He Without a Face

            I’m not crazy. Keep telling yourself I’m not crazy. I may be soon, but not now.



I live alone in my apartment, I always preferred isolation, though that might not be the case right now. Wait…did you hear that? You heard the singing right? Don’t deny it, you heard it. I’ll tell you what happened. Please believe me! It was only a week ago. That’s when this mess started. You’ll find out! You’ll find out!

Okay, I got to calm down, I get it. Okay…Tuesday. It was Tuesday. Only three days after college had ended. I was…what was I doing? Oh yes, I was searching job listings on my laptop when this first started. I didn’t want to work two jobs, but I was starting to run a bit low on cash. The search process was boring, I’m not one of those people who’s just enthusiastic about getting a new job, but that’s not the point. At some point, I started to get a little drowsy. I’m sure I was just about to go out…if it weren’t for a creak from upstairs. I dragged myself up the stairs into my room. Nothing. Not a thing in sight. I figured it was possibly just a rat, I’ve had a few pest problems before, so this seemed like a possibility. I walked back down to the kitchen and turned my laptop back on.

Two more hours passed. I was really considering a job at a fast food place at this point. So I punched in a few places. Thirty minutes later, I found a place that looked quite promising. The site this clean look to it and was also one of those sites that has pictures of employees smiling. After admiring the look of the site, I clicked on the careers link and I could’ve sworn that for a split second, one of the employee’s faces was missing. The careers page showed the same kind of friendliness displayed throughout the rest of the site. There was even an introductory video on the page. I clicked on it and was greeted with a video of a little girl smiling at me. The video seemed to buffer for a moment, at least that’s what I thought. The girl’s face seemed to be decaying very slowly. The color started to fade from her hair. She was still smiling. Her face had become an ugly shade of yellow and seemed to be peeling at her hairline. Blood ran from her eyes as they turned into a crimson red. Her face was peeling at multiple areas now, but she kept smiling, as if this wasn’t affecting her at all. Her face snapped at the left end of her head, and was now hanging from the right side of her head by a single strip of flesh. Her head was now bleeding profusely and the crimson water flooded from the hanging face’s mouth and eye sockets. Her face eventually slid off and fell with the last drop of blood, revealing the decaying muscle underneath. Her mouth started movie, uttering something I couldn’t make out. Her mouth kept moving until her jaw suddenly split. The screen flickered a bit and the video ended. I kept telling myself this wasn’t real as I clicked on the video again, just hoping it wouldn’t show what I just saw. It didn’t. At this point, I just assumed I was in serious need of some sleep, the job hunting would continue tomorrow after I got some much needed sleep.

I lay in my bed. I kept repeating that I just had a long day and was just in need of sleep. I couldn’t close my eyes, as if I was wide awake. I just stared at my ceiling. I started humming a song. I stopped. I could’ve sworn that there were two voices humming. There is no such thing as pure silence, even if there is no sounds present, there is still a faint ringing in your ear caused by passing air. That wasn’t the case. The room was absolutely silent. Not a sound. I closed my eyes, just hoping the night would be over quickly. I heard a faint sound before I finally fell asleep. It sounded like…singing.

I woke up downstairs, which was odd, considering I don’t sleep walk. It was three o’ clock in the afternoon, a majority of my day was already gone. I turned on my laptop and resumed the search. Three applications later, I was starting to get bored again. I looked out the window between the next few applications. After three or four more applications, I looked out the window again. I didn’t see my reflection. In its place was a little boy, covering his face with his hands. Green liquid seemed to be dripping from his face. He moved his hands, showing rotting muscle swarmed with flies and oozing green liquid. His eyes focused on me and his jaw started moving, chunks of meat would fall off his face with each movement. I was sure my eyes were just playing tricks on me, so I rubbed my eyes and blinked a few times. He was gone. My reflection sat where it should be. No, not just resuming some job search, I needed some help. I called up Dr. Ather, my therapist, something I know I should have done sooner, and arranged an appointment. I got slotted in at six o’ clock.

