"What’s your greatest insecurity?" - Quagmire Literary Magazine

My story "What’s your greatest insecurity?" has been published by Quagmire Literary Magazine a wonderful new publication. Please check it out and take a look at all their other excellent content.

This story finished fourth in their inaugural short story contest. I hope you enjoy it!

They met through an app. He was on so many these days he couldn’t remember which. He hated them and needed them and hated how much he needed them.

He’d just arrived and hadn’t even sat down yet when she asked it. “What’s your greatest insecurity?”

The café was quiet and spacious and getting ready to close. Chairs stacked on tables, dwindling supplies, the staff walking around with the apathetic defiance of people already gone.

He smiled and choked out a laugh. He thought maybe he’d misheard her. Or maybe this was a joke he didn’t understand, a reference to something he hadn’t seen.

“What?” he said, with that same stupid, desperate laugh.

“What’s your greatest insecurity?”

Another laugh. Another stone faced, mute reply.

She pulled her phone from her purse, and he watched as she began to undertake the robotic, mindless movements he knew to associate with dating apps. Her finger tracing to the right, sometimes pausing, and reversing action. Her eyes empty, a wash with choice and indifference.

“Like physical or…” he searched for the word and landed, without conviction, on, “mental?”

“Let’s start with physical and go from there.” She looked up from her phone with interest but not commitment. She laid it on the table, screen up and didn’t lock it.

He thought.

Penis size came to mind first. His skin was pale and had been covered in acne for a long time, which left some mild scarring. He was short, not too short, but enough that he thought about it. He couldn’t grow a beard and he wanted to. His hair was receding, his gut making itself known.

But this was all just stalling. He knew the answer the second she asked the question.

He had a mole on his left wrist, right where the bone formed a nub. It was large and had three coarse black hairs protruding from it. The hairs grew like weeds, and, no matter how often he plucked them, he could never seem to escape them. He would look down while on a date or in a meeting and notice an embarrassing hair dangling off his wrist.

He shifted his weight and dropped the mole to his lap, concealing it with his other hand.

“I guess I’d like to be a bit taller,” he lied. “What about you?”

“That’s not it.” She dropped a finger to her phone and continued swiping.

He had a choice. He could stick with his answer, insisting that was his greatest insecurity. He could argue with her and tell her she was being rude. He could feel the brief surge of righteousness as he berated her. Or he could commit to this.

He lifted his hand and presented his wrist to her, dropping it on the table with a thud.

“This,” he said, pointing to it. “This mole.” He turned his head away, unable to watch her reaction or allow her to see his.

She leaned towards it. Inspected it. “It has a few hairs growing from it.” She pressed down on it and traced its raised edges, folding the hairs over and watching them spring back.

He turned and looked at her, catching her phone out of the corner of his eye. It lit up and she turned it over, so it was facing down.

Relief flooded his brain. His limbs felt lighter. He felt high.

She was smiling and it unsettled him. There was something off in her smile, something he couldn’t quite place.

“What about you?” he said.

She flinched and sat back in her chair as if recoiling in pain. She took a sip of her coffee and then shook her head in anger. She reached into her purse and pulled out a tin of mints but didn’t offer him one. She took it, chewed it with her mouth sealed shut, grimaced, and leaned forward.

“I still have a baby tooth.” She stared at the table to avoid his eyes.

“What?” he said, his brain not quite able to process this.

“A baby tooth, you know, like the ones you lose when you’re a kid. I still have one.”

“Can I see it?”

She nodded and motioned him in further. He had to stand up and stretch himself across the table. She opened her mouth. He now understood the mint, though he still caught a heavy trace of coffee on her breath. He tilted his head as she pointed to a tooth. It was on the top row, left side, between the incisor and the canine. He hadn’t noticed it before, but now it was all he could see. He’d felt her smile was a bit off, a bit crooked, and now he knew why.

“I’m sure you could get that fixed,” he said.

“I could say the same to you.”

He dropped his head and moved to cover the mole, but she stopped him. She shook her head, and he felt the warmth of her hand on his.

They sat in silence and drank their coffees. Neither moved for their phones. Neither checked the time. Neither got up to use the bathroom.

“I could remove it,” she said after they’d both finished their coffees. “I have a knife back at my place, it isn’t far. I could cut it off for you.”

The man felt a tingle run down his wrist. He should’ve retreated in horror at the mere suggestion, but he didn’t. He’d been expecting it. “Don’t you need, I don’t know, training or something?”

“I’m sure it’ll hurt… bleed and maybe scar. But I’ll get it off and they don’t grow back.”

“Do I get to pull out your tooth?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation.

The man felt a jolt. He vibrated with anticipation. He nodded and they stood and walked out into the cold, bright afternoon.

She sharpened her knife – a small, unblemished, paring knife – with a honing rod. She sanitized it with rubbing alcohol and did the same to his mole and the surrounding area.

“You can’t flinch or squirm,” she said to him as he sat on the edge of her bathtub, waiting. “I don’t want to… well you know.”

He nodded and flexed and unflexed his arm. He understood the stakes. He found, for the first time in his life, that he could feel the blood rushing through his wrist. He could make out every vein, every vulnerability. “I’ll be fine. Let’s just do it.”

She placed a pair of pliers on the counter. He would go first, but they were there. A promise of what was to come. A taste to whet his appetite.

She motioned for him to sit in the bathtub and lay his arm on the edge. He obeyed.

She cut deeper than he’d anticipated, and he felt the skin break and pull apart with the knife. The cut wasn’t clean, and she had to go back over, holding the mole and the skin with two fingers as she sliced through again.

The naked air stung the wound and he had to fight not to move. She poured more alcohol on it, and it was then that he let out a cry and began to squirm.

“It needs to be clean.” She poured more.

He watched as his blood and the alcohol mixed and trickled down the drain. A thin, pink stream. She used gauze and tape to cover it, working without focus or care. He wondered if he’d have to go to the emergency room. He wondered if it’d get infected. He traced the bathroom and saw every speck of dirt, every impurity.

Then he met her eyes and she smiled, and he stared at her tooth. “When do we do yours?”

She stood and walked to the door.

He stared down at the reddening gauze. He touched it and felt the pain roll through him. He luxuriated in it.

She returned with a glass of water and reached into the medicine cabinet pulling out two bottles. One was an over-the-counter pain killer. The other was serious, a prescription bottle that he could only assume contained something stronger. She offered him either and, greedily, he took the prescription bottle, swallowing the pill down dry with a practiced desperation.

“What about the other one?” she said. “The mental insecurity?”

He took a moment to search himself but found it without trouble. “I’m worried that the dark thoughts, fantasies, that I have are abnormal. That one day I’ll act on them and that’ll be it for me. I won’t be able to go back.” He took another sip of water and tried to force himself to feel the pain killer. “What about you?”

She reached over for the prescription bottle and took one of the pills, tossing her head back with a practiced ease. She pulled out her phone and showed it to him. “I’m worried that this has ruined me. That no one will ever be as interesting to me as this.” She paused, took another pill, and continued. “And that I’ll never be as interesting to anyone as this is to them.”

The man nodded and continued to stare at the pliers. He stood and picked them up, felt the weight in his hand. “Ready?”

She brought in a chair and placed it in front of the sink. She leaned her head back and the man hovered over her. He placed a knee on her shoulder. He anticipated a struggle. He longed for it. Then he felt the metal grip the tooth and began to pull.