A Face in the Glass, Part I: The Sacrifice

Fiction by Brock Eldon

The stories in this volume compose FAB = -FBA, SUM FLUX V.2.2. See more stories, and check out the authors featured in this edition here.

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Visual by allgoor

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Read “A Face in the Glass, Part II: The Hollowing” HERE.

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PART I: The Sacrifice

I:

The bar was a smear of shadow and light caught between waking and sleep, smoke coiling lazily under the amber glow of tired lamps, the air thick with stale, sour beer. Elliot slouched over a crooked table, his shirt damp, clinging to his back. A sweating glass of whiskey sat beside a battered notebook. He stared at the blank spaces, pen in hand, as if waiting for the page to reflect something back.

Where was Ambrose?

He should’ve been here by now . . .

The thought circled. No text, no call, not even one of Ambrose’s cryptic napkin scrawls. Just absence. Elliot scratched out another sentence, the fragments meaningless, guttural. He and Ambrose had always looked like men out of time—black suits, white shirts, ties knotted loose like something from a tintype photograph. The cigarette between Elliot’s fingers burned in deliberate spirals.

The blank page stared back, indifferent.

Where was he?

Time here was a thing unmoored. The minutes stretched and snapped back like a cracked rubber band. The bar reeked of bodies that hadn’t left in days, of laughter that came too late, of that pervasive heat that stuck to your skin in this city and never let go. Elliot peeled off his tie and slung it over the back of his chair.

A guy in a sweat-darkened muscle shirt appeared, slapping another lukewarm bottle of Tiger on the table. “Elliot!” he snapped his fingers: “That’s number eight. You good for it?” His voice was all teeth and edges.

Elliot fished crumpled bills from his pocket, slowly. “I’ve got it,” he muttered, sliding the cash across the sticky surface. His other hand tugged at his collar.

Outside, the city pulsed. Motorbikes snarled through the dark, their taillights smearing red streaks on the wet asphalt. Neon signs flickered like dying stars, bleeding electric colour onto the chaos below. The air outside was alive—gasoline fumes, fried dough, beer . . .

It was a tomb. The walls seemed to sweat, swallowing sound until the room felt submerged. Voices rose and fell, their rhythm numbing, meaningless.

Across the room, a girl in a threadbare dress sucked on a pink nitrous balloon. Her body jerked like a marionette’s, all tangled strings. The sharp gasp she let out was half-pleasure, half-pain. Elliot turned away but the feeling stayed—the horror: where he was again, how he’d gotten here. This city—Hà Nội—it did not permit rest; it was as if it wanted you to sink. Around the edges of the lake, the buildings edged precariously, reflections dissolving into the water like they were being swallowed whole. Walls cracked and peeled as if the lake itself were breathing, drawing them down into its depths. The shoreline blurred, becoming less a boundary and more a suggestion, a place where solidity seemed optional.

Elliot looked out to the barrage of motorbikes—metal, flesh, noise in constant churn—until the motion twisted, serpentine. They undulated in rhythm, a coiling snake that unspooled endlessly, devouring its tail. The city shifted in and out of focus, its streets narrowing, expanding, and folding back on themselves as if guided by some unknowable will. Hà Nội was alive—not alive like a city teeming with people, but alive like something sentient, something probing, omnipresent in the background of things.

The glass reflected him back to himself, but not in any way he recognized. The air pressed close, suffocating, laden with a damp heaviness that seeped into his lungs, his skin, his thoughts. It wasn’t so much a place as an organism, and it knew him well. It fed him his own fears, his own desires, refracted and distorted. It whispered that there was no leaving because it was already inside him, inescapable.

He wasn’t sure he’d notice when it finally pulled him under.

I:

The sun slashed through the slats in the blinds carving crooked bars of light over the room as Elliot awoke. Dust circled lazily. He saw his clothes spilling in corners, an ashtray choking on butts, the manuscript scattered in heaps across his desk, pages hung from walls, pinned there, margins blistered, rewrites scrawled at unholy hours. First thing on waking, he downed two Valiums with a Red Bull and a cigarette out on his balcony. He sat up, and slipped off the bed to pick up his pack of Marlboro’s.

Somewhere, eggs burned. He got up early that morning—earlier than usual. He used to write on the dot of six. It was best to write when one was tired, Elliot thought, somewhere between waking and sleeping, still dreaming. He’d been trying to get back to the routine; he cracked eggs into a pan, the sizzle filling the silence of the apartment, then felt himself leaning against the counter, eyes heavy.

