A Face in the Glass, Part II: The Hollowing

Fiction by Brock Eldon

The stories in this volume compose FAB = -FBA, SUM FLUX V.2.3. See more stories, and check out the authors featured in this edition here.

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Read “A Face in the Glass, Part I: The Sacrifice” HERE.

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PART II: The Hollowing

III:

Entire months in Hà Nội collapsed inward, time warping under its gravitational pull. Mornings bled into nights without ceremony, Elliot hunched at his desk.

The words resisted him, not born but extracted, jagged and raw—each syllable dragged from depths that felt more wound than “creative-fucking-wellspring.” The words came grudgingly: reluctant, pried loose from some hidden, unwilling part of himself. Every sentence was a little violence. The pen was a scalpel slicing through the viscera of his thoughts, an autopsy performed on a thing still gasping and bleeding.

It was as if he were dissecting his own living memory.

There was, at last, the possibility of leaving.

He’d been bound to the city for months, since his last visa run. Phương had suggested it—bare shoulder turning toward him as he scrolled through Netflix one minute, then airline and hotel bookings with her on her laptop the next. He remembered just how the blue light of the screen illuminated her skin.

The weight in his chest lightened, just enough to breathe, to feel the voice silenced.

***

Vientiane barely made a sound, but in the haze of drink and sweat, Elliot remembered it differently. The Mekong barely moved, but he had drowned in her, sinking, gasping, hands gripping sheets damp with heat and the slow, deliberate pull of her body against his.

Laos was too beautiful for what had happened to it. The mountains rose like the spines of sleeping gods, wrapped in mist, while below, the fields bore the wounds of wars they had never declared. Bomb craters turned to pounds, the past still buried in the soil, waiting. The detonations had stopped, but the land still held its breath: two million tons of ordinances were dropped on Laos over the course of the American War with Vietnam, and an estimated three hundred unexploded ordnance (UXOs) were scattered across the country which remains. Opium smoke curled through the air along with the incense, thick as Phương’s exhale against his throat when she leaned into him, her body heavy, slow, undone. The silence between them was just as treacherous—pregnant, unstable, a buried charge waiting for impact.

They fucked in dim hotel rooms, ceiling fans spinning slowly, their bodies tangled under mosquito nets, sweat-slicked, restless, her nails pressing into his back as if to ground him as if she knew how easily he might disappear into all this. The weight of her on him, the press of her thighs against his ribs, the taste of salt, the wet heat of her mouth—none of it was ever enough. Outside, the river dragged itself south, thick and indifferent, the jungle swallowed the dead, and the neon burned through the dark. The country split itself open before them: temples glowing gold in the morning haze, bars still pulsing from the night before, the promise of forgetting in every shot of cheap whiskey, every cigarette passed between them, every unspoken thing humming beneath their breath.

Elliot felt it every time she pulled away after rolling onto her side, staring at the ceiling, her fingers tracing invisible shapes across her stomach. Something was shifting. The way a buried charge shifts under the weight of the world pressing down, the way a fault line hums before it splits. They were an unexploded ordnance, buried deep, volatile, waiting. They had not yet gone off.

Or maybe they already had.

***

Vang Vieng to Loang Probang. Last leg. From there, they’d fly back to Hà Nội.

The van lurched forward and eased past the dust and smoke into the preserved, manicured quiet of the old town. The roads smoothed out, and the old French colonial facades glowed. French bakeries, boutique hotels, spotless tuk-tuks idling at corners where sunburnt couples in linen browsed lacquerware, silver trinkets. It was a “different” Laos here—curated, softened for those who needed the country to be something they could take home with them.

Elliot thought Phương was still asleep.

He kissed her forehead, then her lips, realizing she was awake, feeling a grin tug at the edge of his mouth. Hà Nội felt so far away now. Ambrose felt so far away now.

Arm wrapped around Phương as the van made its final turn, Elliot watched the darkened wood blur past, the slow churn of the river catching the last golden light of the beady Laotian sun. Monks passed in their saffron robes, shifting like the light itself, chanting. Stepping out at their stop, the air smelt of wet stone and the smoke curling from temple braziers.

