|
|
LUMP LUMBERED OUT OF the forest with a black-haired woman slung over his shoulder. She hung limp and unconscious. With his thick, scarred hands, he swung her to the ground and lay her on the grass, cradling her head as he lowered her. He looked at her face, her smooth skin. He trailed his wide fingers down her cheek. He felt his own face. His fingertips travelled over the ridges and grooves in his flesh. He ran his palm over his scalp, over the lumps and scabs. The scars.
He lifted the woman back onto his shoulder, the perfume in her hair, apple blossoms, touched his nostrils and he breathed in. His own stink mingled with hers, tarnishing it. He took her to a small stone house. He halted. His mother stood in the doorway.
“Bring her inside.” His mother twirled away into the dark interior.
Lump ducked under the doorway and lowered the woman onto the table. Her dark hair splayed out behind her. Again, he cradled her head in his massive hand.
“Hm,” Mother said. “I wish you’d bring me a blonde one.” She turned her wicked eyes to him. “You have some grime on your chin, dear.” She reached up and wiped at his face with a rough cloth. It scraped a scab. He grunted and pulled his face away from her.
Mother turned her attention back to the woman on the table. She pulled a knife from her belt and thrust the blade into the woman’s chest. Blood poured from the wound. She filled a chalice with the woman’s blood, chanted an incantation over it, and drank. She turned away from Lump, gasping.
He knew she would cry out and cover her face and when she moved her hands away she would be young again with the woman’s black hair. Her skin would be smooth, not wrinkled. So, instead of watching like he usually did, Lump gazed at the woman and stroked her cheek with the back of his rough fingers. He touched her hair. Never once did his eyes stray from her smooth face.
Mother wouldn’t send him out again for a few days, so Lump went into the woods. While he walked, he looked at a brochure for a music school called Juilliard. He stared at the pictures of the symphony and the violins for a long time before folding the wrinkled and creased pamphlet and tucking it away in his back pocket.
He reached his favorite clearing and pulled his violin out from under a bush. He played a song he made up. The music caressed his mangled, cauliflower ears and he closed his eyes. It transported him to a better place. A place where his skin felt smooth and unblemished under his fingertips.
“Lump!” Mother’s voice, inside his head, said under the music. “You’ll never be beautiful, you’ll never be accepted, you’ll never, never, never.”
He squeezed his eyes shut tighter and tried to block her voice from his mind, but it did no good. Her taunts plowed through the melody. He missed a note and stopped playing, looking at the violin so small in his hand.
“There you are,” Mother’s voice said behind him. “You play so beautifully.”
He turned and looked at her. The knife in her hand worried him but he didn’t move from the rock.
“I found this on the path.” She held up the Juilliard brochure.
He grunted and felt his back pocket where the brochure should have been.
“You’ll never go there. You will never leave this forest.” Mother paused. Her voice softened. “You’ll never leave me. Will you?” Her voice quavered, and Lump hefted his form from the rock and approached her.
He reached a hand toward her face, her smooth skin. He touched her cheek and with his other hand he touched his face.
“Why?” The word came as a groan, thick in his throat.
“Lumpy,” Mother said in a soothing voice. “I had to, to protect you.” Her face hardened, and she slashed across his face with the knife, spraying blood onto her soft, smooth skin. The pain burned across his forehead, over his nose and down the other cheek. Lump grabbed his face and cried out. He backed away from Mother until his legs hit the stone and he fell onto his butt. He cried into his hands. Wept like a child.
When he stopped crying, Mother was gone, had likely been gone since right after she slashed him. He felt his face, his new wound. The blood caked in the gash. Another scar to disfigure him even more.
“Lump want,” he said to the quiet forest. He swallowed hard. “Lump want new skin.” His thick, swollen lips curled into an anguished frown.
He got up from the stone and picked up the Juilliard brochure Mother had dropped, then lumbered deeper into the forest until he came upon an old shack. He pushed the door open and went inside the dark space.
A table and two chairs took up the majority of the space inside. Off in a dark corner, a door stood ajar. The door led down to a basement much larger than the tiny shelter built on top of it. Lump clopped down the stairs and lit a lantern.
The room smelled like old, damp rags. Mold and mildew and mustiness. Lump went to a table in the middle where shackles hung from the edges of the marred wood. He touched one. It tinkled in the gloom and his thick lips spread into a smile.
