Filched Identity

A Story by bryanie

It was here that I found the world dead, different than the city that lay so close by and yet both shared the same sky, the same sun and dark grey clouds passing over to shadow the doorstep on which I now stood. As I knocked, my eyes observed the two large doors that were painted a deep crimson and framed with some sort of dark metal not known to me; the knocker was made of the same metal and cold with the frost that still lingered on it. I was soon answered, the left door opened to reveal a young man who was unshaven and dressed in fine clothes. How familiar he seemed. His eyes were grey, like silver even, although they at first seemed cold and sharp to me, I saw a hint of sadness, of a newly awakened fear. Dark hair, which framed his pale skin, hung about his face weathered and unwashed.

“Can I help you?” His voice was strong and showed no sign of the fearful state he possessed although I saw him swallow nervously as he waited for my reply.

“My car,” I pointed behind me vaguely in the direction of where I had left my car an hour before I reached where I now stood, “it broke down and I am in need of a phone.” There was a pause, ever so short, in which those frosted eyes were clouded in suspicion, but it was soon replaced with a foreign look and I once again saw only cold and sharp eyes. How familiar he seemed. The man stood back, beckoning me into the house and down the hall and off to the left where I found I desk on which was a phone.

I was placed on hold and upon waiting for an answer; my eyes scanned the area where I stood and stopped to rest upon a folder that lay open on the table right behind the desk. My heart skipped a beat in that moment. I allowed my hand to reach out to look through the obituaries that filled the folder while my eyes looked at all the faces that each possessed a different name. It was the faces that had caused my heart to skip a beat, the men that each had different hair, some with beards and some without, some with glasses and some without, but the eyes were all the same. Silver eyes pierced through me from each photo and I realized the unshaven man’s familiarity as I found a photo of a man I had previously worked with. It was the same man who had directed me to this very phone, the man that seemed to have died over and over with the identity so many men.

A floorboard creaked behind me as the phone dropped out of my hand while my other hand, the right, clumsily dropped the folder to the floor, burying the papers beneath it. The man with so many identities stood before me, knife in hand, and he took one step towards me.

“Deux ex machina.” He half whispered with a smile before I awoke with a start to find myself in the familiar leather chair of my car at the side of the road while steam issued out from the hood, the city was not far off.