Face

It's been seven months.

I was in an accident. Can you tell?

People look at me like I'm a monster. They see me and physically recoil. I have a face that can make a child cry. I am the bogeyman. I am the monster that hides under your bed when you sleep and threatens to eat you. I am a witch. I am a gargoyle. I am all that you fear.

I am a nineteen-year-old girl who will never find anyone to fall in love with me. I am bitter and sour and I have a face to match. I am lonely but I cannot cry. I am interesting but I can't find anyone new to have a conversation with. I am thin and I have good hair and long legs and nice breasts and no man will ever care because none of the good outweighs the bad. I am ugly.

I am painfully, irrefutably ugly.

*

Things are pretty much back to normal in my house now. For a while after I came out of hospital everyone tiptoed around me, and went out of their way to be nice. Ali was wonderful. Every day after school she'd come and talk to me, tell me about her day and make me a drink. Mum would liquify my food and Ali would patiently sit there placing the straw in my mouth and wiping the slobber off my chin. I suppose they behaved like that to try and make me aware of how much they loved me, to try and soften the blow. They wanted me to stay the same, to be the person I'd always been. Not to let my injuries redefine me. Not to let the fact that I was disfigured get me down.

Of course, it doesn't really work like that. They tried, and I'm grateful and I love them, but they don't understand and they never will. They love me because we are family; we have a mutual, unconditional love that can't be destroyed the way that bone and skin and muscle can be destroyed. But they must know, deep down, that if they didn't know me, if I was a stranger they saw on the street, they would be disgusted. They would recoil just like everyone else. And I can't blame them, because I would too. How could any normal person see this face and not feel the horror, the disgust, the perverse and twisted intrigue? I am a modern-day freak show.

Dad even came down a couple of times. I can't remember the last time I saw him before the accident, it must have been months. He came to the hospital but I don't really remember - even once I was awake I was dosed-up so much that everything from that whole period is pretty hazy. Sometimes I feel like I was in hospital for about five or six hours, and sometimes it feels like it was about three or four months. I suppose both are quite ridiculous.

When Dad first visited me at home, I still couldn't speak. That was quite weird, especially because he was trying really hard to be cheerful, but clearly wasn't properly prepared for the way I was going to look. He hadn't seen me without the bandages before. It must've been quite a shock. Mum got really angry with Ali because she kept trying to talk to Dad, to be the centre of attention. I felt a bit sorry for her really - she always was the centre of attention when we were kids and now she had been pushed aside for me. No, not even for me, not really. Just for this thing that had happened to me. God knows I didn't want to be the centre of attention. I didn't want any of this to have happened. I wished so hard that I could have just broken my arms or legs, or both. Maybe if I'd been sitting in the back... Sometimes I even wished that I'd never woken up, like Lindsey. I've never told anyone that. It would be an awful thing to say out loud. That I'd rather be a pretty girl in an indefinite coma than be 'healthy' and deformed.

*

My name was Sheila Hughes. I say 'was' because these days, when I look in the mirror, I don't see the Sheila Hughes I'd recognise staring back at me. I just see the Face. This thing I hate. I've hated it since the first time I looked in the mirror and saw it. I don't feel like it's part of me. They said I'd get used to it, but they never said I'd grow to like it. Why bother? It's obvious no one could ever like this Face.

I suppose, to an extent, I have got used to it. When I look at photos of Sheila Hughes, as I was, it's with nostalgia. When I look in the mirror, I'm no longer shocked, the way I used to be when I caught sight of the Face, straight after it happened. I still feel the same horror and repulsion, but it's not so immediate, so fierce. It has mingled with bitterness. It is not so striking but it is stronger, more intense. I hate and resent the Face in a way I never thought I could hate anything. The Face itself is only part of my problem, I suppose; the other part is my Hate. My Hate is like a cancer, the internal equivalent of the Face, just as ugly and irreparable. It's like the way people talk about being beautiful inside and how it will make you appear more attractive outwardly - the exact opposite has happened to me. Ever since I've had this Face I've become twisted and ugly within.

I shouldn't have said that: 'I've had'. I don't 'have' this Face; the Face has me. It controls me, it controls my life. It determines everything I do and think, everyone I know. It defines me.

I am no longer Sheila Hughes.


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BRIT ALERT
Please read before you review
I'm British and, as such, spell things differently than Americans do. Having been "corrected" on correct British spellings in many reviews before, I decided to add this disclaimer to some of my stories. Please bear in mind that many words ending -or in the US end -our in the UK; words ending -ize in the US end -ise in the UK; and we do not have the word "gotten" — over here it's simply "got". There are various other differences, of course, these are just a few that I'm always getting picked up on. Please consider our cultural differences before "correcting" my spelling and word usage!