The fuzz of morning is made of blurry eyelashes and popcorn ceilings. She sat watching specks of dust trickle down endlessly through the blades of light slicing the blinds. A dark, curved figure protruded from her vision, emerging from the inner corners of her eyes. The metal spheres on either end acted as buttons on a tight shirt, connected by the metal bar just beneath the swollen skin.
René rolled over and flung the blanket off, easing herself onto the ground. Her feet hit the carpet with a heavy thud as she lifted herself up. Her bones felt heavy, too heavy for her muscles to move for very long. Her short curly hair was frizzy from tossing and turning all night, her tattoos swaddle her, de-saturated. The swelling of the piercing she got a week ago had not only persisted, it grew larger and larger every day. Despite the saline, the draining, despite the re-piercing, the dollars and minutes wasted, and a couple of brief prayers to some higher power; this balloon on her face continued to inflate. She turned her head to the side and the golf ball shifted and presented itself as the mighty horn of a rhino. She fell back onto her bed.
“I haven’t seen anything like this, nothing close, ever,” said Agnes, leaning over her trying to find an answer for her client. She peeled her gloves off and tossed them in the garbage. René now sat in the piercing room of Snakeskin; her Piercer just as lost as she is. The fluorescent lights paled the sterile room. The metal tools lay on their tray gleaming in anticipation. She still stared at that ceiling, now tiled, past the lump on her head.
“Honey, at this point you’ll need to do something at the hospital,” she said. She stood at the foot of the chair; her arms of ink were crossed and not a single spot was untouched by color. Her large shoulders held up her thick neck and buzzed head with a moth that crowned her forehead. René turned to her.
“I don’t go to the hospital. You know that.” She sat up and put her back to Agnes.
“I’m really sorry for all this,” said Agnes, “I really just have no idea what could be going on. You know, I’ve been doing this for fourteen years, Ré? And I’ve never seen this?”
“What are our other options?” said René. Agnes came around, looking her deep in the eyes.
“I’m telling you Ré, I have tried everything. I can’t even get it to budge it’s like stuck to your fucking skull.” Agnes turned around holding her face, she raised her arms and rested her hands on top of her head interlocked. She took a deep breath, “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know. We’re just going to go, let’s go I can bring you,” she said. When she turned back, the chair was empty and the front door chimed.
René wandered down side streets and alleyways; her face shielded from spectators by the hood of her heavy black hoodie. A black mass carried by two inked legs wearing a pair of Chucks so abused the sole was bruised. Tears welled up in her eyes. The anticipation and excitement drained from her body, leaving only cold, hollow bones. Since the day she got her first piercing, René had discovered an avenue for self-expression that nothing else could compare. She had started with a simple piercing; a small, twinkling stud on the right side of her nose. A glimmer that gave her glances, compliments, and attention. A shine that made her mother fume red and scream at the sight of it. To René, this was beauty.
She persisted with her metal modifications: first an eyebrow hoop, then a belly button stud that she switched for one that dangled just beneath. Then there were the gauges that grew progressively bigger. And after that a tongue stud coupled with snake bites on either side of her mouth. Every day she came to school with something new, the rush returned. Cyborg, they called her. René loved it so much that she wrote it on her assignments. So that by the end of the day, René would walk into that apartment she grew up in. She would feel wrapped in the warmth of the anger, the envy of her youth, the pain. Every piercing was a conduit for another bolt of something, anything but emptiness.
It had been a few years since then, a new home without Mom. High school became college, academia dissolved into labor. That warmth had disappeared from her life. So she went to Snakeskin.
The sun that greeted her this morning was now saying its ethereal goodbyes as it sank into the ocean. René stood in the middle of a road, lined with tattered homes and garbage cans, that dove downhill toward the bay. Clouds melted into oranges and purple waves that chased the sun away from the stark black that approached. Only the glow over the horizon was seen, slowly dissipating. René wobbled, taking a step forward, then collapsed onto her back.
She could hear the silence, the life pouring out of her into a void with boundaries incomprehensible. She could hear a screeching. She smelt rubber and felt mangled. But other times she let her brain drift in the nothingness, the absence of it all, so much of nothing. Sirens broke through and echoed in the cave, the forced inflation of her lungs shifted this dark realm creating smooth waves. She floated in an endless bay of deprivation for what seemed like a lifetime. Until she felt an embrace. A warmth she hadn’t felt for years now.
René opened her eyes once again, this time greeted by fluorescent lights and mechanical cries of machines. She felt pads stuck to her chest and the sterile bed sheets beneath her. Her lips cracked as she cringed at the pain of being alive again. Her neck was throbbing, her stomach burned, her brain lacked moisture. Her eyes took a moment to focus, this time there was no obstruction between her eyes. There stood a doctor at the foot of her bed. She had a look of grave concern, she swallowed heavily as she slowly closed the door to René’s small medical cubicle.
“Hello René, can you hear me?” she asked. René nodded slowly. “Good, that’s good. My name is Dr. Xaio. Can you see me okay?” she asked. She bent down and gave a slight wave, then her face dropped once again. Her vision sharpened, the doctor’s hair was pulled back tight and her eyes were locked with René’s.
“Yeah I see you,” said René. She slowly gripped her head, it felt cold, slick. She felt the bridge of her nose, the piercing was gone, and the area smoothed over. “Did you remove my piercing?”
