Skin Deep

Heath could hardly hear her over the roaring din of the crowded street. “You… work… world.” He struggled to keep up with her, elbowing his way through throngs of the drunk and happy, a crowd that she seemed to slip through unnoticed. He kept his eyes on her dark red ponytail as it swung back and forth, and forced his way to her side.

“What?”

She didn’t acknowledge him.

“Abbie. Come on, what did you say?”

She kept looking ahead as she replied, “Have you even been listening to me?”

“Well, it’s kind of hard when you’re trying to talk to me while bulldozing through a crowd of drunk people on a Saturday night.”

She shook her head. “It’s just… complicated, okay?”

“Come on. It can’t be that — Holy shit!“ An empty bottle of beer soared through the air straight for them. Heath dove to the side instinctively, knocking someone and their beer over in the process. He gasped as the bottle dove straight for Abbie’s face. He gritted his teeth in anticipation of the crack of glass on bone and the flying spurt of crimson. But neither came. There was no crack, no blood. Abbie didn’t even flinch. As the bottle fell within inches of her eye, she simply tilted her head to the left, the bottle soaring past her head and thumping into a guy’s chest.

Heath kept at her heels, looking back as the bottle’s unfortunate victim keeled over in pain. Abbie continued to wind her way down the crowded street, unfazed. “How the hell did you–?”

“Why do you care so much, anyways?” she asked.

Heath shook his head and turned his attention back to Abbie. “Well… because I do. What kind of question is that?” The crowd began to thin as they got further down the road, away from the bars and the nightlife, and Heath leaned in front of her, trying to look into her eyes. “I mean, what do you want me to say?”

“Nothing. I just…” She rubbed her eyes and slowed to a walk. “What is this? What do you want from me?”

Heath stared at her, his mouth agape. “Why are you asking me this? You know how I feel about you. You know I care about you. This has nothing to do with me wanting anything.”

The street was nearly empty, but he looked from side to side, trying to find a quiet, private place for them to talk. He spotted a dimly lit alleyway and pulled her towards it. She didn’t hesitate or fight his grasp, allowing herself to be led into the dull orange corridor. She kept her head down as he pulled her in front of him.

“Look. There’s something there between us. Call it chemistry, call it a spark, call it a feeling, I don’t care. Hey. Look at me.” Abbie tried to turn away, but he gently lifted her chin until they were looking eye to eye. “We could work. You know we could.”

She sighed. “But you don’t even know me.”

Heath stared at her in silence, her strong gaze never leaving his. His eye slightly twitched.

—

Heath and his older brother had this argument when they were younger. They would constantly watch movies and TV shows together and Heath adored it. It was how they bonded, he and his brother, how the two of them connected; not through sports or girls, but through sharing stories. Heath was always careful never to annoy his brother; he feared that if he did, his brother would simply refuse to watch anything with him anymore. But whenever they watched a story where one character would tell the other, “You don’t even know me,” Heath couldn’t help himself. He would howl in frustration.

His brother would scramble to hide the remote as Heath screamed, “What does that even mean?!” To Heath’s delight, his brother never reacted poorly. In fact, he seemed to get a kick out of it. At every one of Heath’s outbursts, his brother would simply laugh, shake his head, and punch him in the arm, feeling that that was sufficient enough communication to make Heath shut up and watch the movie. Adamant to make his point, though, Heath would wrestle his brother for the remote, pause the movie (the one act that truly annoyed his brother greatly) and stand right in front of the TV. Heath’s brother would roll his eyes, his whole head rotating along with them. Heath was never sure if his brother was being dramatic or just couldn’t move his eyes separate from his skull.

“It’s bullshit! It doesn’t mean anything!”

“Yes. It does,” his brother would reply. “You’re just too dumb to understand because you haven’t dealt with that kind of situation before.”

His brother would snatch the remote from Heath’s hands, throw him the meanest glare he could muster, and rewind the movie or show. Defeated, and perhaps too scared to continue his tantrum any further, Heath would plop back down next to his brother on the couch as the guy or girl reiterated that the other character just didn’t know them while the other stared back in disbelief, unsure of how to respond. Heath would scoff and mutter under his breath, “Just once I wish it meant that they were an alien or something.”

This would happen at least once a week since Heath started junior high, and every time, it was the exact same. One character wouldn’t know the other, Heath would interrupt, his brother would give him a bruise, and both characters would inevitably wind up declaring their undying love for one another. It was what they did.

As Heath got older, that line always lingered in the back of his mind. As he navigated his way through friendships and relationships, he always waited for that phrase to arise, for those words to suddenly make sense. They came up here and there, as they inevitably do when dealing with people who have some sort of past they want to hide from plain sight or with people who have a flair for the dramatic, but they never felt real to Heath, like they actually meant anything. “You don’t even know me” began to feel like a canned response, a thinly veiled attempt to deflect emotion or run away from a potentially vulnerable or uncomfortable situation. Heath always hated looking back on how he reacted to that line in movies when he was with his brother, but he began to feel like maybe he was always right, like maybe his kid brain somehow tapped into a secret of the universe that no one else was aware of. “You don’t even know me” wasn’t a grand declaration or an admission of dark secrets; they were just empty words.

And then he met Abbie.