He slithered down to the floor, fell. Blacked out.

The floor was cold. . . The room swam with the smell of the burning. His body felt weightless and leaden. Hunger clawed through him. Atop the stove, the pan was scorched.

His head throbbed: each pulse scraped like broken glass against his skull. He slumped forward, elbows grinding into the desk, squinting at the street below. His mouth was dry, his tongue swollen and useless. Hà Nội churned outside, alive, deafening, indifferent. Vendors barked in sharp, rhythmic cries, swallowed by the growl of motorbikes furiously darting past. Across the curb, a woman adjusted her conical hat, bamboo pole swaying under the weight of her daily dragonfruit. The prices scrawled on a scrap of wood clipped to her bike seemed more enduring than anything he’d ever written. He thought this overly bitterly: he was a stain in a crowd tethered to nothing.

Inside, the room pressed down on him. Sticky notes clung around the edges of his manuscript, their faded colours marking failures like scars. He turned, glaring at the manuscript as though it might dissolve under his contempt. He read a line aloud, voice flat and splintered, but the words just hung there, lifeless, mocking.

The manuscript lay open atop his desk, stained with coffee rings and smudged ink. He set the ruined pan down beside it, and he stared: proof of what he gave, proof of what he lost.

***

He slouched in his chair, the faint glow of his phone the only light in the room. The fan in the corner sputtered, doing little to cut through the sticky heat pressing against his skin. His fingers hovered, swiping idly on his phone through Tinder. The usual blur of faces came and went until the DMs started coming in. The girl with the red lace lingerie, holding her curves with her hands the bits of her exposed flesh, biting her lip—she chimed in first:

—If I were under you right now, what would you do to me first?

The heat simmering all night pooled low in Elliot’s body.

—Ever jerk off with a voice note in your ear? I’d send one. Just ask.

Elliot’s pulse quickened as he switched between chats. The other girl—the girl in white’s— follow-ups came in fast, each more direct and explicit than the last. She wanted to know how he’d touch her, where he’d start, how long he was going to take with her.

The ache in him built as his hand moved faster under the table.

But the girl in red escalated:

—Just picture me kissing you. Your face, your neck, your chest, abs. My lips moving lower, lower . . .

The girl in white (sexy librarian glasses) countered:

—Don’t stop. I wanna hear it. Right now!

Elliot bit his lip. His fingers trembled. He could barely think straight, caught between their words, his body reacting faster than his mind. His breath came in sharp, shallow bursts.

—I’m free tonight. Where are you?

He hesitated. He felt shitty about this.

—Are you serious? Ghosting me now? Don’t ever talk to me again.

By the time he clicked back to the girl in red, he was blocked, and her profile vanished from his match list before he could reply.

Elliot sighed, his forehead falling into his hands. Closing down the app, his chest tightened in frustration.

***

He wasn’t really like that, he told himself, thinking about last night’s swiping.

The morning sunlight flickered across Trúc Bạch Lake like restless fireflies. Cobblestones shifted under his flip-flops, tree roots breaking through the path. The air was thick with petrol, grilled fish, and overripe fruit. Vendors set up carts, their voices rising in melodic calls. Behind his sunglasses, he felt insulated, though the manuscript weighed on him like an unshakable toothache. He couldn’t leave it behind. He couldn’t face it either.

Phương had messaged him that morning. He’d been talking to for a week: the “hard to get” type. He pictured her profile photo—her calm, confident smile, dark waves of hair, hand on an open book. No artifice, just quiet, self-assured beauty. Briefly, not without guilt, he imagined the curve of her back, the weight of her. His pulse quickened. Without Elliot’s even realizing it, the ache of Ambrose’s absence was dulled.

The café adjacent to the old market was modest, though its charms worn a bit thin. Wooden tables scarred with burns and knife marks, ceiling fans wobbling in sluggish circles, the air dense with coffee and salt-tinged breeze. He took a seat by the window, where the peeling shutters framed the lake.

He ordered a cà phê sữa đá, watching thick black brew swirl into condensed milk. Ambrose’s voice intruded: sardonic, scornful. Did Elliot really think she’d get him? That she’d see what he had buried in his pages? No, Ambrose would say, she’d be bored in ten fucking minutes.

The first sound of her voice startled him.

