Perfection

No scars. No blemishes. No imperfections. Just you. Order now!

Perfection, the face cream for never ending beauty.

Hopefully you live long enough to enjoy it.

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Discount!

I used to think beauty was a country everyone else had been born into, while I’d been stranded at customs with no passport.

You notice these things when you’re young. The girls at school would lean over a bathroom sink, laughing while they fixed lipstick that didn’t need fixing. They complained about pores I couldn’t see. Freckles they wished away. A pimple before prom that disappeared in two days.

I stood beside them with a face that looked like it had survived something. My skin wasn’t just different, it was a landscape of its own making. Across my cheeks and nose, the tissue swelled into thick, ridged plates, their surfaces a mottled roadmap of purple and deep crimson, threaded with darker veins that pulsed beneath the surface. The texture was like dried leather that had been boiled and stretched out, cracked in places that wept a clear sticky fluid. On my chin and along my jawline, the skin gathered into fleshy folds that never knew smoothness, their creases perpetually damp and raw. In the hollows of my temples, the skin was thin and papery, a contrast to the bloated terrain elsewhere. It was a face that seemed to be in a constant state of lowgrade inflammation, radiating a heat that I could feel with my own fingertips, a warmth that had nothing to do with life and everything to do with a body at war with itself.

Children asked if it hurt. Adults tried not to stare and stared anyway, their eyes flickering away then snapping back like rubber bands.

My mother always told me I was beautiful. She meant it. She also never had to watch a cashier lose their train of thought after looking up from the register, their smile freezing halway through a transaction. She never tripped over a sinking piece of cement outisde her home and, when a handsome man goes to help you up, he flinches at the sight of your face.

People don’t understand how exhausting it is to be the first thing strangers notice. You begin imagining another version of yourself. The one who walks into a room and isn’t remembered for the wrong reason.

When the advertisement appeared I almost laughed. A woman washed her face in warm water. The screen filled with impossible words. Clinical breakthrough. Six weeks to porcelain skin. Erase every blemish. Every scar. Every imperfection.

Ugly? Gone.

Fat? Gone.

crooked lips? Gone.

Butter Face? Gone.

Too black? Now you're white.

Too white? Now you're tan.

Leprosy? More like No, Lassie.

Perfection, the cream for never ending beauty.

There was a symbol. A heart burning in rainbow fire.

Under that, a number.

That was all I needed.

I ordered two jars.

The cream arrived in plain packaging with no company logo. White glass. White lid. White label. It smelled faintly sweet, like flowers dipped in chemicals.

I rubbed it into my face every night before bed, my fingers pressing into the rough patches, hoping.

The changes came slowly enough to fool me. The angry patches faded. The swollen ridges softened. The discoloration disappeared. By the fourth week I stopped wearing makeup. By the sixth week I caught my reflection in a grocery store freezer door and almost cried. My skin looked perfect. Smooth. Even. Light caught it differently, like polished stone.

People smiled at me for no reason. Men held doors. Women asked what foundation I used. One girl touched my cheek and whispered, “How does skin even get like that?” Her finger felt warm against my face, and I didn’t flinch.

My mom asked me about it, then said, “Honey, I just want you to be happy. I'm glad this has worked for you, but you have always been beautiful honey. Before the cream.”

I told her she was wrong, but I appreciated the comment.

I was living the best days of my life.

I floated through those days. I remember sitting in a cafe by the window letting the afternoon sun fall across my face because for the first time in my life I wanted people to look. I remember laughing louder. Standing straighter.

The seventh week began on a Tuesday. I woke before sunrise because something felt wrong. My face wouldn’t move. At first I thought I’d slept awkwardly. Then I tried to yawn. My jaw opened barely an inch. A dry crack echoed inside my head. Sharp. Tiny. Like a fingernail dragged across glass.

I froze.

I walked to the bathroom. The woman in the mirror looked exactly like me. Perfect skin. Perfect color. Perfect texture. Except it reflected light differently now. It had no softness. No warmth. It looked polished. Inhuman.

I pressed one finger against my cheek. It didn’t give. I pressed harder. Nothing. I tapped my forehead. The sound was dull and hard, like knocking on bone.

