Ugly
Flash Fiction
He felt the ugliest man on the face of the Earth. His face was ghastly scarred by the unforgiving and unapologetic ordeal of youth and the incomprehensibleness of his endocrine system in a way that made people upon seeing him for the first time gasp in horror but then immediately feel pity for him. The worst part of all, however, was that he was unbelievably self-aware that he was ugly.
Every night, before going to bed, he would pray and fervently wish that he could wake up dumb the next day. He desired not to be able to think about things like life or death, beauty, women, or sex anymore but still wanted to have a life, one in which he was still able to walk, eat, and drink the things that he enjoyed the most.
His wish never came true. At least not how he thought it would. But still, every morning, like clockwork, he would run his little test on himself to make sure whether he had woken up dumb. The test consisted of consciously thinking of an abstract concept, such as love or beauty. If he succeeded in defining it, however poorly, then he would realize he was yet not as dumb as he needed to be and that would make him sad and frustrated. He would get out of bed dreading going into the bathroom as he knew he would have to look at himself in the mirror one more time.
He considered inflicting a concussion on himself, but since he was not dumb he was thus afraid, so he never went through with it. The closest he got was when he asked his best friend if he would like to help him be happy, to what his friend said of course, but what did he mean exactly; when he told him exactly what he meant his friend said he was crazy and that he would never do such a thing to him, and that was that. He never broached the subject again but continued thinking about how to ease his pain in the easiest way possible.
Things finally changed for him one night when he got stupidly drunk and high and the next morning felt numb and completely out of himself. He woke up feeling exhausted and sick, though somewhat lucid still, and at once attempted to run his little test: he tried to ask himself a question but couldn’t come up with anything right away, so he reached for a magazine and leafed through it quickly until he stopped on a page with an article that read: Are we really free? : Thoughts on Free Will. And before his eyes could even catch the first lines of the article, he closed the magazine up and tossed it away. Then he went through his process:
First: posit the question to oneself aloud
Second: visualize the concept at hand with one’s mind's eye
Third: establish connections with other ideas or theories
Four: come up with the most original definition possible
Unexpectedly, he got stuck at step two and realized his mind was blank and his head throbbed in pain. All of a sudden, he felt his stomach turn, then swiftly leaped out of bed and ran to the toilet. He retched noisily but felt so much better right after. He could only think about drinking water now; he jumped in the shower and started feeling better right away.
He got out, got dressed, and went downstairs to have something to eat. His mom told him he reeked of alcohol and looked very tired. It was then he, for the first time that morning, thought about his looks, and thus realized something. In other words, that was the exact moment he decided he would drink every day for the rest of his life.
***
For the next 30 years, he drank, got high, slept, and had sex, and never again—perhaps only rarely, when some of the women he fucked asked him what had happened to his face was that he thought about his ugliness but only then—never again had the time nor the intellectual bandwidth to think about shit that used to make him feel miserable.
In the end, he became a bum and went from town to town getting drunk and high, yet in his dumb, permanently numb estate he was finally able to achieve happiness and not feel ugly anymore. He died a happy death at age 49.
Were he still around, it would make him extremely happy to know that when people talk about him, they don’t refer to him as ugly but as the dumb, drunk guy from the street.
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Finding peace is the hardest part of being human.
I have had relatives live and die from such a life. It is sad. But this story is the reality for many. It is a good reminder of the frailty of life. Thanks
"It was then he, for the first time that morning, thought about his looks, and thus realized something. In other words, that was the exact moment he decided he would drink every day for the rest of his life."
Haha, the numbing of the human mind is how we choose to get through this life in the modern age, unfortunately. Trying to break out of that is The New Hope