Jon Athan - Am I Beautiful?

Miki said, “Your husband fucked me, then he tried to kill me. And I bet you’ve been sharing a bed with him nearly every night since then. He lied to you— to us . He’s missing some important details, but I’ll forgive him because I can’t expect him to know everything. You see, I was pregnant when he attacked me.”

“N–No,” Adam said, voice trembling.

Amber groaned, then she sobbed. It just kept getting worse and worse.

Miki continued, “I was pregnant with his child. I know it was his because I didn’t sleep with anyone else. I lost the baby because he hit me in the stomach. He hit me so hard. After he left, I tried to move on. I spent weeks in the hospital and months at home, hoping to recover. And I got better. The doctor said I could still get pregnant in the future. My head, my body, stopped aching. But no one cared about me. People were afraid of my scars. And when they weren’t scared, they were disgusted. No one wanted to date me or even talk to me. I was alone— completely alone .”

Miki watched as the Miller family wallowed in their sorrow, listening to the music of misery—sniffles, whimpers, whines. It reminded her of her own suffering, but it didn’t spark any sympathy in her. Along with her innocence, her humanity was stolen on the night of the assault.

She said, “I’ve felt like I’ve been dead since your husband attacked me. Do you know the word onryō? It’s Japanese. It means ‘vengeful spirit.’ I think that’s what I’ve become. But you want to know something interesting? I don’t think the punches or the cuts hurt me as much as Adam’s lies. You feel it, too, don’t you? It stings, right? He said I was the most beautiful girl in the world, but he didn’t love me. He couldn’t love me. And I guess it was because of you.”

She grabbed Amber in a rear-naked chokehold, pulled her back until the nape of her neck hit the chair’s backrest, then she closed the shears over her nose. Amber squeezed her eyes shut, ground her teeth, and snorted as blood bubbled out of her sliced nostrils. Her nasal septum crunched and crackled . It took three snips to shear off Amber’s nose. It fell between her legs. A triangle of blood stained her face—starting at the bridge of her nose, flowing down diagonally to the sides of her mouth, then covering her jaw.

Amber’s head bobbed. She could hardly breathe through her nose, leaving her dizzy and lethargic. The duct tape over her mouth looked black because of all the blood.

“No!” Adam cried. “Oh my God, no! I’m doing what you told me to do! I told her the truth! Why are you doing this? Why?!”

Miki placed the nose on Riley’s tray, then she moseyed over to Adam. She said, “I didn’t want to hurt your family.”

“Fuck you!”

“But I’ve had a… change of heart now that I’ve heard everything again. You do deserve this, Adam. Your entire family deserves this.”

“Don’t you fucking touch my—”

Miki pressed the duct tape over his lips. Adam kept screaming. He pulled the tape into his mouth and nibbled on it, but he couldn’t tear through it.

Miki took a stainless-steel lighter out of her coat pocket. She ignited it with a flick of the spark wheel and then held the flame up to Amber’s face. Amber didn’t realize it until she saw the flash of the flame through the blood in her eyes. She was already hot— fevered — all over because of the immense pain. Then she heard her blood sizzle.

She moaned as she turned her head. The flame burned her cheek. Her skin began to peel, so she tilted her head back. The fire torched her jaw. She turned her head again and stretched her neck out as far as possible. The flame bounced off her bulging jugular.

Miki grabbed her hair to stop her from moving. She held the flame up to her left eye. Her eyelids twitched, reddened, then peeled. Some of her eyelashes burned like fuses on fireworks and others detached and spiraled down to her lap. The left side of her vision faded as the vitreous inside her bloodshot eyeball began to boil. It looked like her eye was melting, her pupil drooping into her brown iris. A fresh ring of blood outlined her eye.

Miki stepped aside without releasing her snug grip on Amber’s hair. Adam sat aghast. If it weren’t for the tape over his mouth, his jaw would have dropped like an anvil. His wife was unrecognizable. One of her ears was missing, her nose was cut off, and her eyebrows were removed. Her face was drenched in blood. From across the table, her left eye appeared gooey, her iris now blending with the damaged sclera around it. It looked like it was oozing out of its socket.

Adam apologized repeatedly, although his voice was unintelligible. In the throes of agony, Amber couldn’t hear him anyway.

Miki gave Amber’s head a shake and asked, “Who’s more beautiful now?”

Amber clung to consciousness, her head bouncing like a drug addict’s on the verge of nodding off. Adam was out of breath due to his excessive sobbing. He stopped apologizing and started begging for murder— his murder. Fingers smeared with blood, Riley had pushed one of her mother’s fingers and eyebrows off her tray. Her face ached from her persistent grimacing.

Standing next to Riley’s highchair, Miki said, “Your daughter is beautiful. Her name is Riley, right? Ry Ry? I read about her on Amber’s Facebook page.”

A million questions swirled around in Adam’s head: Is she going to kill us? Would she hurt an innocent baby? How long has she been watching us? How do I save my family?

Miki smirked and said, “You look surprised. You were smart, Adam. You stopped sharing everything about your life on social media. I mean, you still shared with your friends and family, but you stopped posting things publicly, right? Amber… Amber was stupid, but she didn’t know any better because you didn’t teach her from your experience… until now. I think the phrase is ‘too little, too late.’ Yeah, it sounds right in this situation.”

Adam said something, but Miki didn’t understand him. She didn’t care, either. She was tired of Adam’s voice.

As she stroked Riley’s hair, the intruder said, “I had this thought when I first saw Riley and I could never shake it off. I thought: This girl can’t be Amber’s. Does that make sense? I mean, look at her. She looks nothing like Amber, does she? Her hair is dark brown, almost black. Her eye color is lighter than Amber’s and her eyes slimmer. Narrow, you know? She looks more like… me . I even feel a strong connection to her. I know she’s not my daughter, but she feels like my daughter. Can you understand that?”

Miki sat down in the chair to Amber’s right. She peeled the bloody tape off her face. Soaked in blood, it came off easily. Amber could have blown it off her face—if she could have only drawn a deep breath through her mutilated nostrils. Miki expected her to scream. Instead, Amber just breathed, drawing one long, raspy breath after another. Her body was desperate for oxygen, fighting for survival, but in her heart, she had already admitted defeat. She was only concerned with saving Riley.

In a hoarse voice, so gravelly it sounded painful, she said, “Don’t… hurt… her.”

“I don’t want to hurt Riley,” Miki responded. “No, I’m actually thinking about saving her. I want to take her with me.”

Amber frowned, sending jolts of pain across her face. It made her nauseous. She felt hot vomit stewing in her stomach, ready to be served at the dinner table. Sadness became physically painful.

She said, “Da–Don’t… Pa–Pa–Please…”

“Why?”

“I–I… la… love… her.”.