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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/CMCWrites on 2024-09-29 20:30:31+00:00.

Did you know my eyes used to be brown?

Before I start, I must beg of you one thing: do not speculate about my identity. You already know who I am. If you have passed a radio in the local shops even once over the last decade, you’ve heard my voice. Perhaps you’ve been a rabid fan at my concerts, perhaps you physically recoil at the sound of my lisp, perhaps you’re entirely neutral towards me. Love me or hate me, you know me. My situation is extremely unique, so it is difficult to anonymize my story. So please, if you can think of anything that may help me, share it, but keep my situation between us.

Since I was a lad I’ve been prone to acne, of all places, on the sides of my neck. My parents, my teachers, and the town’s doctor swore up and down that it was hormonal, temporary. Once my growth spurt finished, they assured me, it would be a thing of the past.

The thing that annoyed me the most about this acne is that it never came to a head. No way to pop it and find relief in watching the pus ooze out, feeling it deflate. 

This didn’t stop me from trying. I would struggle for what seemed like hours in the mirror, squeezing the hard bumps between my two forefingers in hopes that they’d burst. It never happened.

Instead, my acne would only grow angrier, more inflamed, when I tried. I would enter the bathroom with a neck speckled with small rosy bumps, visible only up close. I’d exit with what looked like huge welts, no closer to being popped than when I approached the mirror in the first place. My skin, and ego, would be bruised.

So I learned to wear my hair long, to cover it up. When I was a younger teenager, it looked greasy, oafish. Though, I will admit, I grew into the look quite a bit as time went on. The fairer sex took a liking to the sensitive, long-haired poet type I had become. 

My confidence increased exponentially as a result, thank God, but I would still come home to the bathroom mirror all the same. No matter how secure in myself I felt, the mirror was my grave reminder of my embarrassment of a neck.

I must apologise for droning on about this topic for so long. It was a big deal in the way that acne is a big deal to teenagers. No one around me seemed to notice, or if they did, they didn’t care.

It didn’t affect the one thing that was most important to me at the time: singing.

I set up with my guitar around my tiny town, at first on the streets that weren’t so crowded. A low stakes test run, if you will. I’d open my wee notebook to one of the dozens of poems I had set to a melody, and bare my heart to the world.

I loved the attention. And boy, did I get a lot of it. At the end of those first performances, I’d find my guitar case overflowing with more than a couple of quid. With my confidence boosted, I’d then move to the town’s main streets, then the square.

I was 17, about to go to uni, and I was doing about as well as one could do in our sleepy village. I was playing cafes, pubs, a party or two. It was beginning to look like an actual viable career option for me, much to my parents’ chagrin. 

Eyes were on me now, a lot of eyes. If I chose to forego uni and take a shot at a musical career, that would mean even more eyes on me. And they wouldn’t be as kind as my neighbours’ and friends’. I knew my music and lyrics could stand the test of the most judgemental ear, but to be a singer you must also, of course, look the part.

As I was becoming a little local celebrity, my acne worsened. I was prescribed a slew of ointments and pills and dealt with the numerous side effects – dryness, itching, peeling – but no medicine made the slightest dent in the issue at hand. The hard bumps underneath the surface of my skin persisted.

Eventually, I booked my first ever venue in the next village over. It was an actual concert venue, albeit a small one, and I was set to play as an opener for a local band. This would mean my biggest audience yet.

Coincidentally, I also had my biggest acne flare yet at that time. One pustule, larger than the rest, was stationed threateningly close to the centre of my neck. I would barely be able to cover it up with my hair.

How I tortured myself for days before the event, praying to whatever God that would listen to just let this one pop. I tried everything. Sticking it with a needle, covering it with toothpaste, caking it with my mother’s old concealer. The eyesore on my neck remained glaringly obvious. 

Finally, half an hour before the concert, the biggest one of my life so far, I gave it one last ditch effort in the venue’s bathroom mirror, and my dreams came true.

