When the first incident occurred, I had been in the company of my dear friend, Elsie. We were at my home after having visited our old university friends across the country together; she was staying at mine before continuing her journey home the following day.
It was a hot day in late August, and the early afternoon sun relentlessly beating down was beginning to give me a headache. I lightly jabbed Elsie in the ribs and attempted to persuade her to indulge in an ice cream with me. As she turned her head jovially towards me, her face suddenly froze in place, though the rest of her body kept moving. Her vertebra audibly popped as her neck whipped back so forcefully that the skin tore from the jaw of her still unmoving face.
Instinctively I shrieked in horror at the site before me; Elsie’s sweet face was still bearing her happy grin, but at the point the face ended and the mandible began,the skin was torn and bleeding as though it had ripped brutallt with giant hands.
Her neck was broken, and her body had gone limp. But she was still almost upright as her face, frozen in place, prevented her head joining her body in collapsing.
Rushing over with a Lovecraftian level of horror in my heart, I put my ear to her mouth to check if she was still breathing; she wasn’t. I attempted CPR as I called [redacted for identifiable purposes], but I stopped after a few seconds; committing to the compressions on her floppy, greying body was causing massive damage to her neck, and the angry crunching filled me with nausea.
I could not get through to [redacted number for identifiable purposes]. A flat monotone was the only emergency response I was able to receive.
Thousands of cases identical to Elsie’s had been reported with a 2500 sq.mile area, at exactly the same time- 13.47pm. People engaging in every day activities when suddenly their face would no longer be attuned to the rest of the body, and would be unable to move or be moved from it’s place.
It sounds strange to comment that dear Elsie was fortunate, but I think she was. At least compared to those affected by the incident who didn’t have the luck of an instantly broken neck. For these people, their body would flail wildly, grasping at their throats as though signalling choking. The thrashing body would go from crimson to purple, before eventually ragdolling and greying.
It was as though the breathing orifaces were part of the victim’s face, and so were paralysed by the incident. Their bodies remained alive , controlled by the still functional brain, until asphyxiating within a few tormentous minutes.
Since the incident occurred, all people within the affected area were ordered by military force to quarantine for 4 weeks- for what reason I cannot tell you- before being sternly advised (threatened) to sign an NDA stating the victims died in a gun related incident. It is only my terminal diagnosis now, years later, which has given me courage to tell the story.
Scientists, have theorised globally and wildly upon the cause of the incident. The most widely accepted is a tear in space-time, causing the specific points the victim’s face encompassed to no longer be affected by the physical laws as we know them.
That doesn’t explain why it was only faces affected though, and does not seem right to me. It is this thought alone which enables a fear of my imminent death.
I soon moved away from the town the incident occurred, to the opposite side of the country near my dear Elsie’s hometown.
That place not only harbours too many traumatic memories, but still to this day, though the bodies long since cut away, the frozen faces remain frozen in place, hovering in the air with placid expressions upon them .