Blurryface

Fiction: A man decides not to watch a stream and finds himself alone beyond belief.

This short story is part of our October horror collection, Future Weird, beyond the pale of what we publish the rest of the year. Reader discretion is advised.

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“It's a law of the Medes and the Persians," I said with mock severity. She rolled her eyes so aggressively, the momentum pulled the rest of her body over. Her head flopped onto the couch cushion, and she turned those baleful blue eyes up at me, her pink lips puckering with a playful frown.

"Come on!" she said. "Just about the whole world's going to be watching. I'm sure your boss is staying up late."

"I'm sure he is," I agreed. "And Phil and Martin and all the others too."

"Then let's stay up!" she laughed. "It's the event of the century."

But I was already getting up.

"It always is," I smiled, "and it never is, but whatever it is, the sun will rise tomorrow and we have to face it. I don't want it to beat me to the punch. I'm getting up at five sharp like I've always done."

"Always?" she grinned.

"Always," I said, a touch of uncertainty creeping into my voice.

"I seem to remember…" she said, rolling onto her back and letting the golden cascade of her hair fall over the armrest. Her head was upside down now, a pleased expression coming over her face. Biting her lower lip, she continued, "…you staying in bed past five."

"And when was this?" I asked.

She looked away from me, her cheeks burning red.

"We were at a hotel."

Images of our honeymoon flashed through my head.

"I was up," I said after a pause.

She giggled.

I came over her, our two faces meeting but turned upside down to each other. Our lips touched, and we kissed like the helpless lovers we were. Rising a little, I found her eyes shining up at me like the noonday, bright and clear and warm.

"I have to go to work tomorrow. I'm tired." I began rubbing the back of her head, the strands of her hair like silk between my fingers. She closed her eyes and smiled.

Sighing, she said, "Have it your way, but when you get to the office tomorrow, you're not going to understand anything anyone's talking about. Then you're going to come home and complain that you just don't get people."

"Then you'll explain it to me and make me feel better," I said. "Really, though, it's just a livestream."

Her hands reached up and clasped my cheeks.

"Danny, you idiot. You big, brilliant, idiot."

"I'm your idiot," I said, still rubbing her head.

"Aren't you the least bit curious? Don't you want to know what's out there?"

"Somewhat," I admitted, and kissed her one last time. Standing up, I said, "You'll just have to fill me in in the morning."

With a little moan, she sat up, grabbed her laptop off the coffee table, put her feet out, and let the weird glow of the screen paint her face white.

Not looking up from the mesmerizing display, she said, "It's just something that all of humanity has been waiting for since…forever."

"Well, this member of humanity doesn't mind waiting a little longer," I said with a yawn, and turning, I wandered to our bathroom.

As I was brushing my teeth, I stared at the stranger brushing his. I never really knew who he was, what to think of him. I wondered what he thought of me. We had this little contest going. Each night we waited to see who'd blink first. We never won. Spitting the foamy peppermint into the running water, I washed out my mouth and made my way to bed.

I was cold all night, never really committing to sleep. Whatever dreams I had were lost to me in the morning, shattered by the blaring alarm.

Silencing my phone, I sat up and stretched, rubbing my eyes in the darkness. I didn't hear anything on the other side of the bed. Good, I thought. I didn't wake her. Then I remembered last night. How late had she stayed up? The answer burst through my blurry thoughts: Midnight, that's when the livestream started. I laughed inwardly, imagining myself dozing on the couch, only kept awake by her prodding, and finally falling asleep as the stream started. Probably have had a backache all the next day too, sleeping on that old coach, I thought.

I stood up from the bed slowly, not touching the lamp beside me. Holding my breath, I began groping my way toward the door. Pleasant dreams, I bid.

The knob was cold to my touch, but welcome after my blind fumblings. The handle turned, and I slid out, quietly pulling the door closed behind me.

Feeling the wall along the hallway, I made a careful progress in the darkness. Yet another morning to curse whomever neglected to put a switch just outside the bedroom door. It always took me forever to find the light. But we wouldn't be in this cheap apartment forever, or for long. There was a reason I got up at five every morning, a reason I was the first to work, the last to leave, and it was her. It had been the shock of my life when I found out that this beautiful, playful, living barbie doll, the picture of girly loveliness, loved me, and I would do everything in my power to give her the best life possible.

