~ Short Story: The Plastic Surgeon. By Elda Oreto ~

SHORT STORY

 ~ The Plastic Surgeon ~

by Elda Oreto

James Sullivan looked at himself in the mirror every day of every week of every month of his long, sad life. That was his job, but it was also his greatest talent, his passion. 

He gazed at himself in the mirror, but he could not recognize himself. He had a repulsive face, like plastic. His appearance was disgusting. Small, dark blue eyes had settled into his face almost by accident. His gaze was dull and expressionless; his mouth was puffy, his lips bloated. His thin, small nose was erect in the middle of his face, wanton. 

His dyed dark-red hair cascaded from his half-bald head.

He did not like himself. ‘There is always something wrong—like something is missing,’ he thought to himself, ‘but today something is definitely wrong.’ He could not say what it was, but he kept checking and re-checking.

Then he raised his left hand and, with his fingertips, pulled up the skin on his forehead. He raised his right hand; he was holding a hypodermic syringe with a long needle. Inside the syringe was a green fluid. He aimed it at the corner of his eye and stabbed the needle there. 

“Ah,” he exclaimed in an effeminate voice.

He pressed the plunger of the syringe a little bit and pulled the needle from the corner of his eye. Then he stuck the needle into his face again, at several points, pulling at the skin and pressing the syringe, dispensing a little bit of green fluid from time to time, all over his face—always pulling at his skin and sticking in the needle. 

James was a famous plastic surgeon. Famous actors and actresses, singers and TV personalities from all over the world went to him for a special rejuvenation treatment—a treatment invented, proven and tested by James Sullivan on himself. He was considered a genius, a mentor for artists, a millionaire and then a billionaire, the owner of real estate in the most exclusive places in the world, from Malibu to Thailand. Always surrounded by twenty-year-old girls, he had celebrated seventy-five birthdays and could not remember whether he had been young once upon a time.

Yes, he had exhausted his life on his vocation. He had once not been so rich, and he’d had to do whatever he could to get what he wanted: success!

Over the last fifty years, he had performed over 25,000 surgical procedures on himself. 

A human doll, emasculated and ridiculous, he could always see something else to change.

But this day was a really special day. It was his birthday. 

He always felt a strange eagerness on this very special day, and he had always celebrated in an extreme, magnificent way. All the people he knew—celebrities, politicians, entrepreneurs, artists and models—would come to his palace in the countryside and would celebrate by drinking, taking lots of drugs and doing every fun thing that they could imagine. And there was free Botox for everybody. 

He would remain in his bedroom like an emperor, lying on his bed, surrounded by his five Pekingeses—DiDi, GiGi, FiFi, SiSi, LiLi—a Labrador, Juan, and a black cat, Polly. All the guests would come to him and hope that he would give them suggestions; he would answer with a labile and kind voice, smiling, playing, talking, chatting and answering messages on his three iPhones like the real idol and busy man that he was—giggling with everyone.

Every year had been a mega-party like that, but not this time.

James was scared today, and he could not believe that something like this could have ever happened to him. He was looking in the mirror, and what he saw was not his real self.  

There, in the mirror, was a doll: one of the dummies that someone could find in an old vintage store from the ‘50s. One of the puppets used by ventriloquists to frighten and amuse at the same time. 

He looked at the image of himself in the mirror, and he could not understand what was happening. It was probably the light pink fluid that he had used during his last surgery and that he had injected into himself—in all the principal veins of his body—to dry out all the fat from the tissue. Now he had to find a solution. 

But a strange feeling was growing in his chest. He had done something really wrong to himself, and now there was no going back.

Doctor Sullivan was a man of science; he did not believe in anything like spirits or ghosts or demonic possession. He was a man of logic. He believed in what he could see. Nonetheless, now he really doubted himself: was he going mad, or was he experiencing something similar to a magic spell? 

He had always thought that he could do anything that he wanted with his body. Now he began to think that he had definitely been wrong.

