by Unknown
I built a very successful career with private clinics based in London, Los Angeles and Hong Kong. For many years I performed the usual procedures - rhinoplasty, abdominoplasty, breast augmentation, liposuctions, rhytidectomy. Extracting fat, implanting silicone, injecting Botulinum toxin. I worked with many young models whose already near perfect features only required the most subtle of corrections. A gentle shaving off the bridge of the nose or a tiny tuck behind the ear can improve the profile dramatically. A model’s career can be built on such alterations. It was this subtle work that most satisfied me, most intrigued me, and by which I truly came to understand the intricacy and the irony of beauty. If you are not born beautiful it is unlikely that cosmetic surgery can make you beautiful. But if you already possess a classic or modern beauty then you are a work of art upon which I can put the exquisite, finishing touches that render you a masterpiece.
The majority of staff and clients on Level 1 will never know the existence of Level 2. When the thick steel doors of the elevator open I feel as if I can finally breathe fresh cleansing air, although the lab is hundreds of feet underground. I had to lobby ruthlessly to receive the funds for the facility. I have a small team of medical staff on Level 2 who assist me in my work. I choose for them vintage styled uniforms, with peaked white hats and white aprons over a sky blue pinafore. It reminds me of the legacy of my forefathers, that I am taking my place in a long line of scientists and surgeons whose work has made history. I have a neurosurgeon on my team but I usually perform all operations and procedures myself, be they of the mind or body. I am after all a Doctor.
Level 2 is a sanctuary, a sacred space, for me. I often wander the halls at night, alone, the hum of the silence is nurturing. It is a sterile womb of glass and steel and shining linoleum, and what is birthed here will be a beauty that Nature cannot match. With the pursuit of innovation there is always, of course, collateral damage, and the science of Beauty is no exception. It is a process of refinement; each new subject comes closer and closer to the goal.
Deena was my first. There were others before her but they were quite insignificant. I was just beginning to sharpen my skills and focus my vision then. But Deena, she was the first in whom I truly believed. She was the first who excited and inspired me. She was strawberry blonde; fair skinned with freckles the same hue as her hair. She had arrived at the Institute suffering from severe depression. She would sit by the large windows in the northern wing, wrapped in a blanket and stare out all day. I was captured and enthralled by the way her hair glowed in the sunlight. When she looked at me a cold disinterest pierced right through me, and yet I sensed a seething passion smoking deep inside. She was both of this world and not of this world, hovering in between. I began to talk to her a little each day, keeping our interactions brief and casual, and for a long time she didn’t even acknowledge me.
Then one day she looked me in the eye and said “Beauty really is just skin deep isn’t it? There is no beauty deep inside.”
I was so shocked by her statement that I turned away from her and stared blankly out the window myself. A deep sadness came over me. Then I told her no, that is not true, there is beauty deep inside and I can show you.
Her stunning mane was a crown, fanning her small head, on the operating table. She did not struggle, she did not even ask where she was or why. As the needle pierced her skin, her eyes rolled over to me and she whispered again “There is no beauty deep inside.”
She went under with a faint smile on her face. Why was she trying to provoke me? I was hurt and infuriated. I altered her features dramatically. I completely redesigned her nose, making it quite small and sharp. I changed the shape of her eyes, cutting and tucking the outer lids up. I stitched her skin tightly behind her ears so that her already prominent cheekbones became angular.
Then, picking up the orbitoclast I inserted it under her eyelid and through the top of her eye socket. I hammered it with a mallet to break through the superior surface of the orbital plate, then I drove the instrument about five centimetres into the frontal lobes. Gradual pivoting and rotating movements are required to scrape away most of the connections to and from the prefrontal cortex. Here in this gelatinous colourless mass lies our perception of beauty.
I was excited and eager for Deena to heal from her surgery and to meet her new self. To show her that there is beauty deep inside and that we can master it. I really believed she would be the one but weeks passed and she remained unresponsive. She lay in her bed, refusing to move or speak. I fed her watery cereal with a syringe, but most of it seeped out of her mouth. She defecated where she lay and would remain in it until the nurses came to change her.
When I shone my tiny torch in her eyes I was dismayed that the spark I had sensed was no longer there. She was a vegetable and of no use to me at all. I was angry with her and cut off her locks of flaming sunlight. They floated to the white floor in chunks like huge, red leaves. I stabbed her arms with a scalpel, drawing polka dots of swelling blood, but even that did not illicit a response. I expected more from you Deena. I am very disappointed. You have really let me down. She was dispatched and her case file closed.
