Under the Knife

The call from the boutique Beverly Hills surgery center came as another shock. Crystal, claiming ongoing “dysphoria” from her “accident,” had scheduled and undergone a full suite of aesthetic enhancements. She sent pictures, of course.

This time, when Jennifer surfaced, it wasn’t during a scene. It was in a quiet, opulent recovery room. The **** were softer, a hazy cloud of painkillers, but the pain was a deep, pervasive ache.

She felt heavy. Unbalanced. She lifted a trembling hand to her face. Her fingers traced the smooth, tight skin of her cheeks, the unnaturally plump feel of her lips. She looked down at the pristine white bandages swathing her chest, which felt swollen and alien, a weight that pulled at her muscles. More bandages circled her hips, which ached with a deep soreness.

A mirror on the wall opposite her bed beckoned. With monumental effort, Jennifer pushed herself up and shuffled towards it, the IV pole rattling beside her.

The woman in the reflection was a stranger. It was her face… but not. The gentle lines around her eyes, the ones Donny said he loved, were gone, stretched smooth. Her lips were a cartoonish, bee-stung pout. Her blonde hair was now longer, with expensive platinum highlights. And her body… the soft, familiar curves Donny had held for twenty years were gone, replaced by the sharp, exaggerated silhouette of a centerfold. Large, round breasts strained against the surgical bra. Her waist was nipped in, her hips widened.

It was a parody. A gross, plastic enhancement of the motherly form she’d known. Jennifer didn’t scream. She just stared, a silent tear cutting a path through the residual foundation on her cheek. This was her prison now. Not just a body shared with a stranger, but a body the stranger had remodeled into a garish monument to herself. Jennifer Connors was being erased, from the inside out and now, from the outside in.