**
The water hissed with gentle force into the sink. Nick had neatly lathered his chin and cheeks with shaving cream. A rinsed hand reached for the razor, dabbing the end into the falling stream before bringing it up to his face and pressing in and downward in a shaving motion. In the wake of the blade’s path lay a fresh strip of hairless skin.
He had covered his bases. He hadn’t remembered telling Lucy his last name, or where exactly he had worked-or even specifically what he did. Maybe Nick said something about working for the city, but that was a safe call: the number of city-operated buildings downtown was numerous enough to prevent Lucy from searching town for him. And he knew for a fact that he was not the only one named Nick in the metropolis bureaucracy. No-Lucy would have to be pretty thorough in her search for ol’ Nick if she intended to track him down. Nor did she come off as the stalker type; he didn’t recall her checking out his license plate or anything like that.
Nope. One time incident; just a one night stand, over and done with. No more. Lucy would be in the past, and that would be the end of it-unless Nick and the others decided to hit the Fill Station again some night, and she happened to be there again. Then what?
What if Brenda wants to go there some night?
Nick paused from his routine of shaving, thinking about this. Brenda didn’t like to eat out often, but she did have a habit of surprising him with wanting to go out on occasion, especially when Nick came home early. And for her to suggest the Fill Station-not likely to happen, but not impossible either. Maybe she’d buy Nick making up a story about it not being that great of a place for food or something. Yeah, she’d take his word for it. She trusted his judgment about food. That wouldn’t be an issue.
He resumed shaving as another thought crossed his mind: What if he ran into Lucy while with Brenda? What if-
“Ouch!”
Nick dropped the razor, slapping his face. He pulled his hand back, smeared with shaving cream. On his face, a thick red drop about the size of his pinky’s tip clung to his cheek.
He cursed with a sigh. The nick caused by his blade had been painful, as if somebody had jabbed the tip of a hot knife into him. He was no stranger to cutting himself while shaving-he’d been doing this the better part of fifteen years-but that had to be one of the worst self-induced slices he had ever performed upon himself.
The drop dripped into the cream-clouded, water-filled sink with a plop. The sting did not drop with it.
With a guttural sound that mixed a groan with a growl, Nick rubbed the cut. Of all the times to get something like this. He had to be to work in an hour, and the last thing he wanted to do was walk in with this ugly, obvious wound. He hated blemishes of any sort on his face, always had ever since the first plague of acne had broken out on his thirteen year old being, making his appearance something more akin to toppings on a New York style slice than a junior high visage. He was past that now, having matured into a handsome, tall, trim fellow fit for Venice Beach. The face he had now he didn’t want to lose; puberty had been cruel enough to him.
He moved his hand. The cut had not disappeared. It still bled-and looked worse. There was now a small rip of skin, widening the injury.
“I can’t believe this.” Nick muttered. He reached to the shelf on the left, fastened to the wall, just above the toilet seat, upon which sat a couple of Brenda’s treasured bathroom decorations and a box of tissue. With a violent tug, he pulled out a piece, tearing off a corner and mashing it against the wound. A thick, crimson splotch spread rapidly over the white material, shaping itself into another droplet that fell into the sink. Nick pressed harder against the cut with his index finger, hoping that would prove to be more effective.
A look at the finger revealed cherry-red juice covering the tip, filling the grooves of his whorls and spilling upon the middle finger pressed next to it.
With a spat-out curse, he dropped his fingers into the water, rubbing his thumb against the pads to dissipate the blood. He brought his hand back up, examining his fingers, to see if-
Another curse dropped from his mouth.
A fast-moving streak of red trailed across his jaw, toward his neck, intent on making its way to the finish line on the inside of the white collar. He slapped his palm against it, rubbing upward, flinging droplets of impure water from his fingers onto the mirror. More mess to clean up, meaning more time taken away from his morning routine. A warm washcloth would have to do for now. If Brenda didn’t like that, he’d volunteer to wipe the mirror down better when he came home.
He ripped free another corner, this one a bit larger, bunching it up and pushing it against his face. An impatient sigh left his nostrils; maybe it would have been better to have just gone to work without shaving. It was a rare thing for him to do, as he despised having the shadow of stubble on him. It made him feel disheveled, dirty, more akin to a street bum than to a shirt-and-tie employee. Brenda had remarked one morning that she didn’t mind it at all, that it gave him a sort of sexy, Don Johnson look. Nick had responded with a roll of the eyes and a smooth face five minutes later.
But the only thing worse than the stubble was the remnant of a cut, still visible hours later. Nick didn’t want a nick; he wanted nothing but flawless cheek and jaw for the rest of the professional world to see-and whoever else might be watching.
He brought most of his hand back from the tissue, still keeping it in place by one finger; another uneven red spot had begun to make its way through the material. The cut continued to release blood out into the open. Time for a band-aid. The rest of his fingers joined the one left to hold the tissue in place, surrounding the bunched-up material to pull it off-
-and dragged a piece of skin along with it in a painful tug.
