Facial Purity

The lights flickered in the otherwise picturesque hospital room. There he lies, a shell of the person he was twenty-four hours ago, Cyrus Boar. Skin where his eyes used to sit, skin where his mouth used to occupy, skin where his nose once peaked his face, all his facial features, perfect or imperfect now a thing of the past. He looks to the man responsible, not the man responsible for mangling his face, that wouldn’t even be a man, that would be a dog, no, he looks to the man responsible for saving what remains of his face. The special skin tissue that replaced his eyes working to the same effect that his eyeballs once did. “How do I look doc? be honest” he says, the defeat can be heard in his voice. “The spitting image of a faceless you do boy” the quiet old doctor responds. “Pfff, what would you know anyways old fart” Cyrus responds snarkily. “I had a faceless in here right before you, I could barely tell the two of you apart if I wasn’t so wise”. Cyrus jumps to a sitting position, his expression unreadable by the lack of facial features but hes clearly panicked, “you had a fucking faceless in here?” he lets out, an undeniable edge to his words diluting the sheer spite in his voice. “relax” , the old man chuckles, “I’m just fucking with you”.

Cyrus raises himself from his bed and walks over to the windowsill that sits about one and a half paces away from the bed, the bed that changed his life. “What’s the plan now Cyrus? the regime thinks you’re dead” the doctor asks, Cyrus stares out at the concrete city with new eyes, with no eyes. “I’ll let them know I’m alive and go back to my fucking job, the people need to know I’m alive”. The old doctor laughs out loud, “you silly hulking old bastard, you’re a faceless now, faceless aren’t allowed in the capital”. “I’m not a fucking faceless you rotten old bastard” Cyrus retorts, steam rising from his ears. “Have you got a nose?” the doctor asks rhetorically, “eyes? A mouth? You’re a faceless now”. Cyrus marches over to where the doctor stands, he grabs him by the scruff of the neck, the doctor stands face to face with the flat valley of brand new skin where Cyrus’ mouth once sat, feeling the breath fan him from his pores, “ Don’t. Call. Me. A. Fucking. Faceless” Cyrus hissed. The doctor coughs, “and what’s going to happen when word gets out, you’ll be number one target. The faceless will want you dead after what you’ve done to them, and you think the faced regime is going to allow you to be free with all the knowledge you have, the old military police officer for the faced regime, now a faceless, imagine that…” Cyrus cuts the old man off mid sentence, he throws him against the wall. Cyrus looms over the old man’s frail body, he picks up the back of his head and smacks it against the floor, and again, and again, and again. He looks the old man in the face, blood drips from every part of his mangled face, his nose is indistinguishable from the rest of his face, his teeth have found a new home on the floor of his office, his eyes are completely void of life. Cyrus flings him across the room, “he…he’s fucking right, I’m a fucking faceless”. He walks over to where he discarded the doctor’s mangled corpse, “a faced dead…I’ve never killed a faced before, the regimes greatest doctor, I killed him” he looks towards a mirror, “and now the greatest member of the military police is a fucking faceless, god damnit”

Cyrus exits the hospital, he wanders aimlessly down the street. He’s got nowhere to go, nobody to go to. A man holding a little girls hand walks past him, he trips Cyrus up and shoves him into a nearby wall. The man spits on Cyrus, “you’re in the wrong part of town faceless scum”. The little girl covers her horrified expression, is it the big man with the eerie face or her loving fathers act of violence. As the man leaves Cyrus’ sight Cyrus punches the wall he had just been hit off. “Fuck”, he growls, “I’m a faceless, until I can get my facial features back I’m a fucking faceless”

After several hours of walking Cyrus finds himself in district 9. He slumps onto a rusty metal bench, face down. He falls asleep, faced and faceless people strolling past him. He wakes up to notice somebody had left him food, a single chicken burger lay on the ground by the bench he had napped on. Cyrus picked the burger up and began walking again. He puts the burger in a nearby bin as he passes it, he doesn’t know who gave him that food, he won’t risk eating faceless food. He walks into a rundown hotel reception, dragging his feet towards the front desk.

The lady behind the desk looks at him with a panicked expression, “I…I I’m sorry sir, we aren’t permitted to accommodate for faceless people here”. Cyrus hears a thumping noise, it keeps getting louder. Nobody else seems to hear it. His vision gets less vibrant…BANG! The large man hits the floor with a thud, and then silence