Short Story- PRETTY LITTLE GIRL

The little girl in the mirror was almost pretty enough, except for her shoulder. Her eyes were bright and piercing, her hair was done up in the way it was supposed to be (Mother insisted that she practice putting it up twice a day), and her skin was flawless. Well, almost flawless, if it weren’t for the scaly thing on her shoulder. She’d first noticed it yesterday after lunch—a little grey thing that jumped out at her when she removed her dress. At first she thought it was a smudge of makeup, or just lint from her freshly cleaned clothes. But it didn’t come off when she rubbed it. It moved with her skin, like sea foam. It was rough and cold to the touch.

Now looking at her reflection in the mirror, examining it carefully, she saw it was bigger than yesterday. It had grown to the size of a quarter. She bent over the sink and leaned her shoulder in closer to the mirror. It pushed out of her skin just to the right of her collarbone, where the muscles of the chest and shoulder met. It looked to her kind of like a scab, only a little greyer and perfectly round. And, unlike a scab, its edges weren’t the soothing pink of scar tissue. The skin was an angry, puffy red, curling around the edges of the thing as if in protest to its presence.

It made her feel sick looking at it. She got off the sink and slipped her dress back on, making sure the elegant yoke of it was covering her shoulder. It had to be. Mother would not be happy if she were to find out that she had any blemishes.

#

When she got downstairs she found Mother sitting at the kitchen counter. She was watching the small white TV that stood at the end of the granite countertop, a lit cigarette dangling from her lips.

“Good morning, Susan,” Mother said without looking up from the story on the screen. She nodded towards a plate on the counter. The plate had nothing but half a hardboiled egg.

Susan walked up to the counter and got onto a stool, being careful to fold her dress under her legs so it wouldn’t crease. She regarded the plate skeptically. “Breakfast?” she said.

“That’s all you need,” Mother said, her eyes still on the silent TV. “Can’t let you be getting fat so close to the big day.” She looked up, and her eyes filled with that biting disgust that Susan had gotten so used to seeing first thing in the morning. It was normal, but it still filled Susan with such shame.

“Christ, what did you do to your hair?”

Susan’s hands immediately flew to her head and she felt the lock that had fallen free. “I—It must have been when I put on—“

“When you put on your dress?” Mother sighed. “You always put on your dress before doing your hair. Never… Christ, look at this mess.” She stood up and walked around the counter. She began to run her spidery fingers over Susan’s scalp. “Look at this. Imagine if this had happened Thursday. What then? Imagine if I’d left you backstage, and then you went to take a piss or something before the show. Look what you’d have done.”

Susan sat very still and let Mother do her work. The cigarette smoke stung her eyes and made her nostrils flare, but she dared not move.

Mother dropped her hands away and put them on her knees. “There we go. All better.” She looked over Susan’s face. “Now who’s a pretty little girl?”

“I am, Mother,” Susan said.

“That’s right,” Mother said. She patted Susan’s knee and then stood up, taking the cigarette out of her mouth to blow a cloud into the kitchen ceiling. “I saw Barbara Shilling this morning.”

Susan said nothing and waited Mother to finish.

“She had Kendra with her.” Mother sat back on the stool and looked across at Susan. “Dressed like a little slut. I’m talking wire thin shoulder straps and four-inch heels. Four-inch heels! Can you believe that? Four-inch heels on a ten year old. Jesus. And this was just what Barbara had her wearing for walking around town. I can only imagine what sort of slutwear she has in store for Thursday.”

Susan picked up her fork and touched the egg half on her plate. As she moved her arm, she felt the unmistakable lump of the thing on her shoulder. She’d forgotten about it for a moment, and a spike of fear shot into her heart as she remembered it. Should she tell Mother?

“Really, I don’t know what the fuck Barbara’s thinking,” Mother said. “None of them know what this is all about. They think you can just win the judges with sex appeal, like their daughters are goddamn streetwalkers. But no, it’s about elegance. It’s about beauty. Refinement. Not sex.” She leaned over the counter and touched Susan’s chin. “But you understand, Susan. You’ll win. And why is that?”

She met Mother’s eyes. They were dark and fierce; caring in a way that seemed real but Susan always felt was probably not. But most of all they were old.

“Because I’m a pretty little girl,” Susan said.

Mother smiled thinly. “That’s right.” She went back to following the silent lips of the people on the television.

