Facial (9 page)

Terrifying.

Frightening beyond compare.

And so I did what you’re supposed to do when confronted with unimaginable horror: I clawed out my eyes.

The process was not as speedy as I would have thought. I assumed you just dug your fingers in there and gave your eyeballs a good yank. Not the case at all. It took several minutes. Fortunately, Carlton was kind enough to wait patiently and not try to rush me. I couldn’t hear what Felicia was doing, but presumably she was ripping out her own eyes, too.

Finally, I stood there, blood gushing from my empty sockets. I didn’t feel all
that
much less scared, but at least it was a little better.

The floor began to vibrate, and there was a loud rumbling sound.

“So beautiful…” said Felicia. “So beautiful.”

How was she seeing something beautiful? I couldn’t see shit. Had she not torn out her eyes in horror? Had I jumped the gun?

“Gaze upon me!” shouted the faces. “Gaze upon your master!”

“I can’t gaze!” I said. “Somebody tell me what’s going on!”

“Shhh!” said Carlton. “The faces are speaking!”

I felt a slimy tendril wrap around my left ankle.

“I demand another sacrifice!” shouted the faces.

“When did they become sacrifices?” I asked, utterly confused. “I thought the heads were food! Somebody tell me what’s going on?”

Blood was still pouring from my eye sockets. How frickin’ long did that stuff take to clot?

“Give me the eyeless one,” said the heads.

That sounded like a perfectly fine idea. Why not give the eyeless one to the heads as a sacrifice? There was no downside that immediately came to mind, and so…

No, wait.

I was the eyeless one. I didn’t want to be sacrificed.

But somebody had to be sacrificed, right? It might as well be me.

No, wait.

That thought process didn’t make any sense. Had I poked my brain while I was ripping out my eyes?

“Carlton, no!” I said. “You can’t do this! We’re brothers!”

“Nobody likes a guilt tripper,” Carlton informed me, shoving me down the stairs.

I don’t remember exactly what I said as I was tumbling down the stairs, but it was impolite. I struck the cement floor, hard, and my right hand came down on something very slimy and tongue-like. As it licked my palm, I thought, yep, that’s a tongue. The sensation really wasn’t all that unpleasant, at least compared to the prior sensation of falling down the stairs, or the next sensation of two of my fingers getting bitten off.

I remember exactly what I said then, but I don’t think there’s a spelling for it.

The face I’d landed on proceeded to bite off the remaining three fingers. I shrieked. Some blood from the stumps would have squirted into my eye, so from a “glass is half-full” perspective I was spared that discomfort, although I wasn’t feeling particularly blessed.

“Since when do the faces eat fingers?” I cried out. “I thought they only ate heads! What the hell has happened to the world?”

“I think they felt bad for us having to bury all of those bodies,” said Carlton.

That was a blatant lie. We’d been stacking the headless bodies in the corner of his living room. The relationship between my brother and me had been damaged beyond repair.

I suppose the best course of action would have been to turn around and try to climb back up the stairs, but I was blind, disoriented, and in extreme agony, so I ended up crawling forward. A mouth bit into my knee. Another mouth bit into my other knee. A third mouth chewed on my toe, although I was wearing decent shoes and its teeth didn’t break through the rubber.

I was glad that this was—
no
! I wasn’t glad at all! Getting devoured by these faces was literally the worst thing that had ever happened to me. Felicia could make rambunctious love to a guy right next to me on our bed while I was trying to watch TV and this would still be worse.

My arm that had a hand that still had all of its fingers went into a very large mouth, plunging in past my elbow. I tried to pull it out (obviously) but the mouth chomped down before I could do so.

“Aaah!” I said. That probably doesn’t convey the full impact of what I said, but I don’t wish to overwhelm you with capital letters and exclamation points.

The mouth chomped and chomped.

The teeth had broken the skin, but not the bone, so I did have another opportunity to withdraw my arm. I’m not certain why I didn’t. After all, the pain was significant and I wanted relief.

“Why?” I bellowed in what I hoped was the direction of Carlton and/or Felicia. “Why?”

“It is the will of the faces,” said Carlton. “It must be done.”

An arm bone cracked.

“Please, master!” I shouted to the faces. “I’ve served you well! Why must you…actually, I’m sure you know what’s best. You wouldn’t be biting off my arm without a good reason. I withdraw my question.”

The mouth bit off my arm. I said, “Aaah!”

I continued to crawl, as more mouths took bites out of me. I would not wish this agony on anyone, except maybe Carlton for pushing me down the stairs, but I figured I’d get over it. It did kind of hurt my feelings that Felicia wasn’t making any attempt to assist me. Though I didn’t expect her to put herself at risk of getting devoured by creepy basement faces, she could at least have provided lip service and said, “I’ll be right there!” I had no eyes; I wouldn’t know if she was telling the truth.

Speaking of my eyes, the sockets still hadn’t stopped bleeding. I was starting to feel kind of woozy in addition to the excruciating pain. I regretted my earlier decision and wished that I could shove my eyeballs back into their sockets, but of course that was silly, since I’d discarded them immediately after their removal.

“Your death will not be in vain,” said Carlton.

“Not to rub salt in his countless open wounds,” said the faces, “but in the interest of total honesty, when you told him that his death would not be in vain, you were incorrect.”

“I thought it was a sacrifice?”

