Discord | Website | Twitch

What it feels like to be ugly

Feju 3, 1125 Dom.

  I was so fucked up people couldn’t even look me in the eyes for more than a few seconds. That’s how it was, serving food, all of yesterday with my head down. It’d been like this for a week. Of being unwatchable. To others and to myself. To see my reflection in the bubbling stew and to turn away at the frightening image. To touch the blemished flesh and purple swells along my face and to feel disgust.

  Standin’ here tall above the fruit stand, next to the steaming hot pot. I looked - not because I wanted to, but because I wanted to see how far along the healing my face was at.

  Then the rice was dumped in. A whole white bag of it, by Old Chet. It scattered me across the surface.

  “Me. Me was soldier.” He’d said it so slow in his own language so that I could understand. I’ve been reading and translating and trying this whole time, after all. Apparently soldarus means soldier, convenient. Another word to add to my growing dictionary.

  “Me was soldier. Me hurt leg.” Of course he went through the theatrics of showing it all down, of pointing at his leg and the way he reenacted being hurt by some arrow or some canon or something or another. And me, the stupid child to take it all in through my only unswollen eye. Watching him with a neutral face with the penis-looking fruits wobbling on the table top. He was tender in voice and in attitude, his eyes softened as they looked at me. It’d been like this and I guessed it’d carry on for as long as I stayed with this band, which hopefully wasn’t long.

  Out of everyone here I think I liked Old Chet best. He was certainly second to the white angel at least. He was nice. Maybe not often, but he was nice when it counted. Especially when he fixed my nose first thing coming back from my fight with Gabralto.

  “Come. Come. Come.” He’d told me early morning when I’d come to work (again, the morning after getting fucked up hurt and he brought my face close to his. He put his wrinkled hands on my cheeks and felt the crooked bones on my nose bridge. It hurt like hell, I tried fighting back but the old man had a death grip on my face - that’s how I knew he was a soldier before he told me today. You don’t get that kind of grip without clashing swords hundreds, maybe thousands of times.

  He put both thumbs on my nose and pop. My bone went back into place. I jerked away, holding my face. It hurt, bad. And each breath for the rest of that day filled my sinuses with a deep pain.

  Yeah. Chet was a nice guy, kind of a dick but in a nice way. Like a stern father.

  Dad. Huh. Wonder how he’s doing. Does he even care?

  So’s I’d spent the week with my healing nose with a knife underneath my pillow when I slept and not a single person came after me at night. I don’t think it was that I intimidated Gabralto I like to think I did though. I think it was more so the white angel, the man who saved me and who demanded a name after news of the night attack. I didn’t give him one. I’m not one to tattle, and certainly not one to let another man solve my problems. If a man can’t solve his own problems his own way, he is no man. That’s what dad taught me. I said nothing, gave him a cold shoulder which only made him frown and shake his head and leave.

  Most of my time was kept working on the kitchen, things went easier that way. I think. Sort of. Maybe not. Today went a little different though.

  The sun was harsh against my bruised flesh, a bright gold high and centerfold of the blue sky. I hauled potatoes, Old Chet tapped at my back and led me. We’d gone up the road and set up camp again here, somewhere in an ashy field where the trees were already fallen and where rare wind blew dots of white up. We’d gone up (all of us) to a hill top where the gusts weren’t as rough, where the trunks were broken. Some with clean cuts, some with the fibers torn off.

  “War here. Month, maybe weeks ago.” Old Chet said, slow. I came up to the cart and lowered my head below the low hanging red tarp, opening one flap and watching the groups of men from the side line. How they formed ranks among themselves, both natural and pre-ordained by some number across their pouldrons or leather gear. They laughed. Talked. Mad theater of it all. Jokers and drunks who turned to Romeo’s this early into the day, holding the hands of a few nurses and maidens available. Some men gambled along the tops of the fallen trees. Others played games with their throwing knifes, trying to clip birds out of trees. I looked out during my hauls with Old Chet, the little pointy camps and looked up to the symbols of their banners.

  “What.” I turned to Old Chet. “What those symbols? What that mean?”

  He rubbed his chin. “Numbers.” He said.

  And they went up to twelve, as he pointed and spoke and explained. Twelve units or companies living in this large company. Twelve squads that formed the flock. With hundreds and I mean hundreds of people. Women, children, men. All with their own luggage and equipment. People who took up not only the top of the hill but the sides and bottoms and it was not hyperbole, but we took acres of land and come night the campsites fires went as far as the horizon and further. Beyond to what I could see. And me belonging to not a single feet of land. What was my unit? Fucking kitchen aide? What was my squad? The countertop squad? My weapon, the butcher knife. My uniform, the potato sack. My captain; Old Chet.