She slid into the seat in a seamless motion like water shifting in a glass. He watched the leather skim her thighs. Her dark hair was loose, hung long over her bare shoulders. She moved in a way, spoke in a way that announced that the world bent to accommodate her. He noticed the way her skirt clung when she moved, the way her skin caught the light. Hair, dark and loose, spilling down her back. A perfume he couldn’t name or identify the scent of: something that made you want to cling to her presence.

She smiled; he felt something in him recalibrate with her entrance.

Elliot nodded, and said something about her not being late, about seeing her website. She had a music academy. She’d been running it for years. He let her voice wash over him, absorbing details in pieces—the televised contest, the concerts, and trips to Singapore, her studies in Germany, the sudden acceleration of everything: a clear trajectory, a rising red line. She was thriving. He was envious of that, in the way he always was with people who had no hesitation when speaking about their work, their success.

He nodded, and said something. She smiled, teeth flashing, licking her lips wet.

It was only when she leaned forward slightly, elbows on the table, that he realized he was staring.

Fading in and out momentarily, he thought he saw Ambrose, his look of condemnation.

She was still talking, something about how artists in the city never seemed to date, how they all disappeared into their own worlds, isolated, untouchable.

She said something about bookstores, about how people here actually seemed to read.

She tilted her head, considering him, then asked about his novel.

His stomach clenched.

She knew about the grant. Of course she did. He’d told her. He braced himself, trying to make it sound effortless, casual—the writing.

“Nine months in Hà Nội on it. I’ve got another fifteen to finish?” It was fine. He was fine, he said, going on.

She watched him, listening carefully, her expression unreadable. The look unnerved him. So he made himself keep talking.

“It’s a travel novel,” he answered in response to her next question. Another lie. His stomach was tight, empty, the hunger like a fist pressing against his ribs. It made him feel lightheaded, sharp-edged, like he was floating just outside himself, watching the words leave his mouth, empty and automatic.

She reached for his cigarettes, plucking one out like it had always belonged to her. He flipped open the Zippo, moved to light it, but she hesitated, studying him.

“I didn’t think you smoked this much.”

“Tôi đổ lỗi cho chính phủ này. Cigarettes are cheap here,” he said, already slipping the lighter back into his pocket.

She rolled her eyes. “Hand me the lighter.”

The flame caught, a brief gold flicker in the dim light. She leaned in, lips pursed around the filter, inhaled deep, then let the smoke unfurl between them, watching him through it.

Then her hand crossed the table, fingers crossing over his.

“Can I see some of your writing?”

His grip on the glass tightened—not much, but enough for her to notice. “Maybe another time.”

A pause, heavier than it should have been.

Her gaze flicked over him, lower now, appraising—his collarbones, the hollowness in his face.

“You eating?”

The smell hit him again—burnt eggs, the ruined pan, the last of his food scraped black. His stomach knotted.

“Yeah,” he said, too fast. Something about cutting back, some throwaway line. Enough to move her along.

The street noise pressed in, voices warping. Phương dragged her cigarette to the filter, exhaled, stubbed it out. Shifted in her seat. The moment passed.

She stretched, long and languid. He watched the way her dress shifted, the slow crossing of her legs, deliberate. Then she met his eyes, teasing.

“Thought you said you were gonna grab my ass and kiss me the second you saw me.”

He swallowed as she dropped four blue bills on the table, took him by his wrists, and pulled him up.

***

The door to her apartment clicked shut, barely. Elliot had her against it before the lock could even catch, pressing her back into the green-painted wood. The vibrations of passing motorbikes trembled through the frame.

She gasped as he lifted her, her hands gripping his shoulders, nails pressing just enough into his skin to sting. He bunched the linen of her dress in his fists, dragging it higher. The lace underneath was damp against his knuckles.

She rolled her hips against him, seeking, showing. Her breath hitched as his fingers slipped beneath the fabric, parting her, finding her wet, aching centre.

Her mouth found his ear. “Another cigarette . . . ”

He fumbled in his pocket, one-handed, as she worked his belt loose. The clink of the buckle, the slow pull of leather. She took the cigarette from his lips, placed it between her own. She exhaled slowly, the smoke curling, slipping into his mouth as he kissed her.

Then her fingers wrapped around him, firm, stroking once, twice, her touch languid, knowing. His head tipped forward, forehead pressing to hers, breath shuddering.

