Modern Trends in Flesh and True-ness

The alarm chirps a shrill, pulsing 6AM. My eyelids lift to the red morning as it pours through the window. I see the black smoke in the sky again, but have no time to worry about that. There are ablutions and rituals to endure to fuel the tank and polish the looks for a productive day. I hop up, stretch myself, and slip the covers back, tightly wrapping the mattress, leaving no wrinkle, no trace I’d even been there.

A dog is barking outside. Then a scream, maybe two. I reply to this comical nightmare conversation by briefly shrieking into my palms, allowing myself this small connection. I change gears, dial the anxiety inward, put on black rimmed glasses.

A forced pep in my step as I bounce to the bathroom mirror to examine myself. I jab a forefinger behind my black frames and pull down the puffy bags below my eyes, exposing the whites and their yellowing edges. I prod my receding gum line and take in the face as a whole. The gradual decline of my gaunt true-ness is acceptable, if irrelevant.

Breakfast of toast with a thick scrubbing of margarine. One mug of hot black coffee. I consider turning on the television for the morning news. Instead I listen briefly to muffled chaos outside. The television remains switched off.

At last the pyjamas fall to the floor. I place my glasses on the bedside table and open the closet. The Work-Flesh hangs on its hooks, dripping blood into a plastic tray. I carefully unhook it and slowly, methodically enter the warm, wet skin. I slide into its shape, arms and legs aided by the slippery blood as folds and misalignments are smoothed into their appropriate place. I extend and wiggle my digits and shuffle myself in the meat until I am comfortable. Finally I pull the head down over my face, a routine feeling of normalcy and warm calm sliding over my cheeks.

I take the drip tray to the bathtub, empty and spray off the gore. One more check in the mirror, allowing myself to adjust to the face that stares back. I use a tissue to wipe stray blood smears from the edges of its eye-holes and other openings. This Flesh, all in all, is not perfect. It slides more than I’d like. Does not quite become one to me. Feels more like a costume rather than a bonded extension of me. I sometimes have to concentrate on my step or my grip as some slippage or light bleeding can occur around the extremities. I have to squint through a world of blurred edges, as this Flesh is not recommended to pair with glasses. But the Face is still a good face. That was the selling point after all. Affordable and durable Flesh with the quality face of a go-getter, and I will endure my inconveniences for its benefits.

Satisfied, I spray the closet with disinfectant and leave the door open to air it out. I collect my briefcase, close the blinds, and bid a small goodbye to my safe little home.

A flaming tire rolls down the street. Car alarms and distant sirens bounce off the comfortable, unthreatening houses of the cul-de-sac. The smoke is thicker today, stinging my nostrils, but the fires enveloping the city have yet to spread out here. My neighbor across the street is watering his rooftop with a gardenhose anyway, just in case. It must be his day off, he is wearing casual Flesh, looser, bloodier but more breathable. The skin stops above his knees, white polo shirt and khaki half-pants embedded into it, red blood dripping down his legs to his true ankles. I wave and he waves back, unblinking behind slack and sunken eye-holes. I hear a dog barking again, somewhere.

I wipe a thin layer of ash from the hood of my beloved sedan and expose a small gash in the mint green paint. I suppress the short shock of anger at the unknown assailant and fold into the safety of the interior, the closing of the car door silencing the outside world. I sail the green sedan down the lane and leave my precious subdivision, making my way toward mayhem.

I am welcomed to the city by an overturned bus, laying on the road like a wounded animal. Buildings are on fire. The trains seem to be running on time, for the most part. People still have to get to work, after all. The large red brick factories, except those reduced to smoldering rubble, are still producing whatever they produce. Smokestacks pump billowing graphite clouds into the sky above the already smoke-hazy horizon.

I calmly steer around obstacles, strewn wreckage and garbage. There are people in the road. They are all running...away? Towards? Seemingly directionless. A confused cacophony of screaming anger and fear, appearing both random and as choreographed as a dance. Even in this panic, they are all adorned in an impressive variety of Flesh. Some wear Street-Flesh with their own true heads popping out of the stretched mouth-holes, flat Faces flopping back like hoods. Some only wear Heads or Faces pulled over them like masks. It’s quite an array of fashion choices. Then there are those in the most shocking new style, red drenched minimalists with no actual Flesh, opting instead for regular applications of blood caked onto their true-ness. I’d recently overheard coworkers talking about this modern trend, and I couldn’t believe it at the time. Seeing it now, I wonder if I could pull off something so bold, so brave. Perhaps a younger me.