I was at the end of the hallway, but as my hand reached for the switch a question began to form in the sluggish soup of my sleepy brain.

I could see the switch?

My arm was already moving, and I couldn't bother taking the time to puzzle the question out before the lights came on.

I turned toward our living/dining room. There she was, sitting straight up on the couch. I could see the back of her head, the golden river of her hair tucked behind her ears and wrapped around her shoulder. Her computer was still on her lap, its screen glowing softly. Through my foggy thoughts, I started to piece together the events of the night. She had fallen asleep out here. I hadn't woken her because she wasn't there to wake. I had seen the switch because of the screen's pale light.

I took a few soft steps toward her. Gently patting her shoulder, I whispered:

"Hey honey, it's morning."

But her shoulder felt cold, horribly cold. I rubbed it, a sickening weight growing in the pit of my stomach.  

"Honey," I said. "Let's get you to bed."

I gave her a little push then, and her whole body was stiff. I mean, not a single joint moved. She just sort of tilted. My hand flew back as the laptop fell from her, crashing onto the floor.

"Honey!" I cried, coming over to the other side of the couch.

I think—what I thought, in that moment—I thought I was mad, that I was either mad or dreaming. It was a nightmare. The thing was impossible. When I came around the other side of the couch and looked at her—

But I knew I wasn't dreaming. I didn't need to pinch myself. The shock of what I saw—what I didn't see—it drove any illusion away. I could almost hear my heart pounding in my ears as I stared at her, what was left.

She didn't have a face. I don't mean something gory like from a slasher, not like somebody had cut it off. All her features had been squashed, rounded, melted, like skin had simply grown over her eyes and nose and mouth. It was like the impression of a face—like a mask.

I reached out a trembling hand and brushed her cheek with the tips of my fingers. Cold, smooth, hard. My fingers searched for any seam, any break, between her and this uncanny façade, but there was none. I felt under her neck, but there was no pulse. I watched her chest, those beautiful breasts, but they didn't move. There was no breath there. She was dead.

I don't quite remember what I did next. It all blurs together. I know I ran out of the room, out of the house. Barefooted, I went running through the apartment complex, shouting in the early darkness, crying out for help. I started banging on doors, looking into windows. If I could see any figures through the glass, their faces were away from me—if they even had faces anymore—staring down at glowing screens. They were all perfectly still. It was like looking into dolls' houses, or at little dioramas, lifeless scenes of waxwork.

My first clear recollection, as I was coming out of my panic, was finding the nightwatchman. The little booth by the gate was too small for him, so whenever he sat in it, he couldn't close the door. You could always see his leg and a bit of shoulder sticking out.

The night-black asphalt was cold and rough underfoot, and I was beginning to shiver with the chill of the morning. As the daze of my shock wore off, I wrapped my arms around myself and crept toward the fat figure.

I was trying to remember his name—Nick, Mike, something—when I got close enough to see.

He had his cellphone out, its soft light shining up on the smooth contours which had replaced his bulbous face. The hollows where the eyes should go had been filled in, the mouth had been erased, the always stubbled cheeks were now smooth as plastic, and the nose had been covered over as if by an avalanche of skin. He was very still.

I checked him, forced my hand to feel his neck for a pulse, but he was as cold, hard, and lifeless as my wife. When I pressed my fingers into his second chin, instead of the fatty flesh giving way, I saw his whole body tilt as if he were made of one solid block of…I don't know what.

I couldn't remember him. That troubled me more than touching his corpse. I'm sure he was a person once, but any time I was coming home, he always looked so tired and angry that I didn't want to bother him.

Would anybody remember who he was?

Does anybody remember me?

I'm alone.

Fishing in my pockets, I realized I had left my phone in my apartment. I gazed back toward the dark complex of cramped little rooms and shuddered.

The sun, by this time, was rising, the dark blue heavens melting as the dawn stretched its golden light over the hills. I gazed up into its benevolent, uncaring face, shivering, my teeth chattering, and I cried. I simply fell to my knees and cried.

One would think, if the world ended, it would end, but no. The world had ended, and yet continued, I continued, and like the mechanistic paths of the sun and stars, like my getting up at five no matter what, the patterns continued without any meaning.

My stomach growled. Patterns! I was enslaved by patterns.