The skin split, and out leaked thick gummy spurts of yellow-green pus. It must have drained for over thirty seconds from the small fissure in my skin. I am not above admitting I let out a moan of pleasure. The thing that I had been wanting to happen for a full decade finally happened. 

When it was spent, I wiped it clean with one of those rough brown paper towels from a dispenser on the wall, and there, on my neck, was an unmistakable green eye.

The skin surrounding it looked doughy, false. It reminded me of the liquid latex I had applied to myself one Halloween to create the illusion of zombie skin sloughing off. But I touched it gingerly along the eye’s lid, and I could feel that the skin was as sensitive as my eyelids’. It was connected to my nerve endings. It was mine. 

The bright green eye, the exact colour of the infected pus, stared back at me in the mirror. I was horrified, my breath suddenly ragged. The white of the eye was pinkish, the pupil dilated. It had sparse blondish lashes on either side of the crusty gash that was the lid. It quivered, alive, seeing. And after a moment, it blinked at me. 

I gasped and jumped back from the mirror. I was frozen. 

A knock came at the door and the stagehand gave me a 5 minute warning, said I was needed on stage. The eye was on the centre-right side of my neck. I looked back and forth between the bathroom door and the mirror. Another knock on the door, more urgent this time.

At a loss for what to do, I pulled up my tee shirt up and around my neck, then buttoned up my jacket over it, creating the illusion of wearing a turtleneck. Yes, yes, that’s where my signature look came from, believe it or not. I digress. I exited the bathroom and made my way to the stage.

It was my best set yet. I’ll be honest, I don’t know how I managed it. Though I was merely the opener, a position usually doomed to a half-hearted smattering of slow claps, I got extended applause at the end of almost every song. I could feel the reverberation of the music around the hall, the audience moving and reacting to my lyrics. I swear, even the headliner didn’t get as much response. 

On any other night, my spirits would have soared. But clearly, I was a bit preoccupied.

After the set I rushed back to the bathroom to check my neck. I was hoping, praying, that the eye was in my imagination, a result of pre-show jitters. But I pulled my makeshift turtleneck down and there it was, blinking at me while nestled among my neck acne.

I didn’t have time to ponder too long. The bathroom door burst open and I was dragged out into the crowd to celebrate by my cheering friends and family. 

My career took off quickly from that point. I was invited to play larger venues after the success of my first show. You must forgive my ego, but my talent only improved as I began to become the artist you know today. My lyrics became more poetic, tenfold. My melodies more hypnotic. I was just entering my 20’s, and I was on the rise. Somehow my concern about the eye took a back seat. Fame is all-encompassing, after all.

And though the eye on the side of my neck was no longer my biggest concern, it was still there.

It became a pre-show ritual, in the restroom or greenroom or whatever back room to fiddle with my turtleneck until it concealed the problem to my satisfaction. I knew the eye still stared at me beneath whatever colour of stretch cotton covered it up that day. I could feel it. 

I could never communicate with it. Yes, I did try to talk to it, like a madman. “Blink thrice if you can understand me.” So mortifying to admit. But it never blinked twice, let alone thrice.

It followed movement occasionally, but infrequently enough that I was never sure if it was a coincidence or not. It was always trained on my bloody face. I was so used to having the countless eyes of a sea of concertgoers fixed on me, so eventually it didn’t unsettle me quite the way it once had. One extra eye was nothing.

My acne still hadn’t cleared up either, but now I knew better than to test my luck by trying to pop anything else on my neck. 

As time passed, I was finally able to grow a substantial enough beard to cover up the problem entirely. I grew it longer and thicker to ensure there were no accidental peeks or slips or glances.

And finally, after three years paying my dues opening for other bands and singers, it was time for me to be the headliner. It wasn’t a small venue either, to my delight. More eyes than ever would be on me. Everything had to be flawless from now on. My performances, my appearances.

I had to manage the absolute behemoth that my beard had become over the years. Right after I signed with my first manager, the first thing he said to me was that the “caveman look” wasn’t easy to sell. Stick to the turtlenecks if I was that insecure about my acne.

So I shaved, of course. I was careful, of cours…

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