Figures of Fear

by Graham Masterton

  Fiona closed her door and turned on her light. She went over to the window and unhooked the pink braided cords that held her curtains back during the day. Then she took a small blue plastic-bound dictionary off her bookshelf, and a brightly coloured cotton scarf from the top drawer of her chest of drawers.

  Last of all, she picked up a dessertspoon which she had taken from the cutlery drawer in the kitchen, as well as the poultry scissors.

  She switched off her light and opened her door again. She stood there for a few seconds so that her eyes could become accustomed to the darkness. She didn’t want to trip over something and wake Mummy up too soon.

  In her head, over and over, she could hear Marni Nixon singing ‘I feel pretty … oh so pretty! I feel pretty and witty and bright! And I pity any girl who isn’t me tonight!’ She softly panted the words under her breath.

  Very gently, she pulled down the handle of Mummy’s bedroom door, and then opened it. When it was only a few inches ajar, she stopped, and listened.

  At first she couldn’t hear anything at all. But then Mummy turned over in bed, with a slippery rustle of her satin quilt, and muttered something that sounded like ‘never’. After that, Fiona could hear her breathing quite steadily, with a slight sticking noise in one of her nostrils.

  Fiona crept across to Mummy’s bedside. By the light of her luminous clock, she could see that Mummy was lying on her back, with one arm raised on the pillow beside her, and that she was deeply asleep.

  With great care, she lifted Mummy’s upraised arm a little further up the pillow, until Mummy’s hand was poking through the brass rails of her headboard. She took one of the curtain cords and tied Mummy’s wrist to the nearest rail, using the double knots that Mummy had taught her when she was showing her how to sew.

  Next she walked around the bed and climbed up on to it so that she could gently tug Mummy’s other arm out from under the bedcovers, and tie that to the headboard, too.

  Now she lifted Mummy’s head up from the pillow and slid the cotton scarf underneath it. Mummy stirred and said ‘what?’ and then ‘never!’ but still she didn’t open her eyes. However, Fiona knew that what she did next was certain to wake her up. She took three deep breaths to steady herself and made sure that she had the little dictionary ready in her left hand and the spoon and scissors waiting on the bedside table.

  I feel pretty, she breathed. Oh so pretty.

  She parted Mummy’s lips and then she pried her teeth apart. Mummy almost immediately opened her eyes and jerked at the cords that were keeping her wrists tied to the headboard. Without hesitation, Fiona jammed the dictionary between her teeth, as far as it would go, and then she took hold of the two ends of the scarf and tied them quickly in a tight knot over Mummy’s mouth, so that she couldn’t push the dictionary out with her tongue.

  Mummy’s eyes rolled in panic and bewilderment. She pulled at the cords around her wrists until the headboard rattled, and when she couldn’t free herself she began to twist and kick and bounce up and down on the bed – all the while grunting and mewling at Fiona to untie her.

  Fiona leaned over her, almost as if she were about to kiss her. Mummy stared up at her and stopped thrashing and kicking for a moment.

  ‘Mmmm-mmmmfff-mmmmff,’ she said, through the dictionary. Saliva was beginning to run down either side of her mouth.

  ‘It’s all right, Mummy,’ said Fiona. ‘I’ll try not to hurt you, I promise.’

  ‘Mmmmmfff!’ Mummy retorted, and this time she sounded angry.

  Fiona pinched Mummy’s left eyelid between finger and thumb, and pulled it upward as far as she could stretch it. Mummy started kicking again, and trying to shake her head from side to side, but Fiona was holding her eyelid too tightly. She reached across to the bedside table for the spoon, turned it upside-down, and pushed the tip of it into the top of Mummy’s eye socket. Mummy let out a harsh grating scream, and bounced up and down on the bed as if she were suffering an epileptic fit. But Fiona dug the spoon in deeper, until it curved around the back of the eyeball, and she could easily gouge it out on to Mummy’s cheek. Blood welled out of her hollow eye socket and slid down on to the pillow.

  Mummy started shaking uncontrollably. The mattress made a furious jostling noise and the bedhead banged repeatedly against the wall behind it.

  ‘Mummy! Mummy! It’s all right, Mummy!’ Fiona pleaded with her. ‘I promise I’ll be quick!’

  She hadn’t realized how violent Mummy’s reaction would be, and she started to sob. But it was too late now. She couldn’t push Mummy’s left eye back in and pretend that nothing had happened, and she so badly needed her beauty back. She reached across for the scissors but Mummy jolted her and she dropped them on to the floor.

  Weeping, she climbed off the bed, but she couldn’t see the scissors anywhere. She felt underneath the bedside table, but they weren’t there. She felt underneath the bed, too, but there was a gap of only about an inch off the carpet and she couldn’t feel them there, either.

