Inside/Out
david byron and jane timm baxter
I was born ugly. My mother told me that when I was born. I had some kind of rare skin disease, like leprosy. The doctors told her it was a severe form of eczema vaccinatum, but it just affected my face, and my mother couldn't afford the treatments. She told me it would get worse before it got better, which was putting it mildly. It would, in fact, never get better. It might even be fatal, she said. But, I was still pretty on the inside.
My mama had been a whore; a pretty whore that sold her ass on the street for a few bucks, gave blow-jobs under highway overpasses. But I didn't fault her for that; it wasn't what she'd done, but how she'd done it. She'd make me wear a Halloween mask so nobody could see my face, then make me watch her put their dicks in her mouth. After they left, she told me I'd better pay close attention to what she'd just done, because that is how I would make my living someday. My lawyer asked me why mama made me watch, and I told him because she was crazy, strung out. That's how she died; an overdose. I was there. I couldn't help laughing as she choked on her own vomit and blood. She didn't look so pretty then.