Introduction
Some time ago, I was cleaning out all the crap that had been accumulating in my bathroom. I realized I had about fifty tubes of cleansing and moisturizing creams and such (at least half of which were donated by my mum that I never bothered using), a lot of them unopened. About two-thirds of the way into cleaning up my shit properly, I found an anti-wrinkle sample cream, immediately snapped off the top without thinking and dabbed a little on the spot I felt most wrinkly—namely my forehead. Midway through dabbing, I caught myself and found myself asking “already?” in shock. I was disappointed that worrying about something like this would hit a person at so early an age. Nevertheless, come my Writer’s Craft exam, this unusual experience presented itself as my well of inspiration for the short story section. I think I weirded out my teacher though. Granted, I also felt a little weirded out after writing this. This is pretty much the original version with slight tweaks (grammar and such).

0.1

Milineds (Profit at My Expense)

I first heard their arrival deep in the night when a small tinkling of a bell woke me from my light slumber; lately, stress, exams and their strange, nightly arrivals made it impossible for me to sleep earlier than late.

As always, I kept perfectly still, but not because I didn’t want to run away, but because in one of my first experiences with them, thrashing about had only resulted in a very painful incision on my left arm (I had a vain hope they’d go away). Those bastards are frighteningly fast. I knew I had to be sneakier.

But they were also very smart.

The bell had distracted my attention and in the time it took for me to look over, one of them somersaulted over me, quickly pulling out a length of sturdy tape and duct-taping my body in place. I looked back just in time to catch a glimpse of a huge, ugly smile full of white pointed teeth and dark, sunken shadows where its eyes should have been. As I turned in surprise, two others bound my wrists and ankles to the bed, stapling the slices of tape down by long, silver miniature nails, and despite being more than a hundred times their size, I was now rendered completely vulnerable and ineffectual.

I watched warily as the leader of tonight’s particular expedition signaled to his men to bring out the tools and heard the grinding of gear against gear as they parked crude imitations of cranes and various lifting equipment against my waist and thigh. Their jagged edges felt both cool and threatening against my bare skin. Shutting my eyes, I felt the first of them crawl onto my arms, chest and face, and sharp needles of pain burst into being as they lowered miniature versions of pickaxes into my skin, hacking and lifting pieces of me into tiny metal carts that streamed away from the sheets, down the slanted edge of the foot of my bed and into the shadows below.

Out of the corner of my eye, I risked a glance at the floor-lengthed mirror and would’ve screamed in horror had it not been the fact that they had taped my mouth shut as well. Instead, the scream came out as a muffled croak: the whole left side of my face had become a grotesque map of loose lines and folds.

As they worked, the smooth features of my skin fell away like the shards of an egg shell, revealing the wrinkled, dappled surface within, pockmarked with age. Reacting reflexively, I twisted and turned, but the pickaxes only dug deeper, pulling the pieces of my youth in harsh haste. But at least one of them was thrown off and I caught site of one landing in a rectangle of bright moonlight. The creature hissed, its movements surprisingly sinuous in its shriveled, deformed body.

I’d had enough.

Giving up on staying silent, I struggled even harder against my bindings, ripping the tape off the sheets and crushing the primitive wooden structures placed strategically around me, feeling quite like Gulliver and wondering if this was what truly happened to him as I did so. But those foul things were quick to recover and they came at me again, absurdly long and sharp nails flashing in the dim light. They swarmed towards my face hungrily and raised their claws to strike—

I woke up.

The room was quiet. The mirrors reflected no distortions on my features; the skin was unblemished. There were no traces of broken machinery on the bed sheet, no sign of struggle and no indication that the creatures had ever been here.

I was alone.

Or not quite.
They had picked away my youth for themselves and now a vengeful, newborn pink thing—dressed in the essences of the bits of my skin—stood on my nose, holding a needle high above its head. It drove it into my right eye, puncturing it wetly and passing it straight through my skull.

I died.

And then I woke up again.
And then I woke up again.

The room was quiet. The mirrors reflected no distortions on my features; the skin was unblemished. There were no traces of broken machinery on the bed sheet, no sign of struggle and no indication that the creatures had ever been here.

I was alone.

Another night then.