The path to check-in wound through a garden, lanterns sunk in, their glow diffused in the evening humidity. The rain had lifted but left its weight in the air, warm and fragrant with frangipani. Elliot felt good. Awake. The Valium had steadied the flights, the vodka kept him loose. He’d cracked open in the van, its bitterness sharp against the thickening dusk.

He lighter, clearer—he recognized himself again: his body lean but not gaunt, the muscle beginning to shape under skin again. Phương liked to press her fingers against his arm sometimes, making him flex just to feel it.

A young valet took their bags for them and at the counter, the receptionist—middle-aged, clearly practiced in her trade of silent assessment—slid their key cards across the polished wood. Her eyes flicked between them, lingering a beat too long.

Phương smiled, taking the lady’s looks in with a slow tap of her fingernails on the countertop, before handing the key to Elliot.

Down the hall, the cool, conditioned air, Phương pulled him close, her voice brushing his ear.

“Did you see her face?” A smirk, fingers light on his wrist. “Does it make you feel naughty?”

Elliot exhaled, letting himself sink into the feeling—the heat, the slow press of her body against his. He let his hand move up the back of her skirt.

And for once he let himself feel it. He saw her draped over the edge of the bed, back arched, mouth open in some soundless plea. He saw her on top, thighs tightening, her lips parted in something half-laugh, half-moan. He saw the tilt of her face when she came, the unfocused haze in her eyes, the flush at her collarbone. He wanted to see all of it, right here, right now, against the wall, on the floor, tangled in sheets damp with humidity.

Phương laughed, pressing him back until the backs of his knees hit the bed. “You’re thinking about it already, eh?” she said, fingers looping into his waistband.

Elliot grinned, dizzy with it, with her. “Yeah.”

“Good,” she said, unlocking the room, then pushing him in, then down.

He fell back on the bed and felt her pulling down his shorts, lips enveloping him whole.

***

The next morning, Elliot sat out on the terrace, his towel loose around his waist, the laptop warming over his thighs. The coffee in front of him sat dark and syrupy in its thin ceramic cup. He watched the swirl of condensed milk, pale streaks curling through the black. He skimmed the email to his editor one again and attached the latest chapters. He hit send.

It was like he could hear the world exhaling.

The hum of insects. The slow drift of the river.

Then Phương climbed up to him. Her skin was still damp from the pool, red two-piece slick against her body, a bead of water sliding down the curve of her hip. Her fingers trailed along his jaw, slow, lazy.

Then, the thought: sudden, intrusive. How much of this was hers? The manuscript, the work—no longer an abstraction but a thing. Something breathing. Was it his, or was it Phương’s? He wanted to believe it was his, that he was whole again. That the clarity belonged to him alone.

But wasn’t that Ambrose too? Living off borrowed energy, feeding on someone else’s presence until the hunger outgrew the host?

And wasn’t that Elliot now? Taking Phương’s warmth, her steadiness, letting her anchor him without realizing she was doing it? He studied her, the way she stood so easily in the light, unaware of the weight she carried for him.

How long before he needed more? Before his hunger outgrew her?

IV:

Hà Nội was there, waiting for him on the other side, there to swallow him whole again.

It had been waiting, crouched low beneath the weight of its own heat, thick with its own exhaust, the sickly burn of motor oil and grilled meat. The city moved too fast, too close, pressing against him as though to remind him that a month had passed since Laos. He’d felt the world slow in Laos, its edges softened, his body dissolving into something looser, weightless. Time unfurled, a river with no current; Hà Nội was different. He could feel it in the tension coiled at the base of his skull, the restless static beneath his skin.

He had not touched the manuscript. Phương was in Saigon again, a conference. She had called—more than once. He had ignored it. Let the phone buzz and skitter across the table, then onto the floor. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to answer. He had meant to. He just hadn’t.

He had sat at the bar twice, maybe three times, waiting for Ambrose.

The Babylon Club: the flickering neon, the slow churn of the ceiling fan, the smell of wet tile and cigarette ash. The way the air inside felt so dense, pressing in close. Had he really waited all night? He thought so. But the memory flickered, grainy, like something viewed through a fogged-up window.

