Prodigal Blues

"I am sorry," she said.  "But I had to take that out for just a minute.  It is so uncomfortable sometimes.  I put it back because it is not easy to understand me when I do not have it in."

"Okay…?" I said, almost nodding but then—as False-Face pressed the gun closer—deciding against it.

"You seem very nice," Rebecca said, then unbuttoned the top three buttons of her off-white blouse.  The flesh across her chest was badly scarred, but as ugly and painful-looking as it was, it seemed like a scab on a knee compared to the coarse mass of  misshapen tissue that clung where her left breast had once been; she seemed to blush—it was impossible to be sure—as she reached down into the sports bra and removed the expertly-shaped foam-rubber replacement.  She laid it next to the prosthetic nose, then picked up a jar of cold cream from the floor.  "I have to go into the bathroom and scrub the rest of the base off.  Will you excuse me?"

"Of course."

She looked at False-Face.  "I think you should be nice to him."

"I think you need to let me worry about him."

"Okay, then."  She gave me a little wave—her wrists, like Denise's, were encircled with bruises and scrapes—then turned away; that's when I saw the thumbnail-sized and shaped scar at the base of her neck.  Had Grendel scorched her with a lighted cigar, laughing while she squirmed and whimpered and smelled her own flesh burning?

Rebecca went into the bathroom—I could see my pants and underwear draped over the shower rod—and closed the door.

In the corner, Thomas had stopped crying and was singing to himself again.  I recognized the tune, I knew I did.  But from where?

"Can I take mine off now?" asked Arnold.

"You may," replied False-Face.  Then, to me:  "A grammatical mistake like that would leave us bleeding from the rear for three days."  The prosthesis of his upper lip was coming farther loose.  He blinked, then used the index and middle finger of his free hand to press it back into place; it held for the moment, but it wasn't going to last:  he was perspiring too heavily underneath the makeup.  His wrists were bruised, as well; I didn't have to look at Arnold's or Thomas's to know theirs would be just the same; at some point all of them had been handcuffed too tightly for a very long while.

"What do you want from me?" I asked False-Face.

"Your help."

"I might be willing to discuss it if you'd get that gun out of my face."

"I have heard that before.  The last man who said that to me then tried to take this gun away.  I killed him.  I shot him three times in the face and twice in the throat.  And to my everlasting regret, Denise saw him die."

So he'd killed Grendel in order to rescue her.  I couldn't blame him for that.  I might even have admired him for it if I hadn't been so fucking scared.

"I forgot my towel," said Arnold, then called out:  "Rebecca?  Could you throw out a towel for my face?"

"Must I remember everything?"  The bathroom door opened and a folded white towel sailed out, landing on the bed.  Arnold mumbled something under his breath, then said:  "Could someone please fix it for me?"

False-Face sighed, then shoved the gun into the back of his pants and crossed over to the bed, where he unfolded the towel, lay it flat, whispered something to Arnold, then stepped away.

Arnold was holding his full-face mask by the corners with both hands.  A thin layer of latex coated his actual face.  After gently placing his mask onto the towel, he peeled away the latex—which had been applied over sheets of plastic-wrap used to further protect his skin.

I felt the breath catch in my throat.

Arnold's real face was both horrifying and beautiful; Grendel had scarred every inch of his features with tremendous care, even skill; I knew without having to ask what this was meant to convey, because Grendel—whoever he'd been—had studied the art of Ta Moko; I'd written a paper on it in college.

Ta Moko was a method of facial scarring practiced by Maori warriors; the free-flowing, blue-black geometrical patterns were intended to convey many meanings:  they identified chiefs and social groups, symbolized aggression and ferocity, and—not least of all—disguised the wearer's age.  However, the most important function of the moko was to mark a person's individuality; some chiefs used their moko as a signature on land treaties with Europeans.

Flowing lines covered Arnold's forehead, each of them melting downward into the others until the configuration formed an arrow point above the bridge of his nose; his cheeks were covered in fractal-like whorl patterns of shapes-within-shapes-within-shapes, some of them circular, others elongated; these ran at downward slants, mirroring the angle of his cheekbones, until branching off onto his upper lip; there they intersected and passed to the opposite side of his face, turning downward via the jaw again, and meeting in the direct center of his chin where they became four perfect circles, overlapping so that a fifth was formed in the middle.

What made the scars even more unique was that Grendel had not used the traditional Maori method of coloring the scars with dark juices taken from indigenous berries; he'd employed some kind of bleach:  the scars were a startling shade of deep off-white, giving Arnold's face the look of someone who'd walked into a spider's web that was made from human cartilage.

"Do they hurt?" I heard myself asking.

He shrugged.  "Not as much as they used to.  The ones on my body still hurt a lot sometimes."  He looked at me and tried to smile but didn't quite make it.  "I have them everywhere."  He pointed to his back, his arms, his legs… and his crotch. "Everywhere."

"I'm so sorry."

"What for?  You did not do it."

"I only meant—"

"Your sympathy is a little late for any of us," said False-Face.  "So if you could just keep it to yourself, we would all feel better."

I glared at him.  "I wasn't being condescending."

"Yes, you were.  You just did not know it.  Which I find is the case with most pretty people."

"I'm not pretty."

"You are in comparison to us."  Then he laughed.  "Shar-Peis and Pit Bulls are pretty in comparison to us, now that I think about it."  He caught the expression on my face.  "Do not look at me like that.  This is not self-pity.  It is a simple statement of fact."

I waited a moment, then decided to let the subject drop.  "Do you have a name?"

"Yes, I do."

I waited, then waited some more, and finally said:  "This is usually the part of the conversation where the other person introduces themselves."

"Is that so?" he said, knocking on the bathroom door.  "Rebecca?"

"What?"

"Is everything all right?"

"I am trying to pee, if you do not mind.  What do you want?"

"Are his pants and underwear dry?"

"Since my arms are not five feet long, I ca

"Told you she was in one of her moods," said Arnold to False-Face.  "But do you listen to me?  No, you do not.  I am just Arnold, who everyone thinks talks to himself."  He looked at me.  "I do talk to myself, sometimes, but mostly it is just that no one listens to me when I try to tell them something."

"Fine," said False-Face.  "From now on you can do all the talking."