#1: Provocative Opening Paragraph With Nothing To Support It
As a child, they cut away my face.
This wasn’t done maliciously, but out of necessity: a necrotising infection was threatening to eat me away from within.
Yet still, as a child, they cut away my face, left only gristle and bone.
#2: An Attempt At Psychological Justification Of The Premise
I did not understand the reasons for it, did not appreciate the nuances of their decision. There was, from my view, simply a fever, delirium, darkness. Then confinement, confusion. Bandages, anaesthetics, salves, saline. Itchiness, discomfort, pain, boredom.
And finally, that inevitable revelation, that shock before the mirror, the face gone, my face, gone, replaced by this horror, this void, this grotesque mask that was not, I knew, a mask at all. Rather, it was the foundation on which the mask of myself had been built.
I turned away. I would not look.
#3: Finale Of Extended Outrages, For Which No Prior Justifications Will Suffice
[Forty five pages of faces being slowly and painfully removed by the protagonist in some sort of ironic vengeance or poetic revenge or karmic retribution, I don’t know, I can’t remember now. It doesn’t really matter.]
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Notes:
1. Written in September 2020
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