(Credit: allpix.club/pages/f/faceless-mask)
Why can I not turn and look at you? It is as if there is some invisible but physical restraint holding my head in place.
You don’t want me to look at you and you tell me so, but I must see you as you are. With great effort, I catch a glimpse of your shirt, and you ask me to stop trying, your face is terrible, you say. But I cannot live the rest of my life with you hovering behind me as a disembodied voice, telling me jokes and sharing pain, it would drive me mad. In fact, I fear that I already am mad, that you were never there to begin with; that you are simply a figment conjured up by a lonely brain. So I twist my neck just a little further and see.
You have no face. There is only skin pulled over bone with folds and stretch marks.
I wake with a start and fumble for my phone.
You are not on my list of contacts.
