The nightmare was always the same. Eleven years old, storming out of the backdoor of their old country house, running at full speed past the kitchen garden and into the lemon grove, then through the abandoned park and into the road that finally leads to the factory. Flames and fumes of green and blue escape from the broken windows, his father runs out, smoking skin dripping from his bones, coming towards him and opening his mouth to reveal a dark abyss. The sound is not human, half roar and half squeal, and then he wakes up.
The nightmare was over. He sat on the bed without disturbing his wife, trying to put the pieces of the dream back together. Contrary to what might be initially supposed, it is much harder to remember a dream we have had many times, the similarity of the events leads quite often to the erasure of the slight differences and the merging of details. In this case, the nightmare had happened so often that by now, and despite the horrific nature of the dream, after sitting up for a few minutes biting his nails, he could then lie down again and return to sleep. But not that night, the difference this time was not slight, but noticeable as soon as he started replaying the events in his mind. The narrative was the same, boy runs to chemical factory and finds his father melting, but this time there was a twist, he saw the whole thing from the outside, and by the end he knew, as one can only know in dreams, that he was not the boy but the father.
He carefully got up so as not to wake the woman and went to the bathroom. It was still dark out, but the shaded orange light coming from a lamp outside was more than enough to know where the sink is, and there wash his face, and then to find the towel to dry it. He went to the balcony to have a smoke, and then another, the neighborhood was still asleep, only the still soft whooshing sounds from the highway nearby can be heard, slowly it wakes up from its own dreams and nightmares or perhaps simply darkness, engine after engine, one by one and then two by two and soon many by many, a dog barks and the echoes are trapped between the tall buildings, and by then it is no longer pleasant to stay there, the sun is already fully out of the ground but still hidden by cement, the neighborhood is awake, and so is his mind, no longer fuzzy from the dream.
It is too late to go back to sleep and too early for his wife to wake up. Coffee, then a shower to clear the remnants of the nightmare that the caffeine was not able to dispel. The water washed away the dream slime and the man felt refreshed. He swiped the towel in the mirror to remove the misty film of vapor, but it revealed not his face, nor anyone else’s. There was no longer any hair, there were no lips, and no ears, and no nose, and no eyebrows or lids. The bone structure seems to be the same but it is hard to tell if it is so since all features have been smoothed out and now blend completely with everything else, perfectly smooth skin, the only exception being the orifices, for breathing and seeing and hearing and eating, mere openings without definition, all round, except for the eyes, which are not quite so. The skull is also not round, but slightly elongated at the back. When what used to be a mouth is closed it becomes seamless, rejoining the smooth skin that covers everything, and when opened it looks like cheese melting, strings still clinging from the top to the bottom seam until they are finally separate revealing a black void where two rows of perfectly white teeth appear to float, he touches them with his fingers and it feels exactly as a mouth and teeth should feel. That is when he notices his hand, not in the mirror, but coming out of his mouth, and then examines it in detail. The hand looks exactly the same, he can see the signs of age, the hair coming from his wrist and disappearing into the outward extremity of the back of his hand, only to reappear even softer on the first phalange of each finger, he can see the yellowed skin from the nicotine in them, the bitten fingernails, a few cuts just below them, and yet, looking at that hand in the mirror, it is as smooth, both in texture as in color, as all the rest. The color is also not quite right, it is a color of sickness, off white, but also dark, pale but not bright, with a slight tinge of purple lurking under the surface. Despite this, he appears rejuvenated, or better yet, ageless.
The nose is a mere bump, smooth on both sides, and then at the bottom two little round holes, examining them reveals there is no hair inside them. The eyes, fully black, seemingly with no spark, peek from their holes and seem to be on the verge of coming out, there are no lids, they cannot be closed. But the strangest feature are the ears. One may ask how it’s possible for a person to hear without the benefits of amplification provided by the magnificently built auditorium that is the human ear, but we cannot answer, we can only say that even though the man has now only two small round holes, one on each side of his face, with no protuberances, he can still hear just as clearly, and perhaps even better than before, because just now he heard his wife get out of bed on the other side of the house, behind two closed doors.
Panic did not set in, for one of two reasons or both, the first is that the man isn’t sure if the woman will see him as he sees himself in the mirror or as he sees himself outside of it. And two, the pretense of a shower will be enough to hide him, the likely scenario is that his wife will come in and she will merely say hello, wash her face and teeth, and then announce what he already knows, that she will be visiting her sister, and will see him in the afternoon once he comes back from work, unless it is one of those rare days when wives awake from their own dreams and have the idea in their minds to get in the shower with their husbands. Since the rare event had happened the day before, and even more rarely happens two days in a row, he felt confident and got in the bathtub, slid the curtains back and turned the tap. Even better than the pretense of a shower is the real thing, perhaps there is still slime from the dream, perhaps what he is seeing in the mirror is still part of it, perhaps it is just one of those days, he can say for sure that it happened before, to see himself like this, whether awake or in a dream it is harder to tell.
The wife comes in and says good morning as expected. Behind the curtain, and with the sound of the shower, there is only the slightest indication that his reply is something inhuman, and as he himself is not one to talk in the morning, she will assume he is only half asleep, or brushing his teeth in the shower, since he took his brush with him, to strategically suggest precisely this. But what he just hid from the woman he revealed to himself, that strange sound that he felt reverberate on his throat was not his. It was true, it finally happened. He did not panic before and he is not panicking now as one who is surprised, because he isn’t. The woman goes out, and soon after he can hear the sounds of her shoes clacking in the hallway, and then the turn of the key to unlock the door, and then it opening and then closing and he can finally relax, take stock for a bit, let the water do its job. This time he will actually use soap and scrub, but as his hand moves to his crotch there is nothing for it to grab, he can see his sex but not feel it. He gets out of the shower to confirm, the mirror reflects only smooth skin and a small orifice.
