John Peyton Cooke

Let’s Make a Face

John Peyton Cooke got his start towards the end of the paperback horror boom when, at the young age of 22, he published his first novel with Avon Books, The Lake (1989). With its inclusion of gay themes, the book was ahead of its time and was followed by a novel that was even more daring for its day, the explicitly gay-themed vampire novel Out for Blood (1991) (republished by Valancourt in 2019), in which a young gay man with leukemia gets his wish – and eternal life – by becoming one of the undead. His other works include two crime novels, Torsos and The Chimney Sweeper. Horror fans haven’t heard much from Cooke for a while, so we’re excited to offer this brand-new story. Brace yourself: you will have a strong reaction to this story. You may love it, you may hate it, but we can solemnly promise you that you will never forget it.

The producers had kept her here in this windowless ochre room for the duration of her convalescence. ‘How long has it been?’ she had typed the other day for Nurse, who was the plainest nurse Helen had ever seen, probably a four or a five, as plain as herself, as dull and unappealing as a dried kelp cake. Nurse smiled down at the question pounded out in black ink on the slightly foxed sheet of paper emerging from the manual typewriter. She said that if Helen didn’t know, it was all to the good, as her not knowing would work in her favor and would only increase the drama and sympathy and tension on the night of the final reveal. It might add immensely to her popularity score, whatever her final beauty rating.

They had provided her with this typewriter from the Olden Days as the easiest means for her to communicate with them until the bandages came off. The wrappings encasing both of her hands were drawn so tightly they permitted no free movement of her fingers. She could hardly feel them, balled up and confined as they were. Helen imagined herself something like an ancient Chinese princess; her feet were rigidly bound as well. Nurse had to lace onto each hand a sturdy leather mitten affixed with a short, blunt peg that allowed her to depress the keys on the typewriter one by one by means of the traditional hunt-and-peck method. This meant her communications to Nurse or to the producers remained short and blunt.

‘Bed not comfortable,’ she typed out slowly, banging the machine character by character.

Nurse smiled down at the statement and advised she would check with the producers. Several hours later, as far as Helen could make out, since she had dozed a bit in between, cheerful plain Nurse returned and said, ‘They said it’s too late now to change rooms or replace your mattress. We’re almost to broadcast.’

‘When?’ Helen typed out.

‘Oh, any day now. Soon as they’ve stored enough solar.’

Nurse spoke absently, as she was busy hooking up a clear bag filled with some sort of puréed pale green soup mixture to the rusted pole by Helen’s bedside and fitting the low-hanging end to the dirty-brown latex snake of her feeding tube. It could be pea or celery or sorrel or broccoli or kale or leek or spinach or lowly kelp, but Helen would never know, as it would go straight down the tube through her nasal passage, down her esophagus and into her stomach, and even if she managed to belch, she would barely be able to taste it.

By the time her dinner was prepared, her wrists were always back in the leather straps that kept them secured to the side-rails of her bed, so she couldn’t even type out a query to find out what was in the bag. As she wouldn’t be released again until Nurse’s next visit – if she was even awake when that happened – she would not likely waste the energy to ask what she had been fed several hours previous, so she tended not to know. They always assured her it was packed with superfoods, which was a great treat, as these were usually rationed only for sevens and greater.

The straps, the producers had explained to her, were for her own safety and protection. Early on in the run of the show, apparently, certain disobedient contestants had taken it upon themselves to remove their own bandages prematurely, thus ruining the celebrity surgeons’ work or exposing themselves to infection or at the very least ruining the surprise for themselves and for the audience. Not to mention violating the terms of their contract, being liable for a severe penalty, subjecting their extended family to certain deprivations, and ruining their own chances at greater worldwide exposure and popularity.

Helen was not disobedient and did not want a reputation for being so. As it was, she felt she was being a bit of a bother by even asking these few innocent questions. But the typewriter was a great outlet for her fears and frustrations, minor and petty as they were. She trusted the producers and was grateful for her brief moments with Nurse. Her main concerns were when would this all be over, when would all the bandages come off, when could she finally see her new improved self, and how highly would the audience rate her?

That the producers wouldn’t give her a new mattress or a different room she attributed to the obvious fact that she was not the only contestant they were looking after. All along the corridor, one presumed, judging by how many contestants popped up on the show on a weekly basis, were so many other girls just like her. Everyone had had their own procedure and had their own care needs. Poor Nurse was probably stretched thin attending to everyone.

