Tobias/Tóibín

I was holding a beer. I don’t remember picking it up, but it was in my hand, warm, half drunk. I stepped over a patch of broken tile near the pantry and my boot landed without sound. This place was never quiet. The pipes used to moan like they were dying slow behind the walls, and the heater clicked every few seconds like a lighter trying to catch.

I passed the living room. No furniture, no TV, no pictures on the walls. Just a chair facing the corner like it’d done something wrong. My stomach rolled. I walked toward the hallway, but the hallway didn’t walk back. You know that feeling in dreams, where space forgets how to behave? Where a few steps stretch out forever and you can’t tell if you’re moving forward or shrinking?

The door to the bathroom was open, and the light was on.

I didn’t go in, I was just there.

The mirror was fogged like someone had just taken a shower, but the glass was cold when I touched it. Too clean. This house had never been clean.

And then I saw him.

Bent over the sink. Same boots. Same jacket. Same everything, except he was folded in on himself, laughing without sound. Mouth torn open around it. His shoulders shook like he’d heard something hilarious, like I was the punchline.

I stood up straighter. So did my spine. But he didn’t match me.

His hand twitched. His head rolled too slow. He blinked a beat late, like he was getting his cues from a second rate script.

I wiped the glass. Should’ve left.

I hate that smug face. Not a face, not anymore. Just meat that remembered what a face used to be. My right nostril was gone, burned off in the village fire, skin twisted back so deep the cartilage showed like cracked bone. The rest of my nose sagged like it was embarrassed to still be there. My upper lip never healed back proper, now in a permanent snarl. I had to carve into my face just to breathe again. Cut them open with my bowie knife before being hauled back to camp that night, a victim of my own success as a soldier. My grin’s always showing now. Stretched. Crooked. Permanent. Doesn’t mean I’m happy. My right eye’s gone. The lefts milky useless. It floats in its socket like it’s trying to quit the whole operation. It's a miracle I can see in any capacity they said.

The burn scars don’t stop at my face. They melt into my throat, collarbone, jaw, textured like someone poured wax on concrete. He smiled through it all. The thing in the mirror. Not wide, deep. Like he knew something I didn’t. Like he’d always been there, laughing from the inside.

I could see my teeth. Always can. They’re still white. Still straight. I don’t know why that pisses me off more than anything. Everything worth value was burned to shit, could you believe I used to be a real looker?

I remembered when a girl kissed me in high school and said I looked like a movie star. I remembered Isaac grinning at me through a broken nose and calling me his golden boy, memory is traitorous at best and those glimpses lasted all of a second before I remembered those village girls screaming, begging. I remembered the napalm. I remembered the smell of my own face cooking.

I remembered what I used to be.

It raised the beer to my lips and poured it down the hole where my mouth used to be. It ran down my chin, my throat, soaked my shirt. It didn’t wipe it off.

It smiled, bloody gums showing.

And then I punched the glass.

The reflection stayed there. Didn’t shatter. Didn’t blink. Just smiled back like it was proud.

I woke up sweating in a bed that smelled like metal.

Checked my knives. Checked my guns. Lit a cigarette with shaky hands.

Waist sketch, full body pinup

I pride myself in my ability to tend to and care for the people around me, it's given me purpose in life and now I can't leave my bed or office chair without letting out noises of pain saved for animal documentaries.