Mellow Doubt

by Christopher Brookmyre

(published in a charity anthology called Magic in 2002.)

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I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth. Or to put it more plainly, I haven’t quite been my usual care-free, smiley, mass-murdering self for a while now, and it’s starting to make me feel... a little lost.

There are a number of evident and plausible reasons for this.

When I look in the mirror, I no longer see the face my mind expects. This isn’t any pretentious and self-pitying psychobabble, I should stress: I paid a maxillofacial surgeon a shitload of money to ensure that I no longer see the face my mind expects; and that more importantly, I no longer see the face so very many people in so very many countries would dearly love to get into with a floor-sander and a bucket of hydrogen chlorate. I don’t look radically different. With the bruising and swelling gone, the features and proportions are halfway familiar, but the lines and contours seem softened; blurred almost, so that I resemble what could best be described as a Japanese anime version of myself. I look different enough, though, let me tell you. Walk into the bathroom for a pish in the middle of the night, catch a sideways glimpse of that in the mirror and you’re swapping your cock for a Glock, if you haven’t already jumped backwards into the bath. When it comes to undermining your sense of identity, having your own coupon replaced would do it every time..

But that’s not it.

I’m sitting, as I do most days, outside a bar overlooking the beach. Resting on my table are a beer and a book, though again, like most days, I’m too distracted by what’s going on in front of me to read it. Today, however, unlike most days, my attention is enticed by something other than the cornucopia of sun-worshipping females parading between the terrace and the sea. These last have captured my eye but not my mind, a pleasant and picturesque backdrop to my necessarily ugly reflections; soothingly incongruous, disposably irrelevant. I didn’t come here for the reasons everyone else does. I’m not on holiday and I’m not looking for parties, romance or even just sex. I needed to be somewhere fluidly transitory, where people come and go and the locals don’t bother learning your face because you’ll be history in a fortnight. I also needed to be in a place where wearing sunglasses from dawn to dusk does not look suspicious or even affected.

. . . more