Helen had never in her life had cause to act like a diva, and she would be mortified if she thought they saw her as an emerging one. If she became a nine or a ten, then of course she could do precisely as she pleased, but until that day she at least had to appear humble. She resolved that on Nurse’s next visit – provided of course Helen was awake – she would let her know the bed was all right and she was sorry if she had caused any trouble. No doubt all the other girls were weighing Nurse down with all their hysterical requests of the producers at all hours of the day and night. She didn’t want to be one of those.

She watched the soup mixture gradually gurgle its way down her gullet until the bag was emptied, aside from some remnant gloppy residue sliding slowly down its translucent insides. In the partial view of herself in the mirror, she saw the discolored latex tube threaded into one side of her fully bandaged head, just off center and below her two dark eye holes, just above her fully sealed chin. Her jaw seemed to be strapped tightly shut, and her tongue must be perpetually numb, because she couldn’t feel it. She couldn’t even find it. Finally, dinner was at an end, and she would have to wait for Nurse to return, disconnect the bag, check the status of her catheter, and empty her bedpan.

All she could do now was stare at her own partly obscured oval-shaped, mummy-like head reflecting back at her in the mirror, propped up against the pillows. Mummies she also associated with royalty, as she had seen the exhibits in museums of eternally wrapped princesses. If she didn’t like looking at herself, she could stare at the blank ochre walls and follow the cracks as if they were a strange wallpaper pattern. Or she could choose to switch her glance to the screen hanging from the ceiling on the other side of the room, projecting its endless stream of nines and tens, glamour, wealth, luxury, travel, adventure, sun, sand, fun, flesh, fitness, sex, and, above all, survival.

There was a call button installed within reach of her strapped right wrist, which she could engage by bumping against it, if she needed anything or was ever in a panic. But she never pressed it. She did not want to be considered difficult, and sooner or later all her needs were attended to. They were pampering her, she had convinced herself, as if they were all drones and she the queen bee. The superfoods in her feeding bag were her own royal jelly, aiding her wondrous transformation.

As long as she could remember, she had been plain, and it didn’t help that officially she was considered a five. It was true her mother was a nine, and her father a two, but you would think that would average out to a six, not a five. Her mother had once gently explained to her that it was the policy of the directorate to round down rather than up in equivocal cases, to avoid people asking for more than was their natural-born due.

She had lived her life thus far outwardly as a five, as noted on her public directorate profile, but inside she was convinced she was at least a six. Not only a six, but a six deserving of improvement. Growing up the daughter of a nine, she had never wanted for anything, but as she emerged into adulthood, the awakening was rude.

Her impossibly beautiful and accomplished mother had tried to be reasonably supportive, perhaps out of pity, since Helen was naturally the product of her own mixed marriage. But her mother could not restrain herself from often coming out with negative discouragements for which she would then quickly apologize, telling Helen she was only trying to look after her realistic possibilities for future happiness, and after all, what was so bad about being a five, when at least she wasn’t a two like her father? She would have fair opportunities for a job in service to the superior numbers, but she would never be a spokesmodel like her mother or otherwise appear on telly.

She hadn’t any right to expect that.

And yet she did. She expected it. She aspired to it.

In her senior year, she applied for a Face Grant but was rejected, as the raters concluded from her screen test that she was ‘. . . a perfectly adequate five, with no particularly remarkable inherent physical characteristics (other than a history of beauty on the maternal side of the family) that would lead us to believe she could attain any rank greater than a six, for which the directorate concludes that a grant is not cost-effective and is therefore denied.’

Her mother had professed to share her disappointment, but Helen was sure that she was actually relieved. Mother couldn’t bear to face the competition, could she? What if Helen had emerged as a nine herself, or even a ten? While her mother succumbed to ageing and had to live off her faded glories . . .

Once she turned eighteen, Helen saw her only chance as trying to make it as a contestant on Let’s Make a Face. It wouldn’t be easy; the auditions were likely to be just as harsh as what she had been put through by the grant raters. The auditions themselves would be broadcast, subjecting all the plain girls and the ugly girls to global ridicule and harassment, even if they didn’t make it as a contestant. Everyone knew that some of these girls were deliberately tricked by the producers into participating in the auditions, when clearly so many of them weren’t up to scratch. Simply because it was entertaining for all the world to laugh at this gaudy parade of self-deluded grotesques, and it boosted the show’s ratings and sold more luxury products to the viewers, leading up to the real competition and the finals.

