I’d always been insecure about my looks. My nose was too big, lips were too small, eyes were too beady and I still had acne even though I was in my mid-twenties but mom always said I was beautiful.
She was pretty too, but she’d aged terribly. She spent a large portion of my life trying to make me prettier. She bought me makeup, offered to pay for beauty procedures and even though I’d declined her offers, she still said I was beautiful just the way I was.
I turned 26 last October and she’d really been spending more time with me. At first I was convinced it was pity, but I knew her better than that. She wanted something. I just didn’t know what yet.
She owned a big house that she lived in by herself. After my dad left her to start a new life with a woman a few blocks over, she pulled her life together and started her own business.
She invited me over and I couldn’t refuse again. It isn’t that I didn’t want to see my own mother, it was just that her presence was… off. She didn’t seem like a mother, she almost seemed like a college friend that drank too much.
Her house was beautiful and secluded without another house for miles. When I asked her why she lived so far from civilization, she joked that it was so that no one would be able to hear my screaming.
The food was incredible. I had a glass of wine with lobster and greens and it was the best food I’d ever had. The wine was expensive and tasty and so I gulped it down fast.
“Come on. I want to show you something!” she said as she gestured me to follow her into her basement.
The stairs were steep and winding and it was cold and dark, but I put my big girl pants on and told myself that I wasn’t a child anymore.
She pointed to a room with a hospital bed, an IV pole and a breathing mask. If I hadn’t known I was at my mother’s house, I would have thought I was in a hospital.
“What the hell is this? Are you sick?” I asked, worried.
And then I felt it. I was suddenly drowsy and confused and that’s the last thing I remember from that night.
When I woke up, I was in the same room, strapped to the hospital bed.
“Hey, Tiger! You were out for a while!” She said
“What happened? Where am I?” I asked as I tried to break free from the straps.
It hit me right then and there — the sharpest, most excruciating pain I’d ever felt. I noticed my entire face was covered in bandages and I didn’t know what day it was. For all I knew, it could have been years since that night.
“Dinner will be ready soon, but you won’t be able to have solids for a while…”
In the mirror above me, I began to rip the bandages off, ignoring the intense pain. What I saw staring back at me was nothing short of a monster.
Raw muscle was exposed… my face was gone. I had eyes, but no nose and no lips. I could still breathe, but all that was left were my nostrils.
She came back down with a bowl of stew that was blended into pure liquid.
“Where is it?” I asked, still confused and high on whatever drugs she had given me.
“Cooling in the fridge… we don’t want it to start to rot, do we?” Mom said
To all the people who don’t like the way they look, please appreciate your face. I’d do anything to have a nose, lips and acne. I’d do ANYTHING.