Susan stabbed the egg with her fork and lifted it up. The skin of the egg was off-white, almost a light grey. It reminded her of that thing which sat imbedded into the valley between the muscles of her neck and the muscles of her shoulder.

She set the egg back down.

“Eat it,” Mother said. “I can’t have you getting too thin, either.”

Susan nodded, but could not bring herself to touch her tongue to the egg. She picked it up again and held it in front of her, deciding that that was a fair compromise. The more she looked at the egg, the more she thought of the thing on her shoulder. And the more frightened she became. It was hard like wood, and she could feel a slight numbness around where it sat in her skin. She desperately wanted to bring Mother’s attention to it. But she knew that would not be wise.

Pretty little girls are blemish-free.

#

Susan felt a wet thud on her upper back. It wasn’t enough to make her stumble, but definitely enough to make her notice. She pivoted on the sidewalk, holding her books close to her chest. A clump of dirt and grass lay on the concrete behind her. She gasped sharply and nearly dropped her books as she reached a hand to swipe off the dirt on her back.

She looked up when she heard a boy’s laughter. Another dirt clod flew by her, disintegrating as it tumbled across the concrete. The boy had come from behind a tree in the nearest yard. He skipped towards her now, smiling broadly and patting his hands together to get the dirt off them.

Susan scrunched her face up angrily. “Bobby Marlow!”

The boy stopped as he reached her, bouncing up and down. He was a few inches taller than her. “Morning, Suze,” he said.

“Don’t ‘morning’ me,” Susan said, summoning her best Mother’s voice. “What’s wrong with you? The pageant’s in two days. What if you’d gotten your dirty dirt in my hair?”

“Oh no!” Bobby threw up his hands and then began giggling. “What ever would you do then? Not your hair!”

“It takes hours to do my hair right,” Susan said. Her blood was boiling. She felt like crying. She didn’t know why. Bobby was just being Bobby, after all. “This is why Mother says not to play with you.”

“Your mother says that because she’s a mean old witch.” Bobby reached out a hand to her. She flinched, but didn’t stop him. He patted the dirt off her back and then smiled again. “What’s with the sweater, Suze? It’s like a million degrees out.”

The sweater must have looked very odd, Susan realized. And she was sweating underneath it. But when she’d woken that morning and looked in the mirror, the thing on her shoulder had grown to the size of a golf ball. Also like a golf ball, it was now pocked with dozens of small indentations—little shallow holes with jagged edges that were bisected by squiggly lines, like barnacles. The entirety of the thing was rougher and more developed. When she chanced to touch it, it didn’t move on her skin like it had yesterday. It stayed firm on that point between her shoulder and neck. Anchored. Most terrible of all, it protruded enough out of her skin for it to show under all of her dresses and blouses. Everyone would see it if she didn’t hide it. The sweater was her only option.

“I’m cold,” she said.

“You’re a liar,” Bobby blurted out. “Is this a thing that your mom’s doing? Is she making you wear this?”

In truth, Mother had objected heavily to the sweater. She didn’t want any of the other girls at school thinking that her Pretty Little Girl had anything to hide. So Susan had worn it over her shoulders like a scarf, a gesture that Mother described as “classy.” She immediately donned it proper upon leaving the house.

“Mother doesn’t like it,” she said.

Bobby’s expression changed a bit, but remained mirthful. “Well I think it looks pretty,” he said.

Susan blushed, and was surprised to find herself smiling a bit. She was glad that Bobby had caught up to her. She really did like him, even if he was what Mother called “a dirty little shit.”

“Will you carry my books for me?” she asked.

Bobby, still smiling, took them from her. They continued along the sidewalk. The lack of books was freeing to Susan, but the sun’s heat was plenty heavy. She really wished she had kept the sweater as a scarf. Too late to change it now, though, with Bobby right there.

“I went to show my brother that weird flower,” Bobby said.

Susan’s heart sunk. She stayed quiet.

“It wasn’t there anymore,” Bobby continued. “Really weird. The ground was all black where it was. Like it got burned up or something.”

“Maybe it flew away,” Susan said quietly. She expected Bobby to reject this notion as ridiculous, but he only nodded.

“Maybe,” he said. “Does it still hurt? Where you touched it?”

She felt the firm presence of the thing on her shoulder.

“I didn’t touch it,” she said.

“I saw you touch it.”

“No,” she said. “I fell on it. Remember? I fell and it touched me. Why would I touch a gross thing like that?”

Bobby shrugged. “I don’t know. All I know is I came over that hill after I heard you screaming and you were pointing at that weird flower like it bit you.”