So what was going on?

In the meantime, the evil grin of the weird mask his face had become looked at him and moved its lips. It seemed it was saying something to him: “This is your last chance: Repent for what you have done to me. Repent and you will die in a peaceful and painless way.”

Doctor Sullivan answered, “I don’t want to die! My whole life is about keeping people forever young. It’s about giving eternal life and beauty. I cannot die! I will not die!”

The pale mask looked at the doctor through the mirror and said, “Ah! You fool! Those are your last words. Your destiny is written. There is nothing else you can do! Now your body will take its revenge, and it is its right to do so! You want to become an object, so you will have eternal life.” 

Having said that, the puppet in the mirror lapsed into silence. 

Doctor Sullivan was overcome. He could not stay seated, with his hands in his lap. “Oh, my God! No! What can I do to stop this? Please, tell me what should I do.”

The white, pale, grinning mask answered: “Ah! Now it is done. There is nothing else that you can do!”

“Please, help me! I changed my mind.”

“Can you reverse time?” said the dummy.

“Of course not! Nobody can do that,” answered poor Sullivan.

“So there is little that you can do. Your only chance is to carve human feelings into yourself and find the secret to mortality. It’s right there inside you, under your skin!”

The doctor set into motion straightaway and ran around his villa, across the seventeen rooms on the first floor, followed by all of his dogs, until he reached a small room, his private surgery cabinet, where he used to experiment by doing the most wild surgery on himself.

He went inside, followed by his lovely pets that were looking at him and wondering where all of his desperation was coming from. He gave himself a sedative so that he would not feel pain and grabbed a scalpel and forceps. He would peel his face off and remove the skin from all over his body. 

Later he would graft on new, fresh, young skin.

He started cutting along the edge of his face, all around the hairline of his fake hair—previously implanted during several surgical procedures—then down to the left ear and around his jaw and to the other ear, up to the point where he had started.

With the forceps, he grabbed the external flaps of his face near his ears and pulled outward; slowly the skin came away. He switched sides and started to pull outward from the top of his forehead and from his chin.

The thick mask came off, and James threw the skin away from himself. He looked in the mirror, and he could see the orbits of his eyes, his eyeballs coming all the way out and moving around and up and down. His silicone lips fell from his mouth, leaving a full, skeleton-toothed smile. He was all blood and muscle and nerve and bone. But he could not learn any secrets. 

Without a face, he also could not see any human expression but the grin of a skeleton.

He touched the muscles on his face and then stripped off the dressing gown he was wearing so that he was naked; he had to look inside himself. He sat on the surgical bed in a way that he had a full visual of his old, skinny body in the mirror.

James took the scalpel and started to cut a long vertical line from his chin to his penis. His skin opened up like that of a stuffed turkey; his entrails came out: intestines, stomach, bladder. His heart and lungs were still attached inside his chest. He needed to free them, too. 

So he extended his arms along the table of tools, selected a surgical saw and sawed at his ribcage. Slowly, all the organs started to push and come out; finally they burst out of his body and onto the floor, blood surrounding him.

The little dogs that had been waiting for their lovely owner to finish his work jumped up on their legs. Attracted by the smell, they licked up the blood on the floor and on the bed and on the legs of their beloved daddy.

But the more they licked, the hungrier they became.

Doctor Sullivan tried to turn them away with the scalpel and the saw. But there were more of them, and they were stronger, and soon they attacked his arms and his face. 

For over two hours, they ate the rest of poor Doctor Sullivan, and in the end only his heart remained.

It was still feebly beating, trying to survive. 

Outside, something was scratching at the door to get in; it was Polly, the black cat. The Labrador went to the door and opened it with his muzzle to let the cat in. Once inside, the black feline jumped on the table, and with a single little stroke of his paw, pierced the heart and ate it.

The next day, the news jumped from newspapers to websites to social networks. James Sullivan had committed suicide on his birthday. He was lonely and surrounded only by his beloved pets.