On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 163, of 240 so far.

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“Can I interest you in a makeover, sir?”

The voice stopped Dawes in his tracks once his brain had processed the words.

“In a what?” he asked as he glanced in the direction of the sound, convinced he’d misheard, but he immediately saw that he’d understood perfectly.

The young man standing there had skin that was clearer and brighter than any twenty-ish-years-old boy in the history of the planet could boast, and as Dawson peered at him, he was almost certain that the kid’s eyebrows had been shaped.

Christ on a bicycle, he thought.

“A makeover,” the kid said, smiling with his perfect white teeth, and just a hint of some kind of moisturiser on his lips. “This new product has toning and anti-ageing effects, and it’s specifically formulated for male skin.”

Dawes reached deep inside himself to push down the disbelief and the irrational anger. Everybody had a videocamera these days. Sometimes it was good, but most of the time it wasn’t. You had to be careful.

“Son, do I strike you as the kind of man who wants to put some kind of ointment on his face? I was born in the ‘70s.”

“It’s never too late to start taking proper care of your skin, sir,” the kid said in a plasticky kind of way, and Dawson started to seriously wonder if he was wearing eyeshadow too. The kid had a thin vertical line shaved into one eyebrow, and had the kind of bum-fluff three-day beard that Dawson privately thought of as being the exclusive domain of people who were tragically under-punched.

“It’s not about it being too late, son,” Dawson replied. “It’s too early. Any time at all is too early. We’re men, for Christ’s sakes. Or I am. I can’t speak for you.”

Dawson saw the remark land in the lad’s eyes, but it never touched his face, and Dawson had to grudgingly give him a point for that. The kid had probably heard it all before.

Clearly not enough, though, he thought.

A part of his mind told him that the kid was just doing a job, and there weren’t many choices for young people these days, and society had changed and moved on. But he didn’t really care. He was definitely angry now. The kid was talking again.

“It can reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, and it reverses the dehydration and damage caused by sun, shaving, and harsh weather.”

Dawson sighed. “Son,” he began, sounding almost like an exasperated father, “my single shelf in the bathroom cabinet has got one bottle of aftershave, an electric razor, some condoms that are probably out of date, and my blood-pressure medication. The rest is the wife’s domain. I don’t trim my sack, and I let my ears and nose grow whatever they want to. My chest has more fur than you’re ever going to be able to put on your chin unless you go to a costume shop. I’m not your target demographic, or whatever the hell it’s called now.”

The kid at least blushed, and for a brief moment, Dawson felt guilty. But then the feeling went away, and was replaced by the more comfortable directionless anger again.

“Too much information, sir,” the kid said, with a smile still frozen onto his glowing, immortal-looking face. Dawson had seen pregnant women with less rosy complexions.

“You know what really annoys me?” Dawson said suddenly, unaware he was even going to speak until he heard his own voice.

“Everything?” the kid replied, finally gaining the courage to inject a touch of sarcasm, but it was tentative. Dawson pointed at him to shut him up, and continued speaking.

“What annoys me is that you’re squandering a goddamned gift,” Dawson said. “Maybe the greatest gift in human history, engineered by the hand of man.”

The kid looked at him warily, unsure which way this was going, but he kept listening.

“Here’s the thing,” Dawson continued. “That gunge you’re peddling is just make-up, or skincare, or whatever you want to call it. But we’re men. We’ve spent thousands upon thousands of years, generation by generation, father to son, building and maintaining a world that says one thing very clearly: men are good enough. In fact, we’ve built it to say men are fan-fucking-tastic, just the way we are.”

Dawson took a small step towards the kid now.

“We don’t need face cream,” he said. “We get to have wrinkles, and they make us look better; wiser and more experienced. We get to have grey hair, and white hair, and no hair at all. Wiser and more experienced. And we get to have dry lips, and call it toughness against the elements.”

Dawson put a hand on the kid’s shoulder. “You see, son,” he continued, more quietly now, and with unbroken eye contact, “we are kings. Every last man, in his own home, is a king. We roll out of bed, put plain cold water on our faces, throw on whatever the hell we like, and we call it casual and comfortable and manly. When women do that, we call it a nervous breakdown. It is An. Impeccable. System. And this garbage you’re selling spits in the damned face of everything our forefathers fought for.”

The kid blinked, processing this information.

“Listen to me, because this might be the most important lesson of your life,” Dawson said, leaning in so that his face was inches from the kid’s frightened eyes. “Low grooming and beauty standards are our birthright. We don’t need any creams or conditioners or colours or anything else, because…?”

“We’re men,” the kid said, and Dawson nodded.

“Because we’re men,” he echoed. “And we are perfect, just the goddamned way we are.”

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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