I looked like a young man with
fair skin. I noticed that I stood with an almost imperceptible
hunch in my shoulders which I promptly tried to straighten out.
After a couple of attempts I was able to stand up straight. I made a mental note to myself and my borrowed mind to keep my
shoulders back and my head held high.
Once that was accomplished I looked at the rest of myself.
When I had removed the hooded jacket, I had also removed the
shirt I wore underneath it. My body looked like it had been
ravaged by an army of angry centipedes. London had made no
attempt to hide the scars that were crudely wound from the top of
my chest around and scattered about my torso. My mind was
screaming at me to tear my eyes away but I refused. This was one
thought I wouldn’t take into consideration. I had to look at myself.
I had to take in all the scars and careless stitching she had done to me to remind myself that escaping was the right thing to do. But
it also started to form a new emotion inside of me. It wasn’t the
pain she had made sure I was in a constant state of and it wasn’t
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the fear that I had allowed myself to feel every time I heard her
voice, saw her face, or listened to her working. My body started
to shake and my fists clenched. I knew what this emotion was. It
was the same one that had taken over her whenever I asked her
too many questions.
It was anger and it was powerful.
I pulled at the drawstring on the pants I had been wearing and
let them drop to the ground, standing in front of the mirror naked.
While powerful and defined, my legs too were covered with
malicious, cruel scars. There was one patch on the left side of my leg that looked like it had been stretched too far as if she didn’t have enough skin to work with, which slightly exposed what I
looked like on the inside. I turned slightly and got closer to the mirror again to take a better look. Since the sun had been steadily rising I was able to do a better inspection.
Surprise almost over took me for a moment when I realized
that she had used bone in my construction which shown slightly
through the side of worn skin. I scoffed. Maybe London wasn’t as
adept at perfection as she thought she was. Leaning down I
touched the open wound and felt a small wheel that kept clicking
back then forward almost as if in a panic and the bone. More parts to remind me constantly of my falsehood. Standing up to my full
height I gathered myself to be around six feet tall. The body she
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had constructed for me was strong, even though it bore the labors
of her work.
I turned my body away from the mirror and looked over my
shoulder. My back was the same. The twisted scarring from the
front of me lead all the way to the back down my body and
stopped below my calves.
London knew what she was doing by making sure that I kept
myself clothed all the time. She knew and rightfully so, that I
would never have ventured out into the world looking as I did.
I grabbed my pants from the floor and pulled them up, tying
the string as tightly as I could. I walked back to the cot where I had left the hooded jacket and pulled it angrily over my head.
Soon I would have to find a lighter material than this because the warmth from the morning sun was starting to drift in through the
broken windows.
Go downstairs and string something together, the voice inside
my head said. That wasn’t such a bad idea since the night that I
had awoken screaming in agony as London tore pieces of me
apart and put me back together, I had watched the motions of her
hands so I had some kind of idea how the binding should go. It
was also a good thing I taught myself how to do this in case I
started falling apart, I’d be able to sew the viable pieces back on.
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The sound of my footsteps echoed as I went down the first
flight of stairs. I was delighted in that simple thing that I’m sure most take for granted because I was used to the