Jen sneezed violently, followed by another, and another still, squeezing her eyes shut. With a fourth sneeze, even more forceful than those that came before, she felt an odd tugging sensation at her nose. At once, the tickle was gone, though her nose now felt numb and tingly. Relieved, she idly moved a hand up to rub it, but was startled when her fingers passed through empty air where her nose should be.
Jen’s eyes popped open and crossed in alarm, seeing her hand passing through the space in her vision that her nose should occupy. Her fingers brushed frantically across unfamiliar, smooth flesh in the center of her face, as if her cheeks continued into each other seamlessly. This was too bizarre to process and she froze for a moment as her thoughts tried to catch up with what exactly she was experiencing.
“What the fu-” was all she managed to say before feeling a similar pull on her mouth. This time she was aware enough to hear the soft slap of flesh landing on the linoleum and jerked her gaze downwards in response. There between her feet, an unnervingly familiar pair of lips lay on the kitchen tile facing up to her, pursed together.
Jen forced herself to move her hand down to her mouth. Her fingers once again met featureless skin where they shouldn’t, and she rubbed the area where her mouth should be in alarm. She felt herself try to scream instinctively, but nothing happened. By how she felt, she should be waking the neighbors, but she didn’t hear herself make the faintest squeak.
This isn’t possible. That can’t be her mouth sitting there on the ground. She didn’t know what to expect from that bottle, but it certainly wasn’t this. It didn’t make any sense. She must be dreaming, she…
She wasn’t breathing, Jen suddenly realized in a panic. She couldn’t breathe, not without a mouth and nose. She felt like she would be hyperventilating if she could. Overwhelmed, her legs suddenly couldn’t seem to hold her up, and she sank to the floor with her back pressed against the counter, completely unable to handle what was going on. Any moment now she knew she would start feeling the effects of oxygen deprivation. Any moment now.
But she didn’t. In fact, several minutes passed as she sat on the ground frozen in terror and nothing changed. Though Jen still wasn't breathing, it's almost as if she didn't need to. She tried to anyway, but it was like she couldn’t even feel how anymore. Jen wished that she could take a few deep breaths just to try to calm down if nothing else, but she could at least reassure herself that even after several minutes, she still didn’t feel any closer to dying than she did when her mouth first fell off.
Her mouth, she realized, which she had just left there on the floor.
Still in shock, Jen gathered herself enough to look back down at her lips which lay motionless where they first landed on the ground beside her. Forcing down how weirded-out she was at the situation, she moved to pick them up and examine them. However, just as her fingers touched her lips, she felt another tug in each eye, and the world went dark.
Reflexively, Jen darted her hand back to her face, feeling it all over in horror. Her touch was met everywhere with smooth skin, completely devoid of any feature save a slight ridge around her brow line. I must look like an eerie human mannequin at this point, she thought to herself. Unsure of what else to do, she searched blindly across the floor to find where her various facial features had landed.
Luckily, Jen’s eyes and mouth were close by, so it didn’t take her too long to find them. The sensation of picking each up was a bit unnerving, as she almost didn’t recognize them by touch. Her closed eyes were strangely flat, as if they only took up the space that stuck out from the empty skin they left behind when they fell from her, as did her lips. Yet all three felt warm and lifelike just as if they still sat in their normal places on her face, which was made all the more alien as she didn’t feel the other side of her touch against herself.
She turned them over in her hands, still not quite believing what’s going on. Each facial feature felt like it had smooth skin on the back of it, similar to the skin left behind where they each fell off. She only touched the backs for the faintest instant before recoiling, too weirded out to explore further yet. She still had no clue where her nose landed, but she was relieved after a fashion to have at least found these three.
This is crazy, Jen thought to herself. That weird bottle must have dosed me with some kind of hallucinogen. This can’t be happening. Not really.
But no matter how she tried to reassure herself, what she seemed to be experiencing didn’t change. Figuring that sitting helplessly in worry wasn’t improving her situation, Jen decided she needed to try something. Feeling out for a moment to figure out which eye was which, she took one and moved to try sticking it back in its place…