Body Horror

08 Nov 2021

(No prompt today; this is just a story I wanted to tell.)

You wanted to look like the girls in the magazines, which was a mistake, because even the girls in the magazines don’t look like the girls in the magazines.

So you went to see a plastic surgeon. “The problem,” he said, “is your skin. No one who’s anyone just has skin anymore. Too prone to blemishes and acne. Too many pores. It just doesn’t have the right feel. SynthSkins are in. SynthSkins are now. A silicone blend that looks like skin, but better. Flawless.”

You went in for the operation and the surgeon carved off your skin and fitted you with a SynthSkin. And you felt gorgeous until you went on Instagram and saw the pictures of all the celebrities who’d gotten cartilagectomies, their perfect synthetic skins stretched tautly over nothing but bone.

You went under the knife again. No cost is too high for beauty.

Then you went out on a first date. It seemed like it was going all right, until the end, when your date told you, “Has anyone ever told you your kidneys look kind of lumpy?”

“What?” you said.

“Maybe not lumpy. Asymmetrical, though. It’s not bad. It’s kind of charming.”

You end your date feeling miserable, and making an appointment with the plastic surgeon to remove all your internal organs.

After the operation, you text your date, but he ghosts you. You flip open a magazine, but you feel terrible. You browse Instagram, and you feel worse. You cry yourself to sleep.

The next morning, you delete Instagram from your phone. You throw the magazines in the recycling. You drive out to the desert. You unzip your SynthSkin, and you lay down in the dirt beside the sagebrush, and let the sun bleach your bones. And for the first time in your existence, you feel beautiful.