In the last issue of The Boy Without A Face
Mitchell upsets Mary by making a promise he
can’t possibly keep, or can he?

ISSUE TWELVE

After two weeks of avoiding Mitchell, Mary feels bad about getting so angry with him. She just didn’t like false hope.

A boy approaches her and hands her a note.

This gets Mary out of her reverie.

Mary thinks there is something familiar about this boy but can’t place where she knows him from. He walks off without saying a word. Mary unfolds the note.

         Mary

         I’m sorry if I upset you.

         If you don’t hate me too much then please meet me in my lab for a soda

         Six o-clock.

         Mitchell

At five Mary decides to go. She knows Mitch only wants to help her. He’s a true friend and has been for years. I don’t have that many friends.

She descends the stairs to the basement where Mitchell is waiting for her with a cold soda in his hand.

“Peace?”

“Peace” says Mary, “I’m sorry I got mad but you’ve got to quit making promises.”

“That I can’t keep? It seems I’ve heard that before. Here, have a seat.”

Mary sits on the padded chair Mitchell offers. If she had thought she would have found that odd. She sat down and took a few sips of the soda.

“I’m sorry I got mad with you. I know you just want to help, but…”

Mary’s legs begin to ache, not a sharp pain but a pain that moves up and down both legs. She looks past her shorts to see her legs through her braces as she squirms in the chair trying to get more comfortable. Then both her legs feel like the muscles are trying to turn over under her skin.

“What’s going on?

Mitchell!

What did you do to me?”

“Help you, I hope.”

“You hope? What was in that soda?”

“Now Mary, don’t get mad at me again. You drank some of my Nano Bots!”

“Nano Bots? What the hell are Nano Bots?”

“They’re like tiny robots.”

“You put robots in my drink? Are you crazy?”

“Listen, Mary I did a lot of research on this and several experiments. Trust me, this will work.”

“If you wanted me to trust you why didn’t you tell me what I was drinking?”

“Would you have drunk it?”

“Hell no!”

“That’s why I didn’t tell you. It’s going to work, you just wait and see.”

“If it doesn’t I’m going to kill you. That’s if I live through this.”

They could visibly see her muscles twitching under her skin.

“What’s it feel like?”

“Like I’ve got worms under my skin. It’s horrible.”

“Good!”

“Good?”

“The Nano Bots are cutting away the scar tissue from your muscles like they’re supposed to.”

“So what’s going to happen to all that scar tissue? Is it just going to rot under my skin?”

“No. Your body will absorb it.”

“How long is this going to take?”

“I don’t know. Is it terribly uncomfortable, Mary?”

“No. It’s terribly weird.”

Mary’s muscles continue to move and twitch for around an hour and finally the twitching subsides.

“Is it over?” She asks.

“I think so.”

“For someone who did all this research, you sure don’t have many answers.”

Mitchell comes up to her and kneels down.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking these things off. I don’t think you need them anymore.” He unbuckles her braces from both legs.

“How do your legs feel?”

“Kind of numb yet tingly as well.”

“Now the Bots have done a lot of cutting. Your muscles are going to need some healing so your legs may ache for a few days.”

“Then how will I know if this all worked?”

“Stand up slowly, and walk. Now there will be some pain.” He holds out his hand to her.

She takes his hand and pulls herself up.

“Some pain? There’s a hell of a lot of pain.”

“Try walking.”

She walks over to his computer. Tears stream down her face.

“I’m sorry, Mary. I didn’t mean for it to hurt you this much.”

“That’s not why I’m crying. Mitchell, I can bend my knees as I walk. I love you.”

“Does this mean you’re not going to kill me?” He rushes into her open arms.

Through sobs, she asks, “What’s going to happen to all those little robots inside of me?”

“You’ll pee them out.”

“Eewh, the poor things.”

To be continued…

Don’t miss another exciting issue of The Boy Without A Face by Skip Miller, edited by Leanne Johnston.

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In the last issue of The Boy Without A Face

Mary sees Mitchell transform a cloth into a blue bird and reveal his Utility Foglets

What else can Mitchell possibly do?

“Do you like?” says Mitchell.

“A little too pretty for my taste.”

“Oh. You like a more manly look?”

Reaching into his shirt pocket Mitchell takes out a pad and begins typing.

Mary looks on in amazement. Mitchell’s face changes. His eyebrows darken, his nose broadens, his lips thicken and his cheeks appear more sunken.

“How’s this?” he says.

“You look like a thug. How about a little more in between?”

He types some more and his face changes again.

Mary sees a handsome young man.

“I like that!I can’t believe I’m seeing any of this.”

“Cool. Isn’t it?”

“Where did you learn all this?”

“These aren’t my ideas. There’s a lot research going on all over the world in Nano technology. I just took it further.”

“I’d say you have. What’s next?”

“Not what. Who.”

“What do you mean?”

“The second part of my promise.”

“There’s nothing you can do, Mitch. All the doctors told me nothing can be done”.

“Yeah, they told me the same thing.”

“Well you can’t solve my problem with a weird cloth.”

“No. We can’t. You told me in the accident that killed your parents you had your legs crushed between the front and back seats, right?”

“Yeah and all the scaring has made my muscles stiff and inflexible.”

“I’ve been working on it for some time. I just need a couple more experiments.”

Mary stood.

“I told you not to make promises you can’t keep.”

Mary left the room.

To be continued…

Don’t miss another exciting issue of The Boy Without A Face by Skip Miller, edited by Leanne Johnston.

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In the last issue of The Boy Without A Face
Mitchell attends school making an enemy and a friend,
and gets put into the forth grade.

“Hey. Freak! What do you look like under that cover?” A much bigger boy demands.

