Short Story: Attaining Perfection

This story is the first one I wrote as a contest entry. Attaining Perfection was for the "The List" contest on Figment, in which you were asked to write about someone who was considered "pretty" or "ugly". I chose to write about someone who could be considered both of these things. I also explored the concept of identity and how we define ourselves. Here is the story:

                “Step right this way, Natalie.”

                I follow the nurse silently into the operation room. She wears a mask over her face, so I cannot see her features, but I know they must be beautiful. After all, when you spend your days molding flesh and sculpting bone, how could you settle for anything less than perfection in your own face?

                The halls of the clinic are conspicuously devoid of mirrors. I don’t need a mirror to tell me that my nose is crooked and my eyes too far apart; that my skin is covered in ropy scars from the time I tried to scrub my face raw with a blade. But that is all over now. In precisely twenty-four hours’ time, I will be beautiful.

                Being whispered about as the plastic girl, the girl with the fake face, is a small price to pay to become perfect. I have already become an expert at shielding myself from the condescending stares and barely veiled whispers of everyone I know. My own mother no longer looks at me, my scars an impenetrable barrier between our eyes. She was lucky; born with a classic Grecian profile and marble skin. I was a disappointment at first, an abomination as I grew older. Now, I am the freakish creature that she will not, cannot, look at.

                It was her idea to go for this surgery. “Experimental restoration procedure for deformed teenagers,” she had said, waving the pamphlet in front of me. And now, here I am, the first in line to claim a new life. My heartbeat is slow, surprisingly calm for someone about to be subject to an experimental procedure.  If I dove into the slumber of anesthesia and never woke up, it would still be infinitely better than this life of mocking stares and cruel whispers.

                “Have a seat on this chair. Dr. Robertson will be here shortly,” the nurse tells me, and I comply wordlessly. The nurse lowers the chair until I am lying down, and deftly unwraps a needle from its sanitary pouch. “This may sting,” she says pleasantly, and I nod. A prick and I inhale sharply, the world dissolving into a void of nothing.

                It seems only seconds later that I awaken. Dr. Robertson tells me to stay lying down, that the procedure could be very draining, to rest and allow myself to adjust to my surroundings. I don’t bother. I dart out of the chair and run out into the hall, my eyes searching frantically for a mirror.

                I can hear Dr. Robertson and the other nurses rushing after me, concerned voices bouncing up and down the halls. I don’t stop. I need to know. I need to know that I am beautiful.

               There. A shard of a mirror on the floor, next to a wastebasket. I inch towards it, holding my breath. I tip my face over the mirror and gaze into it.

                I see a girl, face in perfect symmetry, skin flawless, eyes luminous.

                Who are you?

                I let out a strangled cry, and I feel the strong and capable arms of a nurse taking me back to the operation room. Who am I?

                I am forced to sit down on the chair again, and my vision blurs with tears. I should be happy, now that my scars are gone. Yet, those scars were my response to a world that demanded nothing less than perfection. I drew the blade across my face because I had wanted an excuse for their stares. It's a small comfort knowing the scars are what make you less than acceptable, not your features. I remember the fire of pain on my skin and my mother's screams. Now, none of that has happened. My face is unblemished and unmarked.

               That girl in the mirror, she is perfect and beautiful and everything I ever wanted to be. But she isn’t me.

                Who am I?