Five Days (Draft 1) by Susan Mayer
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Faunus™ is a revolutionary new natural product brought to you exclusively by MaNatura. Made from the secretions of the faunus freshwater snail, its transformative qualities are guaranteed to firm up sagging skin. Your fine lines, wrinkles and blemishes will vanish in only 5 days! Apply it today and count the days to a new you. Day 1 I’d practically skipped home from the market, I was so excited. Stupid, I know, but when you’re 48 and back on the dating carousel, age is definitely the enemy. I could still feel a prickle of shame at handing over a week’s wages for such a tiny jar. Still, in another four days I will look half my age – and that’s worth any cost. Looking at my wrinkles in the bathroom mirror, I smiled. I did! I actually smiled at my cr y blotchy sagging reflection. Somewhere beneath the surface, beneath nature’s vandalism, I could still see my young twenty-something face. In less than a week, that face would be back on top. Up yours, nature! I unscrewed the lid. It had a strange evocative perfume – not unpleasant and not synthetic, but difficult to pinpoint. It smelled of wetness and darkness and hollowness. Like being inside a cave. The directions said to apply the facemask just before bedtime, using the entire contents with the enclosed applicator. Then leave it on for the whole five days, allowing it to fully work its magic. Genius in a jar. The gel was gloopy, transparent and kind of spongy. It was bound to be a bit unusual though, considering it contained the concentrated secretions of a hundred and fifty snails in every pot. I slathered it over my face and neck, covering my lips, and nudging it as close to my eyes as I dared. I used every last drop, wishing I had more to cover the rest of my body. The gel was gravity-defying! It didn’t slide or dri or move at all – instead it set quickly, like firm jelly. When I lay back in bed, careful not to smear the illow, I thought about how I’d almost missed the little stall at the busy pop-up market today. Set back a little from the main route, I must have walked past it at least twice without noticing it. It was just sheer luck that the Faunus pot fell off the stall when it did and came rolling towards me.
Day 2 I must’ve gone to the mirror at least a dozen times every hour. Pointless really, as the facemask had now gone an o aque grey colour, and I couldn’t actually see my own skin beneath it. I dabbed at it lightly with my finger. It felt a little tighter on my skin, a bit like dried glue. There was definitely something exciting going on under there: my whole face was tingling with active stimulation, like space-dust on the tongue. I decided there and then to organize a school reunion. Becky Akhtar’s clique would just implode with jealousy when they saw how young I looked, and there was no chance any of them would have got their hands on Faunus; the guy on the stall, Lou, said that it’d only just come on the market. 2
Lou wasn’t the usual kind of erson you’d ex ect to sell beauty roducts. I’ve seen many an Avon lady in my time, and none of them have ever had rectangular pupils - like a little black ‘no entry’ sign in the eyes. These new contact lenses! I’m all for self-expression, but why would you want to look like a goat? He was wearing a strange head scarf too, which seemed to be covering two fat dreadlocks growing from the top of his head. Maybe it was a religious thing. By contrast, his suit was impeccably dapper. Really suave and stylish, and made of a fine silky fabric that I’d felt an overwhelming urge to stroke. I managed to resist. But boy, was it tempting. The only other product on his stall was Faunus Lite; a skin conditioning gel also made from snail secretions. They were obviously on to something here with the snail thing. I asked Lou about the difference between the two identical looking jars, apart from the price (the Faunus gel was five times more expensive!) He explained that the gel is secreted when the snail sustains damage to its shell. If it is slightly cracked, a low potency gel is produced to fix it. However, when the shell is thoroughly broken, which effectively kills the snail, it secretes in its death throes, an abundance of highly concentrated gel which has unbelievably potent skin repair qualities. Lou offered me the choice: a lesser, but still expensive gel, which would probably take up to ten years off my appearance, without any torturous snail death. Or: a stupidly expensive gel, containing the trauma-induced secretions of one hundred and fifty snails, which was guaranteed to firm up my skin and eradicate all wrinkles quickly and permanently. Why was he even asking? They’re only molluscs. We eat meat, don’t we? To me it was a no-brainer. Day 3 When I woke up I couldn’t o en my eyes. My eyelashes seemed meshed together. I touched them and could feel that the upper lashes were stuck to the gel on my lower lash line. Only the gel wasn’t a gel anymore. It had dried and hardened, like clay. That definitely wasn’t on the information leaflet. I scratched and picked at it, thinking it would come away like a scab, but I may as well have been scratching at metal. I felt a yawn building up, and that’s when I realised I could hardly move my face. I called Fiona on speed-dial. My lips were stuck in a slightly parted position, but she could just about understand me. ‘Wash it off!’ she said, for about the fifth time since she’d got here. My sister was very ‘no nonsense’. I shook my head, braced myself, and finally let her see the receipt. Once she’d calmed down about the rice, she checked the recei t for some contact details. Nothing. She went online to look them up. Again, nothing. Not a single mention anywhere about a product that claims to remove every single wrinkle in only five days, and nothing about the company either. I let Fiona help me walk blindly to the bathroom. It was clear, after about ten minutes of hot towels and scrubbing, that the product wasn’t coming off. Deep down inside, a tiny remainder of stubborn hope that I hadn’t been du ed, was glad. Maybe this is just what’s meant to happen! Maybe the product and company are so new that the internet hasn’t got wind of them yet. 3
‘Maybe you should go to hos ital.’ said Fiona, the voice of reason. ‘Imagine if you’d sle t with your mouth closed.’