I had to wait a long time for my next real opportunity. Many enter the doors of the Institute but very few are of the calibre I require. Finally a young girl, a seasoned model at the age of twenty three, was admitted to the Institute. Her name was Lindsay. She suffered from anorexia nervosa. For her duration at the Institute she never once left her room or spoke to another person. I was sure she would speak to me. I took a keen interest in her because clients suffering from eating disorders already possess a unique view of beauty. They have done a lot of the work for me, breaking down preconceived notions and forging new synaptic inroads. On the table she was not much more than a frail skeleton. I can guide you. Together we can find the way; I have begun to pave a path for you. Nobody else is listening are they, nobody knows what you want. But I do. I didn’t feel the desire to surgically alter her face. She was quite gaunt and her beauty was already in a state of transformation. Her eyes sunken, her cheeks hollow, her brow pronounced. I admired the vision of her morphing beauty, something new, evolving and creating itself under her skin. Almost ready to burst forth. I injected her facial muscles with the paralysing neurotoxin Botulinum, freezing forever that saintliness of her face. Then I concentrated my work on her brain. For her I choose the more traditional technique of trephining her skull on either side of the prefrontal cortex and injecting pure ethanol into the holes to lesion the connecting fibres. She was worthy of such a dramatic gesture. At first, I was so impressed with Lindsay. Her eyes blank, reflective and empty of self, her smile so simple and unobtrusive. The Botox kept her expression even and fixed. Her walk was even more light footed than before, she swayed in a breeze that only she could feel. She would not speak or answer questions but when left alone she would sing a little song to herself, over and over. When she was approached she would fall silent again.
One evening I went down to visit her and I was devastated to find her slumped in a bloody mess. She had torn her fingernails off with her teeth, her mouth was a red smear and her fingers were swollen and bleeding. She had shredded her bed sheets and then used the cloth to strangle herself. The beauty of Science, as with Nature, is that nothing goes to waste. Suicides offer me the opportunity to study the brain in more thorough detail than I can with living subjects, and young, healthy organs are always in demand on the international market. If the subject has not been too compromised by the neurosurgery there are many parties eager to purchase them and take them off my hands.
The labyrinth is hand built with thick stone bricks; it towers above you, encasing you in cold walls. As you walk through it your thoughts seem to be amplified by the stone, at first you grow tense, agitated, but as you keep walking you begin to settle into a heightened state of awareness. To come to the centre of the labyrinth is to experience completion and rebirth. At the Institute our focus is on the transformation of the client. We assist them to evol
ve to a deeper knowledge of themselves, they return to the catwalks and photo shoots enhanced by such insight.
One afternoon I walked the cool paths of the labyrinth wondering who my next muse would be when suddenly racing around the corner came Lisa. She crashed into my arms like a giant butterfly, naked and brightly painted as she was. A butterfly, weightless and clinging to me, her eyes wide with wonder. She never did tell me what she was running from.
Lisa was fascinating to me. I decided to spend more time with her than I had with the others, getting to know her intimately, before deciding which path of development to pursue with her. Perhaps I could gain some insight into her inner world, a glimpse of some secret aspect of her, which could serve as a key to her reinvention. It was many months before I brought her down to Level 2 and then it was with her full knowledge of what I intended to do. She was the only one who really understood.
We spent many afternoons walking through the gardens. She was nineteen years old and came from a wealthy London family. Both her parents engrossed in their careers, her father a lawyer, her mother a graphic designer, an image and status conscious family who were very proud of Lisa’s burgeoning modelling career. But Lisa herself felt lost and awkward, displaced, that wide-eyed look of hers was one of shell shock and trauma. She joked that she had always been insane, long before she became a model. From the age of twelve she would fantasise about suicide. Something dramatic and original, she said, to really hurt her self indulged, shallow parents.
She was spotted by a photographer lingering the back streets of Soho and she became an instant sensation, signed immediately by one of the biggest agencies and soon working on shoots in Paris, Milan and Los Angeles.
Her garish six foot four inches frame is thin and sharp. Whips of dark brown hair frame her small heart shaped face, her huge green eyes grip you with their surreal gaze. Such a tiny bud of a swollen mouth that it seems incapable of eating, you imagine her pecking at seeds one by one rather than taking an actual bite of anything. Yet when she smiled she revealed a huge set of white teeth that seemed to split her head in two.
She had always hated her features, her height, the way people stared at her when she walked by, but now she was surrounded by people who told her how beautiful she was.
”I can’t believe I’m being paid so much money to have my photo taken all day!” she laughed.
A high-pitched laugh that ended suddenly as if someone had pulled the plug on her. And her face would grow solemn again, so many doubts flooding in. Then I understood what she desperately wanted, how we could fulfil each other’s aching need. I took her hand, bony and limp it was, with long tapering fingers that curled into a loose claw, like a bird’s foot.
“Lisa, do you want to transcend their stagnant notions of beauty altogether? You are almost there. Do you want to be made again, from the inside out and experience the emergence of a new beauty? I can set you free Lisa, free from the doubt, the self-loathing, the pressure. Free of debilitating self image and free to project ultimate, untainted Beauty. You will be seen for the truth that you are.”
She looked at me, intrigued, and for the first time her eyes actually focussed on me.
