A Portrait a Day...

It started the night he lost his house – the night, unbeknownst to him at the time, he’d also uncovered his greatest asset – and it was all arguably thanks to his excessive drinking. 

Unaware of how on earth he’d made it back to his brother’s home after yet another perilous bender in the city, he collapsed on some unfinished portraits he’d attempted earlier in despair.

The next morning, he was rudely awoken by a sun nearly halfway done with the day.

In a hungover mess, Mrill stumblingly found his way to one of the house's many bathrooms and like straight out of a home alone movie shrieked loud enough to wake up the dead at the sight of his reflection in the mirror.

Mrill was missing an ear. And not in a gory way. 

Where he could’ve sworn it once was, there was now just skin with no signs of trauma or damage whatsoever. It was like his ear had ceased to exist. In fact, studying himself closer, he began to wonder if his ear had ever existed at all.

The reaction he got from his brother when he came home later that afternoon, however, proved otherwise. 

In a flash, they were off to the bars Mrill had frequented the night before praying one of them had an ear in their Lost and Found, carefully retracing their steps on the way in case it was lying patiently in some grass ready to spare them the humiliation of asking. 

However, recollecting last night was a bit tough, given Mrill couldn’t even remember what he’d been wearing. So instead, they opted to just go through a list of bars he could’ve plausibly gone to, unfortunately that number being very high, and tried their luck. To no one’s surprise, not an establishment or soul seemed to be in possession of a missing ear.

Mrill’s dilemma had now become his favorite tv genre – a mystery, and he was going to get to the bottom of it no matter how bad the episode was. 

Long, sleepless nights followed, where he drew up many lines on clue boards sprouting connections between identities and situations that had no business being tied together. But given the such peculiar circumstances surrounding the disappearance, he had no choice but to take shots in the dark.

It was a bright and early 11 am morning at the breakfast table one day when the answer suddenly dawned on him. He dropped the porcelain mug in his hand at the earth shattering realization of the life changing discovery he’d just made. 

Mrill had a Super Power and he was going to have to get Super Drunk. 

That night, using the hard earned money he’d made working part time for his brothers business that he’d promised not to spend on drinks, Mrill bought a 6 pack of blue moons, Tito’s – because it's classic, and his guilty pleasure Mike’s Hard.

 It truly pained him to be drinking alcohol for the first time since that fateful night; oh it truly did, he thought to himself, 3 beers deep questioning why he hadn’t bought more.

 He took a deep breath and further nestled into his chair. It was a beautiful summer night out on his brother’s porch, who conveniently enough was out of town. A great night to get drunk again, he thought to himself, and this time for a good cause.

It wasn’t long before Mrill’s world was spinning. He could feel the power coursing through his veins and this power, whatever it was – felt amazing.

Fueled by this new fire ignited in his life, Mrill hurried inside to the quaint little bathroom in the guest room he was crashing in and faced himself in the mirror. He could feel the adrenaline inside him, channeling from the tip of his toes all the way down his arms into his fingernails. Taking a deep breath, Mrill closed his eyes and placed his left hand where his left ear once was. 

Power flowed out of him like the hoover dam exploding over the desert. He grimaced and groaned as his hands became numb and shaky from the tension. He could feel himself summoning something from within his head, the skin pushing back against his palm as if his ear was struggling to be released. He screamed as he pressed back harder, his head becoming hot like the sun, steam pouring off his hair in a last ditch attempt to keep his body together. Suddenly, he felt an incredible pop and collapsed to the floor from the force of the eruption, breathing heavily and in a daze.

Or you know what maybe Mrill was just drunk as fuck. He got back up to the sight of his unflatteringly disproportionate head still missing the ear. To his massive dismay, drinking actually had not been the power or the trigger.

Defeated, he walked himself into the house's impressively large study, searching through the many dark wooden shelves for a sketchpad and a pencil.

Why? Deep down, Mrill was an artist. For as long as he could remember it had been his passion. Though, he refused to draw since the night they foreclosed his house. 

But Mrill was now drunk and it had become inevitable. You couldn’t name a wasted night in his life he hadn’t drawn something, even if it had to be a raunchy sketch on the side of a bathroom stall.

Staring now at the paper, his hand separated from his body, developing a mind of its own and began to sketch an image like it had been planning this for hours. With every second that passed, he became more consumed in the self portrait he was creating and the disappointment that maybe he really was just ordinary, washed away…

Mrill groggily opened his eyes. The study was always the darkest room in the house, but on bright days, rays of sunlight would pierce through the small circular stained glass windows around the walls perimeters and strike down like separated laser beams protecting a prized jewel. One of those beams happened to be hitting near Mrill’s eyeball, who slowly lifted his face to turn away. There was a slight pounding in his head and he cupped his hands around his temples for relief. 

