I open the drawer and take out the box where I keep the pieces of my face. It isn’t the face I was born with, but one that I assembled myself.

 

I pass a loving hand across the smooth cheeks, full lips, button nose, and small chin. They’re features that I’ve so often coveted in other women, so naturally beautiful, but I didn’t steal them. I constructed them myself through significant effort.

 

And they work, too. Every morning I fit them over the raw stretch of muscle that was left when my original face broke apart. The pieces of my new face fit perfectly together, though it took time. For years, I would set them in place as well as I could, but the cracks were so visible, blood and pus oozing through the gaps, a mockery of humanity more frightening and off-putting than the bare flesh beneath. People stared, and children cried and screamed, terrified of the monster in their midst.

 

Now, I begin the ritual of construction. Leaning over in front of the bathroom mirror, careful not to glimpse my reflection before I’m ready, I start with the forehead. The skin is supple and unblemished, but fragile. I slide it into place, and it’s sucked out of my hand as the wet tissue beneath accepts its covering.

 

I angle my head up a little to adjust, making sure my forehead sits tight against my hairline, before moving onto the nose. It connects to my nasal cavity, and I can smell again. The candle I lit a few minutes ago smells of orange and cinnamon, just enough to mask the coppery stink of blood.

 

Freshly connected, my nose starts running. I wipe away the mucous with a square of tissue paper, wash my hands, and proceed to the mouth. My fingertips caress the plump lips as I lift them, tickling and causing a shiver to run up my spine. The sensation makes me twitch, and I almost drop my mouth into the sink.

 

I go cold. Soft as the skin may be, the parts are fragile. It takes so much time and effort to create them that I don’t have backups.

 

With the crisis averted, I secure my mouth in place over the skeletal grin of my teeth. I run my tongue along my lips to moisten them. Keeping them from drying out in the box has proven an ongoing issue. Next will be the eyebrows and lashes, followed by cheeks, then finally my chin. With a sniffle, I reach back into the box to continue.

 

Then, disaster strikes.

 

Eyebrow in hand, I sneeze. My body shakes, and spittle and snot spray across the mirror, obscuring my half-assembled mask. The box tumbles from my meagre bathroom counter, careening toward the floor. Each remaining piece of my face falls, strikes the tile, and explodes into bloody chunks. Years of work, years of routine and comfort, lost in an instant.

 

I collapse to my knees amidst the oozy remnants of my face. I try pressing the pieces of what were one cheeks back together. They’re warm and slippery between my fingers, and I can’t get a solid grip with my shaking hands. The tattered flesh falls to the floor, raw meat slapping against linoleum.

 

I curl up against the wall and press my hands to what’s left of my face, desperate to hold it in place. Blood seeps through my grasp, and I remember when my face first fell off, of what it was like losing the outward markers of my identity, even if it was an identity I’d never been comfortable in.

 

I’d been standing in front of the same bathroom mirror, trying to recognize myself in the reflection, ready to try anything to change it. To have a face that matched who I was inside. I had read online about ways to create a new face and medical procedures that let you reshape your face into something beautiful, but those were far too expensive for me to afford on fast food wages.

 

One night, four or five beers deep at a friend’s birthday party, I met the most stunning woman in the world. She’d been so confident, so assured, sipping a gin and tonic and puffing TCH haze, when she told me, “You don’t need expensive treatments, you know. You’re already beautiful. You just don’t see it.”

 

I hadn’t believed her, but the idea had stuck. Could I make myself beautiful? Not with my old face, I’d been certain of that. Every day I stood at the mirror, focusing on everything I hated and wishing for a beautiful face, making myself miserable, until one day, a crack formed.

 

It ran along my hairline, separating my forehead from my scalp. I’d dug my fingers into the crack, gritting my teeth through the pain as I peeled my forehead away, retching at the wet sound of meat separating. After my forehead came off, more cracks had appeared, segmenting my face and falling away to reveal the gristle beneath.

 

Now, as the few pieces of face I’d adhered on before the accident fall away, I have nothing but the glistening knot of muscles looking back at me. Tears flow, stinging the exposed nerves, and the other woman’s words echo in my head.

 

Was this what she meant? Underneath the mask is this oozing visage. With skin and lips stripped away, these muscles and bone structure are my face. Could this be beautiful?

 

Tenderly, I reach out and touch my reflection. The bright blue eyes are still mine. The jaw, the cheekbones, the shape of it all, mine. The muscles around my mouth stretch, as close to a smile my lipless face can manage. If this is me, and I am beautiful, then this face must be beautiful. I don’t know if I really believe it yet, but I’m going to try.

 

I sweep up the tattered scraps of my mask and throw them away. They were never me, anyway.

​

Autumn Charette (she/her) is some sort of woman-shaped monster from Maine. She has been mistaken for a vampire, a productive member of society, a man, and various other frightening things. As a writer, Autumn meanders along the borderline between horror and humor, but she sees herself as more of an educator and editor, not to mention a gibbering horror that drives madness into the hearts of those who witness her. She received her MA in English from the University of Maine and attended the Stonecoast MFA. Her work has been published in Flash Phantoms.