Imitation

A woman somewhere sets a timer for fifteen minutes. Even though her phone is right beside her, she sets it on the microwave because she likes that better: the countdown in red numbers, the loud beeps and reminder chirps, the anticipation almost as if she’s waiting to pull out a bag of popcorn. She punches in “15:00 Start,” though she knows she won’t need it—she’ll sense the tightening first, which will expand incrementally, followed by the hardening at the edges, and finally the total paralysis. Then it will be time.

She’s starting to feel it already, of course, and the visage of a facial transplant patient, taut and shiny with the skin of another, bubbles to the surface of her consciousness. The woman banishes the thought, however—too dark. Returning to the bathroom, she stares deliberately at herself in the mirror, amplifying the grotesqueness of it: dead-eyed, mouth agape, head tilted.

She’s often thought that women enjoy posting selfies in sheet masks on Instagram because they secretly want to be monstrous. There’s something deliciously disturbing and confrontational about it, despite the banality of the skin regimen hashtags and self-care motivational quotes. Though she considers herself above such affected displays, she does understand the psychology of it, and relishes looking at herself in this state.

The woman also always thinks of Blanche DuBois at times like this, frantic near the end, extolling her “beauty of the mind and richness of the spirit” that “aren’t taken away, but grow! Increase with the years!” She fiercely believes this about herself, too, while simultaneously acknowledging the irony that she is as deeply obsessed with her looks as the famous tragic hero is.

Her husband is working late as usual—not code for having an affair, simply on a different schedule than she. Sitting at home reading books and watching movies with a mask on doesn’t feel particularly luxurious to her: it feels like maintenance, albeit deeply enjoyable maintenance. Really, the woman just hates that word attendant to luxury: “pampering.” It reminds her of diapers, and by extension, babies, something she has no interest in at the moment.

She’s back in her body, now (what yogis tell women like her to do in order to be “present”), fingering the pleasing crust of the mask and resisting the temptation to rip it off before the requisite time has elapsed. Out of boredom and some innate desire to want to do things correctly, the woman rereads the package instructions: “1.) Carefully unfold mask and apply to clean skin. 2.) Adjust around eyes, nose, and mouth, smoothing to fit the outline of your beautiful face.” She rolls her eyes at this one, resentful at being patronized by an inanimate object; of course she knows that her animus is really directed at some hypothetical roomful of skin-care marketing types, masking contempt for their customers’ shallow need for validation with embarrassing expressions of feel-goodery, which make her feel nothing but silly. But the mask, it must be remembered, is a necessity now: the woman isn’t twenty anymore. She isn’t only fighting acne (though she still is, of course, like every thirty-five-year-old woman she knows)—she’s fighting aging. Aging: the process, and not age itself. Curious, she begins to think…Suddenly, her eyes dart back to the package, and scan the next words: “3.) Close eyes and panic for 20-30 years.”

No, that can’t be right. She blinks, then reads it again. It’s right there in—she wants to say—Helvetica? She is not mistaken. The woman is not the sort of woman to make casual reading errors. She is also not the sort of woman to lose her sense of reality. This is just some hipster take on skin care, irony masquerading as the antidote to boringly sincere copy. We prefer our fruitless attempts to fend off death with a wink and a nod, thank you very much. And yet she is deeply unnerved, glancing away from the bathroom vanity and over her shoulder, into the dimly-lit hallway beyond. She hears nothing besides the humming air conditioner, because her husband isn’t home and won’t be for some time.

The woman realizes with a start that she hasn’t yet removed the mask. She looks back at her wan reflection and begins moving the forefinger and thumb of each hand to the corners at her chin. She feels for the edge that she knows is there, like the page of a book one is desperate to flip, but can’t get a grip on. Her heart races as she manually and intellectually understands that there is no longer an edge: the pallid sheet is the face, and the face is the pallid sheet. Now she is clawing at the mask, whimpering, wailing. Her phone vibrates helplessly against the porcelain.

4.) Remove when dry, or when skin slips off like an omelet sliding perfectly from an oiled skillet onto the plate.

There is pounding at the apartment door, but it sounds fuzzy and distant; her ears ring and her mind adjusts these details around the story that is only now unfolding to her all at once, the Poet’s well-tied knot.

Years peel.

***

Rachel Voss is a high school English teacher living in Queens, New York. She graduated with a degree in Creative Writing and Literature from SUNY Purchase College. Her work has previously appeared in The Ghazal Page, Hanging Loose Magazine, Unsplendid, Jokes Review, Matter Press, Bodega Magazine, and NonBinary Review, among others.