Lemon Face

He comes when things turn sour. You'll know he's near when your eyes start to burn. Lemon Face knows no mercy when a victim has been selected. Those who have seen him and survived, tell the tale of Lemon Face as that of a fairy tale gone wrong. The real Lemon Face was just a young boy in love with a classmate. When that love wasn't returned, things got bad.

He grew up not knowing about love. He was raised by a Grandmother who despised him and the father who'd left him with her. She would tell him how stupid he was and how nobody would ever love him, especially not her. So as he got older, he never felt a closeness to anything or anyone. But when he set his sights on the girl, suddenly he felt something.

Looking at her, he felt his fears of being incapable of love crumbled away, and were replaced by feelings of wonderment. Her name was Emily and her hair was as yellow as one of Big Bird's feathers. She talked to him more than the other kids in his class. They teased him for his used clothes and freckled skin. But she smiled at him when he left her funny notes with drawings of their teachers on them. She laughed when he made fart noises from the back of the bus with his armpit. He was strange, and the other kids made him know that, but Emily, she was just nice. He thought it meant she cared, but because of his loveless home life, he didn't understand the meaning of empathy.

One day near the end of the school year, he proclaimed his love. He handed her a box of homemade lemon squares with a card that read: "True Love is Sweet...as are you!" The other kids began to laugh and point at him. They taunted him for thinking he had a real chance with her. She didn't like the attention, and in a panic, threw the box of lemon squares outside the bus window.

"I hate lemon, and I hate you." She yelled.

Later that night, he cried. He cried so hard for so long that his eyes began to close in on themselves. He could barely see. The burning he felt was as if acid was streaming out of his tear ducts. He fell to the ground, trying to stop the throbbing he felt in his face. He passed out. When he woke up, still only able to see very little, he brought himself to his mirror, and moaned at the horror he made out before him. His entire face had caved into itself like a vacuum cleaner sucked it from inside. His eyes had become slanted and stretched out at the sides. His mouth nearly reached the back of his skull.

He climbed out of his window to leave, hoping he would find answers somewhere, anywhere. But as he ran, the only person he found in his path was the girl. She screamed. He tried to speak, but his tongue was so swollen that nothing but grizzly mumbling came out. When he recognized it was her, and she him, he tried to reach for her hand. She pulled away and pushed him to the ground. He began cry. But this time, as he cried, the acid tears fell from her eyes instead of his.

It burned so terribly that each breath she took felt like being stabbed in the chest with a corkscrew. He saw what he was doing to her, and he liked it. She made him feel worthless, and worst of all, she wasted his beautiful lemon squares. Slowly, her scalp began to itch. She felt her forehead and when she looked back down at her fingers, she saw the deep red blood on her fingerprints. Her once sunny-hued hair was now peeling off of her head.

She looked back at him, and was terrified when she noticed what he was doing while she suffered. He was peeling a lemon. As he did, more of her scalp began to tear. The sound of the ripping reminded her of the sound she made when she tore off the paper book coverings off her textbooks at the end of each school year. When he reached the inside of the lemon, he squeezed it as hard as he could, until she collapsed into the grass. She was dead. He disappeared into the night. In the morning, the girl was found. Her corpse resembled that of an ancient Egyptian Mummy. Her face was sucked in, her eyeballs completely gone, and her hair dried up into ashes. The only yellow near her scalp now were the yellow lemon rinds left behind.

No one knew where Lemon Face ended up. Except they know when he is coming for them. When there is wrong being done to an adolescent, the taste of something bitter brushes their tongue. Once the salty tears begin to fall, they know what they have done. And they know he is coming to make them pay. They see Lemon Face only through squinted painful eyes, but it is enough of a glance to bring their suffering to an end.

Lemons may be sour but their body is sweet.

If you anger another, be careful,

Lemon Face you just might meet.