“Well I’m fine,” she said. “Nothing’s wrong with me.”

“I didn’t say anything’s wrong with you, Suze.”

“I said I’m fine!” She could hear Mother’s voice in her head, shrill and angry. Just look at your skin! What did you do? Just look at it! You touched what? You were out playing with WHO?

Bobby held up a hand. “Okay! You’re okay. Cheese and rice.”

“And it wasn’t a flower. Flowers don’t move.”

“It didn’t move, Suze. You got scared, is all. It was just a weird flower and it stung you. No need to freak out.”

Susan heard the doubt and slight pity in Bobby’s voice, and she realized that that was what she had wanted from him. It was compassion, in a sense. More so than what she received from Mother. And it comforted her. After all, if Bobby Marlow said it was okay, then shit was okay.

#

“Susan!” Mother called. “Susan, what is taking you so damn long?”

“I’m almost ready,” Susan said. For a moment Mother’s fists stopped banging on the bedroom door, but seconds later they started up again.

“Susan, I swear to God, if you step out here and your blush isn’t properly—“

“I said I’m almost ready, Mother.”

Silence for a moment.

“Two minutes,” Mother said. “Two minutes and then I’m breaking the fucking door down.”

Susan listened for the sound of Mother’s receding footsteps, but she knew that she would be waiting right outside the door until the moment that Susan stepped through. Two years ago Mother would have never allowed her to prepare herself before a show. But she was ten years old now, and Susan supposed that granted her some level of agency. Perhaps Mother was realizing that she was old enough to take on responsibilities of her own now. More than likely, Susan knew, it was so she could tell all the other mothers that her Pretty Little Girl had prepared herself all on her own, like a refined lady. Even if she had been shouting instructions through the door.

In the back of her mind Susan thought about these things. At the forefront was the thing on her shoulder. Although to say it was on her shoulder was no longer completely true.

The thing had become her shoulder.

It had grown exponentially over the last night. The crusty grey mass stretched from her collarbone to her armpit, and then almost completely over her shoulder and onto her back. Red skin had peeled back and died, folding over itself at the edges of the thing like thin bark burning off wood. It was cemented deep into her body, she could feel it. Its knobby, barnacle-covered surface stuck out over an inch from her flesh.

Susan could not avoid looking at it in the mirror. Every time she would turn to apply her makeup or replace a loose strand of hair, her eyes would drift to the scabby thing. She didn’t want to; laying eyes on it made her stomach twist in disgust and fear. But a strange, morbid curiosity kept returning her eyes to it. She stared at it with an almost objective gaze, as if the thing wasn’t actually on her, but only on the girl in the mirror. It didn’t hurt, after all. It was still numb. The thing in the mirror certainly looked painful, but she felt nothing.

And if it didn’t hurt, it was probably fine. Just like Bobby had said. What did mother always tell her? Grin and bear it?

The dress that Mother had chosen for her to wear tonight covered only half the thing. So she had made a wardrobe change without Mother’s consent: A billowing, white ball gown with huge poofy shoulders. Ariel’s Wedding Gown, she called it. She put it on (a tricky task what with the rock-like thing on her shoulder) and looked at herself in the mirror. The thing was completely invisible.

When she stepped out into the hallway, Mother’s first reaction was a look of horror. For a moment Susan thought that her dress had slipped and Mother had at last discovered the thing, but then she noticed the way that Mother’s eyes went up and down her body, scanning the dress itself.

“What in the hell are you wearing?” Mother said. “We don’t have time for this! Where’s the other dress?”

The rising irritation in Mother’s voice was unhindered, and it almost boiled over into ineffable fury. She took a step closer, her brightly colored fingernails ready to tear Ariel’s gown apart and reveal the hideous barnacle-thing that lurked beneath.

“I thought it made me look more elegant,” Susan said.

Mother stopped. Her expression changed, and she looked Susan over. Clearly this notion intrigued her, but Susan could see that she was not completely sold.

“Not like those other sluts,” she said.

At this Mother smiled, and then immediately frowned. “You watch your mouth, young lady.” She gently touched the poof over Susan’s right shoulder, and for a moment that icy fear of discovery gripped Susan again.

“Elegant,” Mother said. “I believe you’re right, Susan. This will definitely set you apart. I just wish you’d discussed this with me first.” She flourished a hand. “But you’re becoming your own woman, making your own very fine decisions.”