The sound of clanging pots and the smell of fresh eggs filled the air. His brother must’ve been back. 

The ambiance of him cooking breakfast while Mrill was still half asleep had become pretty familiar given their different schedules, but now that he thought about it, he hadn’t been able to hear the rummaging so clearly in some time…

Mrill shot up straight in the seat he’d crashed in and grabbed one of the hand mirrors on the desk. There, on the left side of his head, was a sight better than finding gold. His ear was back.

Mrill howled in pure joy, to which his brother came carooning in, shouting in concern.

Mrill pointed at his ear, a huge grin on his face. His brother’s jaw dropped in disbelief before jumping and hugging Mrill in a happy shock. He had millions of questions the same way Mrill did too. How does it feel? Where did it go? Why did it leave?

Mrill owned up to having drank last night in an effort to find out, but he admit he didn’t have the faintest idea what that something was. His brother insisted they get to the bottom of it, but right after he finished up making sure his eggs didn’t catch on fire.

With his brother momentarily gone, Mrill picked up the mirror to admire himself again. His beautiful ear was back and bigger than ever and … well hold on, it was literally bigger than ever. 

He held the mirror further from himself to which he gasped at his significantly smaller right ear. What on earth? And now that he mentioned it, were his eyes always really that far apart? And since when were his nostrils that large–

His blood suddenly went cold.

The funny thing was the slightly hideous face he was looking at wasn’t completely unfamiliar either. Slowly, he looked down at the work of art he’d passed out on the night before, although calling it just a work of art no longer felt appropriate.  

In his sleep, he’d become what he’d drawn.

So on the bright side Mrill did have a super power. And it took many more nights to finally fix himself enough, but eventually he managed to wake up to a face he could live with. And it was with that sentiment that he got the brilliant idea to share his gift with the rest of the world. Through the power of his pen, he was going to fix people’s faces.

There was only one problem. Mrill may be an artist, but he was not a good artist. In fact, Mrill could quite possibly be the worst artist in the history of all time. It didn’t matter he had been so inexplicably drawn to the pen since he was a kid, scribbling pictures and painting portraits far more than a boy or child of his age would’ve been interested in. His art would never get better. And no matter how many times his failed art would beat him down, like a toxic ex he always came crawling back. 

So it could probably go without saying that the idea of performing cosmetic surgery on strangers' faces fully reliant on Mrill’s art skills was not a good idea. And that the idea of investing in opening a practice completely unlicensed was also not a good idea. 

But he’d been off his feet for some time now and suddenly he’d been given a second chance.

And unfortunately for society in general, it was this logic coupled with a near debilitating soft spot for him that caused his brother to eventually shell out the money. Mrill was going to get his own practice.

 He set his mind on a small, dainty place in a good part of town next to many cafes that didn’t come cheap, but it wasn’t coming out of his wallet. Anyway, he’d be able to make the money back quick. Probably.

And he seemed on track to be right. Opening day was a complete smash, with customers flocking from all parts of the country to experience this novelty. The concept practically sold itself; a painless plastic surgery with no recovery time. 

Of course, operating without a license had its many challenges besides just being illegal, but Mrill had planned in advance. In anticipation of the high demand and to look more legit, he decided to provide consultations before the procedure. In those sessions, he asked generic questions he found on WebMD and pretended to listen. He’d then eventually, when he was either motivated or drunk enough, get to the drawing and send it their way to put under their pillow one night where they could literally sleep on it and wake up to the brand new and improved versions of themselves. 

More often than not, however, a customer would be put off by the final renditions Mrill would draw up for them. Despite the constant hits to his ego these comments caused, he assured them once they were asleep that everything would come out the way they wanted and to trust the process. Of course that wasn’t completely true, but hey they wouldn't have agreed otherwise. 

Hiccups were expected, but ultimately the list of lives he was saving kept growing bigger and he was becoming a self proclaimed super hero. Likely the only one in history to actually charge for his super human services (and a hefty price too), but he needed to put food on the table just like everyone else. 

Everything was going great. Sure, most clients were still in the “waiting for their portrait" stage, but with every passing day he was getting better at wrapping them up and sending them out, topping each with his signature slogan "A Portrait a day keeps the doctor away!"

