Faceless

I awake in the dirty alley and I’m cold and alone, and it’s raining. I have a gnawing sense of dread and fear engulfing my heart and a feeling that I’m not really here and yet a perception of absolute reality.  I don’t know who I am, I don’t know where I am and I don’t know what’s going on.

A bleak unfamiliarity within my own skin creeps around my being as I slowly get to my feet and try to gather my senses together. The place around me is nondescript and featureless. It’s a damn alley, like every dirty stupid little alley. Brick walls, sodden concrete floor and piles of half decomposed rubbish surround me.

Emerging from the alley into a grey, stark, dank suburban landscape I reach up and touch my own face. The feeling is terrifying, horrible and horrific, as I realise that the features I’m fumbling are not known to me, they’re alien. Not only that, but they seem to be distorted in some way, they seem strange and wet. But it is raining.

Here I come now stumbling down the street.  I don’t seem to be able to walk very well, bit of a limp going on in this unfamiliar vessel apparently of mine. Not many people about, not sure what time of day it might be, it’s dark but not that dark. Although the weather is such that the sky is that sort of nondescript colour we all know about, it could be early or it could be late.

As I continue aimlessly scrambling around what I suppose is a town or city of some sort, I pass the odd few people. Some of them look how I feel; destitute, confused, alone, they couldn’t acknowledge me if they wanted to, they’re lost in their own odyssey of terror. Others regard me with that predictable sort of contempt, so far above me they gaze down hatefully. From others it’s a passing and fleeting curiosity, some have a look approaching vague concern but not concerned enough to speak to me. Not even sure I could respond if they did. I cough in a hacking and vile way that makes my insides scratch and sting and groan.

 

After some time I arrive at what appears to be a café of some sort. It’s dimly lit and dingy and there aren’t any people in there that I can see and I’m wet and I want out of the rain so in I go.  Finding the nearest table I park my sorry behind and begin to sob pathetically and the sound of my own voice and the feel of my own tears frightens me in way I can’t quite describe. This goes on for a while, not sure how long, before I eventually glaze over into a sort of frozen state of not quite apathy, staring listlessly into space like a dog or something….

A woman approaches me; might be a waitress, might be a cook, might be another customer, might be my sister, might be my mother, might be a ghost, might be a hallucination, might be my reflection, might be nothing.  The woman doesn’t look directly at me and just approaches the table like a robot. She greets me hello and puts a cup of something black and rich and steamy under my nose that makes me feel sick. I pick it up and gulp it down and it burns and it hurts and I scream and I �" coffee, coffee knew that was a thing. It hurts and I scream and I spit it back out and it goes all over the floor. I’m shrieking like some sort of big chicken as I head backwards and scuttle out the door, while the woman is looking at me with the strangest expression on her face and I’m sobbing again.

 

The rain hits my face with such force and cold that it seems to awaken me just a little. The first thing I do is stick my tongue out and as the water hits it steam rises from my mouth as if I’m a dragon, mixed with the smell of coffee and bile. I’m trying to ease the burn.

There are street lights now and they dazzle my eyes and give the world a strange dream like quality. Or maybe I should say nightmare, wet smelly nightmare of a street tour happening now.

It could be hours, it could be seconds, could be minutes, who the hell can even say? My world is spinning at present and given the lack of identity from which I’m currently suffering, measuring of time isn’t exactly at the top of my to-do list. 

 

I eventually find myself outside a shopping centre I think we call them and it’s all lit up like Christmas and it pricks at something inside me that is warm but unused. I walk through the lit up arcade and it has a sort of other worldly feeling, with the lights and the shop logos and the soundtrack of soft music in the background. It’s so big and strange and I get a really odd feeling welling up inside me that I swear I can’t contain like I don’t know how and in a way that shocks me I start screaming and whooping in this hauntingly weird way. It’s inappropriately euphoric but also very scary as I’m running around in circles and (running sort of limping and tripping) and making strange crisscross patterns on the ground with the filth and dirt spilling from my clothing.

