I was forced to write fiction. I figured, what the fuck, why not post it?
Today I walked around the plaza. It was windy, I could feel my hair whipping my face and neck, and the cold made my fingers creak. I had forgotten the knit scarf at home. I hadn’t noticed at first because I had my tea, but now it was gone and my teeth chattered. I tried to shove my hands deep into my pockets, but the ratty leather allowed the crisp air to permeate it, leaving my hands balled up into what felt like frozen rocks. After about twenty minutes, rain began to pour and I ducked inside of a coffee shop. It was like a movie, the way the eyes locked on me like they always do. I get used to it. But being in a new town made it harder. I guess people aren’t used to seeing a face with no nose. But on the bright side, without one it wasn’t cold.
My name is Winnie Beazle, I go by Winnabea for long. I like it because it is sort of a combination between my first and last names and my dad gave it to me when I was five. I am now twenty-three and three-quarters years old. I just moved from a small town in Delaware to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and am alone, like always. I like scaled animals, eat only food with cheese on top, sew my own clothes, and cannot stand the color orange. I want to become a fighter pilot for the air force, but there is not a lot of people interested in teaching a female to pilot a jet covered in weapons. I suspect I would’ve been accepted to a school for it by now, but the fact that I’m missing my nose scares people away. Really, I don’t mind it… I just think it makes me easier to pick out in a crowd. But from my experience as a nose-less girl, people think differently.
I’m not going to tell you how I lost my nose. I know that’s sort of a letdown considering how I told you. But the truth is, no one can know. If you think I haven’t told countless lies about it before- my parents, my friends, teachers, and therapists- they all ate that right up. A rabid squirrel had bitten the friendly neighbor dog, Groucho. That much was true. But the rest was a fiction, written intricately and entirely by yours truly. The story about my walk to the school after my lunch, how I saw him and bent down to pet him like every other day, and how I hadn’t noticed him frothing at the mouth… seething with rage so inhuman. Oh yes, I had described his eyes that looked so angry and unfamiliar, I had described the screaming that came from somewhere unknown… All of it had been so real that I almost fooled myself. I couldn’t believe that my young mind had devised all of that, but it did, and I’m sticking to it.
Flinging my coat onto the couch, pulling my boots off, my whole body frigid and quaking, throwing my body atop the tallest piece of furniture closest to the heater vent on my roof. As I lay shivering on top of the book case, I could see the crumbling egg-shell colored paint peeling off, floating down onto the oak in the wind current sent by the only warm current in the entire apartment. I could hear the wind whistling through the no-longer-sealed window, the thumping of rain turning to ice, the clap of the thunder, flashing lightning surging up into the big storm causing the rumpus that had been rocking the city and surrounding suburbs for hours previous. It was scary. Not the storm, not the noises or darkness occasionally interrupted by a blinding flash… it was scary because I could smell. I could smell the rain, the dirty carpet, my wet clothes, the lingering scent of the perfume I’d sprayed myself with. I had smelled the damp soil splattering against the sidewalk as I ran home. I could smell the electric current in the air as the lightning struck. Smell. It was so real. I knew the smell, at that moment, of roses, of chocolate cake baking, of candles melting, of salty crackers and fresh herbs on chicken roasting. I had known them and felt them and understood them. That must’ve been the dream, I suppose. That’s the only reasonable explanation. I woke up hours later, in the early morning pitch black to find quiet. I sat up immediately, hitting my head on the heater vent. I could no longer smell the warm breeze that had once seemed to fill my senses. But I could still feel it. It had not stopped. It was I that had finished dreaming. Lazily, I slid down from the book case, felt my way into the bedroom, pulled the covers over my lazy head, and drifted off to sleep. Instead, the nightmare came. There she was. Five years old, black hair, brown eyes, pale, sick complexion. Her hair was a mess, she had stale tears caked down her face to her chin and neck. Her dress was dirty and torn and seemed to be so tight on her it squeezed the last bits of precious air out of her diaphragm in these crackling moans that made my stomach convulse. The repulsive child’s little lips were chapped and bleeding, she was bound at the ankles and wrists but was standing, unable to move. She looked as though she hadn’t eaten in at least a week. She was crying but had no more tears to shed as though her poor frail body had simply given up and conserved the little moisture she had left just to barely keep her alive. I thought it was sick, the way her captor had un-gagged her just so I could hear her pathetic retching, her begging, and I could not watch. I could not listen. I felt dizzy and sick and wrong, as though this was my doing. The man that had tied her and kept her there- I had never seen his face. I could only see the back of him; he had blonde corn-silk hair that hung just below his ears and the rest was shaved so cleanly it had to have been done just hours ago. He never moved, he never made a noise, he simply stood and looked onward to the sight of the girl he had taken from somewhere. I had tried, over and over again, to stop him, to hurt him. He had never moved. His skin was somehow impenetrable- he was sick like some sort of inhuman god. His skin was porcelain and translucent, I could almost see his veins through his skin. Countless times I had tried to bite at his neck, puncturing his veins. I had found a crowbar and bashed his head a thousand times but never had he flinched. He just stood in his plain, forest green t-shirt, Levi’s 505 jeans, and worn out white-gray sneakers. He was stoic. I had tried everything. What was I supposed to do? All the while this little girl screamed and gagged, praying to God, to her mommy, to me, for help. What was I supposed to do? She looked like a girl you’d see with a big lollipop and two loving parents trotting along the street on a sunny afternoon. Who was I? How was I supposed to help her? The little girl looked straight into my eyes, forgetting her sobs, acknowledging me, and said two words to me. “Thank you,” before she finally let her knees go limp, and she fell forward onto her little face, letting blood spatter across the concrete floor.