Skin Deep

by Alan Brennert

  Lou Boylan said to his wife, “Bring her inside. I’ll get her a shot of Jack Daniel’s to calm her down.”

  “She’s only sixteen, Lou!”

  “I think she just aged a couple of years, hon,” he said, and went ahead to get them all drinks.

  “We’re so sorry, honey,” Emma told Trina as she led her into their home and toward a couch. “My God, this is all so terrible.”

  Lou came over with three shot glasses. “You’ve had a shock, Trina, take this. It might seem strong at first if you’re not used to it.”

  Trina didn’t bother to tell them that this was not her first glass of whisky. She drank it down, and though it calmed her nerves a little, it took away none of her grief. Then—remembering suddenly that this madness was happening all over—she asked, “Have you heard from Judy and Gary?”

  Yes, Lou assured her, their two married children were fine in their homes in San Diego and Mill Valley—at least for the moment.

  “What did you mean,” Emma asked with trepidation, “that your mother—that there was nothing left?”

  Trina explained what had happened and the Boylans’ eyes went wide. If there hadn’t been a giant, two-headed wolf in the middle of Ashland Avenue, they might even have doubted her. But as the radio droned on about the alien virus, the world seemed much larger—and much more terrifying—than it had three days ago.

  The Boylans did the necessary business of calling for an ambulance for Harry’s body, but it would be seven hours before one arrived; there were simply too many bodies, scattered from Santa Monica to El Monte, from Castaic to Long Beach, for the authorities to handle all at once. There was widespread rioting, and looters breaking into closed-up stores and abandoned homes. Radio reports estimated that at least fifteen hundred people had died across Los Angeles County and perhaps a hundred more had been—transformed. Some into monsters, some only slightly deformed, and a few into something … more than human. No one would ever know how many “aces,” as these super-powered individuals would come to be called, were birthed that day—if people had special powers, they were keeping it a secret for now.

  With one exception: in West L.A., a young man could be seen rocketing into the air, crying out, “I can fly! I can fly!” as he rose straight into the stratosphere and out of sight—until his frozen, lifeless body came plummeting back to earth, crashing into the fountain at the corner of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards. Newspapers were quick to name him Icarus, as there was not enough left of him to identify.

  Trina numbly listened to the radio reports, barely ate any of the dinner Emma prepared, and felt drained and exhausted by six p.m. She gratefully accepted the Boylans’ offer to stay in what was once their daughter’s room.

  It took more than an hour for her to fall asleep, and her dreams were tense and frightening, but she slept past dawn. When she got up, she padded into the small attached bathroom. Inside she passed the bathroom mirror, saw something not right, and turned to look into it.

  There was a monster in the mirror.

  She screamed.

  It was a swollen, bestial face with a thick brow, sunken eyes, a pig-like snout of a nose, ridged cheekbones, and a twisting slash of an upper lip … all of it grotesquely framed by a stylish crop of bobbed brunette hair.

  Her hair, she realized with a jolt.

  Instinctively her hands went up to her face, and now she could feel the same deformities she saw in the mirror.

  She screamed again. She kept on screaming until the Boylans rushed in to see what was wrong. When she turned to face them, their confusion and concern had become shock … and revulsion.

  She looked back into the mirror, hoping to see something different, but when the monster continued to stare back at her, she fainted, falling into Lou’s arms as her body went limp.

  She woke a few minutes later in bed and as her eyes fluttered open, she saw Emma and Lou staring down at her, the same mix of pity and revulsion in their eyes. She couldn’t blame them, she felt it herself, but it was still unbearable to see.

  She jumped out of bed and ran past them, down the stairs.

  “Trina! Trina, we only want to help you!” Emma called after her.

  But Trina ran out of the house, without even a thought that she was still wearing her pajamas. She ran next door to her own house; its door was unlocked but after entering she locked it behind her. She saw the empty floor where her parents had died so horribly, and she ran from that too, rushing up the stairs and into the one safe place remaining to her: her room. She fell onto her bed, sobbing, anguished, overwhelmed—grieving for her parents, for herself, and for the life she had loved, a life she knew would never, ever be the same again.

