The stories in this volume compose FAB = -FBA, the second volume of SUM FLUX. See more stories, and check out the authors featured in this edition here.
Everyone still has their pictures. Pictures?! I don’t know if we can call them that anymore. At least, I can’t. Tell me, can you?
My wife used to keep them in the attic. Keep them away from the prying eyes of men. Prying eyes seeking to break into private lives. The only real treasures we own, she’d say. The only real treasures.
Do you still look at the ones you’ve got? The ones filled with faces drawing smiles stained with… Can you even see the faces? Can you see the faces under the blot of blood? You know, I tried to wipe it off. Got dry wipes, wet wipes, sanitization sheets… it – it couldn’t be done. It couldn’t be done, and so… Don’t think I can call them pictures no more. More like…
How many did you lose?
How many faces?
Faces…
That’s all they are now. Been way too long for them to be anything more than faces on silhouettes that move as you’d want, talk as you’d hope, love as you’d dream. They’re just faces. Just faces to fill the spaces where people used to be.
Polaroid cameras were affordable. No. They were cheap and no one cares unless you’ve got to dig deep to make a purchase.
God, my wife was a saint. She knew. She cared. Cared enough to keep those polaroids locked away. Our trite treasures. Trite treasures with faces of loved ones now long gone.
How many did you lose?
Funny how we remember all that’s odd about the world: a solar eclipse, snow in the middle of spring, cats befriending dogs, the number three…
There were three.
Three faces, three people…
What do you call them down in your bunker? Come night, what do you call those that you remember? Here, we stick with faces. Just faces. Three faces that changed everything for me.
When we had TV screens and TV shows, I’d watch families of four. Seemed reasonable – a family of four. Dad, mom, a boy and a girl. How trite. A word I rarely used but one that rung true. Dad aloof, mom astute and kids making a mockery of all that is sacred. As it should it. As it should be. As it was.
Nothing trite about these bunkers. Nothing cliché about the noise up above, the bombs going off, screams of bloody murder coming from… Hmmm! I always thought we’d have to go down into hell. Nothing trite about this.
Then again: as above… As above…
I put the faces on the wall. The wall by my bed so that I can see them before I sleep. Beg and plead that my eyes can see under the murk and grime and rose-colored stains just so I could… So, it doesn’t have to feel as bad down here, you know…?
You know…
Do you carry them with you? Do you carry the faces with you? I would. I’d never leave them on my wall cause…
Once saw a man steal another’s face. Saw him take it out of his jacket pocket and just stare at it. Just stare. I didn’t do nothing. Didn’t tell him not to or to return it cause I knew… I knew why he done it cause I’d do it, too. If I had no faces on my wall to remember the days when hell seemed to burn slowly far beneath our feet, I’d become one.
A face thief.
Face thief.
Imagine that.
Sometime, maybe, when all this comes to an end. When the fires stop burning and the bombs stop dropping someone’s gonna tell a tale of a face thief running rampant in the bunkers. And there’d be no end to the story cause we’d never really know who the man is… We’d never know who the man is cause there isn’t a man that’s a face thief. It’d be all of us. All of us. All the wretched, all the lonely, all the ones with nothing but fading memories, no one to hold and a hope blown in the wind like dying embers.
Ever stole a face?
I have. I have.
I keep the stolen face in my breast pocket,keep her close. Only pull her out when I’m alone. Only pull her out so I can recall what it’s like to be with a woman. What it’s like to dig my nose into her skin, wrap my palm around the back of her neck, love her like death… love her like death.
Can’t love my wife’s face that way. Can’t do it. I was married long enough to have lost that hunger for my wife. You can see why I had to steal a face, don’t you? Steal a woman’s face.
Don’t go judging me.
They love that line down here.
Do not judge.
They forget it was the proliferation of judgmental minds and silent lips that brought forth hell up above.
Judge, I say, judge.
Call me sick. Call me vile. Call me broken cause every single one of us is broken. Broken by the war, broken by the cold, broken by the dark and solitary nights… Broken by the knowing. Knowing that we did this. We did all this.
And what’s left of our world?
There are some remedies worse than the disease...
That was the title of a track I loved. I remember sitting at the dinner table while my wife and kids were tucked up in bed… Hmmm! Heaven was up above back then…
I would type away dreaming up worlds for pages and screens and listen to that track on repeat.
There are some remedies worse than the disease.
I’d be downstairs as they rolled off into slumberland. I’d be downstairs as they…
Not once did I think to go and just look. Not once did I think to go and open the bedroom door and stare at the beauty of a life so trite. Man, wife, son and daughter. Maybe it’s right that no one ever really did that. Maybe it was for the best cause then… Then we’d never get anything done. We’d open the door, watch them sleep, hear them snore and be enamored by the divine grace of a love so profound, part of us thinking I did that and the other whispering I’m so blessed.
There’d be fools who’d say I’m so lucky implying chance while the wise would know there’s no such thing. We were given all that and it was our duty to love and nurture what we were given.
We didn’t have the strength to love as we should have. How could we have lived as we did if we were forced, even if only for a moment, to acknowledge the profundity, the absurdity, of life?
Now, here we are…
Here we are, compelled to contend with the insanity of our choices. Looking back at nothing but faces on a wall and dreams of days when all this would come to a close.
But even then – even then, what would we have? What would we have? There’d be no early mornings with cereal and coffee. No evenings with dinner and a TV show. No wife and kids tucked In bed as dad slaved the night away. There’d be nothing quite as… trite.
All there’d be is faces on a wall.
Faces on a wall.
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Very well written and you have such a compelling voice. I almost feel like this is a serial being told across stories on other publications and on your own. There is an element that reminds me of a graphic novel for some reason. The trapped feelings of the narrators. I tried to give you a compliment in my monster truck story about how profound I find your work. I do wonder what would happen if we had this character out existing with the world a little more. Think Rabbit Run. His internal dialogue is so fascinating it would be intriguing to see him interacting with mundane aspects of life out in the world more. Great work as always.
This will change how I look at photographs for a long time. My phone is full of stolen faces. Bravo.