My approach with Lisa was unique because Lisa was unique. I devised for her a transformation plan and carried it out in explicit detail. A prolonged period of sedation was required to complete my work, a period of which she was to have no knowledge or recollection. A period of rest between lives. I had several options by which to achieve this but I choose a course of Insulin Shock Therapy. Each day for two months I injected her with insulin, gradually increasing the dose. She became more drowsy, restless and disorientated, sweating and perspiring profusely, as her blood glucose levels decreased further and further. She fell into a deep sleep and finally a coma. She had several seizures, she twitched and spasmed in her bed violently. Hush now Lisa, all is well, that’s my brave girl. You are strong enough to endure this. This is your first death, a magnificent slow and tortured demise from which you will return more magnificent than before. I used a combination of Electroconvulsive Therapy and a prefrontal leucotomy to restructure her psyche. The ECT usually results in amnesia, a blank state of confusion and memory loss, and primes the physical brain for the finer work. Rather than using ethanol, which works very generally and is hard to control, I decided instead to use a leucotome with Lisa. A much more delicate and precise method. The wire tool is inserted in the drilled holes on either side of the skull and with a gentle rotating action removes white matter in little chunks. The disrupting of the fibres that connect the prefrontal cortex and thalamus is very effective in clearing old thought patterns and encouraging a state of sublime submissiveness. I saw it Lisa, I caught a glimpse of it buried deep within grey and white matter, a flash of light, your beauty. I touched it as I erased who you used to be. Your mind is a blank now, the space is free. And now your face, your already near perfect face. Just a few enhancements. Dermabrasion to symbolically burn away the old layers. Botulinum injected into the lips to exaggerate their plump eroticism even more. A small adjustment to your nose, making it even tinier, like a punctuation mark to accentuate your large eyes and mouth. I monitor your progress, your healing. Together we have forged this and I am here with you throughout your dark night. Slowly I will bring you back and reanimate you.
We regard ourselves as such complex beings but actually we are so simple, a tiny touch to the brain can alter us significantly. A shallow cut into tissue, a light scrape of matter and we no longer know who we are. It is the brain that constructs our notion of beauty; it is a belief like any other, a learnt response that becomes powerful through repetition. Imagine, a model without personality or personal identity, unadulterated by self-consciousness, the perfect vacant mind in the perfect corporeal body. I’m not going to use the term “super model”, that is so passé. The illusion of individuality in the fashion industry is its most powerful tool. My work will take this illusion to its ultimate fulfilment. What I’m proposing is a product with a potentially infinite shelf life. Exciting advancements in anti ageing technology will make this possible in the near future but for now Lisa and I are enjoying the journey, day by day. I’m very happy to report Lisa is progressing very well. There were a few complications as I brought her out of her coma but she has stabilised now. She is very cooperative and is easily absorbing instructions, learning to embody her new role. She is almost ready for presentation. I have many interested agents eager to meet and invest in her. Then we will design and stage her launch. She will need a new name. Something both evocative and endearing.
###
Magenta Nero is a fiction writer, poet and artist. She loves to spin tales of dark, disturbing fiction. Her work has appeared in Sirens Call eZine, Sanitarium Magazine and will be included in many upcoming horror anthologies from independent publishers. She was born in Italy and currently lives in New South Wales, Australia.
www.magentanero.wordpress.com
WILLIAM
A Too Dark To See Prequel
by Jay Chastain
The screams were coming from the living room again.
William watched the shadows. They seemed to move from where he sat on his bed. A flicker here, a shimmer there. It was as if something was causing the dark curtains of nothing to ripple.
They didn’t hear him at first, so he screamed again. He strained his voice. His chest hurt as he started to cry.
Will’s parents would come into the room once they stopped fighting long enough to hear him scream, just like they did then.
“William? What’s wrong?” his mom asked him as she rubbed his loose hair. Her eyes were red from crying. They were always so red.
The child pointed at the shadows as he buried his head into his mom’s arms.
“What is it? The shadows?”
He nodded.
She rubbed his shoulders. “Nothing’s there, sweetie. You know this.”
Will opened his eyes and looked around. The ceiling fan light was on but he could
still see shadows. It’s where they hid. They never left. Shadows always watched him.
He threw his head into her arms again.
“What’s wrong?” his dad asked. His words were slurred.
His mother didn’t answer. William didn’t either.
His father scoffed. “Ok.” He left the room.
After a moment, long enough for his mom to breathe in and out, her hands came to Will’s face and pulled him up to look her in the eye.
“You know you’re safe here with me,” she said.
Will didn’t answer.
“Do you want to go see Judah tomorrow? I bet he misses you.”
Despite his fear, the kid felt a little better. Judah always helped. He showed him how to make the shadows stop moving. His office was always so bright too.
William nodded.
“You do? You want to go see him?”
“Yes.”
His mother pursed her lips. “Then that’s what we’ll do, ok? Just you and me.”
“Can we get ice cream?”
“Sure we can. But after, ok?”
“Ok.”
She stood up. “Think you can sleep with the lights off now? Or do you need them on?”
Will thought for a moment, and then asked, “Can you leave the door open and the hall light on?”
His mom smiled. “Consider it done, sweetie.”
It didn’t take long before William was in darkness again, except for the hall light. He heard his mom and dad go to their room.
The screams were muffled now. He didn’t fall asleep until they stopped.
***
Will got to leave school early the next day. All of the other kids were jealous, which made him happy. Third grade had been harder than he thought it would have been, even after taking the second grade twice. He always liked leaving school early.