  Trina kept the window curtains drawn and took down every mirror in the house. There was enough food in the kitchen to last at least a month. Whenever the phone rang that day—relatives or friends, probably, checking in to see if the family was okay—she let it ring. In the middle of the night, as the neighborhood slept, she cracked open the front door, taped a MOVED sign on it, then quickly shut and locked it again. Over the next several days people came by and rang the doorbell, and through a crack in the upstairs curtains she recognized her cousins from Covina and the school truant officer—but they all went away, eventually. The hardest one to watch was her boyfriend, Woody, who showed up one day, rang the bell, called her name: “Trina! Trina!” He went all the way around the house, searching for signs of life, and Trina wanted so much to let him in. She wanted him to hold her, to tell her everything was all right, tell her he still loved her—but she knew that would not happen. And she couldn’t bear to see the look of revulsion and horror in his eyes when he saw her face.

  The only ones she let in were the Boylans, who, bless them, continued to look in on her despite her grotesque appearance. Emma Boylan brought home-cooked meals to Trina’s back porch and talked with her when she needed someone to talk to.

  During the next several days she listened to the radio reports about people like her, who were now being called “jokers.” That was rich—this was a joke, a cosmic joke, and she was the butt of it. Worse, public fear of the transformed was hardening into prejudice. Stories of jokers being driven out of their houses, neighborhoods, and towns, terrified Trina. Experts talked about isolating all the jokers in asylums, but the hundred-odd jokers in Los Angeles County either left with no forwarding address or quickly went into hiding. Like Trina.

  The Boylans tried to give her hope: “That spaceman in New York, Dr. Tachyon, has been treating people like you,” Emma told her. “In a lot of cases he can cure them. Maybe he can cure you, honey.”

  “And how do I get to New York?” Trina asked. “Take the bus? A plane? You think anybody is going to be willing to sit next to me—even have me on a bus with them at all?”

  “We could drive you,” Lou offered, and Trina was touched by that.

  “Thank you,” she said gently, “that’s very sweet of you to offer. But people like me are dangerous to be around. I couldn’t ask that of you.”

  By the following week, the authorities had succeeded in quelling most of the panic and rioting and were doing their best to assure the public that there would be no further disruptions from the wild card virus. Trina sat listening to these assurances on the radio one evening—the radio on low, the living room dark, the window curtains drawn—

  When she heard a crash of breaking glass from the kitchen.

  She jumped to her feet. She stood stock still, listening to the unmistakable sound of a window being raised, followed by two thumps … and the sound of voices:

  “Fuck. I got cut by the goddamn glass.”

  “Stop whining, it’s just a scratch. There’s silverware in that hutch, get moving.”

  Looters, Trina realized. The MOVED sign had worked too well. She listened to the chiming of silverware being thrown into a bag. Paralyzed with fear, she didn’t know what to do. Run outside to the Boylans’ house? No, she couldn’t endanger them too. Run upstairs and
lock the bedroom door behind her? No. What if they broke the door down?

  She was looking around for something she could use as a weapon when one of the men suddenly entered the living room. “What the fuck?” he blurted out, swinging his flashlight in her direction.

  Trina winced as the beam struck her directly in her face.

  The burglar saw clearly her deformed, horrible features and yelled, “Jesus H. Christ!”

  The second looter, carrying the bag full of silverware, came in behind his accomplice and said, “She’s one of them jokers!”

  Instantly the men abandoned all further interest in looting, turned tail, and ran the hell away, out the back door.

  Trina was relieved, though it depressed her that she was so repulsive she caused two hardened criminals to flee in terror … and afraid that this would not be the end of it. They were hardly likely to call the police, but what if they told someone she was there—anyone?

  For a week or more it seemed as if they had not. Then she woke up one morning to find that someone had painted the words GET OUT JOKER! on the front of the Nelson house.

