A Pretty Thing Like You by Elizabeth Stark (Idaho, 22)

I can count the number of times I’ve done something right on my fingers. The number is zero. 
Actually, can nothing be counted? Do you count zero or do you count from zero? I suppose it would depend on the perspective…
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    To see me from his eyes was to see something different from a person at all. I believed him. I believed him with all my… 
    In the shower I combed my hair. I combed my eyebrows, my eyelashes. I scrubbed just as a person does. I kept myself clean for bedtime.
                                                                                                                                          Stark / Pretty Thing / 2 
    That evening, the warm water did little to soothe my aches. Something still felt off. Before getting dressed, I tried to reach for the zipper, but things inside of me cracked and popped and I couldn’t stand it. I asked for his help. 
    He unzipped me from the back. This was his favorite view of me. He tugged with little luck at first. He steadied my body with one of his hands on my hip. With another tug, his other hand glided down my back like a butter knife. He peeled away my skin and found no guts, no breath, no heartbeat. Inside of me is a vacuum bag filled with dust and grime. He coughed, then slid his arms under my skin and hugged my ribcage. He did not kiss my neck, but he let his lips just rest against me. He carried me to the trashcan and shook all the dirt out of me. He did not mind. I think he liked that I was a little dirty sometimes. Sometimes, like this time, he would shake a little too hard and I would fall apart. 
    My arms and legs snapped off at the sockets. My head popped right out of place and to the floor. My spine toppled like building blocks, and a great cloud of the sour dust and hairballs poofed out of me. He set me- pieces of me- on the bed, brushed my stray hairs aside, and kissed my forehead. 
    “So pretty now,” he described me. We slept happily while I was in my disassembled state. Where any normal person would be bleeding out, I was clean. His breathing lulled me to sleep. 
    He left in the morning. 
    He did not put me back together. 
    He’s just funny like that.
                                                                                                                                          Stark / Pretty Thing / 3 
    He got around to piecing me back together eventually. When that was done, I went to a mechanic. I figured I needed some bolts tightened, something to keep me together a little better. The man looked me up and down and said, “Sweetheart, you got your heart broken. I can’t help you anymore.” 
    “Sorry?” 
    “I said your warranty is up,” the mechanic replied. 
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    He would visit less and less those days. When he did, he would get on his knees and beg me to clean him up. He would tug at my clothes, kiss my thighs, rub my back until I washed away his dust and dirt. The bathwater grew filthier and filthier those days. I needed emptying more and more often. I would comb my hair in the mirror and wonder why his favorite view was from my back. I could not see my back. I could not reach my zipper. 
    “You look tired,” he said to my face. I touched my cheek. I felt warm but it was cold to the touch. 
    “It’s bedtime,” I replied in defense. He swept away the hairs out of place again. I grew more embarrassed. 
    He had been having trouble sleeping. I did everything I could. I kept everything clean, everything calm. I kept myself pretty. He would not sleep until I got naked with him. And then I would only ache.
                                                                                                                                          Stark / Pretty Thing / 4 
   I’m told that flesh is a very temporary thing. Cells shed, here and gone in an instant from our perceptions of time. I tried to shower after sex, craving the warmth like a cold-blooded animal, but the nastiness of it was caked into my mind like cement. As summer’s heat and winter’s ice   causes pavement to shift and crack, I felt myself growing harder and more brittle. 
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    I knew what he was up to. I told the mechanic that he needs two of us to keep him clean. I must have been completely broken, I thought. 
    “You’ll be fine,” the mechanic told me. That’s what they always tell us. No, something must have been broken. I pleaded with the mechanic to put a stethoscope to my chest, take my blood, or scan my brain. The mechanic shook his head. 
    “You said yourself,” the mechanic explained, “You have no heart, that you are only a machine.” 
    I was pissed. 
    The delusions made me rusted with anger. The warranty was up and the mechanic was ready to let me rot. I would do no such thing. He had not left me yet. I was still pretty enough for him to cheat on. I was not his only one but I was one of his and that was worth fighting for. I thought I was too filled with my own shame and therefore could not handle his enough. I began to cry. 
    I walked to his house. What a sight I must have been, walking, crying, aching all that way to him. I walked past him to the bedroom. He followed behind. I found her in his bed. Her zipper
                                                                                                                                          Stark / Pretty Thing / 5 
was on the floor, attached to her clothing. Her skin was not undone, her skin had no zipper, no buttons, no screws, no belts or switches. She slept on her back, hair sleepily tangled and warmly covered by the sheets. I do not know why I expected her to be anything other than a human woman. I turned away from her, feeling as if I should have never seen it. 
    “I’m sorry,” he said. 
    “You’re not,” I replied, “I do not expect you to be.” 
    I took his hand. It was warm. I took his wrist, felt his pulse. 
    “Am I alive?” I asked him, putting his hand to my sternum. He felt no heartbeat. To see me from his eyes was to see nothing at all. 
    “She’s beautiful,” I said before leaving. I fell apart on his doorstep. The noise awoke the woman and she came to help. 
    “Don’t waste your time with me,” I told her, “He loves you.” 
    “He does not love me,” she laughed as she screwed the last of my fingers into place. She counted them to make sure I had all ten. I felt close with her, as all this time he had taken from me, taken from her, we had known each other through it all. 
    “I feel like everything I do is wrong, like I just go in circles,” I said. 
    “But you feel, which is something he fails to do.”
                                                                                                                                         Stark / Pretty Thing / 6 
    That night I felt a fever coming on. I never saw him again and each day apart from him brought on a pounding headache, dreams of falling that would startle me awake, or aches that I had never felt before. With no one to unzip me, I thought I might burst at the seams. 
    And when I did, I knew I had lived. I hated them all, hated everything. It all left me then, nothing left to hate and finally I was done. I took a walk to allow the breeze to cool my skin. When all the dirt finally poured out of me for the last time, I bled. The vultures took my body and I was grateful for it. Beautiful creatures were given full bellies by my hateless flesh.




Elizabeth Stark is a writer from the suburbs surrounding Boise, Idaho. They received Gold Key recognition in the 2019 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards as well as Silver Key the year prior. In 2023, they were featured in the student-run creative writing publication, "Thistle," at the University of Idaho. Their writing often includes themes surrounding the struggle of queer femininity, narrating the world as an unwilling outcast, and activism.

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