A Regime of Marching Faceless
by
S.L. Edwards
I’m
far too afraid to wonder how they removed my face. This place is dark, full of
hidden ovens. I know I have no face because I've seen the others, walking about
with smooth, noseless mannequin heads. If I look carefully I can see the grey
smoke poking through the corners of this dark place, the red light of hidden
fires. When people vanish, we mutter to each other:
“The
fires opened up. And ate them whole.”
When
the fires emerge, some just stumble in. Before I can blink, the walls are
closed and dark again. The screams from behind them sound as if coming from
behind a gag, panicked and wild but somehow stifled.
These
tunnels beneath the city are always burning. In the world above, you can see their
traces in the thick vapor pouring out from tall black towers, tombstone
smokestacks that mark this network of secret factories.
I’ve
been walking here ever since they took my face. I don’t know how it happened,
but I remember how it felt. A mask of long knives sliding across my ears and
eyes. Bloodless searing. Long days of wanting to scream, but only being able to
whisper through the slit that is now my mouth, functional enough only to eat
the thin grey soup that keeps me warm but not full.
Occasionally,
someone remembers who they were. Walking these long hallways, they suddenly
stop. Sometimes I recognize their proclaimed name, an impossible thing because
its owner has been dead for two or sometimes twenty years. They howl and
insist, as if the veil of the world has been pulled aside and their eyes
returned.
Sometimes
they outrun the fires, opening as they do like secret, cavernous mouths.
And
when they do the tall figures detach themselves from the walls.
They’ve
folded themselves flat, so many of them, shadows melding into the architecture
of the world. They creep in swirls of onyx and gold, a storm of glittering
light that descends on the rememberers. The cries that come from the corner
seem to escape from a full mouth and a deep throat.
When
some time passes, a new faceless arrives, and I’ve already forgotten the name.
I’ve
stopped trying to remember my name too. My name is more dangerous than the
ovens, the fires and the shadows on the wall. My name brought the President’s
yellow eyes on me, and the weight of them forced me down beneath the earth.
At
times though, I remember my crime. Or I think I do. At times I was a
protestor. I was a dissident. Perhaps a journalist or a student. I recall the
sound of applause at a political rally, hundreds of hands pounding and slapping
together with laughter and whistles. But then, when I try to escape my aimless
wandering and remember the speaker, all I see is the President’s face and the
nature of my crime escapes me.
This
is for the best, lest my name be conjured up with my crime.
This
eternal walking is better than the fires.
Being
faceless is far better than being disappeared.
In
fear of remembering, we tell each other lies and the stories keep us going. The
world above is better than this place below. The labors of the President have
born their desired fruit. No child knows hunger. No man dies in pain. We will
have faces again, though they of course will not be our old ones. Not those
cursed, ruined things. Soon the President will lift us out of the darkness and
into the light of His holy vision. He will bring us into His arms, and He will
shush away all our hurts and sins.
In
the lies, in the euphoria of my President’s imagined forgiveness, I can forget
that my feet are marked with bruises and callouses. The hunger in my stomach
evaporates away. Somewhere the corners of my mouth-slit pull tight, and I smile
as best as I can.
When
I daydream, sometimes I wander too close to the walls. They open wide and I see
the infernos for myself. They’re not ovens, they’re pyres. The
furious burning sends a wave of cracking embers across me, pock-marking my grey
clothes with smoke and black-burn marks. When this happens, I careen backwards
and fall. Somewhere behind the thing that is now my face, a reserve of tears
wells up and I feel like my cheeks will burst open. In the absence of eyes to
cry through, I merely breathe slowly and try to remember a lie.
To
imagine a new face.
I
become better at imagining, at not just envisioning but in feeling the
lies. I learn where the fires are hiding, and become subconsciously careful to
stand in the exact middle between even the narrowest walls.
It’s
only when I begin to whistle that I realize I have lips and a tongue to lick
them with. I gasp and fall to my knees. My dusty hands taste metallic and sour,
but my lips and tongue are there. Something wet runs along my cheek.
I
swallow back my scream and decide to believe these lies. I will not draw the
attention of the tall shadows. I will keep walking forward. I will keep living
this lie.
When
I hum, I realize my mouth is closed, that I am breathing through a nose.
My fellow faceless do not notice or at least, like me, they refuse to. But it cannot be a lie, because even after I
wake, curled in the middle of two narrow walls, my eyes have crust and there is
dried snot under my nose.
When
my ears come back I hear the secrets from the fires. The stories that live just
behind the walls. I can’t help but smile all the time. Why hide such beautiful
things? Why not share them with the world? So I come to sing back to the
secrets to the fire, to waltz calmly between the walls.
My
fellow faceless avoid me, careful to walk different labyrinthine routes so that
they never meet my path. It’s not so bad now, dancing alone to the truths in
the fire. Humming and singing and jumping.
When
I find the yellow light, I see myself more fully. My grey clothes, stained and
wet from years of sweat and walking. Long, black hair (was I always so dark-haired?)
falling over my shoulders like starlight streams. I stop before the voices from
the fires behind the walls tell me to move forward, that there is so much more
to see.
I
giggle and laugh, jubilant as I practically bounce towards the yellow light. Warm
water falls from the walls and I shed my clothes. My skin feels slick and
clean. The sound of the water hitting the floor reminds me of the secrets of
the fire, but a calmer and more steady truth.
Across
the tunnel of water is a stool with a black dress, shoes and a brush. I dress
carefully, worried that after so many years of walking that I will tear and
ruin the nicest clothes I have ever seen.
As
I brush my hair, the wall opens up.
But
there’s no fire on the other side.
The
woman who looks back at me is far more beautiful than I ever was, or ever could
have been. She has brilliant green eyes, a small nose, soft pink lips and long,
shining hair. She is as perfect a thing as I have ever seen, angelic and far
too wondrous to be in these burning tunnels beneath the city. I reach out my
hand to the cold glass so that I can touch hers.
Her
lips whisper the secrets of the water and fire beneath our nation. Her hand
trembles against mine.
The
gratitude consumes me in a sudden wave, and welling up in my stomach and
escaping my throat in happy, choking sobs.
I
shout out my thanks and fall to my knees.
A
door swings open, revealing a long row of stairs and a kind face.
A
hand extends forward and lifts me up from the floor. It brushes my hair, and
wipes my tears away.
I
take the hand and walk up the stairs, ready to repay my President’s generosity.
Ready to thank Him forever for my new face.
For
my second chance.
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