Out, Damned Spot

I had been beautiful once. When the lighting was right people called me stunning; I had the face of a muse. I was a woman who men noticed and I didn’t need to try. I had the beauty of a woman who was born into it – born into power and yet who knew subtlety. But nothing has threatened a beautiful woman like the unstopping march of time, and age comes for us all.

I was vain – I am not a religious woman but I know when I have been set upon for revenge. Perhaps it was my vanity, or perhaps it was the fact that I never thanked god for the face I had been given. But as it was given, it was taken away.

I noticed the gray hair first. It’s still what I notice now, staring into this mirror. My hair had always been my crowning glory. It was what made me stand out from the crowd, from even my own sister, beautiful as she was. The women I knew had hair the color of spun gold, or of mouse brown. An occasional woman had hair that glowed a fiery red. I admit that in my lowest moments, those were the women I envied most. But envy was not a common feeling for me. I had hair the blue black of raven wings – a softness and a straightness that had I been less beautiful would have lent itself to the idea of witchcraft. But because my face was handsome and my body was lithe, it lent itself to nothing but rare beauty.

When first I found a grey hair, I plucked it. Promptly and without care. I was 29 and married six years by then. I’d had a child and I lost it. I did not dare name it – it was bad luck to name the dead, and I did not want to curse the name for future generations. I had completed my duty of trying. I could not be held accountable for the baby's failure to live.

My husband was a good man, and I did not tell him about gray hairs. I did not need to worry him that my beauty was fading. He was a good man, not a great man. His age and wealth meant he could marry whoever he so had wished. I did not hate him nor I did not resent him; we both knew a relationship of convenience was all this would ever be. I wanted to be rich and he wanted to marry beauty and so we had both gotten what we had wanted. Admittedly, marriage had never been my dream, and continued on my life more happily once it was done but that was not something that you could mention when I grew up.

The wrinkles around my face came next. By the time they had become noticeable my husband had been long dead and I was ready to be a childless widow. The sciences had grown – they had serum now, antidotes and shots and injections that had not been around when I was young. I did not mind the wrinkles, they lent themselves to maturity, to a woman who no longer needed to marry but could still be admired.

It was neither the grey hair nor the wrinkles that bothered me. It was the spot. That damned indention on my forehead that made me loathe the appearance I saw reflected at me. I had always hoped that vanity and beauty would leave me at the same time, but that indent moved in before my vanity moved out.

The mark was abnormal, unhealthy. So severe and wrong.

So I started seeing the doctors, with their creams and their injections. With their lies and promises. I went to them for years, pointing out the flaw which they all said never existed. But they found other things - wrinkles and spotting and all the signs of age that slowly lays siege to a face. They injected me with syringes full of poison, they cut my face open and filled it with substances that didn’t exist when I was young. And I let them. I begged them. I wanted so badly to be as beautiful as I had been when I was young, and to rid myself of that goddamn mark.

My face was filled to tightness. I would look in the mirror and not recognize who I was. It wasn’t that I wanted to look different. I just wanted that damn indent gone. But it wasn't. I went to doctor after doctor and they filled me. Pumped my face so thick of concoctions that they I looked swollen and corpse like. Bloated and unreal.

Perhaps that is the truest view of what I’ve ever been. Not a woman; not a person; merely a body that hadn’t decomposed yet.

Yet it does not matter. The mark remains, mocking my every attempt to free myself of it.

I think I’m too young to die, and yet this damned indent will not stop tormenting me, reminding me of my own age. “OUT, DAMNED SPOT,” screamed Lady MacBeth.

I look into this mirror again. The doctors have told me to stop. My friends have begged me to stop.

But they do not understand. They do not have this damned spot. This impression on their face that can’t be a scar from something they’ve never done.

I stand here. My face puffy and fat, filled beyond recognition. This is not beauty that I have. No. No, I lost that long ago.

This is money.

This is the cost of what science can do to a person.

I do not look like I once did; I merely look like an imitation of what a person should be.

I am ready to find myself behind the layers.

I am ready to find out what makes this indent.

I’ve never held a knife so close before. Never this close to my face, never so close to what feels like the inflated somewhat-likeness of my appearance.

And it sits there – this indent. This pressure between my brows that no one seems to see but me.

I hold the knife closer. I wouldn’t tell you where I got it – I don’t remember but it doesn’t matter. I sharpened it until cut just to be looked at. I cleaned it till it gleamed.

I sterilized it with alcohol and fire. It seems cleaner than any of the other things I had put in to my body.

It hurts to dig. To bury the point of the knife next to the crook that has overtaken my face. To shove it so deep, the blade so sharp that I can see the flesh separate, first the skin, then the fat, as it burst down a seam created by a knife sharper than a doctor could beg for.

The blood is warmer than I thought. It’s thick. I did not think that this blade – is it a scalpel? – could get stuck, and yet as it drags, through what has been reconstructed and filled to make my forehead, it sticks. It catches on something that feels harsher than fat and filler.

It is bone.

I did not want to cut directly into the indent. Did not want to ruin its perfect impact. Not because I don’t hate it, but because I need to see what the break was, wanted to see the space that it had to fall inwards to fill.

I let the blood pour down my face. The blade is grinding against the bone now, but I do not feel it. I cannot see what leads me anymore. The blood has covered one eye, a waterfall of deep crimson. It does not hurt the way you think it would. The price of finding what is wrong is worth the pain that any human can feel.

I pry the knife deeper. Below the flesh, the subcutaneous layers lift, the flesh separates from bone as I scrape the knife along the line of my brow.

I do not recognize myself in the mirror. The woman who stands there is bloody and unkempt. That is not me.

I move the knife upward, a slanted motion. I realize that I cannot fully see the indent if I do not peel away what surrounds it. And so I work on the pieces that surround the indent. The scraping has become bothersome. It creates an itch I cannot scratch, and the blood has become more cumbersome, the thickness of it has become a hazard. I try to use my other hand to mop it up, but it is warm and thick and I do not have the energy to try and wipe off anymore.

It is a part of me: this indent, this blood. I let it pool in the sink. I’ve never been able to make eye contact with myself in running water, but in the pooled blood I see myself truly.

I have made it now. I have finished three sides of the triangle to pull of this flesh – this flesh that indents in such an unfortunate way.

There is something in the sink, slivers of something white that bobs below the surface. Heavier than water but lighter than blood, and I cannot understand why there is so much soap in the sink until I realize it is skull.

But I do not have time for that. There is no time here to focus on what I’m giving away. I must remember what I’m taking from myself. I have removed it – this plague of aging that no filler has been able to take care of. I slice, cleanly and quickly through the slip of flesh still attached to my forehead.

The blood pours down my nose, the scent of copper thick enough to taste. I want to lick the moisture off my lips but I know there is no hydration in the saline of blood.

It doesn’t matter though; not my thirst, not my need to wash my face, not a single thing. Nothing matters except for the triangle of flesh I hold in my hand.

The indent easily defined; the spot between my brows, now held in my hand, yet still looking furrowed.

I look again at my reflection.

Out damned spot. Out.