“Jack! Leave him alone,” a blond girl, pleads.

“You standing up for this freak Mary?”

“He’s done nothing to you.”

“He’s giving my school a bad rep. It’s bad enough we have to go to school with a bunch of no parent brats. Now we’re suppose to put up with the likes of him.” He turns back to Mitchell. When he does one of his friends gets on his hands and knees behind Mitchell.

“Here’s what I think of freaks like you!”

With both hands he pushes Mitchell. Mitchell falls over the kid behind him and hits the ground hard. His head slams to the ground and his hat falls off. Now they all can see his face.

“What the hell are you?” says Jack.

The crowd that has gathered pulls back in horror.

Mary hurries to Mitchell’s side and picks up his hat.

“Put it back on,” she says. Turning on the crowd, “He’s a person!”

“I want you out of my school. If you don’t find a way to transfer then I will make your life hell!” Jack warns. He turns and leaves. His friends follow.

Mitchell turns to Mary.

“Thank you. Why did you help me?”

Then he notices for the first time, she has braces on both of her legs.

“It’s hard being different,” she says.

To be continued…

Don’t miss another exciting issue of The Boy Without A Face by Skip Miller, edited by Leanne Johnston.

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ISSUE FOUR:

In the last issue of The Boy Without A Face
Mitchell was taken to Nelson Orphanage.
Will this baby without a face ever be adopted out? 

Mitchell looks to Joyce as his mother. She looks after his every need. She applies Emu oil on the membrane daily to keep his skin more pliable. He is in all respects just like any other baby except one thing. He takes in everything that’s going on around him. He watches her every move.

“You seem so serious,” says Joyce. The baby coos.

Like any other child he loves it when she plays This Little Pig with his toes. He wiggles and giggles as any other child would. He crawls at three months and walks holding on to furniture at six months. He leaves the room only when Joyce takes him in his stroller. No one else in the orphanage has anything to do with him.

****

At three Michell realizes the little bugs at the bottom of the page of the children’s picture books that  Joyce gives him mean something.

“What are these?” he says.

“Those are words. That one says dog, like the picture.”

“Oh!” He goes back through all of his books and begins linking the words with the pictures.

Chapter II

“Do you think it wise to let the boy call you mother?” Bill Collins says.

“Normally no but you said it yourself, he’s not going to be adopted so what’s the harm?”

“I suppose you’re right and it does seem to give him some comfort.”

“He needs all the comfort he can get. He saw himself in the bathroom mirror yesterday and cried for an hour. The other kids his age run when they see him.”

“I don’t know how we can solve that problem.”

“We don’t. He’s a problem solver. I’m sure he’ll find a way.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been noticing him find his own answers to problems so I thought I’d test him. I Had my husband build a cage with no entrance. We put a chocolate chip cookie in it and he sealed it up. The cookie was three inches in diameter with the hole in the cage only one inch. I sat it in front of Mitchell and watched.

He looked at it. You could almost hear the wheels turning in his brain. He crawled around the cage twice. He went to the toy box and found one of those long narrow parts of the tinker toys and crawled back to the cage. He poked that thing through the top of the cage into the cookie and broke it into four pieces. He picked up the cage and shook out the cookie.”

****

Mitchell, now six years of age and excited he’s finally going to school.

He has no misgivings. He knows what lays out there for him. He knows because he experienced it in the Orphanage. He cried once over his appearance, he would never cry again.

The kids from the Orphanage went to a local school. His teachers had been briefed about Mitchell so they knew what to expect. Joyce knew this day would come and feared for the boy.

As Mitchell approaches the bus Bill Collins appears with a hat in his hand. He holds it out to Mitchell as he does a veil falls from the hat.

Mitchell looks at the hat and attaches the veil.

“You can see through the veil and the hat will hide that you have no hair. You can tell people it’s a religious thing.”

“Thank you Mr. Collins but I don’t lie.”

“Well then, it will keep people from staring at your face.”

Mitchell took the hat and put it on. The veil covered his face and he could see through it.

“I’m sorry! That’s the best I could come up with.”

“I’ll be Okay! Thank you.” He got on the bus.

All the kids on the bus came from the Orphanage. He knew them all. Some had been his tormenters. He would survive now as he always had. He’d heard all the names before. So they invent a few new ones he thought.

All of the Doctors he’d seen over the years told him he would have to live with it. He knew they were right, for now.

He sat alone on the bus, nothing new there.

I’m going to learn.

The bus pulled in to the school parking lot and he took a deep breath. The doors opened and he took his place in line as children shuffled off the bus to go to school. The torture began immediately, kids pointing at him and whispering to each other.

Stay strong.

He’d been told the room number of his classroom. He found it easily. He entered the room. Kids milled around talking to each other. Mitchell went directly to a seat in the back of the room and sat down.

The teacher wrote her name on the black board, Mrs. Black. She sat at her desk at first then stood up.

“Everyone, take a seat!”

They all hurried to find a seat next to a friend.

He is going to learn. That is all that occupied his mind.

Picking up a pointer, the teacher pointed to her name.

“I am Mrs. Black. I will be your teacher this year. You will have play time but not in my room. When you enter this room it is to learn.

Let us begin.”

She passed out a book on the alphabet.

It didn’t take the teacher long to realize Mitchell was far advanced than the first, second and third grade students. Mrs. Black got the creeps from Mitchell and he quickly advanced to the forth grade.

Mitchell, the smallest in the fourth grade class is soon to realize  forth graders go beyond name calling.

To be continued…

Don’t miss another exciting issue of The Boy Without A Face by Skip Miller, edited by Leanne Johnston.

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