‘You don’t want to draw attention to yourself!’ her mother had warned her. ‘You’re really not that bad looking. Why not just find a fellow five out there and settle down to the five life? No one will bother you, and you might even find happiness of a sort.’

Of course, mother didn’t know what she was talking about. On top of that, this ignorant comment brought back Helen’s longstanding resentment over the fact that her mother hadn’t married a nine herself but had perversely married a hopeless two (probably to piss off her own parents), in which event Helen either would have been born a nine herself or would have been entitled to a new face if she needed it, instead of having to grovel for a grant or try her luck on a reality show once she was of age. She conveniently set aside the fact that she would not even be Helen at all if it weren’t for her father the two – her mother’s common riposte whenever this squabble had bubbled up in the past.

Needless to say, she did not speak to her father these days, partly out of embarrassment, partly owing to the impracticalities of communication and travel. Her mother had thrown him away a long time ago, and he lived in a shack in the lowlands somewhere, monitoring the inexorable rise of the sea, a vocation eminently suitable for a two, but something one didn’t want to talk about in polite company.

Ultimately, she owed her success in the audition process to the unbelievable support of her friends at the Five School. As soon as she had announced her intention to apply, all of her schoolmates had come out of the woodwork to support her – even those like Becka and Elsie and Freddie, who had never before given her the time of day despite being fives themselves. She had been deeply touched that everyone else in the school finally saw her potential for improvement and rallied behind her. They came with her to the auditions, cheered her on, took her out afterward for kelp flatbreads and frozen soy creams, and generally gave her such confidence that her auditions went off smoother than she could ever have hoped for. Of course, the criticism was unduly harsh, especially from the celebrity judges, who were all tens and could afford to be haters. And she couldn’t bear to watch herself on telly being subjected to their endless spews of bile and ridicule.

It was the amazing viewer support that put her over the top and into the finals, and Helen was sure this would never have come to pass without the active social campaigning of her new school chums. And once she made it to the finals, her future success was assured, because the wizards on Let’s Make a Face had demonstrated time and again that they could do absolutely anything they put their mind to, with nearly any face or body.

After the night of the finals, she spent many hours reliving the heady experience. When she wasn’t contemplating her mummified features in the mirror or watching telly, her eyes would drift along the cracks in the dim ochre walls, and she would think about how that episode had gone. Rather well, she must admit, or she wouldn’t be sitting here now, awaiting the cutting of the bandages!

The episode had also been replayed a number of times on the screen in her chamber during these weeks (how many midnights?) of her recovery. It was an out-of-body experience to think of yourself on telly, being interrogated by the celebrity judges and coddled by the celebrity host. Every time she watched it, she grew more distant from it, as if she had never really been there. It was almost as if it wasn’t Helen at all sitting there on stage, getting critiqued for her imperfections and hearing the expert commentary by the celebrity surgeons: what could be done, what couldn’t be done, what was hopeless, and what was salvageable.

And it wasn’t really her. Not anymore. The pathetic caterpillar was about to break out of its chrysalis and go soaring a glorious butterfly. She thought often about giving herself a new name, once she was a celebrity in her own right. Anabella? Fiona? Aurora? Hera? (And perhaps she should keep it to just the one name only, like celebrity judge Veronique.) What kind of a show would she want to host for herself? Perhaps a luxury yachting show taking place in the Med? Ones, twos, and threes were literally slaving away day and night building the new hotels and resorts along the grossly expanded shoreline, replacing the now Atlantean hotels of her parents’ generation. Helen fancied herself a future Med travel expert, guiding the young yacht-set generation of nines and tens to new, ultra-modern destinations that reflected none of the charred memories of the Olden Days.

‘And now let’s meet Helen!’ celebrity host Peter Lamb had bleated out on that last night of the finals. ‘Come on out of your hole, little lady, you’re the next contestant on Let’s Make a Face!’

Helen came out on stage to a thundering of applause, much of it from her own support contingent from the Five School. Becka, Elsie, Freddie, and even her mother were all in attendance to cheer her on. Her father would never have been permitted to leave his post and travel upland to the studios, and she didn’t believe twos were even permitted to get tickets. Anyhow, she was glad he couldn’t come.

Peter Lamb addressed the audience: ‘Here she is, our Helen! What’s to become of her, ladies and gentlemen? Will she be elevated to the status of a nine or a ten? Or will she become the latest popular attraction in Dr. Bob’s Freak Show Caravan, making its way soon to a gated highland community near you?’