“No. I don’t need sacrifices. Just food. Just heads.”

And then one of the faces ate mine.

14

Greg Again

Hi. I apologize for not handing this over the way I was supposed to, but I feel like my last sentence downplayed the ghastly nature of what happened to me. I didn’t wish to imply that my head was gulped down in one bite. It took
dozens
of bites, as I dragged my ravaged body across the floor, the amount of flesh attached to my frame decreasing with every second. Soon I had no arms left to drag myself with, so I rolled, which seemed like it was working until I rolled onto my side and jostled one of my ribs that no longer had any cushion, and the pain became so unbearable that I just lay there, weeping, waiting for it all to end, longing for the joyful time of ages ago when I wasn’t being eaten.

It took a long time for the teeth to crack my skull. I believe I was being savored, but I don’t know for sure. That could just be me being prideful.

Eventually, though, one of the faces really did eat my head. I don’t need to describe how that felt; you can probably figure it out.

Anyway, I wanted to make it clear that my death was outrageously miserable.

15

Felicia

“So,” said Carlton. “That just happened.”

“What the hell is going on here?” I asked. I was having difficulty sorting through my emotions. I wasn’t
happy
that Carlton and I had stood there for twenty minutes watching my husband get devoured, but I wasn’t especially bummed out about it.

“I want you to know that I didn’t lure Greg here to kill him,” Carlton insisted. “It was completely a spur-of-the-moment decision.”

“Uh, I know. We came unannounced. You were upset about it.”

“Right. Good. That confirms my story, then.”

“What are those faces?”

“Travelers. Well, one traveler. I don’t completely understand the logistics. Are you going to push me down the stairs?”

“No,” I said.

“You sure? Because your arm went up a little.”

“Why would I do that?”

“The world isn’t as normal as it used to be.”

“I’m getting that.”

“Did Greg tell you there was a dead lion down here?”

“No.”

“There was.”

“How did a dead lion get down here?”

“It’s complicated. I’m not going to get into the whole thing right now.”

“Let’s sit down,” I said, hoping that if we were both seated, neither of us would entertain thoughts about pushing the other down the stairs.

We sat down on the steps.

“First, I want to make it clear that I’m not going to try to hit on you,” said Carlton. “Greg was my brother and I loved him dearly, so I would never betray him that way, and also, you’re a fresh widow and, I assume, not looking to hook up anyway, right?”

“Right.”

To his credit, Carlton did not seem disappointed. “Anyway, that’s the big secret. I’m not proud of it, but I don’t see why I should get all mopey, either.”

“It’s okay,” I told him. “I understand.”

“Really?”

I nodded. “If Greg had tried to explain it on the drive over here, I guess maybe I would have thought it was a messed-up idea, but being here, there’s this…I don’t know. I’m not opposed to it.”

“Well, that’s awesome. Because I do need a new partner.”

“I’ll have to think about it. I might go solo.”

“That is an excellent idea,” said the faces. “A most excellent idea indeed.”

“I haven’t decided for sure,” I explained. “I don’t want to rush into anything quite yet.”

“Fair enough.”

Speaking to the faces was a lot less freaky than I would have expected. I’m not saying that it was like chatting with my mom, but it wasn’t as uncomfortable as the pillow talk right after my first back-door experience.

“How does it work?” I asked. “A new face for every murder?”

“No,” said Carlton. “I haven’t killed anywhere near this many people. I only killed three without Greg.”

“You told him it was one.”

Carlton was silent for a moment.

“That may have been a fib,” he admitted.

“It’s all right.”

Carlton sighed. “Also, I was fibbing about the three. It was five. One of them was a nun. I went out of my way specifically to kill a nun. I’m less proud of that than anything else I’ve done recently. And it would have been impractical to sneak her out of there, so I left her dead body behind. I didn’t even feed her to the faces.” He glanced down at the faces. “Sorry.”

“We already knew of this,” said the faces. “We know all.”

Carlton looked back at me. “They keep saying they know all, but I think they’re exaggerating. They do know a lot, though. I’m not trying to take anything away from them.”

“Why are there more faces than corpses?” I asked the faces.

“You count incorrectly.”

Carlton started pointing to the faces, one at a time, whispering his count.

“You count the corpses incorrectly,” said the faces, sounding much less annoyed than I would.

“I don’t get it.”

“You are not the only provider. My influence expands.”

“Do you think that’s bad?” I asked Carlton.

He shrugged. “Not really. I’ve never been the jealous type.”

16

Others

Honestly, I didn’t feel bad about ripping out my father’s throat with my teeth. I did, however, feel stupid about doing it while he was doing seventy miles per hour on the freeway. Timing is everything, I guess.

* * *

I buried my face in my hands and silently wept.

“I’m sorry,” said Dan. “I’m really, really sorry.”

“I just try so hard to make you happy. That’s all I care about. I quit my job to raise the children and give you the family you always wanted. I always try to look my best for you. I do nice things for you all the time. How could you say that to me?”

“I’m so sorry,” said Dan, lifting the mug to his mouth. “I didn’t mean it when I said that your coffee smelled like rat poison. Here, I’m drinking it now. Mmmmmm. Good.”

* * *

“Are you
sure
we don’t own an anvil?” I asked.

“Of course I’m sure,” said Mom. “Why would we own an anvil?”