Some nights, Ambrose never showed. Some nights, Elliot stayed too long.

He would wake up on the floor, tiles cold against his cheek, nitrous balloons scattered like burst organs, plastic skins gleaming dully in the bar’s after-hours hush. The first few hits were always bright and clean, carving clarity into his brain. But the more he took, the more it blurred, the lightness turned leaden. The nitrous demobilized him, pressed into his skull with a slow, quiet pressure.

He’d told himself he wouldn’t do it again.

But he wasn’t sure. Had he waited those nights for Ambrose? The doubt unraveled and unspooled into something else—a sudden confidence. He wasn’t desperate. He wasn’t waiting for anything. He had control. No, there was no way he could have gone to the Babylon three nights in a row looking for Ambrose. It’d been two months.

He tiled his shoulders back, leaving the apartment. Walked past the rows of motorbikes, past the old brothel-turned-hostel, past the expats drinking cheap beer under the red-lit lanterns. He found the little Rasta place—the one tucked between Hồ Tây and the rusted hardware shops, the one with the faded Bob Marley flag tacked to the wall. His old dealer barely looked up, rolling a joint one-handed, eyes half-lidded, already gone on whatever he’d smoked before. Elliot handed over crumpled bills and got back a wax-paper bundle, tucked tight. Discreet. Inside pressed green curls sharp with citrus and skunk. Tiny plastic baggies dusted white, their seams tight with powder. A strip of paper tabs, ink-bleeding at the edges, folded small enough to disappear into his palm.

The city thrummed around him again as he exited, crossing over to the lake back to the motorbike as quickly as he could before night fell, and the city turned electric. The ghosts of his haunted hose mind only came out at night. He exhaled through his nose, sharp. His mind was already ahead of him, skipping forward to what came next.

He remembered:

The balloon swelling under his teeth. The rush slamming into his skull. The sharp sweetness melting on his tongue. The hush of numbness, pooling in his limbs. The feeling of weightlessness hit him like a flashback.

Wondering if the lightness in his head was from withdrawal or hunger. Wondering if the slow compression pressing into his skull was the absence of air or the absence of something else.

It didn’t matter, he told himself.

Both could be remedied.

***

Standing before the bathroom mirror, Elliot watched the fluorescent light stutter above. The sickly yellow glow leeched the colour from his skin. He looked tired. The kind of exhaustion that wasn’t just in the body. It was stitched into the way he held himself.

He ran a hand over his jaw after they hung up, tracing the rough stubble, imagining how it made him look—worn, unkempt, hollowed out. His fingers drifted down, brushing the ridge of cartilage at his throat, the motion absent, automatic. His eyes flickered to the ceiling fan, and for a moment, a slow, creeping dread curled in his gut—familiar, uninvited, impossible to ignore.

When was the last time he’d eaten?

The razor trembled in his hand, dragging against his jaw: the scrape of steel on stubble. Lather, shave, rinse. He shaved compulsively, often cutting himself. This was his ritual, his flimsy barrier against his own unraveling.

He looked at his phone, annoyed at the commercial break, pressing skip with a soap-sudden thumb, then watched as the foam cleared. Something shifted. The glass rippled, the surface quivering as though the mirror had grown too thin to hold its reflection. At first it was subtle—his jawline hardening, something in his features moving, altering forming where his own had been. The changes accelerated, his features twisting, sharpening, becoming crueler.

The razor slipped from his hand, clattering into the sink, the sound reverberating. The reflection moved freely now, tilting its head with mocking deliberation, its gaze crawling over him and pinning him in place. His breath came jagged, his jaw cracking, the sound raw and wet as he felt his bones shift beneath his skin. He stumbled back, the icy tiles pressing into the soles of his feet.

What unsettled Elliot wasn’t the warped figure, the jagged grin, the smile of whatever that was: it was his own stillness, the quiet certainty that the reflection didn’t need to demand anything; he had already offered himself.

V:

Elliot rode home through the thick tangle of traffic. Motorbikes swarmed around him, headlights flickering in the dusk, engines droning in a mechanical chorus. The city pressed in from all sides, its rhythm erratic, restless, hypnotic.

He thought of Phương.

—Was it just sex?