Things were really, finally starting to look up for Mrill.

Mrill lit a scented candle and took a seat at the desk of the study in his new home. A study that was now entirely his own and done his way, with a similar wooden theme but personalized with much larger, charismatic windows giving way to a calm and starry night. 

Just weeks ago he had been at rock bottom crashing in his brother's home and now here he was. He unsheathed the pen in front of him and began to make a dent on the large list of orders he had piling up in his backlog. 

A car door slammed outside, Mrill brushed it off assuming it was one of the neighbors. Then, a multitude of car doors slammed like a chorus humming all the notes on a scale in progressive unison. That was a bit odd, he thought to himself. Maybe someone was having a party?

There was a big commotion from the sound of many voices outside angrily bickering and progressively making their way closer. Mrill got up and started to walk to one of the windows facing the front lawn.

“Is this the one?” Mrill could make out a muffled voice say unnervingly close now.

“It has to be.” 

Mrill was nearing the front, only able to make out the silhouettes of many figures damn near standing on his lawn when suddenly the flood lights illuminated every single one of them like a stage light had been pointed their way.

He gasped.

Outside, caught red handed on his newly sodded grass, were scores of horrific, disfigured snarled faces staring maliciously into his windows like unfed dogs, each face carrying a unique atrocity of its own. Lifeless, unshaped and misplaced lips. Noses anywhere but in the middle. Hairdos that looked like someone lit it on fire. Eyes too far apart; ears on the back of their heads. And in that moment, Mrill regret not doing something about their hands either because every single one of them was holding either a torch, bat, or some kind of tool that definitely wasn’t going to be kindly.

One of the gremlins rose an object Mrill’s way and shone a powerful flashlight straight into his face, blinding him for just a moment.

“That’s him! Get him!” 

Mrill spinned on his heels and tore for one of the doors in the back as the crowd barreled into his home, mercilessly scouring every inch for him.

Mrill sprinted across his backyard towards his front driveway hopping into his car. The sound of his engine igniting erupted through the night. He really should’ve bought a tesla or something but it was too late now. Unfortunately, most of the invaders in his house still had their ears and in a few seconds he found himself in a high speed chase with god knows how many cars tailing him down like Garfield to lasagna.

In a panic, Mrill banked hard to the right onto a different road.

Shit! He didn’t mean to go that way. To his dismay, not a single one of them missed a beat and were riding behind him as close as before. He pressed the pedal further, but some of them must’ve had some really fast cars or something because they were closing down that gap.

Mrill hit a mean left in the middle of an intersection he’d in a split second deemed empty enough to do so and pulled out onto a wider street than before.

He slapped himself on the head. Dammit he didn’t mean to go that way either but with these ex Nascar drivers somehow still on his tail he had few options. 

Veering right onto yet another street he had meant to completely avoid, his car was now hobbling over unpatched potholes and dips. His heart dropped as the pitch black sea he’d been trying not to drive towards appeared on the horizon; the road becoming a dead end.

He slammed his brakes right up to the very last bit of asphalt and hopped out. Dozens of headlights lit up the road behind him like they were impersonating the sun. Frantically, Mrill sprinted towards a wooden pier leading over the water. 

There weren’t any boats parked there that night, which was just his luck, but by some miracle he spotted a small raft made of wooden pallets bobbing in the light waves. It didn’t really look like it was for humans, but with the angry mob now only yards away running across the pier themselves, Mrill didn’t have a choice. 

With all his power, he jumped onto the raft, the momentum from his landing immediately pushing it forward. Desperately, Mrill got on his knees and started paddling water like his life depended on it because it did.

 He didn’t stop til he felt mild discomfort in his arms. Out of breath, Mrill turned around to admire the distance he’d put between them.

To be honest it wasn’t much and in fact how close he still was, was a bit of a jump scare. But somehow, it was enough. The mob stood on the pier shouting, cussing, berating him but it was all they could do. 

Mrill lay down on his back and looked up into the night sky as he let the current of the sea guide his craft away from harm.

Beaten, battered, bruised and broken Mrill crawled across the sandy earth of the tiny safehaven island in the ocean his craft had marooned on. Saltwater rolled down his face and dripped off the nose he, in that moment, had decided he’d wear for the last time. With little strength remaining, he reached into his pocket to pull out the only thing he had left to his name. 

Mrill held the pen in his hand. 

If the world wasn’t going to accept him as a hero, it was going to have to face him as a villain…………………………………………………………………………………………………................................................................................