Until they knew more about the product, the doctors were keeping me in an isolated ‘tro ical diseases’ unit. A bit over the to , I thought, but at least I could see again; they’d managed to snip through my eyelashes. I hadn’t a lied any Faunus to my u er eyelid, so I could blink too. In the evening, just to be on the safe side, they gave me a plastic insert to keep my mouth open, and coated my eyelids with a barrier film. Tomorrow they would get the test results back and then they’d work out how best to remove the Faunus. As I drifted off, I could feel the product working on my face. A tingling, itching, almost effervescent feeling, while on the surface the facemask was cool, rough and inert. My tears trickled over it like lava over bare rock. Day 4 Fiona was waiting for me when I woke up from the anaesthetic. It took me a moment to come round. I touched my face; it was smooth now, like slate, and just as hard. She said they hadn’t been able to remove it; the Faunus had fused with the muscle tissue attached to my skull. Fiona looked grim as she passed me a mirror. I gasped. The Faunus had darkened even more to a matt gunmetal grey threaded through with veins of copper brown. The beauty of it was lost on me. Then she held up a picture of a snail. It was a faunus and its shell was identical to what was on my face. I couldn’t even begin to contem late it. I felt a tremor in my arms. When I looked down, my whole body was shaking. I heard a constricted howling scream and saw Fiona lunge at the emergency button. Then I realised the screaming was coming from me.
The sedative made me feel woolly and distant, but I could still understand what everyone was saying. The police had made extensive enquiries, but not one single trader had seen either Lou or the Faunus stall. They’d all said that the place I’d described was just piled with empty fruit crates and had a goat milling about amongst them. Stallholders often brought animals to the market; they attracted custom. So, no-one had thought it the least bit unusual.
Day 5 It must have been the smell that woke me. Dank, damp, subterranean. So strong I felt flooded with it. I reached up to touch my nostrils. My fingers found only the smooth curve of the shell. Then, both hands were fumbling over the carapace, searching for any recognisable feature. But the Faunus had grown into a solid level mask, over my mouth and eyes, covering the entirety of my face. It had spread down my neck and was almost covering my ears. A 4
swell of panic rose up from my gut and I called out. I made no audible sound. The shell had muted me. I felt a hand on my arm. ‘Evelyn, I am Doctor Munro. I am monitoring your situation. You are absorbing oxygen through the shell, but it becomes difficult when you are distressed. Please try to remain calm.’ There was a knock at the door. ‘One moment lease.’ I heard her walk away and talk to someone, but they were speaking very quietly. I caught odd hrases: ‘harness it’, ‘military a lications’, ‘unlimited funding’. The doctor returned. ‘Evelyn, this morning we made a small crack in the shell which roduced a substance that was able to heal the crack within minutes. We also know that the hard outer layer has no nerve endings, similar to finger nails. In order to make you better, we need to look at what this substance is beneath the shell. If you agree with this, lease raise your hand.’ I hesitated a moment, wondering if Fiona was still here. ‘Evelyn? Do you understand?’ I raised my right hand. ‘Good. Thank you for your permission. We have a government advisor here who has promised you will receive all the latest cutting-edge treatments available to fix any disfigurement. Plus, any additional cosmetic treatments you want! Absolutely anything you’ve ever dreamed of, completely free of charge: boob job... stem cell therapy... anything. To help you in your recovery.’ I wasn’t sure about this. I couldn’t think straight. Where was Fiona? I waved my hand and mimed writing. If they brought me a pen and paper, I could ask them. ‘Yes, of course, Evelyn. Don’t worry. Your sister can sign all the documents for you. We will begin pre-op immediately.’ I waved my hands frantically, but she must’ve already turned away. There were footsteps, receding, and hushed voices. I strained to hear. A door creaked open. As they left, the only words I picked up were: ‘until it’s thoroughly broken.’ The door creaked again as it swung back. There was a moment’s silence. Then it clicked shut.
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