Not sure if this really qualifies as science fiction-you tell me. Thanks for editing, Regis!
Jane stood in her bathroom, applying her makeup with careful precision as the sound of traffic outside her window played a soundtrack to her morning routine. She arose each weekday morning at precisely 7:45 a.m. and popped two pieces of bread into the toaster, turned on the coffee, and dressed. After she dressed herself, she entered the bathroom where she styled her hair into a tight bun at the nape at her neck, the same exact way it had been styled for the past two years, ever since she became a partner at Lyman & Clarke. She then took exactly fifteen minutes to apply a light shade of mauve lipstick to her lips, sweep light taupe color across her eyelids, and finish off with a swoosh of light pink color across her cheekbones. Once she was done powdering her canvas, she liked to take a moment to study herself. Her eyes were bright and inviting, her well-paid for nose was straight and sleek, and the collagen that was pumped into her lips on her twentieth birthday did its job, giving her a perfect pout.
That morning was like every other, well planned to every minute detail. Jane gave herself a little wink in the mirror before turning to make her way to the kitchen, where she would have her coffee and toast while reading the morning paper. Like clockwork, she would finish at 8:43 a.m. and grab her coat and briefcase before heading off to the office. If that were a normal day, that’s what would have happened but, on this particular morning there was a little boy sitting at her kitchen table.
Jane stood frozen in the doorway to her kitchen, trying to figure out how this child got into her apartment. He was a cute little boy despite his bulbous nose and that horrible look of loneliness that adorned his small face. Jane noticed that he didn’t seem the least bit scared, as he looked her directly in the eye. It was as if he had intended to seek her out that morning, as if he had known her for years.
“Where did you come from?” Jane asked as she slowly crossed over to the table, careful to stay a foot back. According to some of the stories she had been reading in the paper recently, you could never be too safe. The boy didn’t answer her in words, but instead, greeted her with an innocent smile; a smile that one would use when asked a silly or obvious question. His carefree demeanor made Jane uneasy. Why was he just sitting there as if he had been invited in?
“Are you lost?” Jane again tried to get something out of the boy.
“I’m right where I belong” The boy answered before letting out an eerie chuckle. There was something odd about him. He looked every bit like a normal child but there was something in his eyes... something old and cold. “You brought me here.”
“What do you mean I brought you here,” Jane asked, startled. The boy was beginning to give her a good scare. “I don’t even know you.”
“Parts of me, you know.” The boy hung his head low and Jane thought she could see a tear beginning to form in his eye. “You threw the rest of me away like trash.”
Jane watched as the boy lifted his head again and looked at her with the eyes of an old homeless dog, abandoned by its owner and ignored by the world. She peered closer into his face, trying to remember who this child was. There was something familiar in those old eyes; the blueness was very unique. For a moment, she thought she saw Daniel looking back at her. She had loved Daniel many years ago. They would have been together still if not for that unfortunate incident... then it clicked. “Oh God,” Jane gasped. “You know Danny, don’t you?” She looked over the boy once more. Could he be Daniel’s son? Those eyes were one of a kind.
“You never let me meet my father,” the boy said as tears began to fall from his eyes, clouding their clear blueness. Jane stood there in shock and confusion. The boy was playing games with her head and she was starting to find it irritating.
“Look, kid, I don’t know who the hell you are but this little joke isn’t funny,” she scolded him. “Who are you?”
“No name was given to me before I was tossed aside,” he answered in an eerily distorted voice. “I am the part of you that you threw away.”
Jane clutched the neck of her blouse nervously. That awful dreadful voice was almost mechanical. How could a human being speak in such a voice? It sounded like a mixture of children crying and women screaming. This isn’t real, Jane thought, this can’t possibly be real.
“What are you and what do you want with me?” Jane could feel the tears of terror started to dribble down her cheeks and fought off the urge to grab a tissue to protect her makeup.
“Look at me closer,” the boy instructed her in that awful voice. “What do you see?”
Jane looked carefully at the boy. He had Daniel’s eyes for sure, blonde hair like she had as a child, small frame, about eight years old, and that big round nose, so like the one she had.... as a child, that awful nose that had been passed down generation after generation through her family.
“Oh God,” Jane whimpered as she remembered that cold morning, lying on the metal table in that dark and dirty makeshift operation room. “Oh God no, you’re not supposed to be here.”
“Because you threw me away, right?” The boy smirked as he watched Jane huddle on the floor. “Oh how the mighty fall,” he said in that monstrous mechanical voice. “Everything you have destroyed on your quest for perfection is in me. You created me and I am not going to hide away in the shadows like a dirty secret.”
