The bathroom carried the sour scent of dampness, that faint mildew of wet towels that never truly dry. Black mould threaded along the corners of the ceiling like veins, defying every spray Mum unleashed at it. The mirror above the sink was split by a diagonal crack, an ugly scar dividing my reflection into two uneven halves. My fingers clamped the porcelain basin, cold as stone, while my fractured face stared back at me. Crooked nose. Greasy skin, underdeveloped narrow jaw, buggy eyes, no eyebrows, balding, I looked like a goblin under the weak yellow bulb. The longer I looked, the more grotesque I became, as if the mirror magnified some hidden rot. Evolution had been merciless. Beauty is survival, and those who don't meet the baseline of attractiveness are doomed to fail. The worst part is that it is not that we judge and decide the fate of people consciously based on their appearance, we do it unconsciously following the script of nature. The chosen are smiled at, respected, admired, given more opportunities, and have an overall easier time on this temporary journey and these are all backed by scientific studies. People like me drifted on the periphery until we faded. Nature has never promised fairness, only rules for more efficient survival of the species as a whole, it doesn't care if some are left behind or destroyed in the process.
I rubbed my fists against my eyes until the reflection blurred, but when I opened them it snapped back sharper, like a wound reopened. Yesterday's memory rose again, Sasha's laughter clawing at me from across the classroom.
The room had been loud, chairs scraping, pens tapping. Yet when I stood up, heart hammering, rehearsed words trembling on my tongue, the noise seemed to fold in on itself. Silence, waiting. Sasha tilted her head, eyes narrowing as if she hadn't heard.
"What?" Her voice cut the air, too loud, and the row behind her began to snicker.
"I… I like you." It barely left my throat. My face burned. The words landed like stones thrown into water, vanishing before they reached her.
A heartbeat of pause. Hope sparked. Then her lips curled, not soft, not kind. A sharp, clipped laugh burst out. Another. She turned to whisper to her friends, and the giggles spread like fire through dry grass. "Seriously?" someone muttered. "As if," another breathed.
But the worst came later. Her ex, the smug idiot with gelled hair, posted my picture that night. Distorted with filters until my face sagged into something inhuman, my body twisted. Caption: Roy's big moment. By midnight it had spread across the year group. My humiliation wasn't a moment anymore. It was immortal.
I walked home with my head down, hands deep in my pockets. Fried food and exhaust fumes thickened the air. The pavement glittered with wet cartons and crushed cigarette butts. My trainers scuffed the ground like a metronome marking my shame. I wanted to slip into the cracks between the stones, and vanish.
Then the thought returned, jagged as glass. The article. I stumbled on it months ago during a sleepless night:"Seeking participants for groundbreaking studies on integrating human consciousness with next-generation virtual reality." No fees, No strings. I laughed then, thinking to myself who would fall for such an obvious scam. Now it burns in my memory like a flare. If they could make me conscious in another world where I am not a short hideous loser, life would be worth living even if my real body rots away in the real world.
The building was harder to find than I'd imagined. Hidden between a boarded-up bakery and a dust-choked office whose windows were too grimy to see through. The door was metal, unmarked, with a keypad. I pressed the buzzer. Without a word, it clicked open.
Inside was cold air humming with machines. White walls stained and scratched by years. Disinfectant stung my nose. A group in white coats turned at once as I stepped in, like birds sensing prey. Their eyes gleamed, not friendly, but hungry.
"Roy," one of them said, though I had given no name. "You're just in time."
They swarmed me, fastening wires to my arms, pressing metal discs to my temples. My pulse drummed against my throat. The tallest, gaunt and hollow-cheeked, leaned close enough for me to smell his breath, chemical, stale.
"You won't wake in the same place," he murmured. "Every second will feel real."
I opened my mouth to ask what he meant, but the needle pricked my arm. Fire spread through my veins. The hum of machines swelled; the floor tilted and fell away. I plunged into blackness, weightless, spinning.