Nick’s brow furrowed, his mouth open in a puzzled scowl. The cut couldn’t have been any bigger than the tip of a ball-point pen at first. With the pulling away of some of his skin, it had widened to the size of a dime, with more blood filling the wound. Another dribble dropped down his face, this one a bit thicker and wider than the first. A new tissue found itself in Nick’s clenched hand, and was slapped against his face. Nick pulled it away in order to reposition the tissue, and pulled away another, blood-blotched segment of skin. Now the wound possessed the diameter of a quarter; its edges bordered with warm, spreading scarlet, still stinging from the fresh pull of skin away from the face, and now accompanied by something else: an itch around the edges of the wound, begging to be scratched.
But that wasn’t what made Nick frown at his injured doppelganger.
What caused the frown was the strange patch in the middle of the wound. Surrounded by the bloody fringe was skin: pure and white, unblemished. Was that supposed to be there?
Nick was hardly a medical or biological expert, but that didn’t look right to him, not at all. There should have been-well, there shouldn’t be something like this. Wounds didn’t reveal anything this clean looking under them, not without a pooling of blood. And the blood only emerged from the edges of the ripped skin, where the tearing had occurred, not from the middle itself. This wasn’t right.
Nor was the growing itching sensation that now accompanied the wound. It wanted him, it forced him, to scratch, to relieve the tickle of invisible feathers that brushed and flitted against his face. Fingernails obliged in an instinctive reflex, digging into the bloody wound, pulling away more skin, increasing the pain as well as spreading and amplifying the maddening itch.
Call a doctor, Nick, the rational side of his mind urged. This can’t be right.
No, it couldn’t be right, but the itch had to be stopped first. It would not permit him to divert attention elsewhere.
Nick slapped his hand into the sink, flinging water in his face and on the mirror, hoping for relief.
He got none.
Stop the itch. It’s spreading through the rest of my face. Get it. Tear it off.
In vain the scratching tried
to tear away the persistent tickle, instead exposing more of the strange, white flesh, bordered with blood. By the time he paused to examine the damage, the wound had encompassed his entire cheek: a jagged patch of ivory, outlined by spattered scarlet, against the rest of his somewhat tanned, blood-smeared visage. Bewildered, furious eyes stared back at Nick.
Getitoffgetitoffgetitoffnowww!!!!!!
The itch continued to scamper across him, tingling under his skin, just out of reach from him, making him have to dig harder, faster, deeper, with each swiping movement of the nails. Each stroke removed more of the outer epidermal layer, scattering more bits of blood and flesh, exposing more of the white underneath. Nick let out a frustrated growl, desperate to rid himself of the crazy itch that was causing him to shred his face to ribbons. His clawing hands had now moved to his forehead, scraping down against the nose and the other side of his face-Ow! Pushed too hard on his eye with his fingernail. That had to have cut his lid; his eyes responded with salty water that pushed between closed lashes. More flesh dropped to the sink, floating upon the water in flaked, bloody strips and scabs.
Another look through impure tears revealed a face striped and slashed in red and white, racked in streaks of burning pain. Barely any of his remaining skin could be seen, instead replaced by the white flesh, smeared with sticky, dirty blood. Something about the image reminded him of a clown with horribly mangled makeup, but Nick was hardly in a mood to laugh about this.
The itch prevailed above everything: above pain, above reason, above health, above keeping quiet and not waking Brenda up. It burned and tickled, brushing over his entire face with playful, maddening softness. Nick let out a guttural growl, resuming his scratching with eyes slammed shut.
From the dark outside the bathroom came a soft voice. “Nick?”
Brenda.
Shredded skin peeled away from his nose and lips, revealing more of the lifeless white. The marble countertop displayed smears and speckles of red and flesh, as did the mirror. The sink water had lost any remaining clearness, now a murky, polluted pool of matter-filled brown, as thick and obscure as the agony and confusion that muddled up Nick’s brain.
The itch stopped.
Relieved hands planted themselves into the slicked countertop. The burn had not let up-it gnawed at raw, exposed face flesh, but there was no longer a desire to tear away at the invisible ants which had taken refuge in his face. If anything, Nick felt relief at not having to scratch anymore; he feared that the next swipe would end up revealing bone and marrow.
Nick lifted his tear-smeared eyes up, staring at the distorted, sickly pale blur that was his reflection. A blood-crackled hand reached for tissue in slow motion, pushing against the mirror and moving side to side in a slow, mechanical movement. Little by little, the image sharpened, pushing streaks of water and something else off to the side, bringing back definition to the face.
But not Nick’s face.
Staring back at him above a blood-coated neck in a stare of hungry inquisition were two eyes composed of frozen circles of ice, hovering above a small, feminine nose and delicate cheeks that were full and round: a stark contrast to the high-cheeked, chiseled face Nick possessed. Trickles of blood from the forehead had fallen down the freshly revealed white skin of the nose and had found their way to the mouth, spreading across the full, ruby lips in a gruesome application.
The lips in the mirror were smiling back at Nick.
“I told you I was into you.” Lucy whispered.