Chapter 1: The Consultation of Narcissus
“I want to look better than this hag my boyfriend is married to.”
The words hung in the sterile air of my clinic, sharp and cold as a scalpel. She didn’t know that the face she was mocking was the same one hidden behind my surgical mask, and that by the time I was finished, she wouldn’t just look like the hag—she would become her.
The Vance Institute in Beverly Hills was a temple of white marble and hushed whispers. It smelled of eucalyptus and money, a scent designed to make you forget the blood that paid for it. I sat behind my glass desk, fully scrubbed in—blue cap covering my hair, N95 mask concealing my nose and mouth, surgical loops magnifying my eyes. To the world, I was Dr. Evelyn Vance, the “Sculptor of the Stars.” To the girl sitting across from me, I was just a pair of hands holding the keys to her vanity.
Chloe was twenty-two, blonde, and radiated the kind of entitlement that usually comes with a trust fund, though her cheap shoes told a different story. She tossed her phone onto the desk with a clatter.
The screen lit up. It showed a candid photo of a woman in a garden. She was wearing no makeup, her hair was pulled back in a messy bun, and she looked exhausted.
It was me.
It was a photo taken three weeks ago, in my own backyard, while I was deadheading roses after a fourteen-hour shift.
“This is her,” Chloe sneered, popping a piece of gum. “My boyfriend says she’s a bore. A hag. He says he only stays for the kids, but he’s tired of looking at her. I want to look like a younger, hotter version of… whatever this bone structure is. I want to walk into a room and make him forget she ever existed.”
My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird in a cage. Richard. My husband. The man who had kissed me goodbye this morning and told me I was beautiful.
I looked at the photo of myself—vulnerable, unguarded. Then I looked at the predator sitting across from me.
I took a deep breath, the mask filtering the air. I forced my eyes to crinkle in a professional smile she couldn’t see.
“I understand completely,” I said, my voice smooth as steel. “We can certainly achieve a… striking resemblance. I will make you a masterpiece.”
Chloe beamed, a shark smelling blood. “Good. Money isn’t an issue. He gave me his card.”
She slid a sleek, black card across the glass. Richard Vance. Vance Corp.
My husband was paying for his mistress to replace me. He was funding his own haunting.
“Excellent,” I whispered, picking up the card. It felt heavy, like a weapon. “The nurse will take you to prep. I’ll see you in the OR.”
Chloe signed the consent forms without reading a single word. She stood up, checking her reflection in the window, preening.
As the nurse led her away, I sat alone in the silence. The rage didn’t burn; it froze. It crystallized into a plan so perfect, so symmetrical, that it felt like destiny.
Chapter 2: The Anesthesia of Ignorance
The prep room was quiet. I washed my hands, the ritualistic scrubbing grounding me. Finger to elbow. Scrub. Rinse. Repeat.
My phone buzzed on the metal tray. A text from Richard.
Richard: Stuck in meetings late tonight, babe. Mergers are a nightmare. Don’t wait up. Love you.
I stared at the screen. He wasn’t in a meeting. He was probably at a bar, or a hotel, waiting for his “upgrade” to wake up.
I looked through the observation window. Chloe was lying on the table, the anesthesia already taking hold. Her eyes were fluttering shut. She looked peaceful. Innocent.
But innocence is an action, not a look. And she had chosen violence.
I walked into the Operating Room. The lights were bright, casting no shadows.
I picked up the marking pen. Usually, I follow the Golden Ratio—phi, the divine proportion. I measure distances to the millimeter to create objective beauty.
Today, I followed the lines of my own memory.
I leaned over her sleeping form. I traced the bridge of her nose. It was straight, cute. I drew a line to indicate a deviation—a slight bump, just like mine. I traced her jawline. It was soft. I marked it for reduction, for sharpening, to match the severity of my own profile.
I stopped viewing her as a patient. She was clay. She was raw material.
For a second, my hand trembled. This was malpractice. This was mutilation. This was the end of my career if anyone found out.
But then I remembered the photo. A hag.
And I remembered the credit card.
“You wanted to take my place,” I whispered into the silence of the room. “So you shall.”
