reveals that I have been watching the news for two hours. It hardly felt like even an hour had passed. I shake my head again, trying to regain some focus, and open up the browser. Strange day.
The work is simple, a short quiz over reading I had done the day before. The reading is practically unnecessary for me, considering I grew up hearing the terms and understanding the situations, but I had still done it. I only miss one question, and if I could argue with a digital grading system, I would.
17. You have been pursuing your suspect, and you get him cornered. There is a possible way for him to escape, and his weapon is raised toward your team. What do you do?
A) Tell him to drop his weapon.
B) Shoot him in a non-fatal area to subdue him.
C) Shoot him fatally.
D) Let him get away.
I had answered C, which to me, had been the obvious choice. Telling him to drop his weapon would be foolish. What if he didn’t comply? What then? He could fire at any one of your teammates and wound them, possibly kill them. If this person is already a suspect and has been evading arrest, the time for mercy has passed. I sigh with frustration and click the button to send in my quiz results. This is one of the very few times I have ever missed a question in this class. I am the top student. I just hope that Mr. Parker won’t be disappointed. I close the browser and turn off my laptop, and it heaves a whirring, mechanical sigh of relief as it powers down.
Thirty minutes later, I am swiveling in slow, lazy circles. I stare at nothing and everything. I think about nothing and everything. The news is still on, and every now and again, I focus my eyes to check what’s happening, but there’s still nothing of interest. Car crashes. Robberies. Petty crime. Another gentle push of my foot against the wood floor, and…another circle completes its revolution. Faintly, I hear the door close downstairs, and I smile. My dad is home.
I don’t quite run down the stairs, but I reach the bottom much faster than I had that morning. My dad is setting down his keys on the counter, and he smiles as he sees me. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes, that smile, but I understand. It never really does. He’s a very serious man. I’m a very serious girl. I lower my eyes, trying to not seem too excited and embarrass myself. I try to let my respect overwhelm my childish enthusiasm when it comes to my father. We both operate that way, and respond much better to it.
“Hi, dad,” I say warmly, going up on my toes to kiss him on his well-shaven cheek. My mom passes in front of me, and I step back as she kisses him fully. Leaving her hands on his chest, she looks him straight in the eye.
“Every time. Every time I worry that you will not come home. Still!” she cries desperately, her brows knit with Spanish passion, thumping his chest for emphasis. He laughs, shaking his head, and kisses her again, making her smile and laugh as well. She can never stay upset. Absolutely never. I smile again, not one for sappy sentimentality, but always appreciative of my parent’s beautiful relationship. It can be a bit tense sometimes, what with her true concern for him and his extreme dedication to his work, but when I looked at them like this, close and smiling and warm, I could see why their marriage had lasted.
The day passes plainly, comfortable and slow. I go out to lunch with a few friends from my old high school whom I still stay in contact with, and whom all still think I am “way too serious”. I go and buy my mother a birthday present, early, so I won’t forget. We eat dinner among pleasant, low conversation, punctuated by my mother’s sharp and infectious laugh. I am not what I would call a normal girl, and my life is far from normal, but there is a groove in which our lives settle that feels very right and very good and very normal. I get ready for bed, starting a draft of a paper for my English class before settling in between the cool sheets. I drift to sleep, thinking of nothing and everything, and I am at peace.
Chapter Five
Amadeus
I’m not really sure what happened after the whole flashback incident. There’s blood on the floor, and all in the sink, and a small streak across the mirror, and I know that I was thinking about something pretty important, but I just can’t remember what. And my hand hurts. I sit on my bed now, again, staring through the television. It isn’t on. The fingers of one hand absentmindedly trace across the rusty knuckles of the other.
“Shallow,” I say quietly to myself. “Shallow and pointless. No, better than that…” I’m thinking about television. Brittany tells me that everyone watches television, out in the mysterious outside world. TV is one of those things that I don’t personally enjoy in any way, but it fascinates me. You have to understand, I’m aware of the outside world, but I’ve never been there. Not that I remember anyways. For all I know, everyone else in the world looks totally different than the people on television or Brittany or I do. Maybe they have fur. Maybe they are green. These are the sort of things that I think about. Really it’s probably quite unhealthy. But back to the point. Although television irritates me, it’s my only way to know anything about the outside world.
