Danny looks in the mirror, notices the tomato soup stain to the right of his nose. He unspools a handful of toilet paper, folds it over into neat layers, and then soaks part of the stack in warm water. The stain becomes fainter with each dab but refuses to come out. Danny regrets not taking in smaller spoonfuls. Danny crushes the wet, tomato soup flecked toilet paper, throws the wad at the mirror. It bounces off, lands where a bar of soap should be. Danny wants to remove his head but his arms refuse. It’s been 87 days since Danny last saw the reflection of his birth face, the longest he’s ever gone.
•
Danny spent the last two years mastering how to live in his new skin full time. After coming home from whatever temp job he was assigned to this week or month, Danny would shed his clothes as if he was escaping from them. He showered to wash the stink of his birth skin off before putting on his true skin. He inspected himself in the full length mirror hanging on the inside of his bedroom closet door to make sure none of his birth skin showed the way it normally does.
The first thing Danny learned was how to do things with limited peripheral vision. The bruises on his birth skin became less as he mastered navigating around his apartment in his true skin. He ate microwave meals for a month before becoming tired of the hint of freezer burn aftertaste in the so-called chicken, the moist, rubbery texture of boneless ribs, the molten brown gravy smothering the lost continent of Salisbury steak. The things Danny loved cooking he was afraid he couldn’t do in his true skin. He was afraid how ground chuck would stay matted on his fingers, regardless of Woolite, or bullets of grease hitting his arms or chest. He wanted to keep his true skin perfect. Danny bought foods that were pre-formed or pre-marinated. He cooked things in pans using a more reasonable heat, with cooking spray instead of olive oil or butter. He couldn’t get around using oven mitts when he baked or broiled. He mastered removing his true hands and placing the oven mitts on his birth hands without looking. The microwave helped with heating whatever canned vegetable he wanted to have with his dinner. When he didn’t need to take his true skin to a dry cleaner to make it perfect anymore, Danny knew he was ready to take the next step.
•
Danny finally found a temp job that let him work from home. He willed himself to stay in his birth skin as the technician installed the Thin Client and phone in the spot Danny designated as his workspace. Danny kept down his glee when the technician didn’t install a webcam. Danny asked the technician if he was coming back with a webcam. The technician shook his head.
Danny couldn’t wear the headset on his birth skull. He didn’t ask the temp agency if they could get him a larger headset. Before he started taking calls, he put the headset on his birth skull, fixed the earpiece and mouthpiece in their appropriate places before putting on his true skull. He kept his voice to a reasonable volume so it wouldn’t echo or sound muffled. When a caller noticed an echo, Danny apologized with the appropriate amount of empathy. He waited until after the call to remove his true skull and adjust the mouthpiece. Danny’s assigned supervisor was happy with his performance, the amount of calls he took on a daily basis, his overall productivity.
•
Danny made it 32 days in his true skin before he heard a knock on his door. He looked through the peephole and saw a man in a black polo shirt and khaki pants. The man had a clipboard in hand.
“Who is it,” Danny asked.
“Your supervisor. I’m here to do a compliance inspection.”
Danny forgot he was subject to random compliance inspections to make sure his work space continued to meet all requirements of the client: no children in the house during working hours, no media devices near the workstation, no windows in a place where someone can look in and see what Danny is working on, whether the work space had a door that could lock, no food near the workstation. The occasional invasion of privacy was the price Danny had to pay for working from home.
“Just a minute,” Danny said. Danny rushed into his bedroom, escaped his true skin, threw it in the closet. He put on his last clean white tank top shirt and a pair of pajama pants. He shut the bedroom closet and bedroom door. Danny noticed his supervisor trying to not gag at Danny’s birth smell. Danny noticed his supervisor still ticked off all the right boxes on the inspection form. Danny vowed to himself to wash away his birth smell during his assigned lunch. He caught a glimpse of his birth skin after he got out of the shower. Danny hated how beads of water rolled down his skin. Danny wished he could just shake himself dry.
Danny’s birth face soured at the birth smell lingering inside his true skin. He looked at the wall calendar above his workstation, every day but today crossed out with crooked X’s. Danny rotated which dry cleaner he would use; he kicked himself for doing that. If he used the same dry cleaner regularly, he could have begged them to rush this, how he needed his true skin back faster than normal for a reason not related to needing his true skin. Danny knew the obvious cover stories: a variety of parties that involved or didn’t involve children where he was or was not paid to attend and amuse. Danny cringed when he pictured a cover story he couldn’t say to a dry cleaner but involved people who did things in their true skin with each other; there was a reason why their so-called true skin didn’t have genitalia, including his. Danny liked not worrying or caring about what he considered a vestigial organ. Danny revolted against his biology whenever he could, always on his terms.
•
Danny started treating his birth skin as an evolving defect when his first baby tooth fell from his mouth. His parents plucked the tooth from his hand, held it high in admiration. Danny’s mother said if he put it beneath his pillow, the Tooth Fairy might leave him some money. Danny stayed awake as long as he could, hoping he could negotiate with the Tooth Fairy to put the tooth back in his mouth instead. Danny tried this with every tooth he lost. The quarters piled up. Here and there, his new teeth grew in crooked. Danny’s mouth looked like an entrance to a dungeon, especially with the braces. Danny’s teeth became straight. His parents had to buy him new clothes as he grew taller. Danny wanted a new face when his cheeks and forehead erupted. Danny hated his voice, even after he tamed its consistency. He shaved his armpits, his pubic hair, hoping it wouldn’t grow back. His parents got tired of finding his hair in the sink, the rim of the toilet, the shower drain. They finally convinced Danny the hair would always grow back. Danny stayed invisible in school and in life by maintaining an acceptable level of mediocrity. He quietly admired those who lived in a perfect skin, the consistency of fur or feather. Unlike them, he wasn’t interested in conversation, entertainment, or even edutainment. Danny wanted a body better than the one that was designed for him. He knew no workout regimen, diet, or needle would give him what he needed.
•
Danny thought Kissimmee made the most sense to move to so he could finally live as his true self, near US-192, a perpetually clogging vein of red faced families coming or leaving whichever theme park would put them in debt for the next six to nine months. He’s always been used to the honking, the occasional object thrown at him when he goes out for walks, but never the perpetual summer. Danny mastered opening his neck wide enough to drop the occasional pack of wet wipes so he can use his birth arms to wipe down his birth skin to quell his birth smell.
Danny hates when parents try bringing their children over to talk to him. He knows the questions they want to ask: Is he on vacation? How long does it take to paint all of those eggs? What is he bringing them this year? He’s learned to pretend to not hear them, use the gleeful expression in his painted eyes like a thousand-yard stare. Whenever he’s cornered, Danny puts his hand over his mouth as a hint that he can’t talk. Sometimes, he may also shrug his shoulders in a way that he hope says: I’m just not that kind of rabbit.
J. Bradley is the author of the graphic poetry collection, The Bones of Us (YesYes Books, 2014), with art by Adam Scott Mazer, the linked story collection The Adventures of Jesus Christ, Boy Detective (Pelekinesis, 2016) and Pick How You Will Revise A Memory (Robocup Press, 2016), a collection of prose poems disguised as Yelp reviews. His flash fiction chapbook, Neil, won Five [Quarterly]’s 2015 e-chapbook contest for fiction. He runs the Central Florida reading series/micro chapbook publisher There Will Be Words and lives at jbradleywrites.com.