The Razor Fairy, He Thinks

snippet 13

It’s 8:35 when Rafael climbs out of the 8th street subway station. There are dozens of men in three piece suits, women in pencil skirts clutching Gucci handbags, and briefcases, and ten story tall paper cups of morning coffee. They’re going at it up the stairs, each of them pushing and clawing ahead of one another. They all work in those mysterious glass buildings with the black tinted windows. Maybe some of them sit in cushy offices and shout on the phone all day and sell, sell, sell. Maybe they’re lsecretaries for bigger, more important people, but they’re all fighting to be the first one to take that last step out of the subway. 

It’s 8:35 when Rafael comes out a little winded, but unscathed. It’s 8:38 when he passes by a deli cafe and checks the time in the window. He goes inside to avoid the harsh current of air blowing outside. There is nothing worse than walking into a full class, late. More than forty heads turning all at once, more than eighty eyes following him until he finds a seat and until they find something else to look at. So, Rafael isn’t going to BIO 111, introduction to experimental molecular biology. That’s his favorite class, but today has been a weird day. The whole week feels topsy turvy. There’s his excuse for missing it. He’s not going to class, so Rafael digs out whatever spare change and crumpled up dollar bills he has in his back pocket and buys breakfast. 

When the day’s at an end he spends the next three hours sitting at a long wooden table in the library by himself. He reads about malignant melanoma and skin cancer and cystic acne. All these flesh disorders. He reads about granulation, contraction, and how if the contraction period goes on for too long, the healing flesh will grow tight around a full thickness wound, leaving the area disfigured. On page 97 there is a full color picture of a hand pulled so tight by wound contraction, the fingers permanently crooked and raw, that it's lost all function. He reads about scarring. He reads about self injury and it makes him think of Caleb’s trail of scabs. 

On the way back to the subway station, with his hands jammed into his pockets and a backpack full of books, Rafael thinks about Caleb’s scars and the way they wind up all around her arms like little pathways. He thinks about her cold nose and her bare feet and her annoying twittering, twittering laugh. Twittering and twittering, Caleb reminds him of a little cut up pixie. The razor fairy, he thinks. On the R train, Rafael pulls his sleeve over his hand so he doesn’t have to touch the hand straps without some sort of protection from the three million different kinds of germs he could contract. Rafael never sits down on a train. He’s standing, swaying a little, the train hurtling through the tunnel, and he thinks, Caleb the razor fairy. Leave a blade under your pillow and she’ll zip through your window that same night and show you a secret map to a secret buried treasure she has written all over her body. 

Author's Note

{ quick snippet about rafael's less than thrilling adventures as an angsting, socially inept mutanet [may or may not see more of him] }

Reviews

[Dane Osborne]

A remarakably well written snippet. Realist but yet perversely dreamlike to the point where as you read it, the imagery created by the words all coalesces into this ethereal blur. It presents the confusion and disorder of consciousness in a very interesting way.100/100

[.quan.011.]

This is a nicely written short story. It is very creative and I hope to see more of him.