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Alex Is The Queen

by Kimberly N, San Jose, California, USA, Age 17

She looked up at herself from the floor.

“And something is amiss,” she whispered, and she was immediately confused. Was that a poem? She fidgeted. She was wearing dark blue straight leg jeans and a pale pink T-shirt reading “Alex is the Queen” across her chest in curly red script, sixties nostalgia. Examining a mirror, she wondered, Is there a mirror in the hallway? She wore white ankle socks and shuffled her feet uneasily into the off white carpeting, pushing herself up with her hands. Standing, she shook her head like a wet dog in from the rain. She was startled to see her face, expressionless, blank, move with her mane of short black hair from below—two slight hollows, two small holes, a jaw full of teeth. Her face was gone. A thin layer of skin stretched over the bones of her skull. The epidermis? No, the bottom layer of the skin. The layer responsible for generation of cells. Her lips, eyebrows, nose, forehead, chin, and eyes lay on the floor with a mess of skin; but her face, her skull, was not bleeding. She could think and smell and see. She blinked. Her eyelids were a part of her face.

She had tripped, running down the hallway, trying to reach the phone. It had, by this time, stopped ringing. Her eyes had not stayed with her body but with her face. “Oh, wow,” she moved her lips and watched her mouth open and close above. “Oh, my God.” She shut her eyes and screamed. “Ohmygod ohmygod OH SHIT!” She could hear herself perfectly. Her voice came from her body, and her ears were attached to her head. Okay. Okay. Okay. What do I do? She could feel the panic rising in herself. She had the myriad eyes of a housefly; the world was convoluted and torn apart. Keeping her eyes shut, she fell carefully to her knees. Her hands ran gingerly over the carpet. Nothing. She opened her eyes. Her right foot was a foot away from her chin. Left. Turn left. Her body turned to its left, away from her face. No, right! She saw her hands reaching to pick her face up. Her nails were cut short and painted blue on long fingers. Her right thumb was cut. Or was it her left thumb? She felt herself elevated, removed and apart, and stared at herself at arm’s length. The bones and cartilage in her nose peaked below the hollows of the non eyes in her skull. Her skin was pale grey and her veins pulsed, red and blue, easily visible. She could see back into the emptiness of her eye sockets. She reached up to touch her skin, entranced, and dropped her face back on the floor. “Oh, shit,” she worried, falling to her knees. She was immediately filled with apprehension. Looking behind her back, her fingers gripped the carpet, desperately searching and confused. She shut her eyes again and tried to breathe calmly with the onerous task of helping herself. She opened one eye and peered at her hunched body.

Left. No, right! Again. Her fingers gently probed her face and held it to her skull, facing outward. She walked carefully to the bathroom. Her eye tendrils stiffened in the air, the nerves curling against each other and shying away from the eye sockets. She stuck her elbows in front of her body, pushing open the bathroom door. Watching herself in the wall length mirror above the sink, she discovered that her face was like a rubber mask, too lifelike, as though she was a snake and had shed her skin but for her eyes. She had shed those, too. Her lips were slightly spread open. She breathed through her body. What the hell? She wiggled her ears tentatively. The muscles in her non face twitched with her cheeks.

“Well, this is just too fucking weird,” she sat on the toilet seat lid, still clutching her face to the outside world. “Oh,” she said in wonder. She carefully set her face on the counter next to the toilet. She was looking at the ceiling. A spider calmly made its way across the plastic hanging light fixture. She closed her eyes. A hand reached out awkwardly, bumping her elbow against the roll of toilet paper hanging above a plastic green wastebasket. She poked her cheek while her left hand hesitantly touched her non face. Experimentally wrinkling her nose, she furrowed her brow and scratched her cheek and her non face. She hurt in two places.

The phone rang.

She foisted herself off the seat and stood as she watched the spider discover a groove in the light fixture. She walked out the door, hands held straight out in front of her body. The spider crawled into the groove, and she felt her way to the room at the end of the hallway. The phone rang. She gazed at the yellow glow emanating from the light fixture. The spider walked across the bulb, casting a tiny shadow. She bumped into a desk. “Ow!” she sat down and rubbed her shin. The phone rang, and she ran her hand across the top of the desk, searching. Dust scattered across the desk and between her nails, against her skin. The heat of the fluorescent lamp burned two of the spider’s legs off. He scurried out of the light fixture. Her hand touched a plastic curling phone cord. She wrapped her finger around the cord, traveling up the base of its spine, until her hand touched cool smooth plastic, and she picked up the phone.

“Hello?” the spider was making its way to its web, in the corner of the ceiling above the shower head.

“Hi,” she heard a cooing voice, and her lips and teeth curled into separate smiles.

“Hey. Hey, Hawk.”

“Hey, Cricket Lady, I missed you.”

The spider was dangling from a thread, presumably unable to walk. “Yeah, I missed you, too,” her lips and mouth moved. She spoke quietly.

“And so I was thinking, and I was quite moved that we should do something soon. I need to see you. Cricket?” his voice came uncertainly. She had not answered.

“Yeah, I’m here,” the spider curled into a ball and now dangled midair. “Yeah, you’re right, we should definitely do something soon,” she said dreamily. She could see blue spots turn to green and fade out of the corner of her eye.

“Is something wrong?”

“No, nothing’s wrong,” he broke her reverie, and she paused. “My face fell off,” she said thoughtfully.

“Your face fell off?” he repeated. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Yeah, it did. And my eyes fell out, too.” The spider trembled and swayed in the sudden gust from the open bathroom window.

“Are you okay? Your eyes fell out? What are you saying?” He didn’t understand.

“Oh, I’m fine,” she heard what she was saying and was surprised at herself.

“What happened?”

“You called, and I was in the bathroom, and I left my face and eyes there and sort of found my way to the phone,” she tripped over her words as she watched the spider swing back and forth in the breeze from the open window.

“Are you blind?”

“No, I can see. My eyes are in the bathroom. I’m watching a spider on the ceiling. And I’m here.”

“Oh,” he paused. “You seem to be taking this well.”

“So do you,” she murmured. The spider’s legs bent to its body, in a spider like fetal position.

“What do you need? Can I do anything? I commit to your recovery, but I don’t really get it,” Hawk was utterly devoted.

“Come over,” but she realized that she didn’t really want him to.

“Okay. I love you, Cricket.”

“I love you,” she hung up the phone. She suddenly felt exhausted and closed her eyes. She lay on the carpet next to the desk.

The doorbell rang half an hour later. She opened her eyes. The spider had by now dropped a foot in the air. It swung and turned on a thread, and she watched, entranced, at its injured legs, now stubs.

She stood up next to the table, fifteen feet and a wall separating her face. She slowly made her way back to the bathroom. She saw herself walking through the door. Her hair was messed about her non face, and her clothes were wrinkled. The spider dropped down next to her face, and her body jumped. The bell rang again. Her hands found a tube of liquid foundation. She hesitantly smeared the foundation over her non face and adjusted the face to fit over and stick on her skin. She looked at herself in the mirror. She was wearing a mask.

She walked to the front door and flung it open.

He smiled. “Ribbit.”