Facial

By Henry Luzzatto

I woke up with the angriest pimple of my life. Red, swollen, and right between my eyes — the kind of blemish that announces itself with authority and refuses to be ignored.

“Let me pop it,” said Craig, a coworker who had a habit of eating all the office snacks and talking too closely. “I’ve been watching those pimple popper videos on Youtube.”

“Please don’t touch my face,” I said. “There’s no way you wash your hands. You’ll make it worse.”

But it didn’t need the help. The pimple was getting worse on its own. It felt like something was burrowing into my skull, drilling down between my eyes.

At lunch, I went into the bathroom to check. Instead of staying static, a throbbing lump, the pimple appeared to be twisting, wrenching the skin on my face in a clockwise fashion so my left eyebrow was raised and the right one was lowered in some gross caricature of a “Dreamworks” face.

It was unsightly. My boss didn’t mention it out loud, but he spent an entire conversation trying not to gag.

That night, I smeared it with every balm and ointment I could find and hid the blemish under a band-aid, hoping it would go away. The pain was unbearable, even after edibles and Advil. My dreams swirled with agonized twisting, images of being broken on a medieval wheel or thrashed beneath the surface of a maelstrom.

When I woke up, the center of my head didn’t ache. It itched.

I reached up to take off the band-aid, but it was no longer on top of the pimple. There was no “pimple” to be on top of. Instead of rising upward, crowning out of my skull, the node of the blocked pore had twisted inward, pulling deeper until it subducted to a single point. All that was left above the surface was the tag of flesh-colored fabric, lightly sticky with adhesive.

I pulled on the mangled band-aid and felt the edges of the hole dilate as it slid out. The twists and folds of skin near the center were sensitive, and as the bandage brushed against them, I felt an intense tingle run up my spine.

I inspected the new hole in the mirror.

Without the band-aid to block its path, I could see that all of the turned flesh was pulled towards single point of pure black at the center of my head. Not quite my insides, exactly — the orifice didn’t have a human sense of wetness, the biological squelch on the interior of every other body hole. Instead, it had this clean darkness to it, the feeling of something with infinite, interminable gravity, pulling indefinitely towards itself. Whatever it was, it looked better than a pimple.

“It reminds me of a butthole,” said Craig. “With all the wrinkles and everything.”

“Thanks, Craig,” I said.

“Don’t mention it,” he said. “Have you gotten that checked by a doctor?”

“With our insurance?” I said. “I’ll wait until it gets worse.”

“Yeah,” he said. He stood there, staring blatantly at the new swirling hole.

“What,” I said.

“Have you fingered it yet?”

“Don’t be gross.”

“What do you mean, gross? If I had a new hole, I’d finger it immediately. Here.” He reached for my head. I stepped away.

“Quit it, Craig,”

“It’s for science!”

“Is that what you call it?”

“Come on, let me finger your head!”

He pushed forward, and I felt my back run up against the shelf of snacks in the back corner.

“Craig!” I said. “Jesus!” He put his hands up, relenting.

“Jeez, dude,” he said. “I was just kidding. I just wanted to know what it was for.”

But maybe not knowing was part of the point. I couldn’t tell exactly why I had a new hole in my head, but I knew that it affected my experiences with other people. I would get more eye contact on the street, more smiles at bars, more conversations at the coffee shop and the deli.

My boss came into my office to give me directions: “Hey there buddy, when you get a chance could you—hey, there’s something new about your look! I like it!” I was a rising star now, both personally and professionally. No longer the kind of person you could ignore. I had an in now, unlike Craig or Alphonse or any of the other mediocre types in the office. It was impolite to directly mention the appearance of a new hole on one of your friends or coworkers, but I could feel them looking. I could tell they wanted to know what it was for, too.

On my way home one evening, I felt eyes on me for blocks. When I reached my doorstep, I heard a familiar voice behind me.

“Hey man, how’s the face butt?”

“Oh, hey, Craig” I said, smiling. He was dirtier than usual, with a certain haunted, far-away look to him. “What’s up?”

“Oh, nothing much. The usual.” He shifted his weight from foot to foot, anxious, his hands held clasped behind his back.

“Yeah, man, It’s been a minute.”

“Ha. Yeah,” he said, without smiling or laughing.

“Is everything OK?”

“$1,462,” he said, walking closer, staring with startling intensity. “Please tell me it’s enough.”

“What do you mean,” I said. “Enough for what, Craig?”

“Let me fuck the hole.”

He said it evenly, plainly, with no irony. Even still, I choked on a laugh.

“Sorry?”

“Let me fuck the hole” he said. “I’ll pay. Please. $1,462.”

“Ha,” I said. “That’s funny. Great joke. Good to see you, Craig!”

“Don’t walk away from me,” he said. “Please. I know it’s crazy. But it’s the only thing I’ve been thinking about. The only thing I can think about. Please let me fuck the hole.”

“It’s not made for fucking,” I said.

“It’s made for me,” he said. I turned away, but he grabbed my wrist. “Please! It’s all the money I have in the world. Just once. One time. Just the tip, I won’t even bust. I just want to know what it feels like.”

“No, Craig. You creep.” I freed myself and walked towards my house. “Please don’t make me do this,” he said.

“Do what, Craig? You know, technically, I’m your supervisor now, so—” I heard the unmistakable noise of a pistol cocking behind me.

“Craig,” I started.

I turned to look as he held the pistol in his shaking hands. But as I turned, he looked into the swirl at the center of my face and found his resolve. “It’s made for me,” he said, as he walked forward, gunmetal glinting. “You can even keep your eyes closed.”

I felt his finger gently touch the clockwise twist at the center of my head. I closed my eyes and the twist at the center of my head began to stir.

As he touched it, the mass of coiled flesh began to turn the other way, counter clockwise. I felt the pinprick in the center dilate, the aperture opening. “Yes,” Craig whispered. “Yes!” At once he began to frantically remove his jeans. The twist in the center of my head unfurled more and more, unwinding until there was nothing but big, black, infinite openness at the center of myself, a massive space, a nothingness even larger than me and Craig.

“LET ME IN!” screamed Craig, as the darkness opened up, the hole now even stretching out to meet him. He stepped forward, walking into the darkness at the absence of flesh. “This was made for me,” he said with reverence as he stood, naked, fully enveloped inside the dark part.

Then, with a certain natural suddenness, with the electric quickness of a new synapse forming, I felt myself contract a new kind of muscle. It wasn’t even deliberate, not really. It was just the pre-ordained, reactive snap of a reflex I didn’t know I had. All at once the walls of flesh that had unfurled began to turn clockwise, closing inward again. It took Craig a moment to realize what was happening, and by then it was too late. Craig was no longer within the vast, inhuman darkness, but enshrined in flesh.

He yelled and pleaded as he found himself inside my dark. The aperture got smaller, the turns tighter until Craig’s voice was squeezed out of himself and he was bound up into silent twisting flesh. The soft curls of my body met the hard lines of his bones and torqued, turning until the hardest solid parts shattered and turned into suspended fluid. The great curve had enraptured his body, crushing him and rending him, squeezing him, squeezing him, squeezing him until he was broken, then flat, then two dimensional, one dimensional, and nothing at all.

He was gone, leaving only empty clothes, a Craig-shaped absence, and a trickle of blood leaking out of the pinpoint in the center of my head.

I guess that’s what it was for.

Henry Luzzatto is a Brooklyn-based writer and editor. Originally from Suffolk, Virginia, his work is featured in Body Fluids, Points in Case, and the Suffolk News-Herald.