Helen wore a dowdy dress appropriate for a five, actually much dowdier than anything in her own closet, which she took pride to modify to make herself look at least a six. But the producers were in charge, and the makeup and wardrobe department was tasked with making the girls as hopeless as possible, so that the before-and-after comparisons would be suitably jaw-dropping. The makeup itself accented all of her imperfections, so that in the glare of the studio lights and in the camera close-ups, nothing would be left to the imagination.

‘You’re quite sure you’re a five and not a four?’ queried the lead celebrity judge, Nigel Soames, not even looking at her but down at his cards. Handsome Nigel was billed as every woman’s dream husband, though he was in reality a bachelor who careered across the globe on his yacht from port to port and woman to woman. Helen had often dreamed of marrying him; despite all the abuse of the auditions, she still held out the hope that he would warm to her.

‘Quite sure, sir!’ Helen said winningly.

‘I can’t say it’s nice to see you again, Helen, as even for a five you look a perfect horror!’ Laughter from the studio audience as Nigel shook his head sadly and then glanced over conspiratorially at the judge next to him, the celebrity supermodel Veronique (just the one name, darlings).

‘Hmmmm,’ Veronique said, musing aloud with her index finger set aside her plump red lips. She was a ten, there was no gainsaying, everybody knew she was. In classic ten fashion, she had even gotten away with murder, having shot her second husband, a three, six times with a .38. This was many years ago, during the Loose Decade when mixed marriages had been so trendy and available. In fact, it was the not-infrequent incidents like Veronique’s that had contributed to the rise of the New Conservatism and led most jurisdictions to enact laws banning such unions. Her trial had been dismissed before it could even start, one presumed because of the dark-channel deals and payoffs so common among the tens. The prevailing story passed down ever since was that Veronique had married a right beast far beneath her station who had used her and disrespected her, and had finally done so once too often, and it was all perfectly understandable that the helpless woman had to resort to use of the revolver to stop this powerful monster from bothering her.

‘Hmmmm,’ she said. ‘Heaven knows, Helen, I’m quite sympathetic to your story. Although you must realize, I aborted my own child from my second husband precisely because I knew she’d never be a ten. I’m not here to second-guess the wisdom of your own birth mother, but really, darling, don’t you find it humiliating being paraded around on our dear-lamb-of-a-Peter’s stage, in front of a billion-odd people (and I do mean odd!) watching in their little hovels, all of them knowing you’re nothing but a five from a shotgun nine-and-two?’

‘I . . . I’m not humiliated,’ Helen said, maintaining her smile, though it was indeed how she felt. Anything for a new face, she thought. Anything! She used the line the producers had coached her to do in such a situation: ‘I’m a strong girl, I am!’

Veronique rolled her eyes, her trademark move enlarged in full close-up on all the repeater screens, eliciting an eruption of laughter from the studio audience. She loosed her catch-phrase: ‘Oh, what a bore!’ And threw her cards in the air as she’d done a hundred times.

You wouldn’t think by looking at him that the third celebrity judge was a ten. Antony Smith had been one all his life, having been born of a famous ten-and-ten couple, and had never looked any better or worse than he did now, and of course Helen was in no position to judge anyone, much less a legit celeb. She was also fully aware that the directorate had quite different standards for men than for women. Everybody knew that. All the same, he didn’t seem even as handsome as her own father, who was, as a two, by definition quite ugly. And yet she would rather gaze at an old capture of her father any day of the week than to have to stare for too long at Antony Smith’s face.

‘How you holding up, hon?’ he said. His role on the show was that of the empathetic counterweight to the awful Nigel and Veronique. And yet when it came down to the hard decisions, Antony Smith could be quite cold, as if it was your own fault he had been forced to judge against you, and how dare you be so faithless as to put him in such a position? Helen had seen it on the show over and over again. Antony Smith could turn like that and become your worst enemy. One had the impression the only calculus that mattered to him was his own viewer ratings.

But all Helen needed to succeed in the finals was two out of three judges’ votes, after which all the final decisions were up to the studio audience. The fact she had made it this far meant the judges were still rooting for her, no matter what act they were putting on for the sake of entertainment.

‘We all understand how you must feel, hon,’ Antony Smith said. ‘It must be rough growing up a plain Jane. I’m encouraged you’ve got such a ginormous fan club in the audience from your school! What great friends you must have! You really want this, don’t you? I’m going to be hard on you, Helen, but that’s because I love you. What makes you think you can be a nine, maybe even a ten? Why should we waste the talents of our surgeons to turn this plain duckling into a swan?’