  Mummy was quaking and snorting now, with her gouged-out eye staring at Fiona accusingly from her cheek. There was only one thing that Fiona could do. She climbed back up on to the bed, and grasped Mummy’s hair with her right hand to keep her head still. Then she took the eye between the thumb and middle finger of her left hand, leaned forward and bit it in half. She sucked the clear optic fluid out of it, and swallowed. Her eyes were still filled with tears, but she could almost feel her lost beauty slipping down her throat.

  Mummy was still trembling, and she felt very cold, but she had stopped kicking and struggling. Fiona lifted her right eyelid, picked up the spoon, and gouged out her right eye, too. Again, she bit it in half and swallowed the fluid inside.

  She knelt on the bed for a while, feeling slightly sick. Then she climbed off it again, untied the scarf that covered Mummy’s mouth and gently wiggled the dictionary until it came out from between her teeth. Mummy had bitten almost halfway through it.

  Next she untied her wrists and dragged up the bedcovers to try and get Mummy warm again. She didn’t know what to do with the empty shreds of half-bitten eyes that were hanging out of each socket, so she carefully poked them back in again, and closed Mummy’s eyelids, and then she tied the scarf around Mummy’s head like a blindfold.

  It didn’t occur to her to call for an ambulance. She had seen ambulances on television, but they were only in stories. She had never seen a real one, and she didn’t know that you could call one yourself, and it would actually come to your door.

  Besides, the most important thing was that she had regained her beauty, and in spite of being so beautiful, she would risk going out into the world, no matter how jealous other people might be. Mummy might be blind now, but she was so beautiful that she would be able to become a famous actress, and become rich, and support them both.

  It was only now that Fiona realized what a sacrifice Mummy had made for her – keeping her beauty in her own eyes for all of this time, in order to keep her safe. She must have known that one day the time would come when she would have to give it back to her.

  She crossed over to Mummy’s closet and unlocked the doors. There she was, in her pink pyjamas, which were spattered with a fine spray of blood. But something was badly wrong. She wasn’t beautiful at all. She looked the same as she had before, with that bulging forehead and those wide-apart flatfish eyes and that dragged-down mouth.

  Perhaps it took time for the beauty to make its way into your body, she thought. After all, if you ate a bar of chocolate, you had to digest it first, in your stomach, before the sugar went into your bloodstream.

  She sat down cross-legged on the bedroom carpet in front of the mirror, and waited for Mummy’s optic fluid to work on her face. It had to work. Mummy had said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and she had swallowed the beholders’ eyes. What more could she have done?

  She woke up and the bedroom was filled with sunlight. She glanced over at Mummy’s bedside clock and saw that it was 7.17 a.m. It l
ooked as if Mummy was still asleep, with her blindfold over her eyes. It was the blindfold that reminded her what had happened last night, and what she was doing here in Mummy’s bedroom.

  She looked in the mirror. She hadn’t changed at all. She was still just as hideously distorted as she had been before. She couldn’t understand it. She had swallowed those eyes for nothing.

  She slowly stood up.

  ‘Mummy?’ she said. ‘Mummy, are you awake?’

  She went over to Mummy’s bedside. Mummy was very pale and she didn’t appear to be breathing. Fiona shook her shoulder but all she did was joggle unresponsively from side to side.

  ‘Mummy?’

  She realized then that she must have misunderstood what Mummy had said to her. The snail hadn’t been a beholder, and neither had Zebedee, or Mummy. She – Fiona – she was the beholder. It was she who had seen her own face in the mirror and thought that it was ugly. That was why Mummy had kept her away from mirrors, and stopped her from going out to meet other people. So long as she didn’t know what she really looked like, she had remained incandescently beautiful.

  She went back and stood in front of the mirror. Her hideously distorted face stared back at her. It always would, for the rest of her life, every time she saw her own reflection.

  There was only one remedy. She went over to Mummy’s chest of drawers. In the second drawer down, there was a purple biscuit tin with a picture of Prince Charles and Lady Diana on it, to celebrate their wedding. Mummy kept her sewing things in it – her spare buttons and her button thread and her needles.

  Fiona picked out a large shiny darning needle and went back to face the mirror. With her fingers, she held her left eye open wide.

  I feel pretty, she whispered, and stuck the needle into her pupil.

  She felt nothing more than a sharp prick, but her eye instantly went blind. She held her right eye open in the same way, and stuck the needle into that eye, too.

  She stood there, in total darkness. She couldn’t see herself now. She couldn’t see anything at all. But she could imagine how beautiful she was – so beautiful that if anyone tried to paint her portrait, their paints would burst into flames, and mirrors would shatter into a thousand pieces if she ever looked in them.

  She started to circle around and around, and as she circled she sang ‘I Feel Pretty’, over and over, until she was so giddy that she dropped to her knees. Outside, in the street, she could hear traffic, and people talking, and her blind eyes filled with tears again, although she no longer knew why she was crying.