The Paper Man - Gallagher Lawson

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a single desperate motion, he flipped the light switch. It flickered several times, humming loudly, emitting a very dim glow. At first, it gave everything a milk chocolate overtone, and Michael could make out in the mirror, staring back at him, a familiar young man. Across his face, still frozen in the bland, impassive look his father had created for him, a jagged fault line now spread down his forehead and faded near his nose. His yarn hair still framed his face, but instead of being parted neatly to the side, it was a curly mass.

      When the light finally reached an antiseptic brightness that could burn any mold or soft-shelled insect, the true damage became clear. The entire upper right side of his face had been caved in, dented, as if a crater had exploded around his eye socket. The flesh-colored paint that made his skin had faded to a dusty rose and in many spots was completely gone so that he could see the newsprint underneath, a pulpy sinew of smeared words from ten years ago. While most people could recover from an injury—a bruise or a cut always healed on its own—his body had not been designed to heal itself. That was a kind of art beyond the powers of his father. In a frenzy, he removed his clothes and examined the rest of himself.

      His paper coin nipples: gone. His belly button: caved in, leaving a gaping tunnel to his innards. His paper coin roll penis: still fully intact and flaccid as usual. He moved his hands along his body and skin: dents, more dents, and occasional soggy spots. All of it was a close approximation of what he used to be. His elbow and knees: pins still between the segments of his arms and legs, except for the missing arm. He fingered his empty socket, hoping for any kind of physical pain, but of course, it didn’t register. The sensation caused was purely visual. In the mirror, he saw his reflection fade into the colors of the wall and tile for a moment before his shape defined itself again and returned to normal.

      This was how his body would be for the rest of his life. After the accident, when he had been rebuilt with paper, he’d at first imagined it would be temporary, even refusing to believe his father when he confessed that there was no going back. And now after ten years inside the paper cast, here he was, in a strange city, in a stranger’s home, a strange creature himself, disintegrating into something hideous.

      He no longer wanted to be alive like this. To be made of paper was bad enough; to be made of deformed, defiled paper would be unbearable. He considered sitting under the shower in the tub that was too small for him until he had melted away like a piece of soap. He was, in fact, reaching to turn on the water, when a phone began ringing, so loud it shook the toothbrush off the edge of the sink.

      In the kitchen stood the woman, her back to him, the phone held to her ear. Her hair was tied up, revealing an elegant neck.

      “Only one room is flooded,” she said in a hushed voice. “The same one every time it rains. Can you come tonight?”

      On the kitchen floor lay the fur cape. As a guest, he knew he should help keep things tidy, and so he crept into the room and with his one hand draped the fur onto the tabletop. But as he did this, one corner snagged under the foot of a chair, which squealed in surprise. The woman reeled around and dropped the phone to the floor. She squeaked like a mouse.

      Michael darted into the darkness of the hallway. The woman scrambled to untangle herself from the phone cord and then held the receiver back to her ear. “It was nothing,” she said. There was a long pause while she smoothed the hair around her forehead. Finally she added, “I saw a spider, that’s all.”

      She spoke for a few minutes, negotiating a time for someone to inspect the flooded room. Then she hung up, undid her bale of brown hair so that it cascaded over her shoulders, and stared at the fur on the table.

      From the hallway, he waited a long time before he said: “I’m sorry if I scared you.”

      She approached, but he stepped further away, past the pictures and back toward the bathroom.

      “It’s all right. Come out,” she said. He paused in the doorway, and she stopped before him, a silhouette against the light from the kitchen. She stepped closer. She was young, with tired eyes, and had a small mole on her jawline like a mushroom. Her frame was petite, and yet her posture made her stand as if she were much taller. A moment later, he noticed that he was touching his own face, tracing the dents around his eye socket and the torn edges of his cheek.

      “How is it,” she began, then hesitated. She rubbed her temples as if she was trying to break loose the thoughts that were jammed in her head. “I’ve never seen anyone like you.”

      “I wasn’t always like this,” he said quickly.

      “Will you be all right?”

      “I don’t know,” he said. He didn’t want to talk about himself. “Who was on the phone?”

      “The engineer. You’re not from the city, are you?”

      “I just got here, from the inland. Today, actually.”

      “What will you do now?”

      “Start over,” he said.

      “It’s not easy,” she said. “Just when you think things are fine, your life can change—like that.” She laughed so hard he thought she was laughing at him. She covered her mouth, stifling her trill of a giggle. When she recovered, she sighed and stared at the floor. “Today I lost my job, and I don’t know what I’ll do. All I think I can do is laugh at myself. Sorry.” She looked at him until he turned away. “How old are you?”

      “How old do you think I am?”

      “Why, with skin like that you must be a hundred years old!”

      He bowed his head.

      “Relax, it was a joke,” she said.

      “You’re not afraid of how I look?” he asked.

      “Why should I be?” She smiled and he found this very comforting.

      “I’ve fallen apart.”

      Before he knew what was happening, she was touching his dented eye socket and brushing her fingers across his cheek. He tried to stay still, but it was the first time in years that someone had touched his face. He retreated into the doorway.

      “I could fix you up,” she said.

      “You’ve already done so much for me,” he said. He wanted to say more, that he thought he would have died today if she had not rescued him, but he couldn’t shape the words in his mouth. Besides, he had seen the damage and knew he could not go back to how he looked before.

      “Don’t be silly. I’ll fix you. Then you can go your way. But you don’t seem prepared. Where are your things? Do you have any money?”

      His head sank, remembering the one thing he missed: his notebook.

      “Someone stole my money. A one-eyed man.”

      “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching to stroke his frayed head of yarn. “You poor thing.”

      He wanted to run away. He was tired of real people reaching out at him. But where could he go? Outside it was likely still raining.

      She asked, “Are you hungry?”

      He explained what he liked to eat: newspaper soaked in milk. This seemed to give her a new purpose. She went through the curtains that separated the kitchen from the drawing room, which was flooded, and climbed a set of stairs. He realized they were in a basement apartment, and the only window was at the top of the staircase. She returned with the evening edition of the City Mirror.

      “Look at that,” she said, pointing to the front page. A photo of a crowd of people was below a headline that said DEAD MERMAID CAUSES ACCIDENT.

      She used scissors that shined in the overhead light to chop up the newspaper. She shredded it into bits that she put into a bowl on the stove before adding a splash of goat’s milk. For herself, she made noodles with mushroom broth. Was this the source of the persistent fungal smell in the apartment? Through the

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