‘Go on, Helen, tell Antony how you feel!’ Peter Lamb prodded, literally, as he stabbed a finger into her ribcage. ‘Go on, girl!’

‘Well, you see, Antony,’ Helen began, ‘I’ve never felt it was quite fair that I was a five. My mother raised me all by herself, of course, and all her friends were beautiful. She never consorted with anyone below a seven. Not around me, anyway! My father was just some kind of fluke, you know, some silly toy. And beg your pardon, Veronique, but I’m sure you know all about that! Then as I grew older, and I realized what I was, and that I’d never get to live among the beautiful people, I don’t know, I just . . .’

‘Did you cry?’ Antony said. ‘Did you have a little boo-hoo?’

‘I cried myself to sleep every night. Knowing I’d never be beautiful. Knowing I’d never be popular.’

The studio audience was prodded by an assistant producer into letting out a collective awwwww! of sympathy.

‘Especially with the boys,’ Helen said. ‘Never be popular . . .’ And she felt the tears come spilling out and roll down her cheeks. ‘Can you imagine? I mean, I don’t disagree with the law, but for me to be forced to marry a five! I don’t see myself as a five, and I don’t want to marry a five. I feel like I’m a ten trapped in a five body.’

‘Indeed, indeed,’ said Antony. ‘We all feel your pain, hon. If I weren’t a ten, I think I’d probably kill myself. Not that I’m proposing you should do any such thing if you don’t make it through.’

‘Some days, I do feel like that,’ Helen said. ‘I mean, I respect my school chums, but most of them seem to be totally content to be fives. They aren’t equipped with the aesthetic sense that’s inherent to a ten. They look at themselves and they think they’re just fine. Well, I’m not just fine! I won’t accept being a five! I just won’t! And I thank God every day for giving me this chance on Let’s Make a Face!’

‘Whatever God you pray to is not going to help you,’ Nigel said. ‘We’re God here, us lot, up on this phony dais. We’re the Holy Trinity incarnate up here, me, Vee, and Antony, and don’t you forget it.’

‘What does that make me?’ cried Peter Lamb.

‘Head priest,’ Nigel said. ‘Pope. Whatever. Take your pick.’

Peter laughed chummily. ‘Now let’s hear from our surgical team. You’ve looked her over top to bottom. You’ve made clinical assessments of her muscle tone, bone structure, cellulite deposits, and skin quality. You’ve read her psychiatric evaluation. What do you think? Can you change this fiver into a tenner? What say you, Doctor Bob?’

‘Stand up straight, girl!’ ordered the chief surgeon, a tall wiry ten of distinction with a full head of black hair, greying just at the temples. ‘Whirl round a bit, there’s a good girl!’

Helen did as she was told, feeling her face flush with embarrassment as she did a classic girly twirl in her plain dress.

‘Now stop!’ Doctor Bob took out a long stick and used it to refer to various parts of Helen’s body as he spoke. ‘Overall, the skeleton is adequate. Bone scan reveals a classic five, nothing too grotesque, but nothing beautiful, quite a plain old skeleton, all in all. We’re all in agreement. Could be pushed either way, though. We could push it if we had to. Not much limiting us there. Leg muscles rather middling, as befits the plodding life of a five. It would take some work to tone them up to a nine or a ten. Not outside the realm of possibility, though. Female parts down below are fully matured, but nothing special. Upper parts would need some serious augmentation to get them into ten territory. I believe that’s obvious! Shoulders rather slumped, we’d need to get them straightened out, and we’d need to suck out quite a lot of fat here and there, tummy, buttocks, thighs, the usual problem spots for fives. . . .’

‘What about the face, Doctor Bob, the face?’ Peter whined. ‘I think that’s all she really cares about, isn’t it? Realistically, Bob-O, what are this girl’s chances of being made beautiful?’

Doctor Bob shrugged his shoulders. ‘Anybody’s guess, really! The facial bone structure is tolerable. Classic five skull, no doubt about it. Awfully plain nose, lips nothing to write home about. Cheekbones rather chipmunkish, if you ask me. But the whole point is to turn this one into something she’s not, and frankly we can do whatever we want as long as we get paid. If there’s a will, there’s a way, as I always say. If the judges and the audience will it, we will build it.’

Doctor Bob’s catchphrase. It always made Helen smile!

