We can all agree that it’s satisfying to pop a pimple, right? Don’t get me wrong, it’s absolutely disgusting, but something about a buildup of pressure under the skin being pushed forward and out of it…it’s just the right kind of gross. It feels like cleaning your skin, in a way. Like letting the pus come out from your pores is healthier than letting it sit there, festering. I know for a fact that it isn’t actually good for your skin, but it feels like it should be.
It became part of my morning routine, poring over my own reflection looking for blemishes. I have a little mirror in my bathroom that shows a closeup, just for this purpose. I’m no Dr. Pimple Popper, I wasn’t filming it or anything, just a routine that helped me feel like I was cleaning my skin thoroughly.
A week ago when I began my routine, I realized I had a particularly nasty whitehead along my jawline, just off center from my chin. The head was small, but there was a larger base burgeoning just beneath the skin. Using the tool to apply pressure as well as my finger, I popped it. The pus was viscous and foul-smelling, and a shade closer to yellow than the usual off-white. I maneuvered the tool around my skin, trying to get all of the clog from beneath it, but still found myself unable to get all of it with the tool alone. I honestly didn’t think much of it. I wore a bandage to work in an attempt to hide the crater in my face and breathed a sigh of relief when I realized it was barely noticeable underneath my mask.
The next day upon beginning my routine I realized two things - first, was that the pimple had thankfully scabbed over. I hadn’t fully been able to get deep enough to clear it of pus, but I had gotten enough out to be pleased with my own handiwork. It was nearly deflated, now just a sore with a small mound surrounding it rather than the mountainous blight from the day before. The second thing I noticed was that a similarly enormous whitehead was sitting just at the edge of my hairline, as big as if not overtaking the size of the one from the day before.
Frustrated, I made quick work of it and put on yet another bandaid, audibly sighing when I realized this one wouldn’t be covered by my mask. The liquid evacuated from my skin was just as rancid smelling as the day before, and I gagged as I realized it was leaking down my face from under the bandage. When I pulled the bandage away, I discovered that just as the day before, I had been unable to get all of the liquid out, it was too deeply embedded within my skin. The thick, chunky pus flowed down my forehead and I cursed quietly. I used my metal pick to go deeper still into my own skin, applying pressure until a red welt began to form and the dripping finally stopped.
Here’s where I may have messed up. When I got home from work that day, I took the bandaid off the now scabbed-over wound from the day before, just to replace it. As I looked at the thin layer of skin over the crater, I realized it had flared up during the day, getting rounded and almost painful to the touch. It strained against my skin, making it a dark pink color around the white head of the pimple. Infected, I was sure. I had no idea how to handle it, but seeing it rounded again made me think that if I could get out the infected pus, I could make the pimple go away altogether.
I applied pressure yet again from the metal instrument and my finger, and yet again it erupted. It was the same yellow, stinking mess as the last two times, and there was quite a bit more of it. But even as I released what seemed to be an absurd amount of secretion, I felt more beneath my skin. I steadied my resolve and dug as deep as I dared, wincing from pain as with a tiny squelch, a solidified ball of mass came from the spot on my chin. When released, it gave off a worse stench than even the previous whiteheads, almost as if the scent were concentrated. To my dismay, it stayed there resting on the wound rather than falling as I’d expected it to, and I quickly realized that it was stuck to a wispy trail of blood, holding it in the air.
It was about the size of my pinky fingernail, in total. But as I looked at the coagulated blood-covered ball, I reached up to take it off my face. Grasping it gently between my thumb and forefinger, I noticed the gut-wrenching squish that I felt, as if the thing were mostly liquid. After smudging some of the blood off, I realized with a start that while most of it was off-white, a speck of it was a sickly yellow, reminiscent of a rotten egg yolk. It darkened in the center to a slit of black, and I tried to tell myself that there was no possible way for it to be an eye.
As I tried to pull it off of my chin, the thin string of blood stayed attached, and after pulling it about an inch from my face, it pulled taut. I realized then that I had mistaken a vein for a trail of blood. It hadn’t hurt to pull the orb until the vein held, and even then the pain was not from a place I recognized. I had expected to feel it behind the wound, but I realized with a start that the pain I was feeling began near the top of my shoulder, a pressure I couldn’t relieve.
What can you do with something like that? I wouldn’t be putting the thing that I’d decided was not an eyeball back into me, so I had to pull the vein. It was as simple as that. It was indescribably painful, the slow trail from inside my shoulder to my chin. The throat I think was the worst part, as whatever was at the end of the vein dragged its sharp, hard edge beneath my skin. It didn’t help that the blood and ever more disgusting pus dropped from the wound as I pulled, stirred by whatever I was bringing to the surface. Still, I pulled at the increasingly long red thread that kept the thing that couldn’t possibly be an eyeball with a rotten pupil hanging off of my face.
When I finally got whatever was tethered inside of me to the wound where my pimple had been, I assumed that the worst of it was over. That was, I assumed until I realized that whatever hard, sharp object had been in me must now come through the pinprick-sized hole in my face. I would like to say I was brave, in the end. That I unemotionally pulled the last of it through. But if we’re being honest, I screamed. I cried. I gave up, over and over, despite knowing that each brief reprise from pain would only make it all the sharper when I tried again. Eventually, I used my metal pimple tool to open the wound further and finally passed the dark metal object through my skin.
You’d think I would’ve noticed somewhere along the way when vein had become wire, but I was distracted by the pain I was in, and even looking at it I couldn’t see a single point where one bled into the other. It was absolutely seamless. Having the ordeal over with, I looked closer and saw small veins running throughout what I know now had to be an eye, hidden deep within my skin. The color of the eye was not my own, and the slit pupil looked almost animal in nature. That wasn’t what made me cry out in shock, though. The inhuman-looking eye wasn’t what made me immediately flush the eye and vein and anchor all down the toilet, crying inconsolably as I prayed that it had all been a dream. What caused this reaction was the realization that even without a deep understanding of technology, I understood the black metal that had been inside my own shoulder had to have been some kind of camera.
This morning when I woke up, there were four more whiteheads straining against my jawline, and two more on my forehead. Each was larger than the last and looked ready to pop at any moment. I don’t know yet if I’ll have the strength not to pop them, or what will develop if I don’t. I don’t know if each contains an eye, or if by some miracle they’re regular pimples. All I know is that I can feel something underneath them, deep within my muscles. I can feel it growing within me, and I don’t know if pulling out whatever is being grown can stop it.