Faceless

It’s easy to see her face is skin. Just skin, nothing else. No eyes, no nose, no mouth.

Her eyes were so dead, they slowly sunk into her face until finally, the skin closed over them. No one can even remember what colour they were; not even she herself. All they saw, when that happened, was the horror of the clear skin; a small dent where her once-beautiful eyes used to be.

She doesn’t need a nose to breathe; she’s so used to holding her breath in fear, she eventually stopped needing it. Her flawless nose, too, disappeared. One day it was there, the next gone. Scientists and doctors marvelled over how she stayed alive, even without breathing through her mouth. It was a miracle, they exclaimed. She disagreed.

Her lips were stitched shut, when they were there, forever her words hidden. No one listened, she told herself. So, slowly, the stitches dissolved into skin and the pinkness of her lips did too. Look closely and you can see small indentations where the thread was. No one even realised, before or after the existence of her lips, that she had stitched her mouth closed herself.

Her face is nothing but skin now. She felt worthless, insisted to herself that she was really nothing, until she became worthless, just a doll that cannot do anything but wait until someone comes to paint her face back on. And even then, she can’t see, she can’t speak, she can’t breathe. She is faceless, she is helpless, she is worthless.

This is what cruelty can do to you.