The thought had been circling for weeks, circling, churning

He loved Phương. He told himself that. He told her that. But what was love, if half of it happened between tangled sheets? He thought of her legs locked around his waist, the way she’d look at him after, flushed, elated, melting.

It wasn’t bad. No, it wasn’t empty. But it was heavy. Too heavy. Some nights, it left him wired, thrumming, unable to sleep. Other nights, he lay awake beside her, listening to the fan creak, the hum of the city outside, wondering what else they had.

And yet—the thought of leaving her? Impossible.

The traffic bottlenecked at an intersection. Taillights flared red. A slow wave of brakes sounding. Elliot lowered, one hand slipping into his pocket. The joint was already rolled, already there, like it had been waiting for this moment. He put it to his lips and flicked the lighter.

He inhaled deep, letting the warmth settle in his chest, cheeks freshly stoned.

He saw Ambrose. Out on the patio of craft brew place on the corner, elbow resting on the table, fingers drumming against his glass. He sat at ease, one leg crossed over the other, cigarette balanced between his fingers, exhaling, His gaze was already locked onto Elliot, unreadable, still waiting.

Elliot froze.

The light turned green.

For a moment, Ambrose did not move and neither did Elliot.

The city honked and revved around them, but the moment stretched—tight, breathless. Ambrose smiled, slow, knowing, and turned his head, as if he had already seen enough. As if he had already decided what this meant.

The spell broke. Elliot let out a breath, twisting the roach between his fingers, taking one last hit. Then he turned the throttle and disappeared into the rushing dark.

***

They sat cross-legged on the floor, pillows up against the mattress, an ashtray balanced between them. He struck the zippo, lit a spliff, then passed it to her. The glow flickered between them as she exhaled, watching closely.

“Hôm nay trông bạn không được khỏe. Chuyện gì đang xảy ra? What’s wrong?” she asked.

Nothing. The word rose, caught in his throat, but she was already looking at him like she knew. Like she had always known. He was lying. His skin felt too tight, his breath too slow. When had he last seen Ambrose? When had he last felt him? It was like trying to recall a dream after waking—the sighting at the street corner. Weeks had passed: he felt the recollections like something half-remembered, slipping between his fingers, yet still there, still pressing at the edges.

His hands curled loosely around his feet and he exhaled the smoke, beginning to feel the sensation of his high from the weed kick in. His body was both weightless and impossibly grounded. The sensation came in waves—the cool floor beneath him, the way his shirt clung to his skin, the faint pulse in his fingertips as he flexed them. Thoughts unraveled, curling and reforming. He felt them, saw them glitch between clarity and abstraction.

Pushing the ashtray aside, she crawled onto his lap, smoothened lengths brushing down his thighs. His lips found hers, slow and deliberate, hands mapping the rise around her hips.

Elliot stopped suddenly.

He was absent. Somewhere else. Gone.

“Elliot,” she said.

He blinked. Her body still slick with her sweat and glowing under the red of the neon, blurred at the edges.

“What’s going on?”

Her voice reached through him, soft, probing, like a hand pressing through water.

He closed his eyes.

Her forgiveness rested on him like cool fingertips against a fever; but the pressure in his chest remained: the debt. She understood him in ways that terrified him: not because it felt invasive, but because it was true. He wasn’t sure what scared him more—that she might be right, or that he needed her to be.

“It’s nothing,” he said, brushing away the smoke from his eyes.

“Elliot,” she murmured, tilting his chin up, forcing him to meet her gaze. “Where are you right now?”

He shook his head. Not here. Not anywhere.

She exhaled, her fingers threading through his hair, her touch firm, grounding. “Talk to me.”

He kissed her instead—harder this time, like it might force something back into place, keep something from spilling out. She let him. Let him take it. Let him push. He bit at her lip she she bled.

Then she whispered it, her voice sultry, teasing, a slow dagger sliding between his ribs.

“Em là nô lệ của anh. Hãy làm với em theo ý anh. Anh muốn gì? Em sẽ làm tất cả,” Her fingers moved over him, slow at first, then deliberate, tracing his length, her lips parting slightly as she watched his face shift. She repeated her words in English: “I know you’re not here, but I am. Whatever it is, Elliot—whatever you’re going through, take it out on me.”