My clothing; what am I wearing, what do I look like? It occurs to me that there are reflective surfaces all around me and I can go and say hello to myself and see whose there.

After about seven attempts at trying to hang onto this thought and remember what really important thing it is I’m trying to do, I go and find myself a shop window. Like everything else it’s brightly lit and I can’t really see much at first, but as I concentrate and squint really hard I can make something out.

A man, a man in a dark blue suit with a shirt and tie, not really what I expected, and it’s all dirty and filthy and this is what I expected. The face is all torn and mangled and I’d say doesn’t look like me but then I don’t know what I look like anyway. The hair is a mess, kind of bizarre looking and the face has been bleeding pretty badly it looks like, and it’s been hit with something hit hard with something big and sharp. With the bruised eyes and the red smears and the absurd hair it occurs to me that the face looks a bit like a demented clown. I begin to laugh and whoop again in that same way but it quickly turns to screaming and shrieking and crying and back to laughter and then that hacking cough again. 

My tears are burning my throat as I taste them.

I need help.

I can’t remember where that café was since I don’t know where I am and my thoughts are hard to keep a grip of. I look for more people around and it’s getting lighter and the sun is coming up now so maybe I can get to work on time. I start to see people, I see suits and ties walking the streets after what might be an hour or two or even a minute I don’t know. The suits and the ties they’re so bold and bright that it’s like they’re all I see, walking around disembodied without heads above them.

 

I start approaching them helplessly but some of them just ignore me or don’t even see me as they pass me by, stuck in their own world of nothing. I try to speak, to plead, but nothing comes out of me expect this horrid gurgling sound that makes one or two young women in the crowd scream and run from me as if I’m some type of monster. Which I might be, I don’t have any way of knowing. Although I’m reasonably sure I’m an ordinary person, a person missing a personality, a person missing a self.

I need help.

There doesn’t seem to be a reason to keep thinking or doing as all I’m hitting is a brick wall and my sense of self which isn’t altogether intact as it stands if I’m honest is starting to fall apart now. Eventually all the suits and ties and loud shoes who swarmed around me on their way to work have gone and the streets aren’t populated anymore. There are still people here or there, but like me they either don’t have the will or ability to communicate or they are people with their eyes looking only at the ground, hopeless.

I need help.

There’s a place you go at a time like this, a big place with white walls and such, but I can’t really remember it properly because my brain is liquefying in my head as we speak. Intended thoughts keep being interrupted by random iterations of cartoons and horror movies and thoughts of a past I can’t put any detail or context to and it’s all very overwhelming and sad. Something they used to tell me, whoever they were, whoever I was, about your life flashing before your eyes when, when it….

I need help.

What follows is an abstract cacophony of images and sounds and half experienced experiences. I seem to think that I went back to the shopping centre for awhile. I seem to think I screamed and whooped again for a time and people fled in fear and panic. I seem to think I tried asking people for help again but of course couldn’t with the gurgling and they fled in fear and panic. Seem to think I gave up, seem to think I staggered some time but only back the way I came as It’s all my mind has left at this point like a leaky fuel tank desperately sucking up its last few vestiges.

 

The alley is where I eventually find myself again, the same alley I started in today, or is it? I don’t know like I said it’s a damn alley, like every dirty stupid little alley. Brick walls, sodden concrete floor and piles of half decomposed rubbish surround me.  

It’s been a pretty horrific day and I feel like I’m coming home to the alley. It’s smelly, damp and hard concrete floor seems like a homely embrace as I lie down and curl up with some distorted parody of a smile crawling across what was my face.

I don’t feel like going out again after all this, I don’t feel like facing the world, I don’t feel like it after all that tiring screaming and laughing and gurgling and doing and whatnot.

 

 

I’m ever so tired now, I’m ever so weary.

I become ever so still as whatever time might be passing passes, and I feel like I’ll probably sleep in today. Yes, I feel I probably will….

Author's Note

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