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August Writing Challenges
Day 5, "Nail Biter"

Day 5, "Nail Biter"

I don’t bite my nails. Never have, never will.

My mother always told me I was a bit too prudish, but keeping my nails in proper shape and health is only one part of a larger, more extensive bid to keep my health in check. I’m equally specific with my teeth, and my hair, and my skin, and even my throat. It might not be typical, but I hope to maintain a good shape well into my middle ages. Not that I’m anywhere near that age yet.

I’m young. I’m professional. I’m diligent. And I have fought so hard to be these things, so…

“Don’t you look a bit tired?”

The coffee in my hand suddenly felt very hot. Practically scalding through the brown paper cup containing it. Deliberately, keeping my full attention on maintaining neutrality, I turned toward my coworker. “How so?”

She smiled awkwardly, knowing that her question might have been a bit rude, but nonetheless biting out the response, “It's just that your eyes… Well, I don’t mean to assume, but there are bags under them, and I just want you to know that it’s alright to take a break every now and then. You still haven’t used any of your days this year, have you?”

“No,” I answered. She assumed I answered only the second question, but in truth, it was both. “You must not be seeing right. I would never…” I touched a hand to my face, feeling the part below my eye, my fingers instantly recoiling as I touched something soft and puffy. But that couldn’t be it. I had done my morning routine perfectly. There was no reason for me to look tired. I didn’t feel tired. “This isn’t…”

She looked at me pityingly. “It’s alright,” she said, in her middle-aged narcissistic wisdom, “we’ve all been there.”

“No,” I said, again. Because I hadn’t been there, and I never would be. “I’m not like you.”

The words seemed to take her by surprise, because all of a sudden she didn’t have any more stuck-up advice to give, not even which anti-ageing creams to use—all the better. Not waiting for her to come up with some words to make herself feel better with, I turned my shoulder and walked back to my cubicle, suppressing the tremble in my hands by clenching them tightly, making my perfectly painted, perfectly manicured fingernails stab into my palms.

When I came back home to my clean, flawlessly designed studio apartment, the time was almost too much to have dinner. I hadn’t noticed the time passing by.

Once home, I drank a quick nutrient smoothie to make up for dinner before taking a seat at my home computer. Work may have finished for the day, but I still had much to do. Emails to answer, spreadsheets to optimise, schedules to plan…

At least, that is what I had planned on doing. Until I placed my fingers to the keyboard, everything was fine. And then I saw it. My left ring finger, at the very crown of my ruby-red nail, there was a crease. A part bit off. A small but obnoxiously noticeable part, simply removed. I stared at it for several long, painful seconds before abruptly standing up from my desk, my lips twisted on my face, my hair suddenly in my face.

I brush the hair out of my face, avoiding using my left hand for fear of seeing the dreadful mistake.

And for almost a full minute, I just stood there in my apartment, breathing.

Once I’m done, I become a whirl of activity, moving to my bathroom in a few quick strides. I hate doing it, but I have no choice. The best option would be to go to my nail technician, but not at this hour, and not tomorrow morning. This will be my one option. Hesitantly, unwillingly, I reach out to the bathroom cupboards and pull out the nail scissors. It takes me a few minutes to cut all of my nails the same size, filing off the dreaded cavity as I do, leaving my nails pristine but somewhat shorter. They are no longer perfectly almond-shaped and I hate it.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Regardless, in the morning, this is all sure to go away.

But when I wake up the following day, after an unusually uneasy night, it is far from better. My face looks tired. Far more than it had been yesterday. My hair is a mess. No, everything is a mess. I skip breakfast to spend an extra half an hour trying to fix my face, but it isn’t enough, and when I get to work ten minutes late, the bags under my eyes are still fully visible. Not even the jade facerollers and the guava cream could rid me of them.

My coworker must have noticed it too, but for fear of a similar confrontation as yesterday, she avoids mentioning it. But I can see it in her face, her eyes. Every movement of her body screams, ‘You look a bit tired,’ and ‘Are those wrinkles?’ and ‘Did you get enough sleep last night?’