  Let them form their own numbers in their own language and symbols, let them count the moons and the days and the calendar as they want. Let these weirdos do how and what they would, so long as I got my ship. So long as I got out. That’s all I wanted. Still, maybe even more than before.

  To escape all manners of monsters on this island.

  But we’re getting ahead of myself.

  Back to noon, after a midday of cooking.

  I stepped out to cold air, the steam like a kind of sauna inside the kitchen. The sun half bled into the floor. The camp fires started, and looking down they seemed like stars against the dark green fields. The men’s faces glowed against the campfires, scared and scary-looking at the same time.

  As night deepened, so did the drinks. With drinking came clamor, laughs and I was working instead of flirting the whole time. God damn. I set up the platterware and food on an unbleached table, fixing every little thing to neat perfection, knowing it’d all be a mess in a few minutes. And I started putting down the wooden bowls, and stirring the ladle inside the stew above low flame.

  Old Chet came all of a sudden, burning the gears of his handicap chair. Grabbing the ladle from my hand, nodding his head. “No. No. No. You rest. Me do work tonight.”

  “What?”

  “You rest. You done enough. Go go. Shoo.” He waved me away. And I touched my face to remind myself how bad it was. The little tumors formed around my forehead and my chin. I looked back and around. The soldiers looked back, eyes narrowed and tight.

  Where could I even rest?

  People came in and out of my cart. And they brushed against my shoulder and didn’t care. The wine and the games and the bows and the arrows were more important.

  I went east, a little off the campsite so’s that I was far enough that the light of the campsites were just blurs. And I ended up wandering into a neighboring forest. I rested my back against a nice tree with deep roots that seemed half-untangled above ground level, that had survived this war and probably many wars prior. Roots that were stiff and dry. A leaf came down my face and clung to my forehead and I looked up with my lips pursed against it. It made a nice funny whistling noise.

  “Ish ti val?” A voice from behind. I jumped, leapt out of my seat and tripped.

  I turned around to face the man, his features hidden behind the shadows of trees and brushes. I could tell he looked at me though, his eyes were bright in the dark. Two beady gray eyes.

  “What.” He spoke slow, slow enough for my mental translation. “What you here?”

  Well, I wasn’t aiming to get bullied again. I’d dealt with that before, with the brutality of being weak. So’s I raised my chest a bit and puffed. Then I paused to remember how to speak Lylian (the language). I stayed there, my eyes rolling around in my head as I remembered.

  “I’m Virgil?” I lowered my head. “Me new.”

  The dialect, all fucked. The grammar, all fucked. And I knew this because the man tilted his shadowy face and squinted one eye.

  “You speak like a fool.” He said. “You must be the fresh-one, the boy they call black cheeks.”

  “Black-cheeks?” I asked. “What. Mean. That?”

  He chuckled a bit. Was he laughing at me? Better not have been.

  “It’s the name the soldiers call you because every time they see you, you’re wearing black on your face.” He said. “The soot from the burning village. The shit on your face. Black cheeks.”

  He went slow but I wish he rushed it, I wish I didn’t understand a word he spoke. Black cheeks was it?

  “They’re calling me names?” I clenched my fist. “Who?”

  “Mmm, Gabralto, I believe. Nine hells, he’s a mean one. Maybe that’s what makes him a good fighter. Meanness.”

  Gabralto. Each damn letter of his name raised my blood pressure bit by bit until it felt like my finger tips would explode from the growing pressure.

  “Who else?” I asked.

  “Everyone.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s not obvious?” He asked. “They don’t like you here.”

  “And who the hell are you?” The words - these - came out easy, talking was easier when I was angry, when my body was quick and my brain even quicker. “Who are you, huh?”

  “Sylas.” He said. “Don’t scream your madness at me now. I’m not the one who named you. What was your name again?”

  “I’m Virgil. I’m a big deal. You know that?” I pointed my thumb at myself. “B-Back where I’m from. I’m huge.”

  I felt stupid.

  “Virgil, huh?” He shook his head and chuckled. “I think I like black-cheeks better.”

  I looked back to the campsites, to the men.

  “My fault, no.” Shit. I fucked up the words. Fuck the words. Fuck the camp and the flock. Fuck Gabralto.

  “Not my fault.” I said. “Not me fault. Wrong me no did.”

  I ventilated. I Breathed in. Breathed out, slow and closed my eyes.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong.” I said. Finally.

