Fleshless

‘Are you sure they’re safe for dogs?’

The woman is placing two of my ribs into a large freezer bag. She has long, well-conditioned hair and a pleasant demeanour that puts me at ease. You don’t often get seen by the same person at the clinic, and while maintenance is not painful you are still acutely aware of all the prodding and yanking and stabbing taking place.

‘They’re perfectly safe as they’re made of nylon, don’t worry. But just keep an eye out for if she starts to shred pieces off and swallow them, her stomach could become filled with plastic.’

I suppress a laugh at this, and as our eyes meet I notice that she is too.

I drive home with my ribs in the passenger seat. The air freshener in the shape of a tree bobs as I move along the road but I cannot smell it. I mostly bought it because I was used to doing so in another life. Before I was a doll I was a woman trapped in fallible human flesh with its tan lines and peach fuzz and flare-ups of hormonal acne. That old body is God knows where now. Hopefully since I donated it in exchange for this it has been put to good use. Doctors have doubtlessly rummaged around my organs that take on a new value when I am not attached to them. There is a heart and lungs and kidneys and even eyes that someone else will be grateful for. The donation is not all that benevolent of me given that I didn’t want these things anyway. Didn’t want to rot and especially not in that particular body. It’s easier to distance myself from it all given that every trace of who I was has been erased so successfully. Yet I still live in a body my mother created, only this time from her death. From the sale of a house that sold for an eye-watering amount of money. As I’m driving I spot a fast food chain and remember when such a thing appealed to me. I pull up. Stand under the fluorescent bulbs that fail to dull my beauty. Not a facetious statement. I wouldn’t have paid so much money, spent so much of my mother’s inheritance to me, on a body and face that could not withstand the harsh glare of overhead lighting. The beauty is the point.

‘What can I get you?’ the teenage boy at the till with pockmarked skin asks me.

‘Burger please. Plain.’

I take my sad, limp burger wrapped in paper that is becoming increasingly translucent with grease. Matilda will be delighted.

‘Hello!’ I call out.

She walks towards me, wagging her tail. I feed her the burger which has now cooled before taking one of my ribs out of the freezer bag. She jumps onto the sofa with it and begins to chew zealously. I briefly wonder what my mother would think of this bizarre scene before relinquishing that thought. That face. I try to remember what my own face used to look like and feel relieved when I can’t. The thought spurs me to open my phone and check my reflection in the front camera. The recently-installed nose has settled nicely but I have another in the drawer of my bedside table if I change my mind. Was worried this one would be too small for my face. The woman said I can hold the second option up against it to compare but shouldn’t try to apply it myself. Better to have a skilled professional do it for best results. This recent nose is my sixth in the space of a year. They’ve all been nice enough but after a while I inevitably notice that there is some room for improvement. In the evening I brush my teeth with water because, although they do not need it, old habits are hard broken. I spit into the sink and see a lone tooth in the basin. They must have used cheap glue last time. Irritated, I pick up the tooth and book an appointment to have it re-fitted. Constant, constant maintenance.

I have a gig the next day interviewing a C-list star about her latest range of wellness supplements. The cutesy pastel packaging makes them look like sweets for children. I lie and say I own some myself, unsure whether she knows that I am unable to eat them. Their laxative properties would have no use for me given that there is no waste to lose. The inside of my body is pristine. Nothing ugly or unpleasant can fester in there. No shit or blood or cancer or pain.

‘You look amazing,’ the C-lister whispers to me as we greet each other in a hug. ‘Do you mind me asking, are you…?’

‘I am. How could you tell?’

‘They did an incredible job. I only figured because you felt so solid!’ She steps back slightly to take a good look at me. I don’t mind. The attention is pleasant rather than uncomfortable. ‘I’ve considered it, you know, but you can’t feel things can you? Sex or taste or anything?’

‘No, but it’s not that bad,’ I say, unsure of how true this is. If it were bad what could I even do about it?

The interview-slash-advertisement goes well. She offers me a box of the pills and then remembers and gives me an apologetic smile.

‘Sorry, I know I’m being nosy but I’ve just not met many before, not close up like this,’ she says as we leave the studio. ‘Did you go for a whole new face or did they recreate your old one? Or can they do something in the middle and keep your best features? I’m just wondering as my eyes are sort of my main draw…’

‘It’s new,’ I say. Something about my tone must have been too clipped because she looks chastened and doesn’t ask any further questions.

