Replacement Scars by Christopher S. Bell
Shorter hair now like right before the divorce when he barely noticed the highlights. She loves how it glimmers, strutting with a faint migraine, forcing cold licks from the cone, grinning in a broken sugar rush while cycling face filters. A puppy today, then maybe a cheetah tomorrow. It used to be she’d Photoshop every pixel, eliminating drips of sweat or the misjudgment of gloss. He’d glare at frames atop a shelf of her books and still find something off about his wife. They’d only learned to live with each other in the dark, allowing each shift in the mattress the courtesy it deserved.
The likes are slow this Wednesday as she swipes past duds, waiting for her receipt. The smell of Piko Pao turns her insides glassy, each dip in the hot sidewalk clanging ingredients together like the crystal windchime he’d found at the rest stop. She’d returned every gift from that expedition except the blue artic wolf XL tee; each cotton fiber stretching past her knees for all subsequent winters.
It wasn’t common to dwell on those pieces inevitably left behind. She’d burned quite a few, giving even more away, and only selling those with blind traces of value for far less than their worth. She’d started watching doctor shows again, sometimes crying or masturbating depending on which point she’d reached in the season. Finales were harder, but premieres carried just enough resolution to remind her of what good remained in the world.
Today, she doesn’t feel anything when one of the main cast gets killed off. He’d worn out his welcome weeks earlier, stretching her patience into oblivion with boyish smirks and close-up torso shots. Often she hates how mainstream media makes her feel like a boring heterosexual; the credits rolling to a bellow in her gut. There were supposed to be leftovers, but the gurney rolled and she chewed pods until it was all gone.
A ding pulls her from another anticipated coma. “You gonna watch me under the bridge tonight?”
Shit. Fucking Bryce. He’d reconfigured her slump, but only by punching her in the face. With her husband, it was always sports; overpriced ticket packages, licensed uniforms and the subsequent grease stains. When she’d gotten away, finding a distant hobby was worse than all the advances from their mutual friends. An improv class made her weary of common human interaction. Her stand-up jokes were either about the ex or her mother’s text message etiquette. What’s worse is that they were all better at it than she was. Every syncopated family man or chubby nerd had her on the ropes.
“I totally forgot, but yeah, I’ll be there.”
She rises from the couch, a mess of nerves before repeating his mantra. “Nobody breaks you down but you.” His voice blooms in her cranium as she recalls the rush of his glove grazing her left cheek; that thick stench of manufactured rubber protecting her mug before a purge of adrenaline, better than any rollercoaster or fuck she’d ever had. He’d taught her to fight back, while the class watched her rearrange each brick, some at a loss, others offering support in the parking lot after the bell. Remedial, intermediate, expert and finally private classes every Thursday. Bryce would be a plush lump of clay if she didn’t show; gritting insecurities with each breath, holding the bag and pretending like that night didn’t represent the epitome of his craft.
A shower for the day’s sweat, then that black top borrowed from Sue. Dye the lips red and let the bangs do all the hard work. She’d only viewed a few tutorials, unsure if eyeliner junkies could be trusted. Just because something was tested didn’t mean it fit the definition of who she was, which was never the exact person she was trying to be, but maybe the kind of individual occasionally perceived a certain way by strangers with potential.
“It must be nice to care so little while pretending to care so much,” the driver remarks, after observing her stats.
“Don’t place all the blame for who you are on who you think I am because of what I do,” she replies, defensively.
“I can tell you this. You ain’t no goddamn hero or nothing. This place was plenty shitty before your whole generation came along and took all the credit for pulling us from the brink. Maybe we wanted to watch the stars fall from the sky.” He rambles for a bit longer, while she tunes out, letting beats fill her head from the backseat to the street, then down an overgrown path underneath suspended cement.
The crowd is just a few loners and dead-Whigs passing eye droppers around the cage. Bryce is already inside, pacing between corners. His competition rocks blue and purple streaks with dark red sideburns, like a ship void of destination. “Ladies and bucks, put your samplers on full speed,” the announcer gargles through dangling frequencies. “This one’s gonna be a bludgeoned mind of a brawl! Sizzle, sizzle fry baby!”
At the bell, Bryce charges and tackles his opponent. They roll around in a frenzied stupor as the crowd shouts through symphonic filters, highs and lows echoing in a thick trash garden. She wouldn’t know what to say if somebody from work saw her, whether she could explain it all as outreach, or if these were merely the kind of kicks she needed to run playback through all of tomorrow’s conversations. They were piling up already, quandaries of air quality and tube supply, whether the nozzles were properly fastened, and if the shell above would hold through all of summer’s moistures.
Crack! Cold cocked in the knee cap, Bryce barely flinches, but the synthetics all but crumble from his pad. No one’s sure at first what they’re seeing, whether it’s programmed fog or the buzz. The delicate chrome of screwed in joints reflect sparkling neon. This isn’t a man in the cage, just another bag of parts fashioned for various dips in gravity. His opponent takes a step back, as Bryce howls into the air. “Yeah, so what, right? Fuck it! This is me getting a piece.”
It’s then they start throwing bottles and shaking the metal casing, growling for satisfaction; an end to the match. She watches for a little while as he lets them claw at his form, sticking fingers through the cracks so the kids can chop off a souvenir. She’d never considered Bryce the type to lie about who he was, but it’s certainly more common these days. There isn’t much of a vetting process for interactions, every word worth tallying if only to better keep score.
“Are you sure someone like you should be out this late? Won’t they be worried about you tomorrow when you’re busy worrying about everyone else?” Another driver with no sense of subtlety.
“Nobody’s busy worrying about much around here,” she grins. “We’ve reached our peak.”
“It’s all downhill then, right? Isn’t that what they say?”
“They can go fuck themselves.” And with that she only considers which blend of vapors will put her to sleep.
Christopher S. Bell is a writer and musician. His work has recently appeared in Alluvian, The Bookends Review, Saw Palm, and Quibble. His latest novel, Contemporary Disregard, will see release by year’s end. He currently resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.