It had started raining. “Perfect. What else could wrong”, my inexperienced self said. Ten minutes early. I sat in the waiting room for twenty minutes, nervously bouncing my leg. It was soon my turn. The room was not like those stereotypical therapy rooms, it didn’t have that chair that is so commonly found in these kinds of places. No degree hanging from the walls. The walls were white and did not appear to age well. The room was mainly empty, with two chairs sitting in the middle of the room. Dr. Ather welcomed me into the room and we sat down. I told him everything I had been experiencing. He just sat there, unphased by everything that came out of my mouth, he occasionally nodded, but that was the extent of it. He had this look as if he had heard it all before. I finished my story and he began to write something down on his clipboard. I stared at the ceiling while the sound of his pen on the paper rang in my ears.

“What are you going to do when he comes for you,” Dr. Ather said suddenly. I looked over at him. He hadn’t even looked up from his clipboard.

“What,” I asked. He looked up, a look of confusion stretched across his face. “What did you just say,” I asked him.

“I didn’t say anything,” he replied. He tilted his head, “You sure you’ve been getting enough sleep?” I quickly nodded, but at this point I wasn’t so sure anymore. Dr. Ather came to the conclusion that these “visions”, as he called them, were just a result of the stress caused by the job search. I thanked Dr. Ather and walked out of the room. It was still raining outside, raining harder than before. My ears were flooded with the pitter-patter of rain drops hitting the street. As I walked to my car, I think I- No, I know I began to hear something between each drop. Like a whisper, a song. Something! I need to finish…I need to stay calm.

I arrived back at my apartment. I was tired again. I walked in my room and got ready to go to sleep. It wasn’t that late, but I still wanted to rule lack of sleep out as an option. I got into my pajamas and crawled into bed. I flicked off the light switch and tried to sleep. I couldn’t sleep though. That night though, now I know…that’s the night when…HE…first appeared. As the night went on, I started to notice that a corner of my room appeared to be getting darker, like a growing shadow loomed over it. My eyes focused on it for hours as it continued to grow and darken. I started to drift into sleep. As I finally drifted into unconsciousness, I saw something in the shadow shine and I heard, what I assume to be singing…

I awoke in the middle of the night. I tried to go back to sleep, I had no luck. I sat up in my bed. The dark shadow in the corner of the room was gone. I walked downstairs, thinking I was just hungry. I opened up the fridge and scanned its contents. I heard someone laugh. A child laugh. I slowly turned my head. On the kitchen counter, sat a little girl. Her back was facing me, she seemed oddly familiar. She turned her head and what I saw made me puke. The skin on her face was missing, remains of her flesh hung from her eye sockets, the exposed muscle was twisted and mangled into wet bunches. She lowered her jaw.

“What are you going to do when he comes for you,” she sang in a voice that sounded as if her vocal chords had been twisted and torn. She repeated her words over and over. There was another voice singing this as well, deeper, but still maintaining the screechiness of the first voice. As I covered, my ears, I looked around the room for the source. No one was in the room, but me and the girl. I sick feeling came over me, as I slowly raised my chin. There he was…right there on the ceiling. There was a body, appearing to be plastered to the ceiling by blood and flesh. It was a lanky man, wearing a faded blue coat and torn grey pants. His skin was white, with patches of exposed muscle scattered all over his body. His hair appeared to be burned off. His face though…there are not enough words to describe what his face was. His skin had appeared to be torn off as well, but much more strips of flesh remained and hung from the irritated looking muscle. Stitching ran across the muscles, with dark green ooze dripping between the seams. Black teeth filled his mouth. His eyes…his blank emotionless eyes stared directly into mine.

The room was still for about two minutes. The man slowly lowered from the ceiling. His long black tongue ripped a strip of flesh from his head and he began to chew it, never breaking eye contact with me. He lay his cold fingers upon my face. They felt like dry ice against my skin. His fingers ran down my cheek.

“i’M HeRE.”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in">Everything went black.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in">I awoke in the hospital, bandages tightly wrapped around my head. My arms and legs were in restraints. I screamed for the doctor and I demanded to know what happened. The Doctor told me people next door heard me scream and when they entered my apartment, they saw me cutting my own face off. He then proceeded to tell me that I would be put in an institution for treatment. I pleaded with him, told him that’s not what happened. I know that’s not what happened! He wouldn’t listen though. He thought I was crazy.

<span style="font-size:11.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:"TimesNewRoman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language: EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">I’m not crazy, I’m not! Please, believe me! Please! Please realize that I’m not crazy, and that that thing is out there! Still out there! People need to know about him! People need to find him and put him away! People need to know!

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;text-align:center;"> Please believe me...for your own sake…

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;text-align:center;">