At first glance the police are corralling rioters in the street, but in reality they are just as awash and lost in the sea of panic as everyone else. Windows are broken, a car crashes headlong into a storefront. Children wearing plastic masks and rubber costumes, still too young for proper Flesh, are throwing rocks or other detritus at any random target they find. Buildings with jutting bricks or usable hand-holds are being climbed, with their occupants attacking the climbers from their windows, kicking them downward or repelling them with broomsticks. Fire licks its many tongues over blackening structures as the sirens of fire engines remain impossibly distant.

A falling climber lands spectacularly before me, just barely missing the hood of my car. I swerve around the twitching heap and keep driving, calm, safe in my mint green bubble. I find my reflection in the rear view mirror, the black frames glinting back at me, perched in dissonance on the false nose of my Work-Face. It is strikingly out of place, a reminder of the screaming man below these layers of Flesh and embedded fabric. I see him, my true-ness, there in the rear-view, sweating and suppressed, a black curl of his true-hair escaping and dangling over my forehead. The factory recommendations are correct. In this Flesh, glasses feel wrong. I curse them, but it can’t be helped. If I am to drive I must deal with the shame of wearing my handicap. I will remove them as soon as I park. In the meantime, I’ll tuck the errant curl of hair back behind the Flesh, quiet the man inside of it, and drive on.

My office building is a tower of windows shining golden in the sun, surrounded by a park of large evergreens. The groves are lush and pleasant but do nothing to mask the hot haze of the approaching orange inferno. I park the car and stroll through the lobby, leaving the smoke and heat outside, doors hermetically sealing behind me. Co-workers, managers, security staff all are making their way to the start of the day, all in their own varying designs of professional Work-Flesh. Combed and styled Hair, pleasant tanned Bodies with fine silk suits subtly affixed to them. You’ll never see the red blood-minimalists in here. Business demands that standards remain. Custodians wearing low end company issued Dura-Flesh are constantly mopping and wiping away stray drops of blood from the floor, maintaining this immaculate space.

Into the packed elevator, surrounded by colognes, perfumes, and the gamy smell of warming meat, and up twenty-two floors to my department. I go to the desk where I perform my functions and sit in calm rigidity beneath a breeze of air conditioning. I type numbers. Pencil a memo. Make and answer phone calls from time to time. I open my mouth behind the mouth-hole and move my hands in the precise gestures required. I offer OKs and thumbs-ups to people I do not know. Productivity cascades forth. Sometimes I hear a low rumble and turn to the window. From this floor you can look over the green tree-tops of the park surrounding the office and out beyond to the expanse of the city. I take a moment to regard the small black mushrooms of rising smoke out there.

On the break room television, there’s a capsizing cruise ship and floating bodies on the news. Leaking fuel shimmers over the water, coating struggling survivors as they make their way to shore. Just behind the television, a travel poster for an island paradise is pinned to the wall. Escape! says the bold flowery copy over azure waters and swaying palms.

I sip tea through a straw and hear a familiar throat-clearing ahem behind me. I know I will turn to see my manager. His name is Jones. The face of his bespoke Work-Flesh smiles while not smiling in that perfectly managerial non-committal to emotion. No words pass between our false lips. He taps his Cheek and grunts lowly behind the second skin. I bring my hand to my own false cheek and find it smeared red. The left eye-hole must be drooping today, a small tear of blood has leaked and streamed down the Face. I am mortified as Mr. Jones stands judging behind his impeccable designer skin. I dumbly mumble an apology and flee in shame to the restroom to fix my failing Face.

The true me is there in the mirror. He is staring out from the misaligned eye-hole. Shaking, tense, lips clamped shut because if only he would open them such a scream would erupt that—

I reset the eye-hole to its proper resting place, dampen a paper towel and wipe the blood from the Cheek.

