Young Again

The old, hate-filled woman had been staring at the bathtub for a whole 15 minutes until she was entirely satisfied that it was dead. Taking her gangrenous black foot from the back of its head, it rose slowly to the surface of the calm, cold water, no longer pinned down by the crabby appendage.

Gripping its scalp with her claw-like nails, digging them under the surface of its soft white skin, she snatched it out of the water in a single, wicked motion, before forcefully smashing it against the floor, like a potter adding clay to the kiln. The back of its head became flat as a pancake, while the sides split open and sloppy brain flowed freely from the cracks. Then she went to work.

Taking a pair of rusted scissors, she messily snipped and sliced the skin from all around its head, taking special care to preserve the eyelids. Then, with a great deal of effort, made more difficult by her missing fingers, she ripped off its head and flipped it inside-out, discarding its small skull by tossing it in the nearby faucet.

She was greying, with hair down to her knees, and horrible, sunken eyes and a near-toothless mouth. Ugly. Horriffic. But that was about to change.

Grabbing a large needle and a thick, leather thread, she began stitching the skin to her own face. It didn’t look good. The mangled, tatty skin was secured to her face by the rotting thread, which wove messily in and out, over and under her skin. She ignored the pain. And the blood. There was a lot of blood. Some of it even her own.

After what seemed an agonizing few minutes, she stood up from her wobbling knees, her hands still shaking and her vision slightly blurred from the intense pain. None of that mattered now, though.

As she looked at herself in the mirror, she couldn’t help but smile that wicked, foul, toothless grin. She looked disgusting before, like a witch, or something dead, but now she was beautiful. It was a miracle, she thought, that the family from across the street had ever trusted her to babysit their child.

It didn’t matter now. She finally had her baby face.