Brief Horrors

Beauty

TW: Self harm, self mutilation, body image issues, death, severe gore

Walking at night is never the safest thing, even if you are just trying to get home from work. Neon signs do nothing to sooth your unrest despite their warm glow and the faces staring down from the advertising panels are watching you, judging you. Your hands wrap around your keys, the keychain digs into your skin as you hold tighter, you can just as easily imagine the grip being on your heart as it pounds in your chest. You need to get home.

And then you do. You're safe.

Turning right from the foyer you go to the bathroom. The mirror reflects a face that anyone else would be fine with, no one else would care about the small freckles you have, the acne or your scars. But you obviously see them, to you they are beacons telling the world you are broken. You wash your face with cleanser. You go to bed. You ignore the urge to do more.

The next day is the same. You go to the gym in the morning, you go to work, and you come home. Someone said you were beautiful, you said thank you but you didn't believe them.

Mirrors are strange to you, to others they are kind. Mirrors always reflect the worst parts of you. Too broad in some places to skinny in others, fine lines and the wrinkles around your eyes always seem to show. You notice your skin is more textured in some places and so you scrub until your skin is smooth again. You don't care about the burning feeling it leaves behind.

The gym is full of mirrors. You like to see your muscles working, it reminds you that you're real. You work through your program quickly though, reality isn't your favourite place to be. The gym has a store connected to it, shelves filled with powders and pills with posters behind them. Posters of perfect people. You can only think of how badly you want to be like them.

The house is dark, no one needs to see what you're doing today. You've lain a white plastic sheet on the floor, you have a flashlight on an adjustable stand next to you, and the light makes the plastic shine. A short table is beside the stand, it's covered in plastic too. You have objects lined up on the table, tweezers, scissors, Q-tips, white cloths, bandages, a bowl, hand sanitizer and a knife. The knife is shiny too.

You pick up the bowl and go to the kitchen, a small LED on the fire alarm lights enough of the room for you to see. The sound of you putting down the bowl echoes through the kitchen. You fill the kettle and put it on to boil, within a few minutes you see steam rising from the spout. You fill the bowl with boiling water and take it back to the table.

You sit on the plastic, grey shorts and a singlet are the only protection your skin has for what's to come. You don't want to use painkillers or avoid pain, you want to feel everything. Pretty is supposed to hurt.

You start by grabbing a cloth, dipping it into the boiled water. Your fingers turn pink from the heat and a light steam is coming off of the cloth as you remove it from the bowl. You start at your feet, wiping gently at first but slowly becoming rougher, by the time you begin move up your legs your feet are red. You scrub at your calves, you reach your knees and dip the towel back into the bowl. You scrub at your knees, the skin warping and shifting over the joint. You keep scrubbing until all of your skin is red. The burn of your skin tingles through you.

You grab the hand sanitizer, flipping open the cap and pouring it onto your skin. It stings as it hits your raw skin. It makes the burn feel so much more intense and for a second you could have sworn your skin was melting.

On the side of your knee you spot a mole, you haven't seen it there before. You hand hovers over the knife for just a second before grabbing the scissors and the tweezers. You wipe the scissors and tweezers down with hand sanitizer. Using the tweezers you carefully pinch the skin around the mole, you grab the scissors, opening them and lining them up underneath the tweezers. Then you cut it off. Blood spills down the side of your leg, you grab some Q-tips. You get the end of the Q-tip and put it into the hole you've made, wiping up blood and digging deeper into the wound. You start to smile until, you see another mole, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another. You repeat the process, washing the tools you have in the bowl beside you. The plastic sheet is covered in blood. But the moles are still there, the skin has healed seamlessly but the moles are still there so you go through and cut them all off. But they aren't coming off. You get matches from the kitchen and put the flame to each one, burns flowering from the contact, but they heal over. You grab the knife and place it an inch above the mole, you dig through each layer of skin until you can see through to the muscle. You push down on the flat edge of the blade, curled up shavings of skin fall from your body and litter the plastic below.

You start to sway, blood loss making you dizzy. You go to stand but your body isn't able to hold itself up. You pass out, fainting into a pool of your own skin and blood. You look beautiful like this, innocent and carefree. The blood staining your clothes makes a morbid pattern but you seem so comfortable.

I step out from the shadows, picking you up and taking you to the bathroom. I put you in the tub and fill it with water. I clean up the table and plastic sheets from the lounge room. Your house is clean aside from your bathroom, where your body lies covered in holes. I think you look beautiful.