HEADSEARCH
By: Melina Valdez • @mmelinavv
The tradition was to celebrate our birthdays at the community pool. The adults would huddle in the corner with their poisonous drinks and slather us with sunscreen. The theme was often a gendered cartoon show, whatever was cheap enough to fill our cart with when we went to Party City. On my 12th birthday, the theme was Dora the Explorer. All the characters were balloons and the gift bags were full of silly plastic goodies. The cake was Dora’s body, I got the first slice so I started at the neck and stopped right before the chest.
Once night creeped in, we left the pool and I had a few friends come back to my house to be in that childhood daze, the kind where everyones woozy and crispy from the sun and our boring routine is broken. The adults are distracted by one another. This is the taste of freedom, enjoy it while it lasts.
The family computer was a huffing PC. We kept the tower on the floor, I’d turn it on by crunching my big toe against the power button. There were about 6 or 7 of us, but only one chair and I was the star of the show. All my friends gathered around me excitedly as the internet server booted up, the dial-up tone screeching, opening its gates. One of the older girls, the daughter of a family friend, kept looking at my thighs. She pointed out the burgeoning stretch marks and told me there were worms under there. All the kids folded their necks and crouched down to look. I pulled my towel over them, embarrassed.
The older girl took over as the internet explorer search screen popped up. She told me she knew how I could get rid of them and typed in ‘plastic surgery’. She clicked around, eventually landing on a surgical review website and scrolling on a few before and after breast augmentations. Everyone got quiet. Curious. For some, it was their first time seeing any breasts that weren’t their mothers. A few kids covered their mouths in amusement. Someone’s mom called someone’s name and the door got locked. I couldn’t help but keep my eyes glued to the screen, focusing on this particular photo of an older lady. Older, at least from a child’s perspective. Now I think she was in her 40s.
Like the others, the Before photo concealed her face. She had small droopy breasts with nipples that took over most of the surface area. It didn’t seem like a problem to me, I saw it as a body. I was struck by the After photo. It showed her face, her skin was more of a pale green hue. Her head seemed to be slightly leaned back, as if she were resting her head on the wall. Her eyes vacant, looking at nothing. Her breasts were larger, but scarred, with stitches around her new areola and more stitches in the shape of an anchor under that. Her hair was in a wispy short bob. Her mouth slightly opened and lipstick smeared slightly to the side. The photo didn’t make any sense there, it seemed like an error.
I ended up saving it and logged out right before the parents shook the doorknob frantically, demanding to be let in.
That night I took a fork to my thighs to try and get the worms out. My mother cried, even though I didn’t cause any serious damage. I never saw that cruel older girl again.
“Jesus fucking Christ, put it away”
My husband demands as he climbs into our bed. I’m holding a printed version of the woman from the After photo. It’s become a sort of fascination, especially as I’ve gotten older. He gets under the covers and I show it to him again.
“You’re sure you don’t see it?” I ask.
“Honey, please.”
I sit up and face him. I push my hair back so it falls on my shoulders, resembling a bob. I remove my shirt. He raises his eyebrows excitedly. I hold up the photo next to me and copy her facial expression.
“It doesn’t look like you. Your tits are nicer.” He insists.
“That’s not the point. Look closer.”
He does.
“There’s something really wrong with her here. She’s sick or something.” He grimaces and looks up at me, I keep the same pose. He sighs.
“There’s some resemblance. Happy? Let’s go to bed.”
He sleepily runs his finger over the scar on my thigh as we cuddle. Ironically, it does look like an earthworm now. Raised and wrinkly, the stretchmarks submerged somewhere underneath it. His fingers lingered forward and between my legs, things began to escalate.
I felt a gut punch to my stomach that night after we fucked. It was obvious I was pregnant.
Reagan was born and she’s a superstar. Tiny with hands that grasp at anything in her way. Watch her reach out for my neck one day, she could easily take me out. I’ve been able to simplify my life to cater to this baby. Ten pairs of neutral shirts, ten pairs of pants, one full pajama for winter and one for summer, constant haircuts to keep my hair above my shoulders, no jewelry and only lipstick if I’m going out to places that matter.
The only issue was my earthworm scar. Reagan was about to fall from the bed and I lurched forward, keeping her safe and jabbing my scar open with the sharp end of the nightstand. It propelled a strange amount of blood almost immediately. I was conscious enough to put her in her crib before I collapsed on the ground. She was still, her head turned to me, hidden behind the wooden prison bars, a satisfaction in her eyes.
A friend of mine told me that there is a website that is exclusively forums for finding missing people. At this point, I was cradling Reagan in one arm because of how demanding she would be. Sour, frantic cries if I didn’t do as she expected. Sometimes I’d show her the photo of the woman from the internet, the tattered edges of the photo resembling a portrait of an old family member.
“Who do you think this is?” I cooed, touching Reagan’s cotton hairs, so soft it felt slippery.
“Mommy is going to find out” and I went to my computer, still giant and slow, a heavy breather.
