I never told my husband’s mistress that I was the renowned plastic surgeon she booked a consultation with. She didn’t recognize me in my mask and scrubs. She pointed to a photo of me on her phone and said, “I want to look better than this hag my boyfriend is married to. Make me younger so he finally dumps her.” I simply smiled behind my mask and nodded. The surgery was a masterpiece. She believed she was waking up with a face that would make me weep with envy. But when the final bandage was peeled away, her face went pale. She screamed in horror, dropping the mirror to the floor. I hadn’t made her younger. I had used my scalpel to carve her into an exact, permanent replica of…

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.

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