“The Product”
By: Lauren Laguna
A young girl once thought she knew what she cared about. She’d
made up her mind during the sweltering summer. Let her old self sweat off and
wash away in a cold shower. When she looked in the mirror she saw the products
on her face. She didn’t see the sprouting whiskers or the enlarged ears
outlined in the mirror’s perspiration. She went to school and showed off her
new skin all shiny and full of product. It got attention from old friends and recently
interested strangers. However, the girl was only interested in attracting new
eyes. She’d spray some perfume and let them watch, crave, planning her attack
carefully. Hands fluttered over their mouths, covering excited whispers. She wanted
their knowledge, their words. In fact, she let all else slip through her
fingers.
Accustomed now, to her new skin, the young girl spent more
and more time applying product in big sweeping gestures. If there were any bit
of her old self not washed down the shower drain, then she would cover it most
thickly. She still couldn’t see the whiskers that felt the vibrations of the
words or the ears that twitched to the whispers breeze. Certainly, she didn’t
feel her tiny heart flutter; she had it too deeply muffled. At school the lips
moved and the eyes stared. She smiled and smelled the ripe scent of approval
wafting through the twisting halls. Moving blindly though the turns, she
searched for it relentlessly, her smile broadening with every wrong turn she
took. Clinically, they judged and tested her. Pulling out pens from their
white, starched coat pockets to scribble on yellow notepads.
The day the young girl ran out of product she looked into
her foggy bathroom mirror and screamed. She couldn’t recognize herself. For the
first time her fingers brushed her cheeks and pinched the air above her wet
scalp, just barely discerning the whiskers and ears that were becoming more and
more apparent with each passing moment. What could she do but run to the
all-knowing crowd, the testers, judgers, and whisperers still scribbling in yellow
note pads. She asked them her questions, begged for answers, lost the scent of
approval, fell to pleading, and backed up in terror when she saw the craving
fall from their eyes. Knowing of her whiskers and ears did not help. No amount
of vibration and twitching could save her. The maze she had been so used to was
nothing but a tiled, locker-lined prison.
Awash with confusion the young girl wandered home to stare
in the mirror. She stared unblinking until the whiskers and ears faded back
into perspiration. Then in a fit of rage she threw away every last empty bottle
of product she owned. This was the easy part. Much more arduous a task was the
buffing. Bit by bit she rubbed, chipped, and clipped away at the caked on
product, scraping off the new skin she had been so proud of. Days passed before
the slim scraps of her old self became visible. Her reflection no longer made
her scream, but she had a new dilemma. Having built her new skin so well that
no matter how hard or often she sanded it away a piece of it still remained.
The old and new together didn’t look right. It had to be fixed. So, she mixed her
own product naturally and used careful, neat brush strokes.
The young girl’s new creation was perfect. Her old friends
agreed. She walked through the halls of the maze holding the map, key, and
torch in her hand. The whispers breeze fell flat on her ear, the words passing
unnoticed. Even the scrawling pens on yellow note pads didn’t draw her
attention. The judgers, testers, and whisperers floated by as shadows do in the
evening. Someone, not the young girl, or her old friends, or the watchers,
found the bits of discarded product. It was bound to happen. This someone used
their own sharp acid to reawaken the brew; they dipped inside it and emerged
into the onlookers sniffing the slight scent of approval. It intoxicated them. The
young girl watched from a distance, clutching at her precious map, amazed at
this new creation built from her old product.
Before her eyes, history replayed. Her last wish before
turning to her newfound peace was that she’d buried the product, burned it,
drowned it, and set the world free.
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