Let Me Tell You About the Hole in My Face
Let me tell you about the hole in my face.
It starts right where my mouth should be and reaches toward my forehead. It consumes my cheeks, leaving just enough room for a cluster of freckles on either side. Little white spots, beside the hole in my face.
When I look in the mirror, I can see the hole. Sometimes I spend hours in the bathroom, just staring at the hole in my face. The whole of it, reaching back, deep into my body. Sometimes, lines of phlegm or drool dangle off the edge of the hole, the hole in my face. I don't dare reach up to wipe them away, just leaving the trails to dangle and sway in time with my heavy breathing. My deep breathing. Air gasps through the hole in my face. My breath is hot against the edges of the hole in my face. The hole in my face, expanding and contracting slightly with each breath. Slowly. Like a living thing, this hideous orifice, this hole in my face, and the swaying tendrils of fluid hanging around the hole in my face. Pus and sweat and blood and drool and phlegm, mingling together and dripping and sliding down the edges of the hole in my face.
One time, I tried to wipe away a trail of slime. My hoof reached up, stretching to the tendril of thick, goopy fluid. Just one time, I tried to clear it away, but I missed, and I touched ...
Oh, Celestia, I touched ...
I touched ...
It. I touched it. The hole. The hole in my face. The inside of the hole in my face. My hoof brushed against the soft, damp meat inside the hole in my face. I felt the inside, inside me. Inside the hole in my face. I felt the hole in my face squish. I felt myself squish. I felt the damp, like a fungus growing over a wall, but warm. Like the walls of a cellar, but alive. The hole in my face is alive. I felt the hole in my face. The breathing hole in my face. The flaring hole in my face. The bleeding hole in my face. I felt the dirt of my hoof sliding into the secret passages. Sliding into my brain, through the hole in my face.
I fell to the ground. My entire body was covered in sweat. I fell and felt the hole in my face still. The aftertouch. The memory of the softness. The memory of the hole in my face.
I screamed. I could still feel it. The hole in my face, so plush. So squishy. So malleable. My me, but so malleable. I only stopped screaming to vomit up my lunch. The hole in my face expanded as it disgorged it all, apple chunks still intact. A vast tide from the hole in my face.
Yellow glops and trails of vomit hung from the edges of the hole in my face. I vomited again, feeling the hot gorge rushing against where my cheeks should be.
Felt my vomit laying where my mouth should be.
Felt the hole in my face.
Dripped tears from the hole in my face, mingling with the vomit. I lay there, I don't know how long.
My little sister knocked on the door to the bathroom.
"Are y'all okay in there?"
"Yes, yes, of course," I felt the walls of the hole in my face vibrate as I spoke. A strange, impossible voice that wasn't mine speaking through the hole in my face. "Lunch just didn't agree with me," said the hole in my face.
I gripped the edges of the toilet with my hooves, and hauled my body and the hole in my face up. Trying to will it to be true.
It isn't true. No one in my family knows about the hole in my face. I've never told them about it. I keep it my secret, this hole in my face. They look and think they see me smiling. They think they see green eyes and white teeth. They think they see something that isn't there.
That was never there.
You see, the hole in my face isn't an injury. I was born with it. An absence that could never be filled. The hole in my face that made my father sick. The hole in my face that pressed against my mothers teats and poisoned her body and killed her years later.
I didn't know this at the time. I was just a filly, too young to recognize myself in the mirror. Too young to see the hole in my face. The hole that had always already been there. Hidden from me, but my parents knew. My parents knew about the hole in my face, and it destroyed them.
No one else can know. I've never told anyone about the hole in my face, except for you. Just you and me know now. Only you and me can ever know. Know about the hole in my face. My one lie, my one secret. The one thing I will never reveal.
The hole in my face.
And you can see it now. See the way it gapes at you. The hole in my face that is eating me alive. You can see it, but you'll never tell. You'll have to hold your peace from now on.
When I eat, shoving whole pastries into the hole in my face, and hearing the hideous sounds of smacking and sucking as the walls of the hole in my face suck the food down. The gasping and wretching as the chunks of food stick in the tunnel that leads down from the hole in my face. The one hole, the one tunnel, just one passage leading deep inside me from the hole in my face. Straight down to where my organs pulse and play beneath the hole in my face.
When I look at you, your face confronting the hole in my face, the sight of you passing through the hole in my face. No eyes in between me and you, nothing to close. No hiding the hole in my face. Your horrified expression against the hole in my face. The wheeze and scrape, air passing through a vast chasm. The hole in my face.
When I sweat, and each droplet hangs on the edge of the hole in my face. The slowly pulsing edges of the hole in my face. The twitching, meat edges of the hole in my face. The slowly, blood-dripping edges of the hole in my face. The dirty, vomit crusted edges of the hole in my face. The living, speaking edges off the hole in my face.
You will see all of this; you will see the hole in my face. Forever, you will see the hole in my face. You will see, and you'll never speak a word to anyone.
You'll see and you won't speak.
Because you were never there, either.