  She immediately began to make plans if the worst should happen, packing every perishable food item she could find into the trunk of the family Buick in the garage, along with water, blankets, a pillow, and extra clothes. Emma and Lou gave her what canned food they had.

  Three nights later, someone threw a rock, wrapped in a burning rag, through the living room window. The drapes instantly caught fire. Rather than try to save the house, Trina ran to the garage and backed the Buick into the driveway as flames crackled and consumed the living room.

  “Goodbye, house,” she whispered, with tears in her eyes for the only home she had ever known.

  She drove through side streets until she reached the California Incline, then down the sloping road to Pacific Coast Highway. There was a stoplight at PCH and another car in the lane next to her, so Trina took her mother’s big floppy sunbathing hat and put it on, slanting it so the man in the car next to her couldn’t make out her face. The red light seemed to last for years, but finally it turned green and Trina headed up the coast highway toward Malibu.

  She and Woody had spent enough time at Malibu’s beaches that she knew that despite its reputation as a mecca for Hollywood celebrities, much of Malibu was still quite rural. There were enough sparsely populated canyons and secluded side streets to provide some degree of concealment from prying eyes. For each of the next ten days she would find a deserted spot off Trancas or Latigo Canyons, eat cold canned food, sleep during the day with a blanket hiding her face, then at night drive to a deserted beach and swim alone, relieving some of her stress and grief in the rocking cradle of the waves.

  One evening she was parked along a deserted road in Solstice Canyon, eating canned tuna, when she heard:

  “Miss?”

  Trina heard a man’s voice and saw the sweep of a flashlight beam across the front seat. She grabbed her floppy hat, hiding her face.

  “Leave me alone,” she begged. “I’m not bothering anyone!”

  “I know you’re not,” the man said gently. “And there’s no need to hide your face. I know what you look like.”

  “You—you do?” Hesitantly she lowered the hat. A tall man in a police uniform stood outside the car. He saw her hideous face but didn’t flinch or even look surprised. “How?”

  The policeman raised the palm of his hand. At first it looked perfectly ordinary, but then a fold appeared in the flesh of the palm and, to Trina’s astonishment, opened to reveal a human eye staring at her.

  Trina sat bolt upright. “What the hell is that?” she blurted.

  “My third eye. It sees more, and farther, than the other two—it showed me that you were hiding here, and what you looked like.”

  “You’re like Icarus,” Trina said softly. “The virus gave you—powers.” The randomness of the virus suddenly hit home: if things had gone only a little differently, she might be able to fly, or turn invisible, instead of…

  “I may have powers,” the policeman said, “but believe me, if anyone on the force saw this, I’d be just another joker on the run, like you. But I use it to help out where I can.”

  She felt a pang of hope. “How can you help me?”

  “About a week ago, the eye showed me that there’s a refuge, of sorts, for our kind. On the amusement pier in Santa Monica. Go there tonight and ask for Dr. Pink.”

  “Dr. Pink,” she repeated. “At the—Santa Monica Pier?”

  “That’s right. You’ll be safe there. Here, take this.”

  He handed her a cheap plastic Hollywood mask of Betty Grable. “These are all the rage among jokers in New York—so they can hide their faces from ‘nats,’ naturals. They may catch on here, too.” She took the mask and he added urgently, “Now go, before the pier closes for the night. If you stay here, someone will eventually discover you and it won’t end well.”

  “Thank you so much, Officer—what do I call you?”

  “You don’t,” he said with a smile. “But I’ll keep an eye on you.”

  The eye in his palm winked at her.

  He closed his hand and moved away into the shadows.

  Trina put on the mask but was still terrified at the thought of driving all the way to Santa Monica at nine in the evening, when there would be plenty of other cars on the road—but thirty minutes later she made it, without incident, to the famous arched sign at the pier that read SANTA MONICA in bright red letters, and below that, YACHT HARBOR * SPORT FISHING * BOATING * CAFES.