“There’s a perfect word for this. I know it. It starts with a…t, maybe…” I mutter to myself, still grazing my knuckles with my fingers, still staring through the dully reflective black of the TV screen. “T…t-t-t…” I worry that these strange people on television who cry a lot and sleep with everyone that they meet and make completely stupid decisions are nothing like real people, though. The only real person that I know is Brittany. Well. Let’s be analytical here. Brittany cries a lot. And she talks about all of the boys that she “sleeps with” all the time. And saying that she makes stupid decisions isn’t even worth the breath it would take to say it. Her entire life is a bad decision. So. Maybe the real fear should be that all people really do act that way. Oh dear. A small light switch flicks up in my brain with a satisfying tap.
“Vapid. The word is vapid,” I say with satisfying closure and a small smile. “Television is vapid. Beautiful.” There is nothing quite like the feeling of remembering a perfectly appropriate word. Especially when it’s one that perfectly criticizes something that needs to be criticized. I sigh deeply, part content, part boredom, and blink my dry eyes. Sometimes I prefer the busy days. The ones where I’m moved from room to room and hurt and cut and shot and shocked. At least I have something to do. I decide, begrudgingly, to stand. Always a good place to start. You can almost hear my muscles and bones creak, grown cranky and lethargic from disuse. After popping a few choice joints and stretching, I’m up and at it again. I half-shuffle over to the mirror. Look into its cloudy surface. Turn my head right, then left, observing my cheeks. The parts around the scars, I mean. An awkward, bark of a laugh escapes me.
“Brittany…” I call absentmindedly, eyes not leaving the mirror, still perversely chuckling. “Brittany…I need to shave.” I say this as if it is a revelation. Around the scars, there is stubble growing. The continuation of any sort of normalcy after this last abomination is absolutely fascinating. I suppose that I forgot that I was still myself.
“Brittany!” I call, rolling my eyes and leaning back from the mirror. I look dead into the camera “hidden” in the mortar between the white bricks of the wall.
“Brittany, your joke isn’t funny anymore. I know that you can see and hear me perfectly fine,” I say drolly, vaguely realizing how thin and tired my voice sounds. Likely also from disuse. And misuse. “Brittany!” I bark the name one final time, rewarded with a quick hiss of static and a response.
“Alright, alright, keep your damn pants on,” she spits, and the intercom crackles a brief goodbye. An amused smile brushes my lips and I shake my head. Always so rude with her. Now, back to my reflection. When I look in the mirror, it’s always with a horrible fascination. I never really look too close, I skirt the edges of my face, I don’t really want to know how bad it is. But this new discovery of stubble has made me look much closer than usual, and therefore become very interested in the finer details of the new additions to my visage. I lean forward, somewhat straining to see the fine points in my filthy old mirror. These scars are much more detailed than I imagined. The dully gleaming wire crisscrosses haphazardly yet with a definite pattern across the angry red flesh. The scars themselves are very gruesome, the flesh overlapping, unable to fully heal due to the abundance of movement in the human face. I open my mouth, gently brushing the right corner. There is a very small but noticeable chink in the skin before the metal pin punches through and holds it together. On both sides, I note, feeling the other. It isn’t pretty. And it stings. Running my tongue over them, I wince slightly.
“That is going to be a pain,” I say quietly to myself, then fall silent and lean back slightly. Ever so quietly, in the distance, I can hear the rapid click of high heels. Moving silently, I step up to the door so that I'm almost pressed against the cold metal, my eyes perfectly level with the small sliding window using for passing things from one side to the other. Click, click, click, click. I open my eyes wide, holding in a smile. Click, click, click. Silence. The window suddenly scrapes open, and there is a scream.
“Holy shit!” Brittany yelps, and I hear a clatter followed by a furious outcry. “You little shit!” She had planned on using the tiny window to pass me a razor, no doubt, but had opened it to see an unwelcome and unexpected pair of bloodshot eyes. And I believe it startled her. At this point I step back from the door, chuckling, because I do not wish to have my eyes gouged out by neither a razor nor a woman’s fingernails. As expected, after a long moment of Brittany hissing words just out of my hearing and retrieving the misplaced razor, it comes flying through the slat, which clatters shut. The razor bounces off the wall and finds its way to the floor, sliding a foot or so and coming to rest. I shake my head. Poor form. Didn’t even leave a mark on the wall. Picking up the metal razor from the tile, I go back to my crude little sink and proceed to start the adventure of shaving. How I am going to navigate around the chasms in my cheeks is beyond me. I begin to feel like an idiot, waving my elbows around everywhere trying to figure out a good position to start from. I sigh irritably. No matter how many cuts, nicks, and expletives this takes, I will make this happen.
“I may be a monster,” I grumble to myself. “But I will be a goddamn well shaven monster.”