He dreamed that night. He dreamed about drinking the magic blood and getting a new face, new skin. Smooth skin. He dreamed about being accepted into Juilliard with his new skin. He played the violin for them and they loved him. He dreamed of Mother’s face, her fists hitting him, slashing at him with her knife, disfiguring him. He dreamed of the things she told him, the words that kept him deep in the forest with her. Protected by her. He woke up.
Mother came to him a week later. Her skin sagged. A gray streak shot through her dark hair.
“It’s time, Lumpy.” She caressed his cheek, grimacing as she touched him. “Bring me a blonde one this time.”
Lump eyed the knife at her belt.
“Well, go then,” she said, shooing him.
“Hhhh,” Lump said. He held out his arms. “Hhhug.”
Mother’s face, stern and pinched, relaxed into a smile. She hugged him. Lump lowered his hand to her belt and slipped the knife from its sheath. He left before she could see he was hiding it along his arm, palming the handle.
When he came back with the blonde woman slung over his shoulder, he didn’t take her to Mother. He went into the woods, through the clearing where he played his violin, and into the shack. He took the woman into the basement and lay her on the table. Ever so gently, he shackled her wrists and ankles. He didn’t bother to gag her. No one would hear her way out here.
He touched her face, her smooth skin. He stroked her arms, loving the smoothness beneath his fingertips, then went to a whetting stone in the corner and sharpened the knife. As the blade scraped along the stone, he imagined his new skin. His new face. Smooth and beautiful. He felt the knife. Sharp.
The girl woke up. Her head moved from side to side. In the low light, Lump watched her, moving his eyes over her, looking for all the smooth skin he could use. Her eyes opened. Lump moved closer, his boots thumping on the stone floor. He leaned over her and her eyes grew wide. She didn’t make a sound until Lump lifted the knife.
“Lump want new skin.” He lifted one shackled arm and dragged the blade down the length of it, shaving off a slice of pale, smooth skin. The girl screamed. Lump hated the way it grated on his ears. He sliced away another filet of skin and set it aside. She kept screaming.
“New skin,” he yelled over her cries. He didn’t understand why she kept screaming. He wasn’t going to kill her. He just wanted her skin. He moved to her other arm and kept skinning until her cries ceased.
“What are you doing?” Mother’s voice screeched from the bottom of the stairs. She rushed into the room. “What are you doing?” She shouted again when he only looked at her.
“Lump . . .” he said. “Lump want . . .” He panted, and tears trickled from his eyes, coursing down the jagged scars. “Lump want new skin.” He held out the piece he just sliced off so his mother could see.
She came closer, her hands outstretched. “Lumpy,” she cooed. “What have you done here?”
“New skin,” Lump said again. He laid the last piece on top of the pile. Before he could move to her legs and all the smooth skin they would give him, his mother’s hands touched his, stilled them.
“She was mine,” she said in a low voice. She squeezed his hand until he released the knife. Lump backed away from her, holding up his hands, knowing she would slash him with the knife again. Instead, she turned to the girl and stabbed her.
“Nooo.” Lump moaned. He didn’t want to kill her. “No, ma.”
“You made me do this, Lumpy,” she said. “You made me kill her. Just like you made me hurt you.”
Lump held up his hands. Mother stalked toward him, the knife gripped in her fist. He backed away from her, knowing she would slash him again. He covered his face. The knife bit into his palms. He cried out. It bit into his wrists. She slapped his hands away and cut into his face again, reopening the wound from the week before.
Lump’s tears blinded him. His mother kept slashing. The knife kept biting and slicing. He sharpened it so well. Blood gushed from his hands and wrists, from his face, blinding him and burning his eyes, mingling with his tears. He slid to the ground.
“Ma,” he moaned. “No.”
Mother crouched in front of him. “You did this to yourself,” she said. Her teeth clenched. She pulled her arm back to slice at him again, but Lump lunged forward. He wrapped his hands around her neck and squeezed. The knife dripped to the ground as her fingers clawed at his around her throat. Her eyes popped wide. She struggled for breath. He squeezed and squeezed until he felt the bones in her neck break. She stopped struggling. He let go and she fell to the ground in a heap.
Lump picked up the knife. He hummed the tune he made up on his violin as he finished skinning the blonde woman. Then he skinned his mother.
Lump carried his violin and a burlap bag dripping with blood through the forest to the edge of town.
Juilliard would take him now that he had new skin.