As we wait for our respective taxis I imagine that she is drawing up an image in her mind of what I looked like before. Though this is an inaccessible thought to me, it still makes me anxious that she might guess correctly and possess information about me that I do not. In the cab home I run my tongue along the bottom of my teeth until I find the gap.

I think nothing of the tooth again until my earlobe falls off during a press junket, taking the gold hoop pierced through it with it.

‘Someone grab the glue!’ a camera operator yells.

A makeup artist comes out and reattaches it for me. The actor I am talking to gives a look of understanding, being a doll himself. The body he’s opted for is too muscular for my liking. Cartoonish. I ask if he has had something like this happen before and he says yes, he tugged too hard on an earbud and accidentally pulled his entire ear off. We laugh about it but mine rings hollow as I know I did not touch my ear at all. That lobe detached completely of its own accord as if disgusted to be a part of me.

At home I inspect my body for further damage. It all looks fine which is why I am so confused by the fact that, when I wake up in the morning and wipe my eyes reflexively, all of my eyelashes come off in my hand. I scream at first because when I look down I think they are a spider. I scream again, much louder, when I realise the truth.

‘What could be happening to me?’ I ask the man at the clinic.

I preferred the woman from last time. This man looks like an ex-boyfriend from my old life. Same angular features and large, slender hands.

‘I’ve never seen this before,’ he says. ‘Obviously pieces break off sometimes but that’s from carelessness. Are you being careful with yourself?’

‘Of course I am,’ I say.

I dress after I have been checked. He says there’s nothing obviously wrong with me.

‘My hair fell out when I was human sometimes, from stress,’ I say. ‘Not like the eyelashes, but I remember it would shed everywhere. In the shower, on my pillows…could this be anything like that?’

‘Your body wouldn’t be able to react to things in that sort of way.’ He says this slowly as if I am stupid. As if I was positing the theory out of anything other than desperation.

I become more fastidious. I glue any parts firmly down the moment even a modicum of wear and tear becomes apparent. I avoid public transport in case someone knocks or scuffs me. I also switch to a gentle surface cleaning solution made from natural ingredients to wipe my skin down. It is the same one I use to wash the inside of Matilda’s dog food bowl.

While I am undertaking the work of carefully preserving myself, my agent secures me a presenting role at an awards show. Somewhat prestigious and broadcast live. My initial excitement about this is dampened considerably by the uneasy feeling that something will go awry. I do not tell my agent about the strange things my body has been doing. She won’t care much and it will ensure the job is lost. On the day of the ceremony a team of five people are dedicated to enhancing my beauty further. I ask one of them to try and pull my fingernails off to check they are not about to go the way of my lashes or tooth. The makeup artist gives me a strange look but obliges. The nails do not budge. When they turn my chair towards the mirror and I appraise my reflection I am undeniably more beautiful than I was this morning. I smile. The missing tooth was returned to its rightful place in my mouth a few weeks ago but I am still able to tell which one it is.

Someone ushers me behind a curtain. As I wait to step out onto the stage I smoothen down my dress that, thanks to the rib removal, sits perfectly on me. My name is being called. One of the only things I have left of my mother. There is applause. I step out onto the stage, rattled by that brief thought of my mother in relation to my name. I can tell that I have not walked on with an easy smile and can sense there is an awkwardness in my stance that I hurriedly work to address.

I tell the jokes that have been written for me and more of them land than not. This should put me at ease and yet it doesn’t.

‘And the nominations for best newcomer are…’

The lights are hot on my face. I am designed to not melt under this sort of heat but am sure I can feel dripping. When the camera pans away from me I ask someone if I look alright but it’s hard to believe their reassurance. Something is amiss. The lights are too bright. My dress is too tight. I squint out into the crowd and then I see it. Her. My mother. My hands fumble as I open the envelope. Of course it was not my mother. It defies all possibility. I try to focus on the task at hand. The millions of people at home watching me on their televisions.

‘The winner is…’

There are cheers. The winner stands up. When I look out into the crowd my mother, or the woman who looks like her, is gone. Everyone is clapping. I remember where I am and clap too with vigour. Someone gasps and a silence falls. I am slapping one hand against the nub of a wrist. My other hand is on the floor. The winner discreetly picks it up and gives it back to me. I thank her and put on a bemused expression as I’m aware my reaction right now will affect the narrative. Hopefully my team can spin this potentially viral moment in the right direction. It will be funny rather than grotesque. Nothing about me is grotesque. My hand will not reattach without glue so I hold it in the other one and hide away for the rest of the ceremony. When I look at the hand properly I notice that all the fingernails have vanished from it. They are likely scattered around on the ground like crumbs and being trodden into the carpet by heels. I place it down for a moment and rub my eyes like I did when I was a child prone to anxiousness. There is a pop sound and, when I look down at my hand, an eyeball that I hurriedly shove back into its socket. If I had a heart it would race but I do nonetheless feel an immense sense of dread.