When I logged on to the forum, HEADSEARCH, I was surprised by how minimalist the website design was. It was light blue and off-white message boards with a simple sans serif font. The username, their avatar, subject and a preview of the thread was the only life to it. That was the allure, no bells and whistles.
I did a little bit of browsing to muster up the courage of creating a new thread. The more I read, the more depressed I became. Overlooked immigrants searching for lost children, children with threads full of typos searching for parents, brothers searching for step-sisters they clearly had sexual fantasies about, there were hundreds of pages of these types of searches. Most of these had responses, although not very helpful, they were mainly emphasizing and providing sincere apologies for the pain the original poster was going through.
I create the thread:
USERNAME:
FIZZYEARS-2025
SUBJECT:
HELP ME FIND WOMAN IN PHOTOGRAPH *GRAPHIC*
BODY:
HELLO EVERY,E MY NAME IS BETH HARMSKI, I AM A MOTHER LIVING IN IRVINE CALIFORNIA. ORIGINALLY FROM JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA. I WAS RECOMMENDED THIS WEBSITE BY JUICE_BOX05, A GOOD FRIEND OF MINE. WHEN I WAS A CHILD I FOUND A PHOTO ON A PLASTIC SURGERY WEBSITE OF A WOMAN WHO SEEMED EXTREMELY DISTRESSED. I’VE ATTACHED THE IMAGE, BUT KNOW IT IS DISTURBING. ALTHOUGH THERE IS NO BLOOD, IT IS A VIOLENT IMAGE. HER HEAD IS LEANED BACK, HER MOUTH IS AGAPE AND YOU CAN SEE THE SOMETHING MISSING IN HER EYES. SHE SEEMS TO HAVE JUST GOTTEN BREAST IMPLANTS, BUT IT WAS A BOTCHED SURGERY. I PRINTED THE PHOTO OUT AS A CHILD AND I’VE KEPT IT EVER SINCE. SOMETIMES I FEEL HER GUIDANCE AND OTHER TIMES I FEEL THE WEIGHT OF HER ON MY BED, WHEN I’M ABOUT TO FALL ASLEEP, BUT IT IS PROBABLY MY HUSBAND.
I pause because Reagan has calmed down. I place her in her playpen where she smashes a few toy cubes around and makes excited baby noises. Then I rush back to finish my post.
-I FEEL LIKE I CAN NOT CONTINUE TO OBSESS OVER THIS WOMAN THAT I DO NOT KNOW, IF ANYONE HAS ANY INFORMATION, PLEASE LET ME KNOW.
BETH
Reagan has stopped making noises. I thought she was asleep, but when I turned around, I noticed her standing still and looking at me. My sweet little girl, it seems she’s ready to walk.
I checked my thread every day. It was quiet at first, but then the responses trickled in. A couple of people had additional questions - what website was the photo on, what year did I discover it, if I tried to get her name. Others understood my curiosity and said they will get back to me in a few days. Most people insisted this woman was dead, that we were all looking at a corpse. One woman introduced herself as a witch and told me to take the photo down, that anyone who looks at it will be followed. When I asked her to clarify, she deleted her account.
Years pass and my thread is the most viewed on HEADSEARCH. There is an entire sleuthing community determined, more than me at times, to find out who this woman is. There is no trace of her anywhere. People from every state have searched local records. They reached out to their European cousins, failing politicians and incarcerated acquaintances. It’s become a viral sensation, the ultimate unsolvable riddle.
Reagan, now a pre-teen, would watch me from the corner of the room as I scribbled down any leads. She didn’t like looking at the photo either, saying it felt too familiar. My husband wasn’t coming home on time which was a shame because he was clearly our daughter's favorite.
“Does the website still have her photo up?” she said, scrolling through things to watch.
“I can check, but I don’t think so” I respond, revisiting the old surgical domain.
Reagan, ever so curious, walks up behind me. She gently nibbles my shoulder.
“There will be some nudity, it’s a natural part of life” I warn her. She nods, understanding.
As I look through the pages that contained the transformed women, Reagan smiles, a satisfied grin that felt like it belonged to a stranger. She looks down at her own small breasts, barely there, and back at the women online. Maybe it was too soon for her to see this. I exit out of the page and she yells at me, I send her to her room.
It must have been a sick prank, I’m not sure what else to call it. Someone uploaded the photo of the woman as their profile picture. Their username was not legible, it was corrupted and so it resembled a frightening mutation of glitches. They began to spam my thread. Mainly repetitive letters like R R R R RR R R R R RR R. Other times small phrases, confusing and ominous. HIDE HERE WITH ME. My husband told me that’s just what trolls do and responding to them will only fan the flames. Reagan was at a friends sleepover, I was too disturbed to remember to check on her. Then a new post came in under my thread by that same distorted user:
MOM I’M HEADED BACK HOME.
At the same time, I get a text from Reagan telling me she’s interested in getting her breasts done. I dug into my wallet to find the photo of the woman. I look at her closely. She may not resemble me, but she is the spitting image of someone who I breastfed, sometime long ago.