The following ten minutes of posturing didn’t register in Selenas mind. For those few moments she was a soldier, following orders and forgetting her individuality.
“You may put your clothes back on. Number fifty-eight, get dressed, and defrag your thinking,” Knowels snapped.
Selena gaze wandered to Shawn, who was slumped back in his chair, twitching from Hardnow withdrawal. It hit her that she was standing naked in front of them. She snatched up her clothes and hurriedly dressed, with her back turned. She knew it made no sense, but still she did it. She wished she’d worn something less revealing, something baggy and formless, like the nun’s habits she’d seen in movies.
Knowels whispered to Taylor , and finally she leaned over and shook Shawn by the shoulder. He roused from his stupor and cracked a lascivious smile.
“It looks like we’ve made a decision, number 58. We’ll offer 28,000 dollars for three years exclusive rights, everything from the neck down,” Knowles said.
For a second it hurt like never before, more than the unmasking at a freshman costume party, more than the drunken man-child who’d jokingly asked if she minded wearing a bag over her head, even more than seeing her face first thing every morning. It passed, and Selena had never been so glad to be plain looking. The money would get her through the last year of school. Beauty would have to wait, but she suspected she would never get hooked on that trend. She’d find some fellow Professional who wasn’t hung up on looks and settle down. If they were lucky, they’d be licensed for space; if really lucky, a child.
“Yes, that will be fine,” she told Knowels. “That will be just fine.” As simple as that, she no longer “owned” her body. A week from now a Professional would digitally paste on the head of a woman with natural beauty. The composite might end up as a walk-on love interest in a cum-edy, or being sodomized by a beer bottle in the “Feels Great, More Filling” campaign, or used for virtual surgery in a federal medical school. Possibly all of them.
Selens no longer had any say in the matter. She couldn’t even show her body to a lover, though that hardly mattered.
The only thing left was her head. She couldn’t believe she’d
never seen that was the only part that mattered. The next year would be hard, even with the money, but the possibility of graduating with honors now existed, and Selena knew she would succeed. Three years from now she would be a Professional, and she could find herself a good man.
She exited through a back door, overwhelmed by joy at this discovery; it was like eating a handful of exuberants. The door opened into an alley so people wouldn’t be seen leaving the auditions, which made Selena laugh. She didn’t care who knew, because it didn’t matter. Selling her body had freed her mind.
She decided to spend a little of the money on a Professional haircut. The bangs had to go. It was time to make eye contact with the world and hold it.
Selena couldn’t wait to get to a mirror and look at her own face.
She knew it would be the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
Hey should I continue this story please let me know ❤