“Say it again . . . ”

He pressed her even harder against the door, banging it in its frame, hips nudging between her thighs. She pulled him in, her legs curling tight around his waist. The wet heat of her enveloped him as he slipped inside, a sharp, breathless moan catching in her throat. Her head knocked back against the door, eyes slipping shut, mouth parting, mascara smearing down one cheek against the sweaty press of his forehead.

The room swayed. It rattled with the city’s pulse. The hum of motorbikes thrummed through the walls, the wood, and their bones.

II:

The bar that night was a swelter of sound and heat. The smell was thick and oppressive, laced with the tang of sweat, beer, and cheap cigarettes. Elliot sat at a crooked table near the back, three bottles of Tiger sweating in front of him, condensation pooling in uneven rings at their bases. The room pressed in—voices rising and crashing, a low bassline. He wiped his face with the back of his hand, but the sweat came back as fast as he could clear it.

The manuscript lay open on the table, pages smudged and curling at the edges. The words stared back at him like an accusation. He read over a paragraph and the words felt too close, too immediate:

The air in Hà Nội isn’t just thick: it’s alive. It writhes with the weight of its fumes: gasoline, grilled meat, the humidity that clings. It won’t let you forget yourself, this place—it digs its fingers in. It makes you feel every itch, every ache. And it watches; always, this city watches . . .

He snapped the notebook shut—too abruptly. The spine bent under his grip, pages rustling like they might spill. Exhaling, he pressed his palms against the cover, as though holding it closed might still the unease creeping up his neck.

The room was silent except for the lazy churn of the ceiling fan, blades clicking unevenly, stirring the air without even beginning to cool it.

His thoughts drifted back to Phương. Away for the week in Singapore. She had another concert at SNU, then two weeks of in-studio recording.

The writing had been going well—better than it had in months. Better than he had any right to expect.

And he knew why:

It was her.

Not Ambrose: not the old self-inflicted torments, not the city gnawing at the edges of his solitude.

It was her.

Yet he could not bring himself to read what he’d written . . .

The bouncer, Lâm, moved in like a boulder on legs, shoulders knotted thick like ship ropes. His black muscle shirt stretched tight across his chest, the fabric clinging to his torso like shrink-wrap over raw meat.

He slapped the table with a flat, heavy palm, and Elliot flinched.

“You owe!” the bouncer said, voice flat, unshaken, eyes blank yet drilling straight through him.

Elliot fumbled in his pockets, pulling out a crumpled bill—nowhere near enough. He swallowed, forcing a weak smile. “Tôi sẽ lấy phần còn lại, tôi sẽ lấy phần còn lại. Cây ATM, đúng rồi?”

Lâm’s eyes narrowed, his jaw tightening.

Elliot swore he saw the muscles in his neck twitch, veins pulsing. Then, a slight flex, shoulders rolling forward, arms swelling, the kind of movement that made it clear that this was not a request.

“Bây giờ! Cút khỏi quán này ngay, nếu không Má sẽ không bao giờ cho mày bén mảng đến đây nữa!”

Elliot staggered to his feet and wove his way through the crowd, brushing tilted beers, nitrous balloons like loaded cannons passing through the crowd to the bathroom. The door groaned open under the weight of his shoulder, and he stumbled inside, greeted by an air cooler only in theory, heavy with the acrid tang of stale urine and cheap bleach. Leaning over the sink, he hacked violently, his ribs tightening with each cough until a dark clot of phlegm finally splattered into the drain. The pollution had done its part, but it was mostly the smoking.

His hands trembled, fumbling for his phone. His thumb slipped across the cracked screen until Ambrose’s number appeared. He pressed the call button, his chest tightening as the line rang out and the voicemail picked up.

“Ambrose,” he started. His voice was raw, teetering on the edge of desperation. “I need you. It’s not just the money. I need you. I’ve been an asshole. I know. I owe you. Please, just call me back.”

He ended the call, and stared at the sink’s grimy porcelain basin, the off-white surface stained with water rings and flecked with the dull, curdled remnants of vomit. The sour tang still clung to the air, thick and acrid. A slow drip from the rusted faucet tapped out uneven beats was the only sound in the room. He ran a finger along the cracked enamel, half-expecting it to stir, to spit something back at him—an answer, a sign, anything.

Like everything else, the mouth of the drain maintained its silence.

***

When he stepped out of the bathroom, faces turned toward him, smirking, whispering.

And then—

Ambrose was there.