  I slapped my forehead, I stomped the ground, paced in circles. I’d ever only felt this once before - only once, when my ex-girlfriend Gabby said I had a small dick. Back in highschool. When she told the whole school and for two months everyone called my needle dick, that was the only time until now that I’ve braced myself with this kind of anxiety. The type where you look at you behind your back with each whisper and sneer and though you’re sure they’re not talking of you, you can’t help yourself.

  Fuck Gebralto.

  Sylas appeared from the shadows, closer to me. I stepped back, naturally. Still shaking, still raging. My eyes watered it’s not my fault I just tend to get watery eyes when I’m really pissed. It’s not crying. I’ve always had to explain that to dad, now I had to explain it to this fucking guy.

  I rubbed my sleeve against my face.

  “Me angry.” I said.

  “Oh, you’re angry? I couldn’t tell.” Sylas said.

  He was a small man, maybe an inch taller than me (and I was five foot seven), but definitely more muscular. At least his arms were, his torso, his legs were all hidden behind a robe. And this man came forward, this older fellow - late thirties, maybe early forties, to look me up and down. His hair black and curly and in a pony tail. His eyes, lazy or tired depending how bad an impression you wanted to gather from him.

  A thin face - with a sharp chin. Sylas circled me.

  “Why’d you join us?”

  “Me no join.” It was all broken and the more broken the words came out, the hotter I got. “Just traveling. Need to get to ocean. Ocean.”

  “Makes sense you’d want out.” He said. “It’s best to leave as quickly as you can. Vicentius is an opportunist, he’ll take in whoever he can. He’s nice. The rest of them? Not so much.”

  “Vicentius. White haired man?” I asked.

  “White haired boy. And yes.” Sylas said. “He has an affection to the needy and boy, you definitely look needy. Have you asked him to put you away from the wolves?”

  “Me have wolf blood. Me no scared. No need help.” I said. It sounded even dumber when I said it in my head, broken or not.

  “This isn’t a place for games, boy.” Sylas said. “Go back to the carts, keep yourself out of notice. We’ll be approaching Lao Lo in a month or two, depending on how things go. You’ll be free then.”

  A month. Two. That’s ninety days with how fucked months and time and days were here. Ninety days of this shit? Ninety days of me hiding?

  I touched my face, a swell on my eye that burned with my slight tap.

  “They hit me. Hit me in night. Three.” I raised three fingers. “Assault.”

  I couldn’t tell the white haired one. But I could tell him, this unimportant man. I could tell him…

  “Assault? They meant to measure you” He said. “How do you think you did?”

  “I-I…” My eyes darted, back to the camps, back to the men in campfires. Somewhere amongst those stars was Gabralto - a black hole, that sucked the life out of me. All my heat went away when I looked down at him and this camp because my veins were cold, and my limbs numb.

  “Are you okay?” He asked.

  My head went back and forth.

  “Are you confused?”

  My breathing paced.

  “You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?”

  “Two months of this?” I said.

  I don’t know what face I made, my lips trembled. My eyes went wet again. It was a face that made Sylas seem, softer? His voice eased.

  “Yes, youngblood. Two months.” He sighed. “Try to be…like a ghost? Do you know what a ghost is?”

  I nodded yes.”

  “Disappear. Go unnoticed. Be blank. Empty. Maybe they’ll get bored.”

  “Bored?” My body shivered.

  “Just…” He scratched his head. “These are just my tips. Just disappear, stick to Old Chet. They won’t hurt him. He carries respect and although the men here are animals, they’re principled animals. At least Vicentius acts like they are.”

  Two months of this? Two months of the swelling? Of the coldness? Of my body surrendering each time I walked past Gabralto? Of the fear of snickers and glares and smiles? An anxiety to make me want to vomit? Two months of that?

  Sylas approached until he was right in front of my face, right there where I could see all the creases and scars of his wooden face as if he was some kind of grand oak. Because in his strider I could feel the presence of the years over me. Years of what? I couldn’t tell you, but it was something heavy.

  “Now could you please leave?” He asked. “I prefer silence.”

  I couldn’t live a day more like this and I wouldn’t live two months like this. My body went hard. My stomach turned, but my face hardened.

  I felt my pocket - these were desperate times for me, so forgive me J.P. But I looked for my knife. And I knew, as the dull edge went across cold against my waist that if there was no spot for me, I’d have to carve it out.

  Two months of this shit? No way.

  My heart felt like an explosion in the making. I entered the campsite, my eyes scanning for the single man. Gabralto.

Discord | Website | Twitch