  She parked in the nearby beach lot and, mask on, made her way up to the pier. No one gave a second glance to “Betty Grable” because she wasn’t the only one here wearing a mask of some kind. She heard the Wurlitzer organ in the carousel building playing “The Blue Danube Waltz,” which brought back comforting childhood memories of the pier—merry-go-round rides and cotton candy—and slowly made her way past the cafes, bait and tackle shops, seafood retailers, concession booths, “palm reader and adviser” Doreena, and a building that announced itself as—

  DR. PINK’S SHOW OF FREAKS.

  Oh my God, thought Trina.

  Posters advertised a frog-faced man, a human torso, a bearded lady, a weightlifter with biceps bigger than his head, and other acts.

  This was her “refuge”? To work in a freak show?

  “Step right up,” cried the tall, ruddy-faced man at the barker’s stand, “see the most amazing collection of human oddities this side of—New York City!” That brought a laugh from the large crowd. It made Trina sick, but it drove people up to the ticket stand with their dollars.

  Trina was embarrassed, afraid, angry. She waited until the crowd was on their way inside, then went up to the barker and said in a tone edged with resentment and sarcasm: “Are you—Dr. Pink?”

  She raised up her mask, exposing her face to him, and he took in her features with—not horror, not revulsion, but actual sympathy.

  “Oh, you poor girl,” he said softly, and the pity in his voice was not what she had expected. “Come with me, dear. Come inside.”

  “Why? Just to be another ‘human oddity’ to be gawked at?”

  “No no, of course not,” he said. “Please, come into my office, we can talk there.” He turned to the ticket taker. “Jack, take over the pitch, will you? I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  He took Trina around the building that housed the freak show to the rear, where he led her into a small office and shut the door behind them. “May I get you something? Water? Food? A shot of tequila?”

  She wasn’t sure if that was a joke but replied, “I’ll take the tequila.”

  He smiled, took out a bottle from a desk drawer, poured two shots. “I’m Irving Pinkoff. And your name is…?”

  “Trina. Trina Nelson.” The warmth of the tequila took a little of the edge off her anger. “I was told to come here for—‘refuge.’”

  “Yes, my dear, that is what we offer. But let me explain.

  “My
show has been on this pier for five years, and I assure you, I don’t really think of my employees as ‘oddities.’ They’re all human beings, all friends. This is the only way most of them can make a living and they know what I have to do to sell them to the public. It’s all show business.”

  He downed his shot glass. “The owner of this pier, Walter Newcomb, came to me a few days after the virus hit L.A. A relative of his had been—changed—and was hounded out of his neighborhood. He asked me if I would take the young man in to protect him and I said yes, of course. He’s the frog-faced lad, Robby, on the poster.

  “Word somehow got out that there was a real joker in the show—and business actually increased. People may not want jokers living next door, but apparently, they’re happy to pay money to see them as entertainment.

  “Next thing I knew, more jokers were coming out of the woodwork, begging me to take them in. What could I say? Mr. Newcomb provides living quarters for them—some above the Hippodrome, some downstairs where the lifeguards used to stay until they became ‘uncomfortable’ with their new neighbors. A lot of the vendors here were uncomfortable, too, and abandoned the pier … and jokers with money took over the leases. Why, there’s even talk of opening a joker nightclub next to the carousel.”

  “And the owner is fine with all this?” Trina asked skeptically.

  “As long as the pier turns a profit, yes. Walter’s met my performers; he knows they’re just people who have been dealt a bad hand.”

  “Why are you doing this, Mr. Pinkoff? Someone set my house on fire. This is risky for you, too.”

  “I had family who died at Dachau,” he said, and didn’t need to say more. Trina nodded. “Now, let’s get you some living quarters, all right?”

  He showed her to her new home, an apartment above the carousel building with a turret room overlooking the surf lapping up Santa Monica Beach. The sight of the beach and the city beyond greeted her like an old friend thought forever lost. And for the first time in weeks, she began to feel—safe. Protected. Tears welled in her eyes, unbidden.

  “Thank you,” she told him. “Oh God, thank you, Mr. Pinkoff.”