I laughed because fear sometimes borrows laughter. The laugh came out wrong. Every movement of my mouth answered with another brittle crack. Small white lines spread from the corners of my lips. Hairline fractures. Like porcelain beginning to break.

I called the cream company. Disconnected number. I searched online. Nothing. The website no longer existed.

My heart felt like it was trying to rip through my chest.

I called my doctor. Speaking hurt. Every word sounded as though someone were stepping on broken dishes inside my skull. The receptionist paused. Asked me to repeat myself. I tried. More cracking. She finally understood enough to say they could fit me in immediately.

I threw on my pajamas because changing clothes suddenly seemed like something people with normal skin worried about. I grabbed my keys. The morning air felt cold against my face though I couldn’t actually feel it anymore. My vision had begun to soften around the edges. Colors bled into each other. I blinked. The world returned, cloudy but usable.

I locked the door. Walked toward the porch. Forgot about the sinking piece of cement outside my home.

My foot caught.

There wasn’t enough time to react.

I fell forward.

For one impossible heartbeat I thought only about scraping my knees.

Then my forehead struck the edge of the concrete walkway.

The sound reached me before the pain.

A violent burst.

A window exploding inside my own head.

My face came apart.

There isn’t a gentle way to remember it.

The skin shattered into pale pieces that bounced across the sidewalk. Not chunks of flesh. Shards. Jagged white fragments slick with blood, like broken ceramic plates. They broke away from my cheeks. My forehead. My chin. Each piece revealing what had always been hidden beneath.

Red muscle glistened in the morning light. Wet strands of tissue hung like torn curtains. Veins trembled in the open air, pulsing with each beat of my heart. One eye filled instantly with blood, turning my vision crimson. The other watched a piece of my own jaw slide across the concrete like dropped china, a perfect crescent of white porcelain with teeth still attached.

I tried to scream. Half my mouth no longer existed. Blood poured down my throat, warm and metallic. I choked on my own life.

People came running. Someone vomited. Someone else kept saying oh my God over and over until the words lost all meaning, becoming just a rhythm of horror.

A man knelt beside me and reached toward my face. Then he saw it. The muscles twitching beneath the missing shell. The exposed teeth, impossibly white against the red ruin. The pieces still falling away each time I tried to breathe, like snow melting from a frozen branch.

He stumbled backward, his face pale with disgust. It was even worse than the first time I had fallen.

This time, I had become something other than human.

The surgeons saved my life, but they could not give me back a face.

Worse yet, I couldn’t even get justice.

The police took what was left of the jar from my bathroom.

They told me they’d figure out who made it.

They never did.

The return address belonged to an empty warehouse that had been abandoned for years.

The phone number had never been registered.

The website vanished sometime between my first call and the detectives trying to access it. Every photograph. Every testimonial. Every promise. Gone.

The payment had gone through three shell companies before disappearing into an account that no longer existed.

The FDA opened an investigation. They found nothing.

No manufacturer. No laboratory. No employees No records showing the cream had ever been tested.

Every person who claimed to have ordered it could produce the same white jar with the same blank label.

No two jars contained exactly the same chemical composition.

The scientists could identify most of what was inside.

The rest wasn’t supposed to exist.

Eventually the investigation was closed.

Officially, they called it an untraceable counterfeit cosmetic.

Unofficially….deep down, tjey knew it was something pure evil.

Years have passed. I cover what’s left with cloth whenever I leave home. Children still stare. Adults still pretend they aren’t staring. Only now I understand the difference between being seen and being wanted.

Sometimes I find old photographs. The ones from those six beautiful weeks. The smile in those pictures belongs to someone who believed happiness could be spread onto the skin with two fingers before bed.

I don’t hate her. I pity her. She thought beauty would rescue her. She never understood that her face had only ever been a face.

I would give anything to have it back exactly as it was before I opened that first white jar. Even with every scar. Every rough patch. Every stare.

Some mornings I still wake before dawn. For half a second I forget. I reach toward my face. My fingers find cloth first. Then the ridges beneath it. Then the places where the surgeons stitched together what the sidewalk left behind.

I lie there listening to my own breathing. Grateful that it makes no sound like breaking glass anymore.

Thank you so much for reading! I know it’s cliche to say, but I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. If you enjoyed my latest post, please check out more of my work. See below!

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