‘Well, that’s that, then!’ Peter Lamb said. ‘First it’s up to the judges! Judges? What’s it going to be?’

Whenever Helen went over this in her memory, she skipped past the long minutes of suspenseful music, the secret discussions of the judges, their animated facial expressions as they publicly bickered and Veronique rolled her eyes and scattered her cards. The further turn of the screw as Peter Lamb said they had to give him their answer, and what was it going to be? Because of course everything had come out all right in the end, with a unanimous decision. Three green circles, not a single red X. She had cried with delight and given Peter Lamb a hug.

‘We knew that all along, didn’t we, dearie?’ he said to her. ‘Now let’s turn to the audience, for the all-important decision. What’s it going to be, you little devils?’

Peter Lamb drew his arm around Helen’s waist and escorted her away from the judges’ dais and across the stage to stand in front of the four doors. The beautiful spokesmodel (who was never allowed to speak) was already standing there, ready to gesticulate at the gaily colored doors as they were called.

As they moved to their new mark, Helen scanned the faces in the audience – Becka, Elsie, Freddie, and the rest – until she found her mother staring at her out of dim blue light, giving her courage.

‘Let’s get this on you so there’s no monkey business,’ he said, as he put the leather hood over Helen’s head and locked its collar in place around her neck with a padlock. It had no holes for eyes or mouth, only two discreet reinforced grommets over her nostrils. Early on in the run of the show, they had used a simple blindfold, but the hood had proven far more dramatic, and invulnerable to cheating.

Helen felt perfectly comfortable in the hood, though the smell of the leather was sickly sweet and made her slightly nauseous. Her heart began racing, as she knew her friends in the audience were about to choose her new look. It was so exciting to be in the actual finals!

‘Now she’s ready, there’s a girl!’ Peter Lamb sounded condescending, but she was sure he wasn’t, not really. ‘As a reminder to our viewers at home and all round the world, we’ve now fixed it so as Helen can’t see anything at all. Nor can she object! That’s how we like our girls on Let’s Make a Face, don’t we?’

Thunderous applause and cheering.

‘Studio audience, are you ready?’

‘Ready!’ they shouted.

‘Ah, my little lambs!’ Peter Lamb said. ‘Our esteemed celebrity surgeons have done up some lovely renderings of what they think they can do with our poor Helen, and it will be up to the studio audience to make that choice for her!’

Lots of cheering, some jeering. Helen couldn’t tell the difference, to be honest.

‘Each of the four choices are blown up in all their glory and currently hidden behind our famous doors. Or should I say infamous? Because as always, our surgeons have come up with three looks that might make Helen a ten . . . plus one that would definitely make her a zero! How awful would that be, eh? Though it’s such a rare occurrence on this show, it’s not something we dare contemplate!’

Helen had no worries about this. The studio audience was packed with so many of her school chums, it was statistically impossible for her to be voted a zero. She had seen it happen before, though, watching on telly from home, and it was always quite a shock, not least of all for the contestant, who knew of course what she was getting herself into and would just have to take her lumps. Some people said this was what everyone watched Let’s Make a Face for, just as they might watch Formula One for a car crash or Olympic skiing for a disastrous run on the slopes and a poor skier’s shattered bones.

‘Of course, only the studio audience will be lucky enough to see what’s behind our doors. All of you folks at home will just have to suffer in suspense until the big reveal some weeks hence!’

Peter Lamb was really working the crowd up into a lather.

‘Now it’s time for the beauteous Jackie Mackey to reveal what’s behind door number one!’

Approving applause and oohs and ahhs.

The opening of the other three doors followed, all to the same reaction, as far as Helen could make out. Then came the vote, held over the familiar suspenseful music. It was revealed that the studio audience had chosen door number three, and they all cheered for Helen. Helen was congratulated by Peter Lamb. Someone led her offstage, still locked within the cloying hood, and she was taken backstage and prepped for immediate surgery.

These many weeks since that exciting episode had been trying, and she had gone back repeatedly for several more procedures. She had been re-dressed and re-bandaged several times, but always while she was unconscious, lest she catch any glimpse of her new self.

Nurse had explained that for a five like her, such a radical transformation could not be expected to happen overnight.

Helen understood. She was not daft.

Ultimately, one day, she came back to awareness in the dim ochre chamber, with Nurse standing over her smiling nervously and saying, ‘It’s time, love. The producers are ready for you.’