The whole world, the thought came to me as I climbed the stairs to my apartment. Hyperbole? Sure, but statistically true. Then I remembered. No. Poor places, places without televisions and computers. THERE HAVE TO BE OTHERS! I thought, coming to the landing.

I had left the door to my apartment opened, and I stared into the place that had been our home. There had to be others out there…but not her. She was here, here and gone.

I kept my eyes low, not letting them wander toward the form still sitting on the couch—the remains, the inhuman remains of my whole world. Stealing my way to our bedroom and turning on the lights, I stopped to stare at the empty bed we had shared this past year.

I made an obligatory call to 911, knowing I would get no answer. I left a message, my voice trembling:

"Yeah, I'm alive. Just me. Everyone else, their faces—Gawd!"

I hung up. I thought about calling around, but I couldn't think of anybody to call.

I dressed quietly, not wanting to make a sound. I grabbed one of the bedsheets, one of the clean ones from a drawer. She always kept them folded there. When I came back out into our living room, I threw it over her. I couldn't move her from the couch, couldn't bear to touch her like this, and I knew I wouldn't be able to do what I needed to do if I didn't throw that linen sheet over her body. I had to do one of the toughest things in my life, make breakfast.

It's reasonable, I kept telling myself. Whatever you need to do today, you're going to have to eat. Still, I felt sick whenever I looked down at the stove.

I kept steeling glances over to the living room as the eggs sizzled, stealing glances over at the woman I loved, had loved, at what was left. I tried to remember what she had told me about the livestream, the one she said the whole world would be watching, but try as I might, I couldn't recall what the hell it was about. "Everyone was watching it," was all anyone had told me, and told me so often. I was trying to think of anyone I could call, but everybody I knew had been planning on watching the show.

I forced the eggs into me, the sickness of hunger ebbing away and leaving only a cold, overwhelming terror. I sat at our little card table behind the couch, chewing a bit of sausage over and over again, mulling over my plans.

Plans! I scoffed. What are you going to do?

I could think of nothing.

Death seemed welcome then, as I gazed at the white sheet on the couch.

What was the stream about? I wondered. I knew everybody was watching it, and everybody was… I had found them all in front of computers and whatnot, but it didn't make sense. What could have done this?

I didn't fool around much on YouTube, no time, but I knew how to restart a video.

Rising, I walked over to where her laptop had fallen. Bringing it back to the table, I faced the screen. The video was still up, and I moved the cursor over and pressed the play button. The speakers began to ring with a strange, wailing undulation. It was almost like speech, like when you hear someone talking but can't quite make out their words. There was a man on the screen I vaguely recognized as someone, some celeb who had risen up in the past year.

He was dressed like a prisoner in an orange jumpsuit doing those strange dances I'd seen kids do. Don't think about it, I caught myself, but the thought continued anyway. How many children were dead and faceless like my wife?

I could see his lips were moving, and it seemed to match the strange, indecipherable speech. As I watched, though, I started to notice flashes, little cuts in the video, just barely long enough that I knew they were there. A vague sense of disgust came over me, something I couldn't explain, a sort of gut-revulsion. The cuts were getting longer, the brief images interrupting the video becoming more distinct.

Then, for a moment, I got a clear image. I had a schizophrenic uncle, he had passed away under a deluge of drugs, some of them prescriptions, when I was sixteen, but I remember him telling me about the Grays. He had shown me pictures, small, human-like creatures with swollen heads and weak, withered bodies, the quintessential little, green men, although he got mad at me for conflating the two.

The image that I had seen was like that, only—I knew it though I didn't want to—there were the vague features of my wife's face there, colorless and sad, the eyes so black, her grey body sexless and frail. It reminded me, the next moment, of those videogame avatars people made where you pick out different features on a little cartoon character to approximate your own. Big head, little body, and the alien, digitized reproduction of my wife's face.

I turned from the screen disgusted and nearly died of fright. My heart stopped. The sheet had risen. She had risen! As the weird, indecipherable, almost-voice-like sounds continued to play, she began to move. There was a strange, creaking sound to it, like branches crying in the wind, and she walked with stiff, unnatural steps, her arms outstretched like some sort of cheap monster-of-the-week.

And as she walked, the sheet slowly fell from her, its corner caught on something. With every step the veil was pulled away. Finally, as she came round the couch, it fell from her, and I was left staring at the person-less, living corpse of my wife. As that faceless countenance was again revealed to me, I felt a faintness grip my body, and I slid from my chair, helpless, onto the floor.