“Scalpel,” I said to the nurse.
She slapped the instrument into my palm. The light glinted off the blade, a star of cold steel.
“We are going deep today,” I announced, my voice devoid of emotion. “Total reconstruction. Facial feminization and structural realignment.”
I made the first cut. A line of crimson bloomed on her skin.
There was no going back.
Chapter 3: The Surgery of Shadows
The surgery took nine hours.
It was a fugue state. I worked with a precision that bordered on the demonic. I broke her nose. Crack. I reset it, ensuring the slight asymmetry that Richard used to kiss, saying it gave me “character.”
I filed down her chin. The bone dust smelled like chalk. I harvested cartilage from her ear to rebuild the tip of her nose, giving it a slight droop—the Vance droop.
I worked on her eyes. A blepharoplasty, but in reverse. I created the slight hooding of the eyelids that I had inherited from my mother. I etched lines into the corners of her eyes—permanent crow’s feet carved from flesh.
The nurses watched in awe.
“Dr. Vance, the technique is… unconventional,” one whispered. “You’re aging her?”
“I am giving her gravitas,” I replied, not looking up. “She wants to be a woman of substance. Substance comes with scars.”
I stitched her up. Hundreds of tiny, microscopic sutures.
It wasn’t just surgery; it was identity theft in reverse. I was printing my soul onto her face.
By the eighth hour, my back ached. My hands cramped. But as I looked down at the swollen, bruised face on the table, I didn’t see a stranger anymore.
I saw myself.
It was terrifying. It was perfect.
I placed the final stitch.
“Bandages,” I ordered.
We wrapped her head in thick layers of gauze. She looked like a mummy. A cocoon waiting to hatch a monster.
I stripped off my bloody gloves and threw them into the biohazard bin. They landed with a wet thud.
“Recovery will take two weeks,” I told the head nurse. “I will handle the post-op personally. No one else is to see her face. No mirrors. No phones. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
I walked out of the OR. I felt light. I felt heavy. I felt like God on the seventh day, looking at a world that was about to burn.
Chapter 4: The Unveiling
Two weeks later.
The swelling had gone down. The bruising had faded to yellow.
Chloe sat on the edge of the bed in the recovery suite. She was vibrating with excitement.
“Is it perfect?” she asked, her voice muffled by the remaining bandages. “Will he love it? Does it look like the photos I showed you?”
“It is exactly what you asked for,” I replied. “You wanted to replace her. You wanted to make him forget she ever existed.”
“Yes,” she breathed. “I want to be the only thing he sees.”
I stood behind her. I reached for the scissors.
Snip. The first layer fell away.
Snip. The second.
The air in the room seemed to freeze. The final layer of gauze peeled away from her skin.
She was healed. The scars were thin, invisible lines.
I picked up the silver hand mirror from the table. I held it out to her.
“Take a look,” I said.
Chloe grabbed the mirror. She brought it up to her face. She smiled, expecting perfection. Expecting youth.
She blinked.
Her smile faltered.
She touched her cheek. She touched her nose.
Then, a sound rose from her throat—a guttural, animalistic noise that wasn’t quite a scream. It was the sound of a mind snapping.
Crash.
The mirror shattered on the floor.
“What did you do?” she shrieked, clawing at her face. “What is this? I look… I look old! I look… tired!”
She spun around to face me. Her eyes—my eyes—were wide with horror.
“You ruined me!” she screamed. “Who are you? I’ll sue you! I’ll kill you!”
I stood still. I reached up to my face.
Slowly, deliberately, I pulled down my surgical mask. I pulled off my cap, letting my hair fall loose—the same hair color she had dyed hers to match.
The face staring down at her was the exact same face she had just seen in the shattered glass. The same nose. The same chin. The same eyes.
“You look like the woman he is married to,” I smiled.
Chloe gasped, backing away until she hit the wall. “No… no…”
The door handle turned.
“Babe? Are you ready?”
Richard walked in. He was holding a massive bouquet of red roses. He was smiling, eager to see his purchase.
He stopped dead.
He looked at me, standing in my scrubs.