Helen expelled a huge sigh of relief. Her heartbeat increased noticeably, thumping against the walls of her chest as she grew more excited. She could hear the rhythm in her ears, as every part of her except her eyes remained encased in wrappings. Today was the day!

Nurse brought the old typewriter over to her and rolled a fresh piece of paper on the platen. She fixed the typing mittens on Helen’s tightly bound hands and let her type out whatever words she wished.

Slowly, Helen moved her arms up and down, hunting and pecking: ‘Don’t know what to say! Over the moon! Thank you, Nurse!’

Nurse extracted the feeding tube from Helen’s nasal passage and esophagus, did whatever she had to do with the urinary catheter, and put fresh eyedrops in Helen’s eyes. Two orderlies, likely twos or threes, came in and helped Nurse detach the bed from the wall and rolled Helen out into the corridor.

In the green room, they removed the bandages from her head, not allowing her any mirror, then locked her back up in the leather hood. Although it was scary and uncomfortable, she reminded herself how lucky she was, when so few of the girls who applied ever made it this far.

She felt a lightening of herself, body and spirit, as they cut off the remaining bandages from every part of her. She felt herself rising up to meet her new destiny. Who would she become from this point forward? Anabella? Fiona? Aurora? Hera?

They transferred her to a new clean bed that would be more appealing for the show than her filthy, lumpy old thing. But they locked her wrists back up to the metal sides, using leather straps as they had done for all these weeks. They used similar straps to secure her ankles to the other end. She thought all this a bit strange, although she had seen it done on some previous episodes.

‘This is just to help quell your excitement,’ one of the producers said. ‘We can’t have you hurting yourself now or damaging the final result, can we? Plus it’s in your contract.’

Helen mumbled her assent. She discovered that after all those weeks under wraps, she had lost the use of her jaw or mouth muscles, somehow, and was presently unable to speak.

‘Ready?’ the producer said, but didn’t wait for a response. ‘I think she’s ready. Time is money. Can’t keep ’em waiting. Let’s go!’

‘And now, let’s bring out our famous contestant Helen from that memorable episode a few weeks back!’ came Peter Lamb’s voice over the loudspeaker system. ‘Round of applause for Helen!’

Although she was still in the hood, she could tell the difference as she was rolled out from the green room to the soundstage. She could hear the raging applause of the studio audience, feel their eyes upon her, and feel the heat of the lights bearing down. She realized she was entirely naked on the gurney as they wheeled her out, but of course, she had seen that done on a few of the episodes as well, at least when there was more work done than on the face alone. It felt like sunlamps gently bronzing her skin. She imagined she was sunbathing on one of the man-made beaches on the New French Riviera. Back to the yacht, James! Oh, how nice it would be to have a servant! A one or a two of one’s own. Her own father had started out that way but had been granted his freedom after the divorce.

‘Let’s all take a good look at Helen, shall we?’

Someone was unlocking the padlock at Helen’s neck, and wriggling the hood off her head. It took quite a while for her eyes to adjust to the bright lights, and as she struggled with this, Peter Lamb kept on talking.

‘Let’s bring out Doctor Bob to tell us what he’s done, shall we?’

Great applause and some nervous laughter.

‘Not sure even our studio audience can see what’s going on here just yet, not until we can get the cameras closer in here. Tell us, please, doctor, what have you done to our poor Helen?’

‘Quite simple on the face of it,’ Doctor Bob said.

The audience laughed at the pun.

‘But an awfully complicated operation in actual fact . . .’

Helen was batting her eyelashes and struggling to get her eyes accustomed to the light, after so many weeks in relative dark. She saw some people wheeling across a three-paneled mirror that they were setting in front of her, while two camera­men also came in closer to direct their lenses on her. One camera was coming in close to her face, the other crouching down between her spread and bound legs.

Helen looked out into the audience, looking for the face of her mother, but found only an empty seat next to Becka, Elsie, and Freddie, where her mother had sat on the previous show. Becka was elbowing Elsie and laughing like a cow. Freddie was hiding his face.

‘What the audience voted on, and what we have done here, is what we like to call a total labial transposition. We’ve taken Helen’s labium superius oris and her labium inferium oris from up here, and switched them with her labia majora and labia minora from down there.’

‘So, sort of a lip switch!’ Peter Lamb said in amazement. ‘First of its kind?’

‘First of its kind. We’ve been looking to do this a long time but needed a suitable candidate. Helen seemed perfect, so we put this forward as her zero option. The team and I were delighted to be given the opportunity by our lovely studio audience.’