Susan forced a smile, knowing that Mother was working on her speech for the other parents. See that ELEGANT look my Susan is sporting? Yeah, she chose that her self. My Pretty Little Girl is also my Pretty Fashionably-Minded Girl.

#

Mother licked two fingers and ran them over Susan’s scalp, no doubt taming some rogue lock. Susan stood still and waited for Mother to lick twice more before stopping and placing her hands on her knees.

Mother looked over her work and smiled. “Very pretty,” she said. “Very beautiful. Did you see Cindy Straub?”

Susan knew it didn’t matter whether she had or not.

“Rampage boots,” Mother said, scoffing exasperatedly. “Rampage boots. Can you fucking believe that? Why would they even design rampage boots for ten year olds?”

Susan remained perfectly still as Mother plucked at the poofy shoulders of the dress.

“This was the perfect choice, Susan. You’ll show them. Now, what are we going to do when we walk up to the judge?”

“Curtsy.”

“Curtsy,” Mother confirmed. “And then when he asks if you’d rather be pretty or smart?”

“Neither,” Susan said. And then in tandem they said, “I want to be exactly the way I am, because I am beautiful and clever and powerful, and I can do anything that I set my mind to. I don’t need to limit myself to ‘eithers’ and ‘ors’. If I strive to be all, then I will be all, because I am beauty manifest.”

Susan didn’t know what most of that meant, but she said it every year and every year she lost. They never changed their strategy, even though the other girls said something different every year. That was just the way these things go. Mother smiled and touched Susan’s chin gently, so as not to muss up her makeup.

“Good girl,” Mother said.

“Mrs. Franklin?” a man’s voice said from the other side of the dressing room door.

“Come on in,” Mother said.

The door creaked open and a tall bespectacled man poked in his head. “The pageant’s about to start. I have to ask you to get on out to the auditorium.”

Mother looked to Susan. “Who’s my Pretty Little Girl?”

“I am,” Susan said.

“Yes you are. You always will be.” Mother nodded and then stood up. She stepped by the man with a smile and then disappeared.

The tall man visibly relaxed after Mother left. He stepped completely into the dressing room. “Are you almost ready, Susan? We’re starting soon.”

“I am, Mr. Baker.” Susan smiled wide, showing a mouth full of almost perfectly white teeth. “I just need another second.”

“Of course. Just don’t take too long, now. We need all the girls up on stage for the start of the show.”

“I know.”

Mr. Baker nodded, and lingered in the room for another moment. When Susan smiled again he left.

Alone in the dressing room, Susan gently pulled down the poofy sleeve over her right shoulder. The thing reared its ugly head into the vanity mirror. It had begun to itch on the ride over, and during the talk with her mother it had started to sting. It wasn’t quite painful, but it was alarming all the same. She bent over the bottles and brushes and tweezers to get closer to the mirror, to inspect the bulging grey mass one more time before the show.

It was as it was that morning: Pocked like pumice and crudely imbedded in her flesh like a Halloween prosthetic.

One of the barnacles blinked.

She gasped and fell back from the vanity mirror, sending the stool skittering across the room. She turned fully to the thing, engaging it not through the mirror but directly with her eyes. Up close she could see the organic, sandy lines of its surface. Her heart raced, and she stared at the nearest barnacle-like structure.

The jagged line in its hole opened for a split second, and something wet gleamed within. Then it closed.

She would have screamed if there hadn’t been a knock on the door right at that moment.

“Susan?” Mr. Baker’s voice came. “Miss Franklin?”

Susan heard him, but she could not find the courage to respond. She looked back at the thing. It was burning now, like a hot knife. She stared for what felt like an eternity, waiting for the barnacle to open again.

“Are you alright?”

The thing didn’t move. The stinging stopped.

“Susan?” Mr. Baker opened the door, shielding his eyes with a clipboard out of decency.

Susan yanked the poofy sleeve back over her shoulder. “I’m okay.”

Mr. Baker peaked from behind the clipboard, and lowered it completely when he saw Susan was fully dressed. He frowned. “Let’s go, Miss Franklin. All the other girls are already on stage.”

“Sorry,” Susan said, standing up hurriedly. Grin and bear it, she thought. Be a Pretty Little Girl.

#

Cindy Straub flipped her overly wound curls over her shoulders and cocked her hip too far to one side, lifting one of her rampage boots so that only the toe remained on the stage.

