It wasn’t always there, it couldn’t have been. Memories from childhood are often corroded by fantasy, and those memories we believe otherwise are often not real memories at all. Bits and pieces put together, reaffirmed over decades until old memories and dreams are indistinguishable. The face, that face…
Whether dream or memory or nightmare I could not know anymore. What mattered was that the face was there, imprinted into my mind like the black stain of the suns blinding light on my retina.
The face knew to taunt me. For months, years I would not see that face. It would become a distant problem that seemed risible when compared to the modern hardships that replaced it. It is then it would appear again. In times of peace or happiness, it would appear. To mock me, to laugh, and disparage my very existence.
The face preyed on the happiness I sought in this world. So I found it elsewhere.
I looked at her, I took a breath, in, and out. My fingers shaking from merciless anxiety. I was so focused on trying to focus on focusing to calm down that my neck was tensing, my muscles straining, my heart pounding; I couldn’t move, nothing moved, why couldn’t I move?
I felt her hand.
My hands where white knuckled as she graced them gently, a soft touch. My mind was brought to ease suddenly, awash with peace. My eyes traced from her finger-nails painted a soft orange, her arms, a few bracelets gently hugging her soft freckled skin before the cuff of her red dress; a velvety looking textile that ran down her arm, covering her shoulder. Opening at the crest where her neck was… her chin, her smile… it’s smile, it’s face… the face…
There was no eyes, there was no mouth, she had no face; but there was a face there. I could see it imprinted onto her pure white skin, a disgusting horror that starred at me like a ghoul of myself from a previous life, mocking my pathetic excuse for an existence, laughing at me. Stop laughing at me!
I shouted, and slammed the table. My eyes suddenly opened to see no face but hers, starring at me in horror and shock. The face was gone, was the face even there? What did the face even look like… I didn’t have time to think I needed to speak, to apologize to her before the veil of innocent timidity was pulled and she saw further beyond it.
Some minds are artwork in themselves. Their ability to control, to perceive, to understand and forgive. There was such beauty in that. So despite my antics, she, that woman in the red dress… she forgave, she understood.
In the early hours of the morning, a day after our first meeting I received a message from the woman in the red dress. I don’t remember what it was. I don’t even think I read it. Seeing that name appear on the screen, the words, I could not read them, but I understood them; I replied to them, I communicated. In my mind however, was only the fixation on the woman in the red dress. How many bracelets was she wearing? Four, four of them, and her nails with a reddish color, I loved that color and I loved the red dress.
What was her name? Did she tell me her name? Did I tell her mine?
The woman in the red dress was my everything. I spent the day with her after our communication. She wore her red dress again, her beautiful nails were painted once more a modest red . We went on a walk in the summer sun and danced in a field of flowers together. I looked her in the eyes and spoke poems straight from my heart, a subtle dance of conversation forming which blossomed into a beautiful rose of love. We kissed, we embraced one another. I could feel that beautiful freckled skin of hers clinging to that red dress remembered so vividly…
The face…
My back grew knotted, my skin was damp with oily sweat, sticking to my uncleaned bedsheets as I tried to sit upright… so long lying in my bed. So much aching pain. I would take it all again and more if it meant another day with the woman in the red dress.
But there was nowhere it could not find me.
The face brought me out of that perfect world. Across the room, the old television starred at me. A blurry warped reflection of a disgusting creature mocked me from beyond. And it wore that face, the face without a face. The mocking laughter began before I even left the bed. It laughed at me, just like it had before. That face and it’s tittering laugh that almost ruined my chance with the woman in the red dress… No. I wouldn’t let the face get away this time.
A single piece was lodged deep between my middle and pointer fingers. The glass shard scrapping against my tendon as I moved the extremity. Another small piece had slid between nail and finger tip. This pain was short lived though, and soon the blood was but a memory, just like the face. The glass which harbored it was nothing but a shattered pit in a box of broken wires. Now I could be with the woman in red again.
Our conversation that day continued and plans were formed. The woman in red would be meeting me for lunch in a few days. A rather plain date for a relationship as enduring as ours but I understood that with love, it is not the where, but the who, that mattered most.
Before our lunch gathering me and the woman in the red dress talked for hours on end. She sat with me, she listened to everything in my mind and gave only that most graceful touch of hers. That touch, the touch of understanding, one that needed no words, no expressions, only the subtle communication of skin, on skin. She listened and understood. We embraced once more and I could feel that velvety softness of her red dress. Her red dress…
It was time. The day was finally here.
The woman in the red dress, we communicated once more. Confirming our plans to get together very soon. We talked more after this though, I told her how much I loved her, to which she confessed as well, but something changed. Something felt off. Her red dress, her nails, her beautiful bracelets… how many were there again? Her nails, they were deep red, red within red, right? Yes, yes they were but the image wasn’t there, it was leaving me, the woman in the red dress was leaving me. I had to see her again, if I could just see her, if I could just see her red dress again.
My legs grew stiff and weak as I sat upright. The air stagnant and heavy. Dust particles gleamed in the air, illuminated in the dark by what sunlight could penetrate the thin blue curtains.
The woman in the red dress was gone. I needed her, and she needed me.
Heat of the afternoon sun made my scalp itch, the brightness straining my eyes and already I was sweating as I sat patiently for the woman in the red dress. Our patio lunch was prepared. I had arrived early, ordered everything so it was ready for her. I knew what she liked, all of her favorites were here waiting for her.
But the woman in the red dress was nowhere to be seen.
“…Hi…”
A voice came, from somewhere, somewhere close. Across from me, sitting at my table was a woman who spoke to me, sitting down at the meal I had prepared for the love of my life. It was a woman in a light blue shirt, wearing a pair of jeans.
She spoke again.
Her palm was laid out subtly on a pair of utensils, a fork, a knife, a spoon. As if she was preparing to eat.
Dark blue nail polish stained unkempt fingers, cuts, dry patches, red splotches covered her… it’s… hands. Along her arm I traced more, more acne, more scars, moles. Her shirt ended just beyond her shoulder, a poorly tailored, sweat stained piece of thin fabric, and her neckline… Her neck, her chin… What was that? That movement?
She said something, it said something. The mouth contoured and twisted as it starred at me, questioning, questioning, over and over again I wanted to scream at this creature. Who was she? Where was the red dress?
Then the laughing began. That tittering laugh, that familiar screech of mocking as I sat there stewing in pathetic rage, hopeless to that starring judgement and scornful screech.
That face…
Eyes like pits, a gaping maw that twitched with each howling, sneering laugh as it stood there, taller and taller. It was no reflection, the thing, the face. It was here, really here; it had finally found me once again! To feast on me and what love I could conjure from this world. There was no glass I could break, no mirror I could smash… but that, that knife… the face could be gone forever with just that knife…