(CW body horror, self harm)
I never had issues with acne. Never. My teenage breakouts typically consisted of one pimple that typically disappeared in a day or two. I was lucky that way. That’s not to say I was some sort of beauty queen, no way. I had the usual body issues that came with growing up; acne was just simply never one of them.
So I was caught completely off guard when at 30 I had a breakout. At first it was just a few red spots on my cheeks. I’d worry briefly over them in the mirror and pray that no one noticed. I began to worry a bit more when the breakout worsened after the first week.
Most of the people I whined to about my blossoming face garden played ignorant. My coworkers and friends would just laugh it off and say that it just looked like my cheeks were a little rosier. My mother was the first person to be honest with me about it. “It looks bad,” she said squinting at the growing mountain range on my face, “Maybe you’re allergic to something.”
Things continued to spiral, the pimples multiplied into a small army. Mom would bring up possible causes. “It’s gotta be that new fabric softener. Your skin is too sensitive for those fragrances. I had the same problem at your age.” Every time I’d strike a suspected cause from my everyday life, she’d come up with a new culprit. I stopped using fabric softener and makeup. I cut out refined sugars and red meat. I ceased perfume and lotions. Every little indulgence that made me feel happy or pretty was eliminated. Still things got worse.
By week three, my face began to itch fiercely. It took all of my willpower to keep from tearing my skin to shreds to ease the burning itch. The bumps had gotten worse as well. They were swollen and blood red, every once and a while I could feel them throb in my face. I realized it was time to call a dermatologist.
But I couldn’t get an appointment. It would be an entire month before I could be seen. I told myself that I could wait it out. I told myself that I was being a baby about this whole situation. Millions of people had this problem and here I was reacting as though I were dying.
The symptoms were taking their toll on my everyday life. I couldn’t sleep. I’d lie awake and feel my face pulsate and ache. I lost so much sleep that I started hallucinating. I’d swear that my entire face would shift and ripple independently in the darkness. It affected my mood as well. I started losing my patience at work. I stopped saying hello to other people. I snapped at anyone who so much as poked their head in my office. Most disturbing of all, I would sometimes realize I was humming to myself. The tune was atonal and something I didn’t remember ever hearing before.
It had to be the lack of sleep, right? Lack of sleep does weird stuff to people. Eventually I stopped looking in the mirror. I didn’t want to see or to know. I just wanted to make it until my dermatologist appointment. The doctor would be the answer to my prayers, they simply had to be.
A week before my appointment I saw my mother for the first time in a while. She paled at her first look at me. “Baby,” She said gravely, “You should go to the hospital.” I rolled my eyes at the idea. “I’m serious. I think you might have staph or something. Everything you’ve tried hasn’t helped and it looks really ba-” I cut her off by throwing my hands up and storming off. I’d had enough. I wasn’t going to the hospital for my face, I hadn’t seen it for a few days but there was no way it could be that bad.
Then I started thinking back to horror stories I’d heard as a kid about spiders laying their eggs in people’s faces. Rationally, I knew that spiders don’t actually do that, but the idea that something was in my skin stuck with me. What if I had a parasite? Maybe I really did feel my skin moving. I broke down and checked a mirror that night.
Mom had been right, the bumps were much worse. There were at least 20 of them crowding my cheeks and more spots were appearing at the edge of my jaw and on my neck. The exhaustion and shock took over me and I flew into a rage and grabbed a needle from a nearby sewing kit. I was done with all this. No more. I sterilized it and my face with alcohol and went to work. I knew that what I was doing went against every medical professional’s advice but there was no stopping me. I jabbed and poked my frustrations out.
There was so much blood. It felt like cups of it came pouring from my face. I worked through the mess, possessed by stress and the desire to finish what I had started. I finally stopped when I couldn’t see any more bumps under the confusion of gore I had summoned from my skin. I mopped up the blood as best I could with a clean washcloth. I was drained in more ways than one. I didn’t even change out of my bloody top.
I slept. Glorious sleep. I had vivid dreams of a strange landscape. It was colored in purplish gray hues, the ground beneath my feet seemed dusty and unfathomably dry. I was surrounded by skeletal trees that twisted into supplicating shapes against the darkness of the place. I remember feeling an unsettling feeling, not just by the surroundings. There was something out there in the darkness. Something coming for me. I squinted into the trees and saw them. Twisted, ash-colored forms lolled in the distance. They seemed to take small, jerky steps toward me. They were bent like the trees and their spindly limbs made soft cracking sounds with their movements. As often with dreams, I could not move. I had to stand in place as they approached with aching slowness.
When they got close enough for me to see them I started to scream. I’d never screamed like this. They tore out of me in vicious waves, I felt the muscles in my throat strain and want to rip with the shrillness and force. Even through all the noise I made, I started hearing them.
They were whispering in dry voices.
I snatched my eyes open in the darkness of my room. I found my hands still clenched tightly from my nightmare, my nails had bitten into the flesh of my palms.
I needed to see. To look at my face. I didn’t know why, but I had to. I stumbled out of bed on weak legs. I was face to face with my wall mirror in the darkness. Nothing had changed. Air rushed out of my lungs in a slightly humored sigh. I’d had a nightmare and suddenly I thought my face had melted off. I could not be more ridiculous. After a few moments of looking in the dark, it seemed like some of my wounds had scabbed over. I knew I should probably tend to them with some actual medical supplies. I reasoned that my nightmare was likely a product of a fever brought on by my impromptu face surgery.
My hand slid over my cool, smooth bedroom wall as I fumbled for the switch. A quick glance in the mirror revealed more than the darkness had initially. Some dried blood remained, some of the bumps had grown white heads, and others had small jagged tears in them. I’d really done a number on myself. My doctor was going to be pissed.
I don’t know what possessed me to lean in closer before I went back to bed. I examined one of the tears closely. Carefully I lifted a hand to it and gently brushed the skin with the tips my fingers. And it twitched.
It moved. In front of my eyes as I stood there with my mouth agape. The little skin mound stretched open. “A yawn. It yawned with its mouth. WITH ITS MOUTH.” My mind was yammering with nonsensical abandon as I stared at my face in horror.
More of the tears...mouths began to move. Wide yawning motions at first, but then they started to take on quick animated motions. They were speaking without sound. But I heard their voices in my head. Tiny whispers slithered through my thoughts but I couldn’t tell what they were saying.
Then the white heads began to twitch. They began to roll in my face. Distantly, I could feel my stomach turning over from the sickening gliding motions of them. One at a time they rolled down to reveal themselves for what they truly were: Eyes. Twenty tiny, milky gray eyes staring back at my own.
The same eyes from the creatures in my dreams.
As in my dreams, I could finally hear what they were saying despite the sounds of my own sobbing screams.
yousharknotpass
prguitarman
dailybridgerton
stormborns
turnnoffyourmind
areudirty
ellievsbear
romaincrisis
gracieabrams
amandla