Polite round of applause.

Helen’s eyes had adjusted as she was listening to the surgeon’s clinical description of what they had done to her. She could not believe the audience had voted her a zero. There must have been a mistake somewhere. There would have to be a do-over . . .

‘But that’s not all you’ve done here, surely, doctor?’

Doctor Bob laughed. ‘No, Peter, not at all!’

Helen tried to make a sound. She couldn’t figure out how to make her jaw work. The muscles of her throat struggled and strained, but the lower structure of her face remained rigid, unable to move. She looked down at her hands and saw that she had none. She looked down at her feet and found they were gone.

‘The transposition is to a large degree superficial. What you see on the outside is precisely the effect we wanted to achieve, with this really quite nice labia majora and labia minora here, just beneath her nose, of a vertical rather than lateral arrangement, as you can plainly see. With other critical lady parts hidden inside. These sexual organs had to be connected to the former oral canal and the esophagus so that it could be at all useful to those lucky gents who will be buying tickets to the Freak Show.’

‘Coming soon to a gated highland town near you!’ Peter Lamb crowed.

‘And that created the problem of what to do with the upper palate and lower palate, and all the dentition, as that could get in the way and create quite a danger for the user. My colleague, Doctor Steve, came up with an ingenious solution. Why not complete the flip? Replace the jaw structures, tongue, vocal cords, everything we commonly associate with the upstairs, and place it all downstairs?’

‘My word, that’s clever!’ Peter Lamb said.

The three celebrity judges came down off their dais and were crowding around the lower-parts cameraman, leaning in for a closer look and grinning.

‘Pure genius,’ said Nigel Soames.

‘Total zero!’ said Veronique, rising up to look into Helen’s eyes. ‘Your mother’s proud of you now, I’ll bet!’

Antony Smith said, ‘But can it talk?’

‘Some physio is likely required,’ Doctor Bob said.

‘Maybe we can get her to give us a right old scream!’ Peter Lamb said. ‘Take a look in that mirror, sweetie! Like what you see?’

Helen didn’t need to look in the mirror anymore. The upper cameraman had come in close and she could see her new face enlarged across all the monitors throughout the studio (and being broadcast to all those with the luxury of electricity). She could see the tears on her cheeks, and the alien-like flaps of flesh that should never have been put there.

‘She wanted to be beautiful, and she wanted to be popular, ladies and gentlemen! One out of two ain’t bad! Now how’s about that scream?’

Helen didn’t know how she could do it. But she was worried she might be punished if she didn’t at least try. She had no status here. Whatever little status she once had was now wiped out with the work of the surgeons’ knives. She worked the muscles she could find in her lower belly, searching and straining somehow to use what they had grafted down there.

‘Open up, at least!’ Peter Lamb said, giving her thigh a slap.

‘It’s moving,’ said Nigel Soames. ‘By God, I can see the teeth.’

Helen watched on the monitors as the cameras focused in on the mouth between her legs. The makeup artists had smeared bright red lipstick on her lips. Somehow she managed to part them and expose her teeth. Bearing down, she found the means to extend her tongue, and slowly it emerged from between the widening jaws.

‘Go on, then, give us a scream!’ Peter Lamb repeated, cackling with laughter. He reached down and started tickling her tongue. ‘Look at that thing! Do you feed her through here, then?’ He looked up at Doctor Bob.

‘No, actually, we couldn’t find a way to hook all this back up to the esophagus, and we needed the esophagus to remain where it was, for obvious reasons. She takes her nourishment through a feeding tube, and that’s how she’ll have to keep on with it from now on, I’m afraid.’

While Doctor Bob was rambling on, and Peter Lamb was listening intently to what was coming out of the surgeon’s mouth, Helen was concentrating with full intensity on mastering the muscles between her legs. The host kept playing with her tongue, tickling it, squeezing it, getting an obvious kick out of pulling it.

‘We also recommend that end-users stick with the upper and steer clear of the lower,’ Doctor Bob said.

‘And why’s that?’ Peter Lamb said, still toying with her tongue.

Helen mustered all her strength and bit clean through Peter Lamb’s finger at the second joint. She might be a freak and a zero, but the viewers needed to know she retained her dignity.

As she savored the iron taste of the warm blood on her tongue, she was shocked to discover she could. Doctor Bob and his team had indeed worked wonders.

She resolved right then that her stage name would be Hera.