Something snapped.

All the anger, all the shame, all the failure—it pooled into this moment, into his hands, into the raw, unbearable heat between them. He gripped the back of her neck, rougher than before, rougher than he ever had, forcing her to hold his gaze.

“Say it again.” His voice was low, ragged.

Something inside him clenched and coiled. His pulse throbbed in his throat, in his hands, between his legs. The thought of pressing her into the mattress, of taking her the way she was offering—without hesitation, without restraint. He could already feel the shape of it, the way it would unfold. He could feel how easy it would be, how much he wanted it, how much she, even, might want it too. But the shame came in hot, puncturing the moment. The voice threatened him: haunting, knowing. It was in him, waiting, and no matter what he did to swallow it down, no matter how much he wanted to believe he was better than this, the wanting never gave way.

“The handcuffs,” she said, nodding toward the bedside drawer. “If you want to. Remember?”

The neon colours still pulsed in the room. Elliot stubbed out his joint in the ashtray beside him, watching the ember dim, then reached for the drawer. The handcuffs just sat there where she’d left them, the chain curled in a loose coil. He ran a thumb over the metal, cold against his skin, catching the red light as it flickered over them. The past and its ghosts receded. Here he was now, in Phương’s room, watching, as she turned, stepping onto the bed on her knees, crawling forward, the curve of her spine deepening, hips tilting just so. She lifted her arms slowly, wrists crossing one over the other, movements measured, submissive, almost ceremonial. The red light bathed her, pooling in the hollows of her collarbones, casting her skin in a fevered radiance. Her pulse flickered just beneath the surface: a quiet tremor, her breath deepening, steadying. The line of her throat stretched as she tilted her chin, baring herself—not just in skin but in surrender. Every curve of her body caught in the red haze, shadows slipping over the swell of her hips, the tension in her abdomen, the slow rise and fall of her chest. She looped her wrists around the bedposts, waiting for the click of steel, that final seal.

“It’s okay,” she said, steady. “I trust you.”

Elliot followed.

He stepped onto the bed, kneeling behind her, feeling the mattress shifting beneath their weight. His hands ran down the length of her back, down the curve at her waist to the rise.

But the voice scraped at the edge of his mind—Ambrose, waiting. He could feel him, just beyond the haze of neon, but he refused to look and let him in.

Suppress it. Drown it.

—“Đi nào . . . Làm mạnh từ phía sau đi . . . ”

The cuffs were cool against his fingers. He fastened them around her wrists, clicking them into place. She exhaled, pressing her forehead to the bedpost, her body settling, waiting.

Something in him fractured.

Ambrose—Elliot felt him slithering through the cracks of his mind, a shadow tightening around his breath, a second skin slipping over his own. A force behind his movements, silent, omnipotent, urging. He could feel him in the clench of his jaw, the twitch in his fingers, the slow, relentless press of his body against hers. A hunger that wasn’t just his.

His palm came down again, harder, crueler, the slap splitting the air, ricocheting against the walls. Phương jerked, wrists straining against the cuffs, a cry punching through the thick silence, raw and breathless. He didn’t stop. Couldn’t. The rhythm overtook him, took root in his spine, a current running from his gut to his hands, to his hips, to the force driving into her, harder, harder.

She was pliant beneath him, but he wasn’t sure if she was submitting or sinking, falling, losing herself in the same abyss opening up inside him. The red light smeared across her skin, her body contorted under him, slick, trembling, the lines between pain and pleasure blurring, bleeding into one another. Another slap. The sound sent a violent jolt through his core, a shuttering electric ripple. He was losing himself in it, in the burn of skin against skin, in the sharp little gasps, in the suffocating heat, in the presence of Ambrose—inside him now, inescapable, a pulse behind his own, laughing, pressing, devouring. Ambrose was in him now, inside the sinew of his arms, the curl of his fingers, in the brutal thrusts of his hips, a specter stitched into his every movement. Elliot felt his desire to twist, sharpen, and mutate. He struck her again, the sound of it filling the room, filling his head, filling everything.

