u/AlexKindaDoesStuff

Author’s Notes: This is my first ever reddit post! I made an account specifically for this story, and to get some feedback. I do a lot of writing, but not a lot of horror content, though I do have a much larger project I’m working on.

It first started when I was 10 years old. Subtle things, at first. I thought that was just what puberty did. My nose seemed a little different, one day. My forehead a little taller. I thought I was just growing. My hair stayed the same, so did my body. Long blonde hair with thin, lanky limbs built for playing outside like kids do. But as I aged, it got worse. By the time I was 12, it was hard to recognize my own face in the mirror. It barely looked like me. I looked in the mirror one day and even my hair was different. Buzzed short and brown like a teenage boy’s. I had a short forehead, wide cheekbones and a nose so sharp it could cut glass. It looked like a face that belonged to a shorter, stubbier type. Not like me. It wasn’t me. 

By the time I was 15, it was normal. I looked in the mirror every morning, wondering what mismatched face I would have. I had a woman’s face that day. Long, curly hair dyed the color of an algae-filled pool. It was faded, orange roots growing from the scalp. She had a gaunt face, I remember, like she hadn’t been well-fed in childhood and never fully recovered. Sometimes my shoulders looked a little wider or narrower, and I wondered if it was just the hair or if my body was starting to change too. Sometimes I wished it would. My body, at least, was always mine, aging and growing like my face would’ve. I counted the moles dusted across my shoulders to make sure nothing had changed. Still 11. Still my shoulders. Good. I figured I could deal with feeling mismatched as long as I had something that was mine. 

I didn’t have any friends at school, I remember, all but one. Her name was Amy. Every morning, I would find her in the cafeteria, say, “Hey, it’s Kaya,” and she would smile and wave. A few months into our friendship she informed me she was incredibly faceblind, and she only recognized me by my speech. She was the one thing that made me glad my voice didn’t change with my face, even on days when I had the face of someone who would never have a voice like mine. She made me feel normal. I wondered if she even knew my face was different every day. Probably not. I was okay with that. I’m still sad we grew apart after I dropped out.

It freaked my parents out too, for a long time. I would step out of the doors of the school bus, and in through the front door, and my mom would shriek as if I was a stranger. It always took her a moment to realize it was me. It made my heart sink through the floor every time. I never bothered to learn how to do my makeup, or style my hair. I never even got a driver’s license or an ID. I couldn’t, really. Not when the face would never match the photo again. It was never the same face twice. It made me wonder if there were a million other people in the world who had the same problem I did, always switching faces. That made me wonder if any of them ever had mine. 

I had to live at home, even at my grown age. I couldn’t own a house without proper identification, and I was completely jobless except for a small online business where I never really had to show my face. I woke up today, though, with long blonde hair flowing down to my mid-back, and a head that didn’t feel too big or too small for my shoulders. I raced down the stairs from my attic bedroom, shoved open the bathroom door, and stared in the mirror.

It was my face! It had aged with my body, a whole 14 years older than when I had last seen it. I looked tired. A sinking feeling sat in the hollow of my chest. Sure, I was happy to see my own face staring at me in the mirror, but the worst part of it all was… I still didn’t feel any less mismatched.