“You’re dead!” Jane screamed at the boy, if it was in fact, a boy. “You weren’t even born! How can you be standing there? I’m going crazy. That’s the only reasonable explanation.”
“Not really,” the boy said. His voice was back to that of a child. “I’m a visual representation of your past. You can run all you want but you can never hide from the past.”
“What do you want?” Jane asked through sobs. Her makeup was surely a mess. She would have to redo it.
The boy laughed and once again, the evil mechanical voice returned. “I bet you’re sitting there worrying about your makeup running down your face, aren’t you? That’s why I’m here. You try so hard to be perfect that you destroy everything pure and good in your life. Remember my father?”
Jane did remember Danny. He was her first love, her only love. But they weren’t careful and she had gotten pregnant. Danny wanted to have the baby and start a family but Jane wanted to build her career first. A baby would be an obstacle. Jane got rid of obstacles. When she wasn’t pretty enough, she had surgery. When she wasn’t the smartest, she cheated, and when promotions didn’t come fast enough, she slept her way to the top. Jane had always gotten what she wanted no matter what the cost. It seemed only logical to her that when she found a child growing inside her, a major setback on her career path, that she would simply have it removed like an unwanted mole. Danny didn’t feel the same way and left her. He had packed his bags and left before the procedure was even finished. She never loved again.
“Of course I remember him,” Jane answered the boy as she rose from the floor and took a seat at the table. “Are you here because of Danny? I don’t understand.”
“You have gotten through life by ignoring the repercussions of your actions, or the effects that those actions have on others,” the boy explained in the voice of an old man. “Instead of dealing with your own insecurities and obstacles, you patch them or just get rid of them, opting for a quick fix instead of a real solution. The actions you have taken in your life have had negative consequences for those involved and you know it. The teacher you seduced and blackmailed for a better grade lost his job; the boss you slept with for a pay raise lost his wife of twenty years, and the son you aborted lost his chance to live. You also caused a man to lose his son. I ask you now, was it all worth it?”
Jane stifled her sobs and thought for a moment. She had a luxurious apartment adorned with fine art, was at the top of her field at work, and had dozens of peons beneath her that jumped at her command. The only thing missing was love.
“I have everything I need,” she said, suddenly angered that this boy was sitting in her apartment preaching to her about all the wrongs she had done when there were far worse people out there. “I have everything that matters. I have beauty, brains, and success. Love isn’t realistic.”
“Do you have respect?” The boy asked the question with a smirk on his face, a smirk that Jane wanted to slap off.
“Of course I have respect,” she answered. “I’m at the top of my profession. I have several people who run behind me all day long, just trying to get on my good side.”
“That’s not because they respect you,” the boy laughed. “They fear you, as if you were some big ugly ogre that could crush them at any second. They have no respect for you as a person, no compassion, no love. You are nobody to them, just a stepping stone that they would gladly walk over once the opportunity presented itself.”
“Get out of my apartment now!” Jane pointed to the door as she rose to her feet. Her cheeks were flushed and her chest heaved up and down as she clenched her fists together. “You’re not real. You’re just my conscience haunting me. I can get rid of you. I’ve kept you silent for years, I can continue. I just need a little rest and you’ll be gone.”
The boy laughed a hideous monstrous laugh as he rose from the table and turned toward the door. “I’ll leave you alone for now,” he said, “but you’ll never be rid of me.” And with that said, he walked through the wall, out of Jane’s view, like a ghost.
Jane was late to work that morning for the first time in her life. Her hair was disheveled and she seemed to have aged a bit overnight. Her superior thought it a good idea when she requested a two-week hiatus; she looked as if she definitely needed the rest.
The boy didn’t return at all that week and she thought she had been correct, that rest was all she needed to rid him from her life forever, but on the morning that she was to return to work, there he sat at the foot of her bed upon her awakening. She let out a scream that seemed to tickle the boy into a fit of eerie laughter.
She was late to work again, and continued to be late over the next few weeks. It got to the point where she didn’t bother with her makeup at all, and she forgot to cover up her dark roots, letting them seep out over the top of her head, dispelling the myth that she was a natural blonde. She changed addresses three times, gave away her fine art, did charity work at a soup kitchen, and even contacted Daniel to apologize for aborting their child, but every morning the boy was there. He aged as the years progressed but he never went away. He was always there, watching as she fell from the pedestal she had worked so hard to erect.
Jane found herself looking in the mirror one morning, screaming at her reflection, wondering where all her beauty and youth had gone, grimacing as her nemesis, now a teenager, bellowed with evil laughter behind her.
Most captivating, Rain; and the lesson taught is obvious. I suppose it could be considered science fiction but it feels deeper than that. Nice work. Love to you. Regis