I hate her. I hate her. I hate her.

I hate her.

When the lunch break rolls around, we have no choice but to make amends. There is only one coffee machine, after all, so conversation by it is a must. She looks me up and down, smiles blandly, furrows her brows, and says, “You look a bit fresher today. Had a good night’s sleep?” I don’t grace her with an answer. She’s right to praise me for once. “But, I just…” She tilts her head, her eyes falling down to my hands.

“Did you always bite your nails?”

The world goes silent. The only sound I can hear is of the coffee machine, grinding, crushing, destroying the dried beans, processing them with guttural mechanical parts, squeezing them and boiling them and charring them. And what pops out of the hole at the bottom is a spray of brownish, steaming liquid. Out of instinct, I reach towards it, only to find the nail doing so to be wrong. The edge is serrated, jagged, bitten and pulled and gnawed into the approximate shape of a fish’s tooth.

I pull my hand back and grip it with my other hand, holding it in place as though it were alive and rebellious. My hands are trembling in a way that ascends merely obvious.

“Are you oka-,”

“I have to go.” She reaches out towards me but I’m already gone, leaving my coffee and her behind.

I can’t focus. The screen in front of me hums in blue-and-white and the open spreadsheet compels me to… something. I can’t tell anymore. I can’t even remember what I was supposed to be doing, much less why. Any time I put my fingers to the keyboard, I find them jagged and horrible and have to draw them back again, glueing them to my thighs.

It takes all the courage I have to grab my small on-the-go nail kit and sneak off to the bathrooms. I had tried to keep them as is until I could leave work. Then I could get a manicure, fix them up and make them perfect again. But I can’t. Not like this. Gulping, I glance down at my nails. Several of them are wrong. Wrong and bad and who did this? I didn’t do this. I could never have done something like this. Not me. Never me. Then who? Why?

Gritting my teeth, I bring the nail scissors to my fingers and cut them again. Now they’re short. My technician would scold me if she could see me. I’ll have to grow them out for a few weeks. But, with them as short as this, there would be no way for me, or anyone else, to bite them. They’re safe, and they look alright. To some degree.

I leave the bathroom.

Right as I leave, I get ambushed by my coworker, who steps in with a remorseful look on her face, her eyes all droopy and unsure. “I’m sorry,” she says. “You really do seem tired, but it was wrong of me to mention it. It’s just that you work so hard, and if I don’t tell you, who will?”

“Buzz off,” I spit. She’s taken aback, but I push past her.

“Wait, please-,”

I leave work at the proper time. I can’t remember driving home. Did I eat dinner?

My nails are wrong again. Pointed. Twisted. Jagged. They’re so short but they’re so wrong and they need to be fixed. Again. Again and again and again and again, I fix them. All night, I sit on top of the toiler, pressing the nail scissor against my fingertips, slicing off fractions of my nail, tiny slices of white and red until I’m no longer just cutting the nail, I’m cutting little pieces of skin, little bits here and there, biting back the pain in pure desperation.

The nail scissor shears off fresh nail and fresh flesh and fresh red nail polish gush from within my fingers, covering me with a nice ruby red shade, burrowing my horrible jagged fingers in its colour. It’s dripping onto the toilet, onto the floor, onto my feet and onto my bare legs.

The red brings black with it and before I know it, I’m asleep in the bathroom, curled in a ball, unable to make sense of what’s up or down. It’s all so dark and cold. I’m one with the tiles below. We’re both all red and shiny—beautiful. Perfect.

When I wake up, the stumps of my nails, what little remains of them, are jagged.

I pull them out.

Long root-like nerves trail out along with them. I’m red again. But a fresh, nice, ruby-red, not the dark, rusty red that covered me when I woke up. Nice. Good. Lovely. Perfect.

With a smile on my face, I fall asleep again. But this time, I don’t wake up.