Putting On Your Best Face
He stared into the mirror tilting his head up, then right, then left. The skin on his jaw was a little tight and there were too many lines now at the corner of his mouth. Some sagging under the cheek bones was occurring as well. His jaw clenched briefly. This just wouldn’t do.
“It might be time for a makeover, Mr. Bellson,” he said to the face staring back at him.
He opened a drawer under the vanity and halfheartedly fingered through the dozens of bottles of gels and creams. Lotions for dry skin. Treatments for wrinkles and sun spots. Skin tone, revitalizing pastes and every manner of foundation and highlighter.
None of them would do him any good. This was the part he hated.
He removed the sandy brown hairpiece and placed it carefully on a metal tree behind the toilet. Reaching into the back of the drawer, he pulled out a box of latex gloves. Starting at his jaw line he began to feel for the seam. Slowly, as if uncrimping the edges of a pie crust, he began to loosen the skin and roll it back. His fingers worked deliberately, kneading then peeling the flesh over cheeks and brow and finally his forehead, until he was able to pull the last of it back from the skull like a hood.
He glanced briefly at the limp mask of flesh before casting it into the plastic-lined garbage pail below the sink. The whites of his eyes had an unearthly glow against the red and pink striated muscles twitching on his face. With a sigh, he turned around and bent down to the small refrigerator behind him. He opened it and looked inside. Carefully smoothed out on a manikin head was an unblemished, pale-skinned face. He reached inside to remove it from its perch.
“Hello, Mr. Reggante,” he whispered as it slipped into his spidery fingers.
