Eyebrows
By Chris Killen
Marcus is plucking his eyebrows. He is using his girlfriend’s tweezers. He is standing in the bathroom, looking at himself in the little mirror above the sink as he plucks out the small hairs at the bridge of his nose. Sarah, his girlfriend, is in the living room watching TV.
She is watching a programme about gardening.
On the gardening programme, a man is planting a flower. Marcus and Sarah don’t have a garden. They live in a second-floor flat. Outside the flat is concrete. Everywhere you look is concrete. Sarah thinks she probably doesn’t see a flower on her whole walk to work. She thinks that any flowers anyone might try and plant on her way to work would probably just get stolen. She imagines a kid in a tracksuit taking a pink flower into a pawn shop and getting a fiver for it.
So what if I pluck my eyebrows? Marcus is thinking to himself. He is playing out a possible argument with Sarah in his head. She’s attacking him for it. Isn’t that a bit of a girly thing to be doing? she’s saying. So what? he says. I guess you’d prefer it if I went around with a monobrow, instead? In fact, why don’t I just let myself go completely, while we’re at it? I’ll just stop washing and shaving too, if that’s what you want. That’s not what I meant, Sarah is saying. She’s regretting saying anything now. She was just trying to make a bit of a joke but Marcus has reacted badly. She didn’t realise what a touchy subject it was. She was going to say, I’ll get you your own pair of tweezers if you want. But now she’s saying nothing. Marcus is screaming at her. So what? he’s screaming. So what? So what? and plucking the hairs out of his eyebrows, clump by clump, until all that’s left is two red raw eyebrow-shaped patches above his eyes. Look what you’ve done to yourself, she says very quietly once he’s finished. She turns him towards the mirror and he looks at his face and begins to cry.
Marcus finishes plucking his eyebrows and puts the tweezers back on the shelf. He makes sure they are in the same place as they were before he used them. He washes the stray hairs down the sink.
Sarah is still watching the gardening programme when Marcus comes out and sits down next to her on the sofa. He puts his hand on her knee. The man on the TV is still talking about flowers. He is saying something about flowers being a bit like people.
Sarah looks at Marcus. She looks at the faint red marks between his eyebrows and at the edges of them. He’s been plucking his eyebrows again, she thinks.
Listen, says Marcus during the adverts. He lets out a big sigh. I was plucking my eyebrows in there. I was using your tweezers to do it.
Oh, okay, says Sarah.
Marcus waits for more but there isn’t any.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Chris Killen was born in 1981. He is currently living in Manchester and working on a novel. He has recently published stories at Pulp Net and in issue four of Parameter Magazine.
First published in 3:AM Magazine: Thursday, April 12th, 2007.
