Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.
Once upon a time there was a girl with a beautiful face. Too beautiful not to notice when you saw her for the first time.
She didn’t think she was beautiful because her head was shaped like a balloon. A beautiful, perfectly round balloon. A red Balloon. One that might burst if it got too happy or excited – especially when thinking about being beautiful.
The beautiful girl hated her red balloon head and decided that a white balloon head would be better.
The beautiful red balloon head girl read about a special ointment to turn red skin into white skin. You wore it with a thick grey mask with little slitty eye holes, some nostrils and a tiny mouth hole. You put the ointment on and then the mask – kept it on for two hours and then took it all off until the next day. You only had to do this for three years – wow, she thought, I’m getting some…
But, if two hours worked well, then three hours would be better. Every day she packed on the ointment and pulled on the mask – her eyes just slits in the thick grey mask. Peeking through was becoming increasingly easier as the days went by and it became as normal as wearing knickers. It became so normal she kept the mask on every day, even when she went swimming the butterfly in the local pool. The beautiful red balloon girl now kept the mask on all day.
One day when she was swimming at the pool a photographer came to photograph the Mayor who was giving the pool manager a ten thousand dollar cheque to save this decaying local landmark – just part of a pool beautification project and all in a day’s work for the photographer.
The photographer saw the girl and wondered why she was wearing such a thick mask, especially when swimming. He stole a photo. But the beautiful red balloon girl had forgotten about her mask. It felt normal to her and she liked peeking through the little slits at the world. She had forgotten all about the red balloon head, because now she just wanted the mask and had stopped using the ointment a while back.
Because of that she just didn’t take off the mask at all anymore. She wore it to bed, to school, shopping, to her brother’s wedding and to her Mum’s 50th birthday.
‘How do you eat’, asked the photographer, but she was gone, butterflying down the pool – fast and graceful – like a beautiful mermaid.
And, because of that her photograph was put on the front page of the local paper, above the one of the Mayor handing over the cheque. She became famous and was affectionately called the beautiful butterfly girl in the grey mask.
She just couldn’t escape her beauty.
Until finally she could take it no more and just had to accept she was beautiful no matter what. She pulled off her mask and smiled her beautiful red balloon head smile…