Now my heart was racing, but I was trapped within my own, useless body as she—that faceless thing which had replaced her—came ever nearer. I couldn't see the video anymore, but that strange, alien voice kept up its wicked cant, weaving its unearthly spell.

She was still coming, her hands reaching forward, and suddenly I knew what she was about. Nearer now, and she was bending down, her fingers stretching, reaching, grasping for my throat. With a wild yell, I reached up and smashed the laptop closed.

Silence, and my faceless wife, her hands frozen there, stood still like a statue.

I gazed up at her. Where were those lips I had so often kissed? And the eyes? Those eyes which had seemed like a cloudless day…my heaven, clouded over, gone, lost.

"Wendy," I whispered. "Wendy, are you there?"

I reached up and brushed the dangling, golden hair which I had so loved. There was a hardness to it now, a prickliness, more like straw than the silk I had known. It reminded me, somewhat, of my sister's old barbie dolls, after the plastic hair had become frazzled.

My sister! Her too. My mother and father? Maybe. Everyone I had ever known—

Suddenly, that indecipherable strain of alien speech returned, some distant speaker outside playing its horrible refrain.

The hands. The lovely white hands I had so often held, were murderously animate again. Lurching forward, they wound about my neck, the fingers closing around my throat like a vice. Unable to cry out, to rise, I tried to push her away. Pulling up my leg between us, I set my foot firmly into her stomach and shoved.

She flew back toward the couch as I gasped for air. Staggering, holding onto the chair for support, I got to my feet.

I heard the creaking sound again and turned. She was moving, that faceless thing, coming nearer, her hands still reaching out for my neck. I screamed, a painful scream that tore at my throat, and ran for the door.

Out on the landing again, I could hear that strange voice still playing, louder now. I turned toward the stairs and saw the blue cap of the guardsman rising into view. He was a big man, fat, or had been—whatever he was now, he was still big, lumbering, blocking my only way down.

The voice that was not a voice was coming from his breast pocket—his cellphone, the screen's light shining through the thin fabric of his work shirt.

Something touched my back.

I spun around and found her, the faceless mockery of the woman I loved, her hands reaching up still, grasping for my throat. I backed up, but her fingers were already coiled in the collar of my shirt. We struggled, wrestling, spinning there in a terrible dance as the perverted form of my wife tried to kill me.

And then, it all happened in a moment, the dance was over. We crashed into the railing. I think it was because she was so stiff. Whatever change had been made to her, she couldn't bend right. Me, I was able to shift my weight around, keep my balance, but she toppled right over, head over heels, down onto the hard concrete below.

She shattered like a porcelain doll, the pieces of her flying in all directions. I gazed down at it, too shocked and mortified to think or do anything. I could hear the groaning creaks of the guardsman as he approached, hear the awful and strange strains of nearly decipherable speech coming from his pocket.

I could hear death, but as I gazed down at the pile of dust that used to be my wife, I found that there was no fight left in me. I had nothing to fight for. As I stared, knowing that thing was behind me, I made up my mind—I wouldn't resist. Just let me die.

I stood there over the banister, waiting, gazing down upon the white powder I had once called Wendy, but then, when I felt those hands, so terribly cold and stiff, touch my neck—I saw red.

It was all reaction. I spun around and sent my knuckles into the porcelain mask. His faceless face shattered as my fist flew straight threw his head. I could hear my own, horrible yell, and felt the swelling pain in my wrist from the awkward blow.

The guardsman's body fell apart, dust at my feet, his clothes, for a moment, holding his form together. Like sand, the remains flowed through his sleeves and collar, bursting as the body fell and the shirt and pants separated.

A wave of nausea came over me. I hopped around the pile of—what was left of the man—trying not to get him on my shoes, and ran back inside, ran away from the strange undulating voice coming from the phone. Rushing to the bathroom, my hand on fire, I turned the faucet and waited. Tears swelled in my eyes as the breakfast I had forced into me now forced it's way out. Once, twice, and again, but nothing came with the third, just a dry, empty heave.

Spitting the taste of bile from my mouth, I looked up. There was my face—it could be the last face in the world, I thought. And the only one who had ever loved it was gone.

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Dr. Agonson is a long and short form fiction author. You can find more of his work on his Wordpress.

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