Veilish and effete

There is a certain feeling you can get sometimes. It doesn't quite have it's own word yet. It's a bit of a niche word. I imagine Inuits or Germans or one of those cool cultures with words for all kinds of stuff we don't have words for have a word for it. Something so simple, so not-thought-of, but still so jarring and important to people. You've gone out all day; shopping, working, gallivanting through public places packed dense with people, then you get home to rest and you step in front of a mirror. And the whole time you had a spot of dirt on your cheek or a tuft of hair sticking up or piece of food in your teeth or any number of slightly embarrassing things that you wish you had been told about but hadn't. Then you begin to wonder. Were they just being polite and not wanting to fluster me? Had they not seen it? Maybe I'd gotten away with it all day. No, that can't be the case, it's a bit of a blunder. Of course they saw. Maybe they don't like me and it was a fun game to them to watch me walk around like a lost clown. And that is where your mind takes over and begins to ask questions it knows it will never get the answer to. If we had a word for that it would make the telling of this next part much easier.

Amber gets home from work and skips the bathroom entirely. The word we spoke about, this feeling, haunts her. Day in and day out she questions everyone around her. Their motives, their disposition, their resolve, all called in to question regularly. Not actively called into question, but in her mind, making it all the worse. And I suppose we don't have a word for this either, or maybe we do and I am just not as smart as I like to pretend, but there is another feeling that Amber has to deal with consistently that she cannot describe. Each day, after she comes home and notices herself in the mirror, questions run rampant through her mind for what seems like hours on end. Then after she finally calms down, after she finally regains her composure, she finds herself completely exhausted. Tired only from thought. The labors of cognition do not relent and are often more tiring than going for a run or lifting a dead body. There must be a word for that. What is the procedure for making new words? Eh, it matters not.

The reason Amber's case sticks out is because she has something on her face each day. Every single day of her life for years now. And nobody says a thing. Now this may not be wholly unusual. It may even be a common occurrence. But the substance of the disturbance is what makes Amber exhaust her mental capabilities. Maybe it's her pleasant demeanor, or maybe it's fear or something simple, but most people would have spoken up by now. Amber is different from most people though, in several ways. So each morning after she gets dressed, and does her makeup, and eats breakfast, and all that boring junk, she heads outside, and each day, people look directly at it and say nothing. And Amber questions things until she gets home. Maybe it's not there today. But she knows it is. And she steps in front of the mirror with her eyes closed. And she crossed her fingers and hopes that nothing is there, but deep down, she knows it will be. And when she opens her big blue eyes she is greeted with a blemish of otherworldly proportions. A horrific, pulsating, parasitic black sludge is splotched across her jaw.

From the corner of her mouth to her right ear and down to a part of her jaw weaves a sickening, tar-like glue. An abstract painting that was inspired by boiled oil and thrown on a bubbly canvas. It doesn't hurt, it doesn't grow, it just sits on her face and beats like a heart. Thumping and pumping and slowly heaving in and out. An unwelcome guest, at any rate.

Amber is running herself ragged trying to figure things out. Is it even real? Maybe she is having a mental breakdown? Surely someone would have said something by now. Surely a single person would have acknowledged such an unsightly mess of a face. Thus, here lies her dilemma. Dreading getting home every day because she knows her mind will place questions in front of her that she doesn't have answers for. She'll spend most of her free time pacing and wondering and not getting anywhere before she goes to sleep and wakes up the next day to do the same thing. It's a wonder she gets anything done in the first place.

Amber lost count of how long she has had this -thing- on her face. Does it even matter anymore? Not really, she surmises, and she steps out the door. It's been years now, she thinks, maybe it really doesn't matter. Nobody has said anything, so I shouldn't care. If it's not acknowledged then I can go on living normally, even with this eye-catching mess. She was thinking differently today and she didn't know why. But she didn't question it. Finally her heart was at rest. Something went off, something clicked in her that made her apprehension die down, made her fear roll away, made her days and nights productive. And this went on for a while. Amber was happy with things. Nobody said anything to her, and she didn't care. She became accustomed to having it, and likened it to an unsightly birthmark. I'll be all right after all, she thought. As it turns out, it doesn't matter at all, she thought.

A few days later Amber was jovially walking down the sidewalk. And by jovially I mean it. Overcoming a burden such as this was practically a windfall given to her directly by a God she didn't believe in, and it put a literal bounce in her step. So she goes on, bobbing down the sidewalk like some sort of cartoon character, and she passes two young men, two teenagers, who stare her down as she walks. She just smiles back and keeps on walking. Only teenagers can face situations like this with such brevity and clarity. One of them stops and turns to her after she has passed. “Hey lady!” He shouts to her, “You got some shit on your face!”