Immortal Skin
GENETIC LOTTERY
My skin was always a point of discussion amongst the kids at school. My skin wasn’t pale or greenish, I had eyebags but they weren’t the colour of the night sky, and I wasn’t cold-blooded like they expected undead species to be. It was unique because people never seemed to pinpoint just what I was. I usually got called a werewolf or a sun elf with malformed ears but never a vampire with the spirit of a firefly in daylight.
Public schools in Masadam-Yae kept the same crowds of about fifty students a grade and although your friend group fluctuated by class, you got to know everyone and their faces, their backgrounds, their quirks; they all became normal. In school, I was normal.
Even when puberty played the genetic lottery on my behalf. At home, however, everything went downhill. Suddenly the normalcy and freedom I enjoyed as a kid became a shackled coffin filled with medication and water — which doesn’t taste bad, the humans truly make wondrous things — and a promise of a better life.
We tell love-stricken people not to chase a broken heart. I think we should tell confidence-stricken people not to chase shattered skin.
SINS MOUNTAINS
I don’t remember my first bumps. Or my first pimples. Or my first popping sprees. It’s not that I have a bad memory, but rather, it became so repetitive that its origins became trivial. Why do I need to remember these olden times of standing in the mirror and trying to scar my back to pop a pimple? Or the itchy burn of rubbing alcohol across my face?
For a while, I had a snappy nightly routine. I bathed quickly, dried quickly, put on medication on my face, back, and shoulders as prescribed, then I rubbed lotion on the rest of my skin and dressed. All in about thirty minutes. It didn’t stop there. I was an early bird: I went to bed at sunset in my sparkly red coffin and woke up before the sun to get ready for school.
I look back in a faint regret and an attempt to go back to those times. I was more productive and more inspired to be productive. I didn’t dwindle in my head or on my skin like I do now. I believed that I could get rid of my acne and have a solid life.
I’d look back and say that I was naive, but in fact, I think it was more hopeful. It was a goal that I hoped to achieve and I’m happy that my younger self had good goal-setting standards even if she couldn’t get the hang of it in school.
I remember the year before the pandemic, sitting in my human chemistry class, and arguing with my friends about who had the worst acne. Whose skin was the most messed up. Who was stressed the most about being ugly.
My friends reassured me. They said I barely had anything, no new pimples, no new breakouts, just skin about as dead as I am that would fade over time. I specifically remember my tall, sun elf friend Afiyah, as she sighed, annoyed with our bickering and remarked, in about as many words, “with or without your skin, you’re beautiful. Stop worrying about something only skin deep.”
The theory of our lands is the Supercontinential Theory. It states that at first, our home planet, Terre, was comprised of one continent named Aphasa Sins. All of our ancestral species met there years ago, in the very centre where the Sins Mountains would’ve stood sharp, and divided each continent amongst each other.
To my ancestor, the vampire with the golden skin and ripples of bumps, standing awkwardly amongst the group, trying to fit in with the visibly more deathly vampires; I’d like to talk. I need to know how you saw the world. I need to know if it was skin-deep.
GRANITE MINES
Karma is certainly real. It swipes back and it swipes fast. I don’t think I’d have time to dodge a swing from karma. She’s not hesitant and she hits hard. Once she starts, she’s relentless until the tides have evened out.
I remember going to my skin doctor, a ghastly old troll with a heart of rainbow crystal and glass, when I began to have strange spots and rings on my skin. The rings were rough and covered my belly, especially on my right side. But I couldn’t understand these patches and rings because they couldn’t be what my sister thought they were. They never burned! I was more curious than I was frightened by the prospect of them.
That day, in the large treehouse office, I remember joking about my sister’s eczema. Now there karma was, only minutes later, swinging the jokes right back in my face as my dear troll dermatologist laughed and said I just had some eczema.
She didn’t necessarily stop there however.
The first time I genuinely cried about my skin was when my arms had become infected with eczema. There were patches amongst patches of rough, itchy, flecks of skin that flared up when touched by water. They reminded me of the abandoned granite mine in the far west. Layers upon layers of streaky reds drowning out the pale flesh.
I hated every inch of it. I wore long sleeves much more frequently, disregarding the weather or the conditions of the place at the time. I wore long sleeves when the sky was blue and the sun was at a standstill in the middle of it. I wore long sleeves when the faint smog ran uphill from the nearby city and covered my evening in orange sweat. I wore long sleeves when the snow was laid out to my knees and above.
My sister tried to brush it off for me. Her yearly experiences with eczema meant that she was used to seeing the patches, to feeling the burn. But she understood how I felt as well and she took a sensitivity to it. I’m sure she fixed my sadness up with a hug, some warm blood, and bone marrow.
In hindsight, it reminded me that I wasn’t this all-confident, uncaring skin beast. I had negative feelings about my skin and I could express them in a way that I absolutely loathed but happened anyways. The care from my sister truly helped me. The relatability of our differing yet shared experience is what tied us together more.
I think our ties are much stronger than those that tie the entrance to the mines shut. I suppose it can be tested.
COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE
Science says that masks give you acne. Cool and all, but masks actually give me a confidence boost. The pandemic made me look at myself and accept that I might be well and truly hideous. But it also made me remember that if I accepted people by face value, I’m only worth my skin. I care less about it now.
But masks make me feel good. I can mouth lyrics to a song or give a soft smile to something I like or just straight up ignore people. If I can’t hear them, they don’t exist, correct? When I’m on the bus, I live by that proclamation.
And yeah, they weigh my nose down and make it a little bit harder to breathe when running so my lungs fill up with blood and I cough more, alongside the unwanted soggy mask when it’s too humid and you’re breathing too hard. But what’s a good omen without a bad one? They say beauty is pain and masks are gorgeous.
Don’t forget that people are creative. The other day, on the train of course, I saw a dragon-born human with a frilly poppy pink mask that also had a translucent piece that came down to their chest. There was a popular faeri mask that was covered in real foliage and due to their ability to naturally keep plants alive, the flowers were always in full bloom. The golems had a mask made of layers of obsidian that they could edge into their skin and make it look like it was a part of their body.
The popular vampire mask was one decorated with little metal coffins along its top edge. The coffins bounce off of the fabric when we move. I have one as well but I don’t wear it that often. I think I look great in medical masks anyways.
This covering of my skin, although people may say it’s counterproductive and I actually don’t have any confidence, there’s a sense of beauty with not seeing someone’s whole face that I associate my confidence with. Masks make people have to look deeper inside. They can’t take you at face value because there’s so much face missing. They can’t be skin deep, if much of the skin is covered. They have to go deeper. That is where I find my confidence.
I remember first-year drama class, where we studied the art of commedia dell’arte, a somewhat improvised drama form where you take on a mask and that corresponds with the character. You physically become them. Somehow, putting on the mask and becoming someone else was very liberating, it made me confident.
It must’ve, considering I did the play-pretend weep where you bawl your eyes out loudly in the centre of the stage with your knees on the floor. Without the mask, I would not have had the confidence to throw my dignity away and have fun. I think it works here too.
They may be baby steps but I look forward to a day where my acne, my eczema, and my scars from both don’t matter. But I got time. I’m not going anywhere until I become a multi-centurion vampire like my grandmother.
Until then, I’m going to play the role of the pedrolino. I might be funny enough.
— Heleza Vavelgeite