When I opened my eyes I was back in my bedroom. The peeling wallpaper, posters curling at the edges, the draft sneaking through the unfixed window. For a moment I thought I had dreamt it. But the taste of metal lingered on my tongue, and static prickled my skin.
I stumbled outside, heart hammering, circling the block. Past the bakery. Past the office. Again. Again. The door was gone. Only blank wall where it had been, as if the place had dissolved into air.
People stared. A woman in a green coat froze, eyes widening as though she'd glimpsed something divine. Her lips trembled open. Behind her a man muttered "what the hell" and turned away, his face twisted in disgust. Two teenagers glanced at me, one dreamy-eyed, the other recoiling with a snort. My skin crawled.
By the time I reached home I was shaking. I slammed the bathroom door, gripped the sink, lifted my eyes to the mirror.
Nothing.
The tiles reflected. The bulb reflected. The crack reflected. But not me.
"Roy?" Mum's voice behind me. The door creaked. I turned.
She stood there holding a mug of tea. Her eyes landed on me and her face drained of colour, crumpling. The mug slipped, shattered on the tiles. Tea spread across the floor like blood. She staggered back, hand over her mouth, shaking her head.
"Mum?" My voice cracked.
Her scream tore through the house. I stumbled back.
The tall man's words echoed. Every second will feel real. You won't wake in the same place.
I understood then. This wasn't a dream. This was my life now. My reality.
I hardly slept. The ceiling loomed above me, alien even though I'd stared at it my whole life. Morning dragged me out of bed with its weight, my mom wasn't at home, I was confused and hurt cause she didn't make me breakfast today, anyways School would not wait. Nothing would. My hands trembled as I buttoned my uniform, crooked. I whispered to myself:
Face it. Go.
The school gates rose before me like rusted sentries, I dragged my shoes across the cracked pavement, the strap of my bag carving a dull line into my shoulder. Normally, slipping in unnoticed was the one mercy of my mornings. Invisibility, irrelevant and not worth looking at or acknowledging which made me feel empty but it was kind of peaceful as well. But today the air felt swollen with attention, thick with stares that clung like damp fabric.
A knot of girls leaned against the brick wall, their chatter dying as I passed. One tilted her head, narrowing her eyes like she was trying to decode a cipher. Another's mouth fell open.
"Wait, he's actually kind of cute," she whispered, loud enough to slice through the courtyard noise.
"Ewww!" the others shrieked almost in unison, a high, tearing sound like metal scraping glass. One grabbed her friend's arm as if she'd glimpsed a crushed animal on the road. The noise stabbed my ears; my stomach plunged, cold and sour.
I sped up, but the whispers trailed me down the hall like a bad smell. Some eyes followed with a strange, soft glow, the sort of look I'd only ever seen hurled at the boys with neat hair and football muscles. Other faces twisted, lips curling as if my presence offended them. The contradiction made my head swim.
By the time I reached my locker, sweat slicked my palms. Two boys I barely knew appeared at my side, clapping my shoulder with grins that felt borrowed.
"Oi, Roy," one said, too cheerful.
The other leaned closer, smile thinning into something harder. "Think you're big now, huh?" His voice dropped, a quiet threat masked as banter, while his friend kept laughing like it was all a joke.
I muttered something, shoved my books into the bag, slammed the locker shut with a hollow clang.
The teachers offered no refuge. Mrs. Kent in English glared at me as though my breathing itself was insolence. She snapped at me for tapping my pen, for sitting wrong, even for blinking too slowly. History was worse. Mr. Carter skipped over every raised hand but saved me for the one question I couldn't answer, smirking as I stammered. I sank lower in my chair, convinced every eye in the room was waiting for me to crack.
But Biology was different.
Sir John greeted me with his usual nod, thin spectacles sliding down his nose. He didn't look at me oddly, not once. His voice was calm, his instructions steady, as though nothing at all had shifted. I clung to that steadiness like driftwood in a storm. At least one person still saw me the way they always had.