Or maybe the laughter was inside him now, swelling like rot in his lungs, bubbling in his throat: curdled, wet. It slipped between his teeth, a sound not wholly his own, a thing birthed from somewhere deep, dark, and writhing. An echo with no origin, no end.

If there was an end, he never wanted to reach it.

VI:

Back in his apartment the next morning, Elliot woke to the weight of her absence. The scent of her was still on his skin. Salt, sweat, the musk of their bodies tangled in neon-lit heat. It lingered as he surfaced into consciousness, dragged back by something sharp, acrid, wrong. Smoke.

He woke in his own bed, sheets twisted around his legs, body damp, breath coming in tight gasps. The room felt different, not his but an imitation—like someone had built it overnight, missing just enough details to make it uncanny.

He reached for her—instinct, muscle memory—but his hand met only the cold stretch of the mattress. He frowned. The sheets smelled of sweat and smoke, but not hers. Not her shampoo. Not her warmth.

How had he gotten here?

The question tightened in his chest. He pressed a hand to his forehead, waiting for recollection, but the memories warped—Phương’s lips on his jaw, her laughter dissolving into breathless gasps. Her fingers clutched at his ribs. The way her voice broke when she whispered something—what had she said?

And then—

Nothing. A void.

His head throbbed. He pressed his palms to his eyes, but the voice bled through, a whisper curling at the edges of his mind before splitting sharp, absolute:

—“Kill the bitch.”

His stomach lurched. The room tilted.

He sat up too fast. The world listed sideways, and his eyes landed on the pile of clothes on the floor.

The stench of gasoline crawled up his throat. His hoodie lay crumpled, hem singed, blackened in uneven streaks. His jeans—stiff with soot. His sneakers—mud-caked, streaked with something darker.

And then his backpack, half-spilled open. A lighter. Blackened edges. A canister of fluid, its cap barely screwed on. A crumpled bandana smudged with charcoal. His fingers twitched, reluctant, before reaching into his hoodie’s pocket. The thing inside was brittle, fragile—he pulled it out, and his breath stilled.

A warped fragment of blue plastic. His old lighter, melted beyond use.

He swallowed hard. He could still see her face—tear-streaked, luminous, lips trembling as she whispered something he could not quite recall. But after that—nothing. The rest of the night was a blank, an abyss between then and now. The fragments refused to cohere, Phương’s image flickering, slipping.

He stepped back, and snapped the blinds shut, but it didn’t keep the smoke from lingering. His gaze drifted to the desk. The pages of his manuscript lay scattered, ruffled but untouched, last night’s water glass still half-drunk beside them. Everything was where it had been. Except him.

Lighting a cigarette, he inhaled. The smoke should have burned, but it didn’t. It curled through him, cold.

Seating himself, picking up his pen, he wrote.

***

The fire still raged on the old TV perched at the end of the kitchen counter. He did not turn. He did not have to. He had listened to the report so many times it had settled in.

Elliot lowered the pen. His trembling hand moved again, words spilling faster now—jagged, unrelenting, pulled from someplace rawer than he cared to admit. His sobs had long since quieted, bled into the silence. The pressure of Ambrose’s hands—pressing, releasing, guiding—kept him upright, kept him moving. Hours passed, or maybe only minutes. Time had unmoored itself, slipping into the spaces between ink and breath.

A hollow calm settled over him, fine and weightless, like the black ash dusting the emptied Hà Nội streets, clinging to rooftops, seeping into the cracks, dulling the neon into something spectral. Outside, the lanterns trembled in the dark, casting red light that stretched and wavered, but did not hold.

The pen carved into the page, deep enough to tear. Elliot wrote as if the sheer force of the words could unmake it all—undo the loss, the hunger, the weight of her absence. As if, in the ruin of language, he could rebuild her from the ashes. But she was gone, and the words were only echoes, collapsing under their own weight, unable to bridge the void she had left behind.

The ink bled. The walls of the room pressed in. Closer, closer.

Ambrose watched, silent but present—always present—folded into the act itself.

Still, Elliot wrote, each word scraping him emptier, hollowing him out, until all that remained was ash—on the page, in the space of the room, in him. In her absence, only ruin . . .

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