Susan squinted at the bright sequins that glittered off Cindy Straub’s dress. Tacky, she heard Mother say in her head. She looked out into the crowd to see if Mother agreed, but the all-seeing beam of the stage lights blinded her to the audience. She could imagine, however, the look of judgmental disgust on Mother’s face when Cindy Straub placed a gloved hand on that sequined teal hip.

“Now, Miss Straub,” Mr. Baker said, “which would you rather be: Pretty or smart?”

“Well,” Cindy Straub said, pitching her voice an octave deeper, “if I had to choose between being smart or pretty, I would rather be pretty. Being pretty is more than what our body says. ‘Pretty,’ for me, means cleanliness in body and spirit, pureness in heart and soul, and goodness in actions and deeds, and by helping out those who need it. By that definition of pretty, I think that being pretty is much more important than being smart.”

She finished with a flourish of her hand, and the dress sparkled. Everyone in the audience clapped wildly behind the curtain of light at the end of the stage. Everyone, Susan knew, except for one person.

“Thank you very much, Miss Straub,” Mr. Baker said. Cindy Straub blew him a kiss and then walked back to her place in the line. The other girls smiled at her and giggled, whispering about how pretty she was and how big of a crush Mr. Baker has on her. Susan watched them. All were dressed similarly to Cindy Straub, with shiny flashy dresses and extravagant accessories. These were the kinds of girls who wouldn’t talk with her at school. The kinds of girls who told the boys to stay away from her because she dressed weird and spoke weird and her Mother was weird and she was just weird all over.

On any other day, at any other pageant, Susan would have felt a sinking jealousy in her heart as the other girls congratulated Cindy on her miraculous performance. But right now all she felt was the burning in her shoulder. It had stopped for a few moments while she got on stage, but here, under the hot stare of the lights, it began its stinging again.

“Up next we have the lovely Miss Franklin,” Mr. Baker said. People applauded softly, inviting Susan to Mr. Baker’s side.

Susan had heard, but her feet wouldn’t move. The stinging had suddenly grown unbearably intense, and she closed her eyes and bit her lip. Her blood pounded in her ears.

“Miss Franklin?”

A hand from behind shoved her forward, accompanied by a barely audible ‘weirdo’. She stumbled out, very nearly tripping, but she caught herself and stood up straight by Mr. Baker’s side. The clapping started up again. A strand of hair hung before her eyes, and she could almost see Mother’s fingers twitching in eagerness to brush it out of her face.

The thing was throbbing now. She began to breath heavily.

“The lovely young Miss Franklin,” Mr. Baker said. He looked down to his clipboard and flipped a page before making a quick mark with his pen. “That’s a, uh, very unique dress you have, there.”

“It’s…” Susan heard a ringing in her ears. Her skin felt greasy, clammy. The thing was pulsating faster. “It’s… Ariel’s Wedding Gown,” she said.

The girls behind her giggled. Someone in the audience made a patronizing awww. Mr. Baker nodded and made another note.

“So, Miss Franklin,” he said. “Would you rather be pretty or smart?”

Susan breathed in rapidly, held her breath for a moment, and then breathed out. She repeated this twice more before trying to speak. “I… I’d neither… I’m… I want to be…” The muscles on her face began to twitch. Her shoulder was very warm now.

“I’m sorry?” Mr. Baker said. “Miss Franklin, you need to articulate your—“ He looked up from his notes. “Miss Franklin, are you alright? Susan?”

“I’m… clever and… and I’m power…“ Tears were beginning to form in Susan’s eyes. “I’m powerful. I’m… I’m a… beautiful—“

Mr. Baker screamed and threw up his clipboard as a spray of red blood erupted from Susan’s shoulder. She felt an incredible rip in her skin, and then heard the split of the fabric of her dress. She fell completely silent as six silvery tentacles tore from her shoulder and reached across her body. The scabrous thing pulled free of her flesh and screeched out of three mouths filled with razor teeth. She fell to her knees as the silver tentacles wrapped themselves around her face and neck. She saw the eyes of the thing—all five of them—buried in the barnacle structures of its exoskeleton. They were hungry.

The tentacles entwined head entirely and the thing descended onto her face. It began to bite and rend and feed, but Susan felt none of it. Her body gave up, collapsing onto the blood-streaked stage while the thing feasted on her.

She heard screams everywhere around her. She heard Mother’s scream above it all, high-pitched and full of primal despair. But Susan knew it was not for her safety that Mother screamed. Even as she died on the pageantry stage, she knew that her mother was in anguish because this terrible alien thing was destroying her Pretty Little Girl face.