His lecture was quite interesting and coincidentally explained my whole situation so well, he was basically saying I was predisposed to relentless suffering, the lecture went "Evolution is driven by natural selection, often described as "survival of the fittest," where individuals with advantageous, heritable traits are more likely to survive and reproduce, passing those traits to their offspring."
"And surprisingly our perception of beauty is a mechanism designed for better survival of the species as the people we consider attractive usually have more indicators of good health. For instance clear skin, good facial symmetry and harmony etc genetic fitness and reproductive potential, so evolution has designed us to find potentially healthier individuals more attractive."
His words made me uncomfortable as he was basically saying I was genetically engineered to fail, but well I can't blame him for telling the truth, and now it all made sense to me, it is always survival of the fittest right, no matter if we are in a classroom or in the wild, the one deemed biologically superior always wins.
Anyways, Josh, my only real friend, remained the same too like Sir John . During maths he nudged me in the ribs, grinning about some inside joke only we know, and asked if I wanted to sit with him at lunch. He didn't flinch. Didn't squint. Didn't stare like the others. For the first time that day, I could breathe without feeling watched.
But Ellie… Ellie was different.
She'd always been kind, smiling at everyone, but never at me for longer than a heartbeat. Today, though, her smile stretched the moment our eyes met. It wasn't polite, it wasn't a pity. It glimmered with something else, something eager. She waved me over at break, cheeks flushed, eyes flicking away when I held her gaze. When she laughed at my awkward joke my chest twisted sharply. No one had ever looked at me like that.
And then there was Sasha.
She swept down the corridor surrounded by her entourage, her perfume reaching the air before she did. For a second her eyes caught mine, and something flickered, hesitation, confusion, maybe even interest. My heart leapt, stupidly. But it vanished in an instant. Her mouth hardened into a sneer; she leaned to whisper, and her friends erupted into laughter.
The contrast between her reaction and Ellie's, between the boys who slapped my back and those who muttered threats, between whispers of "cute" and shrieks of "ewww," spun around inside me like a storm. I didn't know what to believe. Monster or something else? Both? Neither?
Every glance felt like a blade. Every laugh, every whisper, a small cut. Even the smiles unsettled me. I had wanted to be noticed, wanted to matter. But this wasn't what I had imagined.
By the final bell my nerves were raw, my chest aching from hours of holding my breath. Josh walked with me to the gates, chatting about football practice as though the day had been ordinary. But when I glanced back, I caught Ellie watching me from across the courtyard, her smile soft and secret, while Sasha rolled her eyes and flipped her hair like she could sweep me out of existence.
The contradiction gnawed at me, dragging my thoughts into darker places. I wanted to believe Ellie's smile, but Sasha's laughter still echoed.
And beneath it all, one question rose louder and louder:
What had those scientists done to me?
I wasn't expecting her. For weeks she had been avoiding me, brushing past me in the kitchen like I wasn't even there, like I was some invisible shadow. But that afternoon, after school, she came running, her arms wide before I even realized it. She wrapped herself around me and pressed her face into my shoulder, sobbing like a storm breaking open. I froze, stiff as a board, because I hadn't been held like that in years. Not since before Dad died.
"Son," she said, voice trembling, thick and broken, "you are my only child, and I will love you no matter what. I will take care of you until I grow old and perish. No matter what anyone says, I will always love you, and you are beautiful."
Her hands left wet marks on my shirt, and she drew back just enough to hold my face between her palms. Her eyes were wide and shining, tears still streaking her cheeks, and her smile spread slowly, like sunlight through clouds. "You are actually quite beautiful, son," she whispered, and I felt like the air had changed, like someone had opened a window in a room I had been suffocating in for years.
I couldn't hold it in. My chest tightened, my eyes burned, and I cried, hiccuping against her shoulder, while she stroked my hair and held me like she was never going to let go. Dinner that night felt unreal. The table was the same creaky one with its stained oilcloth, the curry was thin and watery, but every bite tasted like warmth. We talked, really talked, about things we hadn't for months. About me, about Dad, about… life.