Someone asks if I will be coming to the party afterwards and I find myself saying yes. There will be canapés and drinks and being adjacent to these pleasures, even if I can’t experience them first-hand, is enough to satisfy me. My agent tells me this may be a bad idea after the hand gaffe, the reception on social media is not as amused as we’d hoped, but I ignore her. The thoughts of the woman are too present in my mind and warrant distraction. I place the loose hand in my bag and ask in the toilets if anyone is a doll who might have some glue spare. The only adhesive offered to me is too weak and more suited for eyelashes or fingernails. Judging from the way they are looking at me it seems that hands coming off are quite rare. I mutter that it is fine and decide I will not let it deter me. The nub in its place is not upsetting to look at anyway, beyond the fact that it seems to represent something.

The party is at the rooftop bar of a private members’ club where I watch people drink and eat and sloppily kiss. There aren’t many dolls present. People are still too afraid of it, I think. They want to wait three, four, five years and see how we early adopters fare first. I dance to the music and as I turn I see the woman from earlier. Even from behind I am certain it is her. I follow my instinct to rush to her and tap her shoulder but as I increase my pace I feel something give way. My ankle snaps and sends my foot tumbling into the swimming pool. People are stopping to look but the chatter and music is continuing. Keen to not draw attention to myself, I hobble as gracefully as I can towards the edge to retrieve it. It looks forlorn encased in its black strappy sandal. I meet a few eyes and laugh to show it does not bother me. One of my own eyes does not feel quite right still. I am really supposed to clean it with a microfibre cloth before inserting it back in for the best clarity of vision.

Just as I feel the foot within my grasp, my balance falters. I fall. A loud splash. No music now. Nobody talking. I grab it and thrash my other limbs, still looking desperately for the woman. Someone is trying to help me and takes my handless nub to pull me out but as they do so my arm comes off. They scream and throw it back into the water. I go to retrieve it but then it happens. My eyes land on her. She’s standing at the opposite end of the pool by the bar and seemingly oblivious to the spectacle I’m causing. When she finally turns around, drink in hand, I am both disappointed and surprised. It is not my mother. In fact she looks like me. Who looks like, looked like my mother in some ways. A version of a version. The parts of her erased that I cannot get back now and was so certain I didn’t want. I had needed so desperately to be far away from it all, from the hurt. While I cannot feel that pain, I can see it now in the way that my leg is detaching from my body as someone enters the water and tries to scoop me up. I wriggle against this attempt to save me. Save me from what exactly I don’t know. Embarrassment? I lock eyes with the woman watching this all unfold and her mouth is a small ‘o’ of concern. Despite my attempts to search for some sort of recognition in her expression there is of course none. She does not know we once looked alike. To her I am nothing more than a doll whose appendages are littering the pool like plastic bags and bottle caps in the ocean.

‘Let me be!’ I scream at the person still trying to rescue me from the water. I move side to side to free myself and in doing so hear the ominous sound of my other leg breaking off. ‘Please!’ The rawness of my voice frightens me and must frighten them too as their hands retreat. There’s the sound of splashing as they clamber out of the pool. Nobody else attempts a rescue after this hysterical display. I am left all alone to stare up at the starless sky.

It’s likely that I will likely never be invited to an industry party again. They may even find me beyond repair and consign me to a landfill. There’s no flesh and bones to return to. No mother to return to. Nowhere near enough money in my bank account to afford the cost of a whole new body again. I can sense people’s eyes on me so I close my own tightly. I cannot cry though I wish to. Instead I float and imagine that the water against my skin is all the tears I am no longer able to shed but should have when I had the chance. The music resumes. There’s conversation but not, from what I can gauge, about me. When I turn and open my eyes I see that one of my ears has detached from my body and is drifting away from my head. I feel a loose tooth in my mouth and spit it out, watching it fly gloriously, freely, in the air. I smile unbothered by what my grin will look like now. The sounds around me are beginning to fade, making way for what doesn’t feel like happiness but does feel something like peace. Only now do I recognise this as something I’ve not experienced in some time. I am safe here, away from the chaos and uncertainty of the world outside of the pool. The water envelops me like amniotic fluid. I am a baby in the womb once more.

By Jasmin Nahar