“What piecing?” said Xaio, “Well, at this specific moment we aren’t entirely sure what is going on,” said the doctor. She reached over to the clipboard on the wall and looked them over, nothing of use. It shook in her hand before she put it behind her back. She stood for a moment, “To be completely honest, I haven’t seen anything like this before.”
“God, how many times is this piercing going to keep fucking me. I don’t see how a little piece of metal in my face can be such a big fucking deal. I have a shit ton of them, everywhere, what’s the difference?” said René, flailing her arms beneath the sheets in anger.
“René,” said Xaio, “you were found lying on the side of the road early this morning.”
René scoffed, “What?”
“When first responders arrived this morning, they didn’t know what they were looking at. They were able to get you, and all your… parts, to ER. We were able to resuscitate you at the expense of our defibrillator. We’ve attempted many tests, all inconclusive,” said Xaio. Her voice began to crack a bit.
René began to see the room around her more clearly. She saw the figures standing in the shadows outside the windows to her room staring in at her. Gawking. She went to get out of bed but was restrained by the buckles around her bruised wrists.
“What the hell is this! Why are they staring at me?!” said René. Xaio jumped when she raised her voice. She swallowed and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath.
“Police informed us they had found local security camera footage of your accident. You were struck by a large cargo truck. Based on the footage, the location of your wounds on your chest and stomach, and the weight of that truck, you should have been killed instantaneously” said Xaio. A bead of sweat dripped down her forehead and she quickly wiped it. More and more silhouettes crowded around the window. “But you survived. In fact, you more than survived, you didn’t even break a bone or lose a drop of blood.”
Xaio walked toward René and lifted her blanket, revealing massive black tire marks burned into her skin. In between the treads, the skin had torn, but there was no blood. There was only a twinkle, something shiny beneath the skin. René gasped and tried to run her hands along the marks.
“HELP!” screamed René, “LET ME OUT OF HERE!” She thrashed violently. Xaio persisted.
“You suffered multiple lacerations along your right arm, right side of your face, and of your head,” said Xaio. She looked away from René, talking to her but looking off to the side. “But you haven’t lost a drop of blood, I said that. And no broken bones like I- you’re going to be fine, René.”
“WHY WON’T YOU LOOK AT ME?!”
Xaio was sweating profusely now. She quickly opened the bedside drawer and handed her a mirror. It shined with fluorescence reflections of the room, trending downward, revealing the top of her head, her hair. Then the skin, torn off of the side of her face. The left side maintained its humanity while the other disturbing, a skull of purple chrome alloy glistened in the light. René screeched as she threw the mirror down, it slid off the bed and cracked. She screamed again and pulled on the restraints. The bed shook and creaked.
Xaio took a few steps back, leaning against the door. René flung her body side to side. Sensors began to trill and lights flashed. She forced her bed over onto its side and one of the side rails broke off. She got onto her feet and pulled with everything she had on her other arm restraint. She let out a primal scream as the skin around her mouth began to tear. Xaio was struggling with the handle, the door wasn’t working. She slammed her body against it as she started to cry.
“SECURITY! SOMEBODY HELP ME!” said Xaio. As more and more figures clamored around outside of the room, René yanked her arm free from the restraint. Her skin peeled clean off of her arm like a glove as it exited, revealing more of the iridescent body she had become. She held her arm up and examined it like a blade. The door was broken down and Xaio ran out of the room. A security officer stepped in with his pistol ready.
“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU?” said the officer. René was silent in awe. She traced her alloy bones with her still skin fingers. Her eyes fell on the officer. She saw the wonder in his eyes, the spell she had cast over him. She grabbed a piece of hanging skin on her collarbone and peeled. Screams of onlookers and cries for help fill the hospital room. “STOP OR I’LL SHOOT.” René smiled. She walked forward and the bullets came. They sparked and screeched off of her metal hull. They ripped and flung her skin off only revealing more of her invulnerable chassis. René extended her fingers flat and chopped at the officer’s arm. He screamed and grabbed a hold of the nub on his elbow, his forearm and gun lobbed off and lying on the floor.
René slowly stumbled out of the room and into the halls. Crowds ran in horror, any stragglers too close were cut down. She was in the intensive care unit, a place she was familiar with. She couldn’t think of it now, but she knew where she was going. Her reflection shimmered off the windows of rooms as she made her way through the hospital, her expression a painful numbness. The bodies in her wake meant nothing to her as her movements became more and more mechanical, less and less René. She turned down a long hallway with a dark room at the end, the door was open. She edged closer and felt that warm embrace with every step she took. It was cozy here, familiar, just like it always was. It enveloped her metal castings, her skin losing its grip and falling off like autumnal leaves behind her. A fire alarm had been pulled in the panic of the creature roaming the halls. The red light mixed with her lavender mandible, swirling into the empty alloy socket where her eye once sat releasing an eerie warm pink luminescence.
Behind the fire sirens and the screams, the beeping of machines could be heard now. The sound of air being forced into the lungs. The sound of silence only present when there isn’t a soul in the room. René took her final steps down the hallway and lurched into that room. The crimson poured around the corner as the lights spun, René’s shadow stretching across the room. Her untorn face is now absorbed by the darkness of the room, only the metal skull is seen. She stares at the woman in the bed, caressing her sharp finger along her chrome cheekbone down to her collarbone. The machines whirring and chirping were the only responses from the room, the woman lay like a vegetable in her hospital bed. If not for the tube down her throat and the lack of activity in her brain, she would fume red and scream at the sight of what her little girl had become. And that made René feel so fucking good.
