I loved my daughter (Deirdre, 19) with all my heart. When she was a baby, every morning like clockwork I would go into her nursery to see her beautiful little grinning face. It melted my heart and made me want to buy the world for her. Unfortunately, we couldn’t afford the world. Her father wasn’t in the picture, but that didn’t matter. My girl looked nothing like him, everyone agreed she was my mini-me with her curly gold hair and bright green eyes. It may not seem like it, but this is where the story started to go wrong. My baby was growing up. Soon she was out with her friends at all hours, buying clothes she knew I hated and even getting her ears pierced. I felt completely out of her life, even when she was with me her phone was in her face and it was just another excuse for her to ignore me completely. Day after day became more painful for me to bear until I began seriously considering sending her to live with my parents up in Tennessee.
Then, it happened. She couldn’t get out of bed one day. The past few weeks she had been sick, but until then I had assumed she’d gotten a little cold. Deirdre had always been my little drama queen when it came to illness. Yet now she struggled to even twist off the cap of a water bottle. We went to the doctor and they told us she needed a kidney transplant. I had my baby back. She let me comb her pretty hair, feed her, bathe her, and dress her for doctor’s visits. I was thrilled to death and made her all her favorite foods. For the first time in a long time I felt like my old self. I hadn’t felt so beautiful since before I had her. Men looked at me when I went out, I even got plenty of date offers from handsome (and some not so handsome) men. Still, my baby was my only concern. Even though I caught her texting her friends about how I was leaving her at home most nights to go clubbing, I still stood by her.
Then she had her surgery, and it was all downhill from there. One night when I had a few friends over, she came outside her room and screamed for my guests to leave, threatening to call the cops about all the pills we had out if they didn’t. As you would imagine, that killed the mood and everyone quickly filed out. I was furious, but before I got a word out she tore into me, telling me what a horrible person I was.
This was when it came to me, that unlikely yet entirely feasible possibility. I locked eyes with myself in the mirror. Wrinkles that had been completely absent a month prior were forming beneath my eyes again. What if I was, in fact, right?
Deirdre screamed as she rolled down the cellar steps. When she collapsed at the bottom into a bony little heap, she was still sobbing. I looked at myself in the full-length mirror and gasped. My face was flawless again, I didn’t look a day over 25. It was perfect. I got my baby back and my old life. I kept her diet around 1200 kcals a day to keep her weak and slow her healing. When she got better, it was only a matter of hitting her skinny little arm with a hammer or twisting her ankle until it popped. You should’ve heard how she would cry and beg when I came into the basement. It was so cute, just like she was a baby again.
This is where Stephen comes in. Compared to even Deirdre’s father he was the handsomest man I had ever seen, and he asked me out on a date. Now, as you could understand, I had to look my best. So I descended the stairs. Deirdre began her hollering when I chose the mallet from its place on the table. I shushed her and told her I loved her as I always did, and I got her right on the side of her head. There was an odd sound and she went limp. Deciding I hit her a little hard, I made a mental note to make her favorite meal when I got back home. I had installed a mirrored wall in the basement so I could see the immediate effects of my work, but what I saw screamed back at me. I was older, uglier, and more hideous than ever.
Deirdre. I grabbed her by her skinny shoulders and shook her. Blank, wide open green eyes stared back. She had ruined everything. It’s been three days and I haven’t been out a single time since. She’s started to stink, but she can rot for all I care.