Hello.
My name is Diogo and I live in a small village located in central Portugal. Things are quiet here : I go to school, I have many friends, and even have a girlfriend. It’s all going great, and this despite my handicap. At least, that’s the way I think about it. Indeed, you see, I can foretell when a person is going to die. All I need is a look at his face. Either on a TV, a photograph or when I’m in front of someone. The difference being that I see them without a face. I can see their heads with their ears and hair but there’s no mouth, no nose, no eyes or eyebrows…
It all started when I was a kid. Back at home there was this picture of the family on the fireplace. Grandmother, grandfather, my parents, my big sister and I. At some point I couldn’t help but notice grandmother’s face had all but vanished from the picture. Of course, this remained unnoticed by the whole family and everyone just kept asking me to be quiet and cause no trouble. But some days later, grandmother passed away following a heart attack. I didn’t immediately see the connection. Nor did my parents. It’s not like she was in her prime, you know?
Then it was grandfather’s turn. His face had vanished from the picture here again. Once again I tried to tell my parents but that only led to more fighting. But I couldn’t argue with the facts as some days after that, grandfather died as well, from a stroke. That time, my parents could no longer deny the truth and not believe me. They did ask me to keep it all a secret and not tell anyone. They saw that as a curse and feared this could lead to trouble. This kind of ability would tend to make people suspicious should this be turning out to be true.
It all went smoothly from there. This handicap was not all that difficult to bear and I thank God for that. I did see faceless people out in the street or when I watched TV. I told my loved ones about Michael Jackson days before it actually happened and they managed to make a bundle from buying collections of CDs before everyone else did and selling every one of those for a ridiculous amount. I know, that is not a particularly nice thing to do but it was my gift, my curse and I had to make do with it so I figured I might as well make full use of that…
You might be asking yourself, why am I telling you all that now? Why am I revealing that secret to the whole wide world now? What happened? Do I want to know if somebody else possesses the same ability? No, don’t care. Do I want to be famous? Far from it. The truth is, my dear friends, as of this morning, I haven’t seen a single face. The TV people are faceless.
All my Facebook friends are faceless.
Same goes for all the people out in the streets.
Same goes for me in the mirror.
I don’t know what’s going to happen but I suggest you start living from now on as you never have before. Have all the fun you can, dance away, make love, pray. Do whatever you want. Because in a few days we’ll all see each other in the next world.