He hadn’t known her very long. A month and a half, maybe two months had passed since they met, but already he could tell just how special she was. She didn’t conform to most standards, the way a lot of women typically do. She had a fashion sense that was hip without being monotonous, different without being weird. She had a passion for art and music with a taste that was eclectic and diverse, but she never belittled anyone for liking what they liked. And she had a beautiful sense of humor that was as specific and deliberate as it was broad and silly. She was his dream girl.

But Abbie also frightened him. They had met at a mutual friend’s party. Heath had spotted her across the room, standing against the wall and people watching. He didn’t think anything of her, at first. After going through so many breakups and uncomfortable situations, he had simply become jaded and manifestly uninterested in pursuing a relationship with anyone. She was another pretty face, nothing more. But something drew him to Abbie, something off. She seemed above everything, like she was studying a lower life form, trying to understand why the creatures live by the patterns they create and the mistakes they repeat. But she did it with a distant smile on her face, like she cared for and loved these creatures, low as they may be. It scared Heath, but it was also alluring, like a child’s desire to touch the pretty rainbow shimmers on a burning hot iron. He forced himself to talk to her, willfully ignoring the otherworldly look on her face, and once he got through his usual stammering, they hit it off immediately, much to his surprise. She was more normal than he expected, albeit in an extraordinary way.

The more they got to know each other, Heath came to see Abbie for her flaws and issues, as well. She was stubborn and could sometimes have a bit of a temper, but none of it was anything Heath couldn’t handle. It was only in times where Abbie was alone or thought no one was watching her that she became the observer again, quietly studying those around her, and it was in those moments when Heath would pull away. What was she doing? Was this even real? Was he going crazy? He hesitantly tried asking her about it once, but it ended in a bitter argument where names were called, insults were thrown, and both parties stormed out of a crowded restaurant. Heath never brought it up again, but it ate at him.

But it never changed how he felt about her. The more time they spent together, the more he simply wanted to be with her. And any chance he got to spend time with her, whether that meant going to a coffee shop or simply sitting at one of their apartments watching a movie, he leapt at the opportunity. There may have been secrets that she wasn’t telling him, but he didn’t care. He loved her. And he knew that she loved him, even if she wasn’t willing to admit it. He knew she probably had her reasons, but he couldn’t go on pretending that there was nothing there. She probably wouldn’t take to the idea well, but he had to do it. Besides, he would plan the whole thing out. He would take her downtown on Saturday night for dinner and drinks at her favorite little bar and grill. And after a couple drinks, when both of them were loose enough to be straight with one another, he would open up and she would admit her mutual feelings and it would be perfect and amazing and they would be together forever.

What could possibly go wrong?

—

Abbie stared at Heath as she waited for a response. He sighed and ran his hands through his hair, his eyes never leaving hers.

“No. I don’t know you. Not fully. I know there are things you haven’t told me, things you maybe are ashamed of or don’t want to relive. I get that. But there’s also a whole lot of you I do know. Like how kind and loving you are to everyone around you. How sweet and funny you accidentally end up being. How stubborn and heated you can get.” Abbie chuckled, her eyes starting to well up. “I know there’s a lot of you I don’t know. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to know.”

Abbie sniffled and wiped her nose. “Really?”

“Of course. I want to know everything about you. Just give me the chance.”

Abbie looked deeply into Heath’s eyes for what seemed like hours and Heath stared back, unsure of what was about to happen. He waited for her hand to slap his face, or a wad of spit to fling from her mouth into his eyes, or, hell, even a gunshot to break the silence, a bullet entering and exiting his abdomen, but nothing happened until she finally broke eye contact and looked up and down the dim alleyway. Satisfied, she nodded, rolled her neck, and said, “Okay.”

She took a deep breath and in the dim light seemed to pinch something on her forehead at the base of her hairline. Heath thought maybe she was picking at a pimple, but his eyes grew wide as her pinched fingers continued in a straight line through her hair and down the back of her skull. She grabbed both sides of her scalp and pulled, her hair the color of cabernet gradually coming apart down the center. Heath’s breath quickened as her fair skin was discarded, revealing an opalescent skin beneath. His heart pounded as all of the human features in her face were lost, replaced by shapes and textures that made no sense. The light may have been dim, but he didn’t need light to know that what he was looking at was not human.

His mind raced and suddenly everything made sense. Her actions. Her personality. The way she studied people. It was all coming together the longer he stared at her face, or what he assumed was her face, if this thing was even a “her” at all. And the longer he stared, the more he could feel his mind start to crack. There was no context for what he was looking at. It was simply shapes and forms impossible to comprehend. He had made a mistake. He wished with all his might that he could take it back, that he hadn’t taken her down this alleyway, that he hadn’t told her how he felt, that he had never even spoken to her at that party. His mind was slipping and he knew what it meant to go insane.

And then she spoke.

“Well?”

He couldn’t tell where the voice came from, but he recognized it. It was undeniably Abbie, the same voice he fell in love with, the same voice he spent night after night thinking about. It rang through his ears as he stared at her new face (her old face?) and his heart slowed, his breathing normalized, and his fear subsided. He stared at what only seconds ago frightened him nearly to insanity and suddenly he could only see beauty. Suddenly he could only see her.

“Well?” she repeated.

Heath took a deep breath, grabbed her by the arms, and quietly spoke a single word, his eyes never leaving her face.

“Okay.”