Prompt: You live in a small isolated commune, where everybody’s face looks the same, except for those of the children around you. You’ve reached the age of 12, and are brought into an operating room.
“I’m scared, dad.” I stopped before entering the doctor’s office, and looked up at him as he held my hand. He knelt, his face to mine.
“Why son?” he asked.
“What if it hurts?”
“Oh, son, it won’t,” he rubbed my shoulder, “I promise.”
“But—”
“Don’t you want to look like your mother, like me, like the others in town? Don’t you want to look happy?”
I looked at the thin lip’s matching the neighbor’s, the small nose matching the mailman’s, the wrinkled forehead matching my teacher’s, and finally met the brown eyes there were my mother’s. If I didn’t look like them, then what would I be? Different? A kid forever? Something cold ran down my back that made my shiver.
My father smiled, and the coldness vanished. I was going to be like him, like the others in town. Not a kid, not different, anymore. I smiled back, and nodded.
“Wonderful,” he said, straightening, and walked with me into the doctor’s office. “You’ll be like us no time, kiddo.”
Read my previous prompt, “Unstable Foundation.”
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Micah Castle 