The Face of the Faceless

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Face of the Faceless

 

            I am that which makes the nameless recognizable, yet at the same time, I am the shadow that hides his identity.  Or should I say, hid his identity.

A long time ago, a very depressed, very twisted man decided that it was time the world learned how it felt to be tortured.  He wanted people to watch as the ones they loved disappeared, then turned up dead in an alley somewhere.  Of course, he couldn’t risk people finding out who he was, because he knew they would try to stop him.  So he took an old burlap sack, cut out some holes, and he created me.

Now, I won’t tell you his name, because I was made to protect that secret.  I will however, tell you his story, my story.

It all started back when he made me.  He had always had a taste for revenge, but now he was out for blood as well.  “The world has to pay for what they’ve done,” he told me, though he never told what the world had done to deserve such a creature as he.

I hated the idea at first, thought the man was bonkers to be quite plain.  I still do.  But what could I do about it?  What power did I have, other than to hide this man from the people?

So I watched as he mapped out and planned his murderous plot; listened as he brooded over how to go about getting his bloodthirsty revenge.  He gathered up some rope, trash bags, chloroform, a few old rags, and some narcotics for himself afterwards.  Oh, and let’s not forget the knife.

I remember the first time like it was yesterday.  It was a dark, dark night on the rough side of Ciudad Juarez.  I never really kept track of time, so all I know is that the weather was cool.  Cool enough that his breath left damp crystals on my cloth.  The air smelled of cheap perfume, smoke, and good old rough times.  The scents clung to me like memories, fragments of time unwilling to slip into nonexistence.  Spanish rap was spilling out of a passing car window, the harsh words accentuated by screaming from nearby apartments.  This was not a neighborhood you would want to walk into alone at night.

And yet, a pretty girl with dark skin and dark hair came down the road, deftly avoiding the shards of glass, cigarette butts, and beer stains that littered the ground.  She wore a short black dress and spiked heels; a cigarette burned in on hand as the other clutched a thin black jacket around her waist.  He appraised her from behind, then slowly moved forward, sneaking up behind her.  But he wasn’t quiet enough.

She turned, and perhaps she saw a hungry glint in his eye, because she said, “I’m off duty tonight, but maybe I could make an exception if I could see that handsome face of yours.”  She smiled provocatively, her hand letting go of the jacket so that it slipped open to reveal the low-cut, tight-fitting bodice of her dress.

“Oh, you’ll make an exception alright.”  His voice was a low growl in the shadows.  Then he had her around the waist, his handy knife at her throat.  “But you won’t see my face.”

She struggled against him, her screams echoing through the alley ‘till he cut them off; first with his mouth pressed against hers, and then with the chloroform soaked rag.  I remember her silky hair sliding against me as she flailed, the scrapes I left on her smooth skin as his lips roamed roughly over her body.

I’ll spare you the little details of what happened next, sometimes they’re even too gruesome for me.  You’d think I would be desensitized by all the episodes of this I’ve witnessed, but it never ceased to terrorize me.  The brutality with which he attacked those women surpassed mutilation.  He violated them, though they weren’t so clean themselves, then he murdered them for their un-cleanliness.  It was as if he was the avenging angel of the insane.

Anyway, he tore her dress open, raped her until she woke up, then raped he some more, all the while slicing into her with his knife as if she were nothing more than butchered meat.  Somehow, he left her in one, ragged piece, though she was a corpse long before he stopped.

When he was finished with his twisted business, he tied up the woman’s body in trash bags and moved her to a different, equally grungy alley, where no one would have any reason to suspect him, because no one there had seen the man in the mask.

Soon after he went home, he rinsed his bloody knife, grabbed a bottle of Jim Bean and some of the narcotics, downed a couple of shots of the foul mixture, and passed out in his own filth.  I was hiding behind his pillow, wishing I could sleep, wishing I could erase the horrid images from my fibers, but what could I do?  I was only a cloth with some holes cut out.

There were many more nights like that, many more girls in alleys, many more bottles of Jim Bean and narcotics (though the Jim Bean soon turned to straight whiskey), many more nights of scents and sights burned into my fibrous memory.  At some point, when the weather got colder �"maybe in that third or fourth year?�"he began using the knife on himself, moaning the same way he did when he raped those poor women.  I sat by and watched, unable to move, unable to scream how horribly sick he was, unable to run form that which had become my life.

The scents of drugs and hard times constantly emanated from my pores.  I was stained with crimson splatters from every drop of life that poured from his victim’s veins; I felt them as they spilled onto me, knew when they hit the cold, hard ground and their brilliance faded.  The screams of dying women echoed silently throughout my being.  I was ridden with guilt and pain at what befell those poor girls and my part in it.  But again, what could I do?  I was nothing more than a mask.

When he finally had enough of all his twisted revenge, when his malice against the world finally ran dry, he turned on himself.  The cuts got worse than ever before.  Smoking and snorting were added to the narcotic cocktails, and eventually, he pushed himself too far.  He double-crossed his drug dealer.

He didn’t stand a chance against professional hit-men, trained to handle even your worst psychopath, and as the reality that he’d pretty much sentenced himself to death began to sink in, he decided to take a nice walk to the river.  The walk turned into a jog, and then a run as paranoia from his last fix set in.

His rough hands tossed me onto the grainy sand as he took his final steps in life.  Then he jumped into the water, finally succeeding in his death in that which he could never succeed in life.  As he swam with the fishes, he finally drowned his sorrows.

I lay useless on the shore, my edges frayed and unraveling like my sanity.  But what could I do?  I was just a burlap sack with holes cut out of it.

Author's Note

I hope you liked it. It was for a personification assignment in English.

Reviews

[DemitriJ]

I remember reading this. I love the way the mask of the psycho feels the pain of the unsuspecting victims. In meaning it shows how people see the dark in life but cannot do anything to stop it, that or they are too afriad to do anything.

[Elizabeth Porterfield]

Again, thank you for the lovely review sister dearest:)