Free The Empty Trap by John D. MacDonald

been a good athlete, he moved well. He liked people sincerely, and so his charm had not been forced. He had been very good at his work, and that had given him an air of confidence and self-respect. Sometimes he had felt, as everyone does, a definite dissatisfaction with his face when he looked in the mirror. It did not seem to reflect what he felt he looked like.
    But this mirror showed him horror. He saw a man he had never known. The high forehead was burned dark bronze by the mountain sun. The tiny irregularities he had felt under his fingertips turned into a great triangular scar, whitish pink against the bronze. It started at the outside edge of his right eyebrow, moved irregularly up on a slant to the middle of his forehead, and then cut back up into his hair on the right side. At the point of entry of the scar, the hair was dead white.
    The eyes were deeper than he had ever seen them, and they seemed to have the staring glow of madness. The entire end of the nose was gone, almost to the bridge. It was a sickening thing to look at. In spite of the concealment of the great bushy beard, he could see that the lower part of the face, under the beard, was distorted. In the nest of the beard, between scarred and parted lips, he saw the broken fragments of teeth.
    It was then that he came to an understanding of the true courtesy of these people. Not even the children had given him any sign by which he could know that he was monstrously ugly.
    When he went back to the hut, Isabella was alone there, sewing. She sensed that something was wrong and she put her work aside.
    “What has happened?”
    “I saw my face in the water. I saw ugliness. A monster.”
    “That is not true!”
    “It is what I saw.”
    “It is not what I see. It is not what anyone here sees, Lloyd.”
    “It is what I see. It is in my mind and I can’t get it out.”
    “It is not as bad as that.”
    He looked at her. “Roberto brought all the things from the car. There are some things of mine. A razor.”
    “No,” she said.
    “He did not find those things?”
    “We have them. You should not take away the beard. The way you are, the beard is good.”
    “Without the beard I’d be so hideous not one of you could bear to look at me?”
    Her dark eyes flashed then and she backed away from him. “Perhaps you should be pretty, like a girl?” She walked mincingly, patting her hair. “With a skin so soft and sweet, like goat’s milk. Maybe you want to be in the movies? Señor Roberto Taylor, perhaps, with great white teeth like a graveyard.”
    “I know that—”
    She stamped her foot, and now her eyes were blazing. “Estupido! You fell from a mountain. You fell on the great stones. Should God have come running to hold under you a great bed of feathers? You should be dead. Your face is marked by the nearness of death. Be a man. Stop being a girl child weeping over a pimple!”
    She whirled and left the hut and the goat skins fell back into place. The light in the room came from the chimney hole in the thatch, and around the edges of the goat skins. He sat on his heels. The others often sat that way. He had practiced until he was almost as tireless as they were. After a long time he grinned, and knewthe grin showed the splintered teeth. Vanity was what had caused the pain. So he could stop thinking of vanity. There was money. Fortunately, a great amount of money. Money could buy teeth and a new tip for the nose. Those were essentials, reasonably utilitarian. He traced the scar with his fingertips, the scar on his forehead. That one must have been a brute. Hit in the middle and laid the scalp right back.
    And he remembered a man who pulped berries between his fingers and tried to push them past his fractured jaw and down his throat. What sort of face would that man have settled for?
    He knew exactly what he had to do. He found Isabella. He stood tall in front of her, hands on his hips. He looked down at her and grinned his broken grin.
    “Truly, I am of