The Newest Me ★ (Flash Fiction)

Every morning I wake up to a new identity. 

I get up and my skin feels all rough, so I take a straight razor and cut it. I peel it off of me like tape and throw it in the garbage. I shower, then I start my day.

It’s not bloody or gory in the least.

I just make a small incision at the top of my forehead with the razor to start it off. 

The rest comes off quickly and easily. 

As soon as I start peeling, I’m able to see my new hair color. 

It’s different everyday when I wake up.  

The next thing I learn is my new eye color, followed by how long my new hair is, along with its texture. 

I don’t often change my name when I see my new identity, but sometimes I do.

It wouldn’t matter, no one can recognize me from day to day anyway. 

I live by being unrecognizable.

It pays to be this way. 

I could rob a bank today and be gone tomorrow, and I have in the past. 

Even if I don’t get away, the police would take me in, book me, and find a different woman in my cell the next morning. Different fingerprints, different eye color, different hair. They can’t very well keep the wrong woman locked away in a jail cell for a crime they can’t even prove she committed right?

I can’t control what I look like each day, although I assure you, I’ve tried. I’ve tried focusing on it, and praying about it. I’ve even tried magical spells. 

Of course none of them worked. 

But, if I exist, then magic probably exists too. 

I don’t remember where I came from. 

I just woke up one day. 

Just opened my eyes. 

My head was halfway underneath a dumpster. I’d been beat up pretty bad. 

I don’t remember anything before that. 

Do I have parents, or any family at all?

Are there other people— creatures— like me out there? 

Or am I just a freak? 

A fluke of nature? 

A one of a kind thing?

Your guess is as good as mine. 

-X-