At my desk, I catch myself staring at the window’s scorched horizon again as a hand drops a report before me. The features of the hand, the color and thread count of the sleeve embedded above its wrist are instantly recognizable. In shock, I look up into the same Face as mine. The two of us lock eyes in momentary awkwardness, acknowledging of the coincidence. Two of the same Work-Flesh is not exactly faux-pas or taboo in a business environment, we are all adults, of course. But the awkwardness is undeniable. The man delivering the report, I can see, feels he has nothing to regret. I can’t even disagree. Unlike my own floppy, leaky, slippery Flesh, his seems to fit absolutely perfect. Snug and professional. If not for the inescapably visible depths of the eyeholes, one might even mistake it for his own true-ness. He looks the way this Flesh was meant to be.

He straightens, nods with what may be smug confidence, and walks away from me. He catches the interested eye of, Debbie? Is that her name? She passes him and sits down at her desk near me. She might be blushing beneath her Skin. She checks the position of her Cheeks in a compact mirror and slightly adjusts them.

I suddenly find myself feeling lost and derivative. I imagine Debbie is looking sideways at me, comparing my ill-fit flesh with the man she just passed. The true-ness inside me pulls the black rimmed glasses from their hidden pocket and places them onto the face. At once, my eyes are seeing clearly, blurred edges have vanished, and I attempt to reestablish an identity.

I clearly see Debbie and others looking at me. And I see clearly enough to recognize, even through the expressionless work-faces how they see me. Some confusion, but mostly pity. The glasses are wrong. A visible symbol of my childish competitiveness. No professionalism. I slowly remove the glasses, fold them up and embrace the blur once more. They return to their memos, typing, phone calls, and I do as well. Another low rumble outside, but I do not turn to it.

Shopping in the supermarket, I step over open containers, spilled condiments and snacks, broken wine bottles. Basket in hand, I survey into the remaining stacks of frozen dinner trays. Young men in torn and bleeding Street-Flesh dash behind me and out the doors, smashing and grabbing as they go. I drop a few frozen trays and a six pack of beer into the basket. Salisbury steaks tonight.

The cashier is wearing the simple fashion of only a Work-Face, the Flesh and Hair pulled over her head like a cowl, the rest of her body her own true-ness, with Face-blood dripping decoratively over genuine clothes and a green supermarket apron. Strained yelling and crashing erupts elsewhere in the store. A large bald man, another blood-minimalist with his naked true-ness caked in mottled red, is slowly up and down the aisles. He howls out in anger while punching bags of chips or pushing cans and bottles off the shelves, sending them violently to the floor of the supermarket. The cashier hands me my change, unblinking behind her eye-holes as the howls and crashes continue.

The cul-de-sac has not fallen into the inferno, though some houses wear busted windows like black eyes. My neighbor’s house seems structurally undisturbed, but his door is standing open and the house is dark inside. His car is in his driveway, but he and his family are nowhere to be seen. A stray dog curiously pokes its head through the open door and walks into the darkness. I decide not to worry about it and unlock the door to my unscorched home.

I sit before the television, my hot dinner of meat patties steaming on a TV tray. I cycle through each channel, waiting for the food to cool. Bad news, bad news, variety comedy lampooning bad news. Blurred images and a drop of blood falling from my Face reminds me I have yet to peel the Work-Flesh away.

I pull the Mouth open, trying to widen it, but it is stiff today. I apply more force. There is more resistance, and I give more force than patience. I can pull my head through the Mouth successfully but not cleanly. Halfway through, I hear a small pop, feel a sudden hot flow of blood, and I know the Face is ruined. Its jawline may never convincingly set in place again. White hot anxiety flushes through me. A dog barks outside, probably from my neighbor’s house. More faint screams in the distance.

I wipe the Work-Flesh blood from my face, my true face, and put on the black rimmed glasses. I stand at the window, abandoning my packaged meal. I stare out at the glow of the fires, the limp and bleeding Head flopping in ruin over my shoulders. I find myself thinking that if only the fires would come tonight I wouldn’t have to repair the torn Flesh.

A commercial bursts onto the television. Another travel advert for some distant paradise. Once again, the tourism board implores in vain, Escape! I taste the word in my mouth, watching the orange haze of oblivion.

***

Sean Ellis Marmon is an American writer and illustrator currently based in Japan. His work has been featured in Booth and The Weird and Whatnot. He randomly posts illustrations and oddities on Instagram @semarmon.