Then he looked at the woman on the bed.
He dropped the flowers.
He was trapped in a room with two versions of the wife he had betrayed. One was holding a scalpel. The other was screaming with his wife’s voice.
Chapter 5: The House of Mirrors
“Richard!” Chloe cried, reaching for him. “Help me! She’s crazy!”
Richard stumbled back, slamming into the doorframe. He looked like a man having a stroke. His eyes darted frantically between us.
“Don’t touch me!” he yelled as Chloe grabbed his arm.
He recoiled from her. The woman he had lusted after, the escape from his “boring” life, was now a mirror image of his obligation. The sexual attraction was instantly executed by the uncanny valley of horror.
“Why… why does she look like you?” Richard whispered, looking at me. “Evelyn?”
“She wanted to be the only thing you saw, Richard,” I said calmly. I walked over to my purse and picked it up. “She wanted to replace me. I just… facilitated the transition.”
“Fix it!” Richard screamed at me. “Change her back!”
“I can’t,” I said. “Bone was removed. Cartilage was grafted. This is permanent. To reverse it would take years of painful reconstruction, and the scar tissue… well, it would be messy.”
Chloe sank to the floor, sobbing into her hands. “You said you’d make me beautiful!”
“I made you me,” I corrected. “According to my husband, I’m a hag. But you seemed to want his life, so now you have his wife’s face.”
I pulled a file from my bag.
“Here are the consent forms,” I said, tossing them onto the bed. “Signed by Chloe. ‘Total facial reconstruction at the surgeon’s discretion to achieve a specific aesthetic likeness.’ And here is the payment record. Your corporate card, Richard.”
I walked to the door.
“By the way, Richard, I filed for divorce this morning. Incompatibility. Cruelty. Adultery.”
I paused, my hand on the knob.
“You can have the house. And you can have her. I imagine it will be very comforting for you to wake up next to my face every morning, reminding you of exactly what you threw away. Every time you kiss her, you’ll kiss me. Every time you look at her, you’ll see your own betrayal staring back.”
Richard slid down the wall, his head in his hands. He couldn’t even look at her.
Chloe was clawing at her cheeks, leaving red welts, but the skin held firm. My masterpiece was durable.
Chapter 6: The New Face
I walked out of the clinic and into the bright California sun.
The air tasted sweet.
I got into my convertible and drove. I drove to a salon in West Hollywood.
“Cut it all off,” I told the stylist. “And bleach it. Platinum.”
Two hours later, I looked in the mirror.
The woman staring back at me was a stranger. Her hair was a shock of white-blonde, cut into a sharp pixie. Her makeup was bold—red lips, winged liner.
I stopped wearing the severe suits Richard liked. I bought leather jackets. I bought silk dresses in colors that screamed.
Six months later.
I sat at a café in Paris, watching the rain streak the windows. I sipped an espresso, feeling the warmth spread through my chest.
I had heard rumors.
Chloe had tried to sue, but no lawyer would take the case. The consent forms were ironclad, and the “botched” surgery was technically a success—she looked exactly like the reference photo. She spent her days wearing heavy veils and large sunglasses, hiding from mirrors.
Richard was drinking alone in bars in LA, telling anyone who would listen about the curse of the two wives. He couldn’t date. He couldn’t sleep. He was haunted by a living ghost.
A handsome man approached my table. He had kind eyes and a hesitant smile.
“Excuse me,” he said in accented English. “I just wanted to say… I love your look. It’s very… unique.”
I smiled. It was a genuine smile, one that reached my eyes.
“Thank you,” I said. “It’s a limited edition. The original.”
I picked up my spoon to stir my sugar. For a split second, I caught my reflection in the curved metal.
I saw the ghost of the “old” Evelyn staring back—the tired woman in the garden, the woman who tried so hard to be perfect for a man who wanted a doll.
I winked at her.
“Goodbye, old friend,” I whispered. “You’re someone else’s problem now.”
If you want more stories like this, or if you’d like to share your thoughts about what you would have done in my situation, I’d love to hear from you. Your perspective helps these stories reach more people, so don’t be shy about commenting or sharing.