He sat slouched in Elliot’s chair, one arm draped over the back, the other holding a cigarette between his long fingers, its ember pulsing as he drew in a slow breath. His black suit remained immaculate despite the heat, the fabric unstirred by sweat formed at Elliot’s shoulders. Ambrose’s white-collared shirt was undone just enough to suggest nonchalance rather than carelessness. The mustache curled at the edges: precise, its shape mirrored in the thick lines of the sideburns that ran down to meet his jaw. He exhaled, the smoke unfurling in careful, deliberate spirals.

Beside him, a neat stack of cash. At least 10,000,000₫—edges crisp next to Elliot’s empty brown bottles.

“Took care of it,” Ambrose gestured to the bill then the manuscript. “Still writing your little mémoire?” Ambrose added with the French intonation. His voice was coy, already disinterested.

Elliot’s face flushed. “It’s not a memoir.”

Ambrose smirked, leaning back, his amber eyes catching in the light. “Sure. Whatever,” he shrugged, offering Elliot one of his thin, slick vanilla cigars. “I hear you’ve been seeing someone.” He paused, letting the words sink in. “Phương’s the name. Yeah?”

He’d never told Ambrose about Phương before. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came.

Ambrose’s smirk widened. “You fuck her?”

Elliot’s face burned. Looking down, he saw that his hands were gripping the edge of the table. He did not answer.

Ambrose exhaled a slow plume of smoke. “Fucking sensitive today, boy. Okay, well: I’ll put it into gentler terms then. How does she make you feel?” he slapped down on the tabletop and Elliot winced. He felt his skin prickling. Conversations hummed around them, volume rising, threatening, always, to overtake theirs: a low, indistinct murmur punctuated by bursts of laughter, the occasional clatter of glass. Someone at the next table shifted, the scrape of a chair leg dragging against the floor setting Elliot’s teeth on edge.

Elliot bristled, his jaw tightening. “What do you want me to say? I like her,” he snapped, the restraint in his voice barely holding. His hand slammed down on the manuscript, rattling the empty green bottles on the tabletop. The tension simmered, threatening to boil over. His voice rose, sharp with frustration, the weight of months pressing into every syllable.

Ambrose’s laugh was as low, sharp; like breaking glass. “But she’ll drag you down, man. You know that.”

“No.”

“Elliot . . . You doubt me now? It’s the way of the world. Far more, and far greater men have died spiritually inside the prison of a ‘marriage’ than those who have fallen swiftly, with at least some shred of dignity on the battlefield.” His eyes narrowed, honing in on Elliot as if to see through, or into him.

Elliot bristled, his jaw tightening. “What do you want me to say?”

He collapsed back into his chair, the fight draining from him, leaving only exhaustion. His chest heaved as he stared down at the manuscript, hand resting on it like a lifeline he could not bring himself to let go of. The words hung between them, fragile, daring Ambrose to respond, to shatter them.

“Frankly, Elliot, I think it’s better to cut through the bullshit.” Ambrose shrugged. He exhaled, smoke rising, forming rings. His voice was soft, almost pitying: “You’ve gotta kill her now before she kills you. It’s the only way out—the easiest,” he flicked away the ash from his cigarette. “You don’t see it yet, but she’s already inside you, Elliot, and she’s dulled your edge.”

He leaned in, pointing with the butt of his cigarette:

“Do it and one day you’ll wake up content, and oblivious, and you won’t even care. You’ll forget all about . . . What’s her name? Phương? You’ll thank me, Elliot, you will thank me—”

***

Elliot stared at the empty bottles, at the cigarette still burning between his fingers, its ember pulsing, the smoke unfurling like a noose between them. The words lingered, refusing to dissipate.

Then—just as suddenly as Ambrose had appeared—Elliot was outside, moving through the streets as if trapped behind glass. The city swelled around him, distant yet oppressive, the sounds muffled, warped, like they were filtering through water. His own breath echoed too loud in his ears, his movements sluggish, disconnected. Neon lights smeared across wet pavement, their glow refracted, unreal. The air felt heavier, thicker, pressing in from all sides, as though he were walking underwater, each step dragging.

Ambrose’s words repeating, the sounds of the night surged, rising, crashing against his senses. His own breath echoed too loud in his ears. Neon lights smeared across the wet pavement, their glow refracted, unreal—warped into something formless, a heavy undertow pulling him deeper, dragging him under . . .

END OF PART I

Continued in Part II—dropping soon on SUM FLUX!

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