The Accident

1

She was one of the many delicate fragments of his imagination. He had spent hours contemplating, manipulating and modifying the features of the many attractive, graceful, if not lewd, woman he had seen throughout his life, manufacturing the epitome of desire in his mind.

He had started working on his project after the 'incident' occurred. He remembered it all too well, the horrendous shriek he let out when his car slammed into the tree, and the pressure he felt when his head, oblivious of the rest of his body, catapulted towards the window.

He remembered glass shattering magnificently, glistening and shimmering, absolutely dazzling as it descended towards him, caressing his flesh and making him bleed. That was all he could remember from the actual accident.

It was the aftermath which had really tossed him into insanity. He remembered doctors leaning over him, explaining to him that they had tried their utmost best. That there was nothing else they could do. That the best plastic surgeon had worked on his face, trying to make it somewhat recognizable, to somehow salvage what had been utterly disrupted.

He did not blame the doctors. He did not blame the doctors for the pitying stares he was the victim of when he walked down the hallways at school, or for the frightened expressions on the faces of mothers, who ushered their children away from him. He did not blame them for the way his heart clenched and tightened when either of the pre-mentioned occurrences took place. No, he did not blame them, as most people would, for he knew that they had tried their absolute best.

The following months, he had remained doleful. It was as if he had a psychological ailment, which he probably did, but denied it as most people with mental illnesses do. It was hilariously ironic, that he was passively concerned about his mental state, since it was his face which bore the severe, disgusting scars.

It wasn't long until he'd developed such an intense case of anxiety that made him explode into tears hours after the clock had struck 12. He'd become self-conscious and frightened, fretting the thought of waking up for another day and having to endure the pointless challenges that life had to throw at him.

His mind had become his worst enemy and his closest companion. It was a constant game of bickering with his own thoughts, suggesting one thing over another and driving himself to clutch and pull his hair on the sidewalk, screaming and shouting, debating whether to walk across the road. He felt as if he was barely on the edge of a cliff, almost about to fall into the dark abyss below him. He was afraid, that some part of him had already taken that leap.

He had no one other than his family, who he ignored for days, but with reason, for he was sure that they would not understand. All his friends had abandoned him. No one dared to come near to the kid whose faces looked like it had been placed inside a sandwich maker, but who could blame them, really? He sometimes laughed dejectedly, as he thought of their reactions if they were to find out that his mind was as big a mess as his face.

So he had decided, one dark evening, to take solace within his own disruptive thoughts, and to become his own companion. He'd become obsessed with books, reading and finishing several within a day's time. He'd started to manufacture his friends by remembering the faces of strangers he'd seen in his life, and the characteristics of those he's read about in books, picking out their features and giving them lives that he could never have.

In his world, he was not the man with the ugly reminders etched across his disgruntled face, nor was he the man who had sought comfort within his imagination after the trauma that he had faced. Instead, he had deluded himself into believing that he was, and that he had, everything that was impossible for him to be and have.