by Paul Miller
(originally published in The Red Asylum)
Today is going to be the best day of my life. There’s no doubt about it. I think this as I fidget nervously in my seat, trying to ignore all the people standing around the waiting room watching me.
I wish my family had come, but they don’t approve of what I’m doing. Just this morning my mom pulled me aside and said, “Melody, you’re such a beautiful girl. I think you’re perfect the way you are.”
She doesn’t understand.
Instead, arrayed around me in a comforting circle is Derek and his friends. They’re all Plastic People.
Beautiful, flawless Plastic People. Their skin shines. The colors of their lips and eyes are unnaturally vibrant. It’s impossible not to stare at their perfect faces. These days, everybody who is anybody looks just like them. I can’t wait.
Derek and I have been dating a few months now. I’ve always been pretty, so he never suspected I was unenhanced. He just thought I’d gone for a more natural look. When I finally worked up the nerve to tell him, he seemed angry at first. I thought our relationship was over. Then one day, surprisingly, he offered to pay for my operation.
He loves me enough to help me become one of them.
“Melody Saunders,” a nurse calls, sticking her head into the waiting room.
My stomach does flips inside me as I stand and follow her through the door.
#
“Please lay on the table,” The doctor says. His white coat is wrinkled. He’s red-faced, and I think I smell alcohol. It makes me nervous, but this is the only chance I’ll ever have to get the operation.
I stretch out on the stainless-steel table. It isn’t comfortable at all, and I have to try very hard to keep my nerves under control.
I can handle the half-empty medicine bottles, strewn haphazardly about the room, and the cigarette butts, but shouldn’t they at least have a bed? Derek said he was getting me the most affordable operation he could find. It’s more than I could have hoped for considering how taboo it is to pay for someone who isn’t of your own family. I think how wrong it is for me to feel anything but grateful, and I try to stop.
The nurse smiles at me as she binds my arms and legs to the table with thick leather straps. I wait for her to give me the shot of anesthetic, but she just stands to the side, her smile never faltering.
The doctor reaches into his little black bag and pulls out a scalpel and what looks like a miniature saw. He walks to the table beside me.
“Wait,” I say. “Aren’t you going to give me something to make me sleep or dull the pain?”
The doctor glances at the nurse. She grabs something out of a cabinet and hands it to him. It looks like a dirty rag. He shoves it in my mouth. I try to protest, but I can’t.
“Sorry kid,” he says. It takes a moment for me to realize that the doctor is being serious. Derek must have got a really good price for this operation.
Tears slide down my face, and my body begins to tremble. I try to force myself to focus on the end result. It will all be worth it in the end.
The doctor’s miniature saw buzzes to life. He leans over me, a grim expression on his red face, and begins.
The dirty rag absorbs my scream.
#
The first thing I see when I shuffle into the waiting room is Derek’s face. He’s wearing a wide smile. He’s never looked happier, in fact. I think I must look truly wonderful to elicit such a reaction from him. It makes the horrible throbbing seem not so bad.
Derek’s friends are all smiling at me as well. Unlike him, however, I see something in their cool eyes that unnerves me.
Disgust? Surely not.
Suddenly nervous, I spot a small mirror on the wall. I step in front of it and look at my new face.
Staring back at me is a grotesque mockery of what I used to look like. Patches of skin, each a different tone, cover my face, bordered by thick black stitching. My nose and mouth are twisted and uneven, as if they were made of wax and had been melted down. One eye is set far higher than the other and barely opens.
I’m unrecognizable. I look like a monster.
I hear a horrified shrieking inside my head, but no sound comes out. This was supposed to be the best day of my life, the day I got what I’d always wanted. How could it have gone so wrong?
I start to turn to someone for comfort, but all I see is laughing faces. The shame is too great. I am aware of something shattering inside me. Something vital. It leaves me profoundly empty.
I slowly sink to the ground, tears spilling from my eyes.
As the Plastic People begin to leave, Derek stops beside me. He leans close and whispers in my ear.
“You won’t fool anyone into thinking you’re one of us ever again.”
I sit sobbing and alone on the waiting room’s cold floor. It occurs to me how lucky I was to have been so pretty before.
But no more.
END
paulmillerstories 