This has been on his mind for many years and the only surprising thing, and yet not one given to generate panic, is that it took until now, twenty two years after the original fear appeared, to become true. The adequate response is to cry, which he does, but seen from the outside it looks more like an animal who is wounded and squealing in pain. Recomposed he goes back to the shower until the warm water can bring no more comfort. He won’t bother calling in sick at work, but he will leave a note to his wife saying, It happened, goodbye. His handwriting is very uncertain, with only capitals and badly drawn, as if from a child who is still unfamiliar with those mysterious symbols. The note is a formality, though a part of him for sure would like to pour his heart out, the other part feels disconnected, there are no feelings, the cry wiped all confusion, he knows what he has to do and there is nothing more to it.
The plan couldn’t be simpler, and it was devised long ago, to kill himself. The wife of course had raised objections, but they were all theoretical, the fear was his alone, she never thought it could actually happen. He would find some place quiet where his death wouldn’t bother anyone, and there slash his wrists. The corpse would then horrify whoever found it, he hoped not a child, but there was no way to know, and this was his best option for it was part of his wife’s theoretical concerns that his body should at least be buried, and it would be enough that he had such an appearance, worse still would be for him to be also badly bruised, or bloated from waterlogging, so knife in wrist it was to be.
Since the sight of the monster he had become would terrify even the most desensitized consumer of all genres of horror fiction, in whatever medium they happen to be presented in, it was necessary that clothes and accessories be used to hide as much as possible his new body, which is fairly easy as we are in the beginnings of autumn, it is not very cold yet, but no one would think it strange to wear a hat and a hoodie over it, especially in the morning when there is a chilly mist not yet consumed by the midday sun. The real problem, however, is the face. He is sure that the thought of buying a fake mustache or a full beard, a wig and eyebrows, crossed his mind many times, but for one reason or another he never got around to it, perhaps he was trying to hang on to a shred of hope that it might not happen after all. But it did, and it must be hidden. He will wear large sunglasses, cover his head with a hat and a hoodie, and his mouth with a scarf, and hope to cross no known face and thus be obliged to say good morning and reveal his gaping hole of melted skin from which a sound, but no words, would come out.
The note is written, the disguise is ready, he put it all on, hat, hoodie and scarf, right away, so as to avoid as much as possible the image in the various reflections he might come across while walking around the house. There is an old photograph on the wall, and the idea of looking at old pictures before leaving the house is now in his mind. He couldn’t say goodbye to his wife, he will at least do so to his life. There is absolutely no rush, the woman is on her way to the other side of the city, at worst someone will knock on the door and he will simply pretend that no one is at home. The various photographic albums are on the coffee table, the last six years almost no pictures were taken and much less printed, the only ones in the album are from weddings or baptisms or office parties, official functions, then a few from the six before that, and then the flood, whole albums filled with pictures of young life, wood and sand, river and sea, mountain and plain, stone cathedrals and wooden temples, roadsides and gardens, and always the two of them, whether in frame or out of it, in front or behind the camera, they were looking at each other through it. The desire is to plant one last kiss over a picture of the woman, but he has no lips.
He closes the apartment door without looking back before noticing the elevator, someone is coming out, there is nowhere to hide and any encounter will be too close to mask his hideous appearance, and whether it is a worst or best case scenario we will let the reader decide, but the person who appears behind the elevator door is his wife. The woman cannot but scream at the sight, so unexpected and yet so many times pictured. What used to be a man instinctively turns around to hide what used to be a face, but it does not take long for the woman to have her hand on his shoulder and for him to cry for the second time that day, he can feel the tears but he knows they cannot be seen, from the outside the eyes will appear lifeless, and the skin, having no indentations and being capable of no contortions will seem to have no expression at all. The woman breaks the silence, Please come inside, but the man waves and twists as if to say no, he doesn’t want to even utter a single syllable, it is bad enough that his wife will have the image of this monster engraved in her mind and filed under husband forever, but worse will be to add to the image a sound, to have his wife hear the guttural noises that remain from what was once a human voice. Please, come inside, the woman continues to ask, and it is not what is said but how, she doesn’t mean, We can’t let anybody see you, but rather, You don’t have to go. And so he stays.
The couple is in the living room, the pictures are still all over the coffee table, the man is still trying to hide his face, and the woman says, I want to see you. Once more he declines and asks the woman to wait, all this with gestures and never facing her of course, then gets up to pick up a pen, then turns one of the instant photographs around and starts writing on the back, Your husband is dead. The reply is not written, No you’re not, I know it’s you in there, and the man writes, But not out here. He stops and adds, This body is not mine, and so it is not yours either. The woman is crying, he has the instinct to touch her but stops after the smallest hint of intent, to which the woman instinctively reacts by accepting the invitation, hugging him. The hug revealed the indifference of the creature to the woman, and it revealed the disgust of the woman to the creature. Collected because she is destroyed, she says, I understand now, you are no longer a man, how could you be a husband.
The woman left first, as soon as the words were said, she did not say goodbye. He decides to put the albums back in their shelves but his sight is caught by something else, and it is strange, he knows he has his back turned, it is as if he is seeing himself walk across the living room to a drawer, and from there take a binder, labelled nightmare. Inside there are newspapers articles, handwritten notes, personal files and police reports, all about the incident in the factory. There are also essays and papers and interviews from and with psychologists about psychosomatic illnesses, and even some speculative prose about more occult matters, which he never read fully. Lastly, there are sketches, which he started to draw right after he left the state of shock, one year later to the day, and then continued throughout his life. And the reality, he knew it now, did not differ at all from what he had pictured. He put the binder under his arm and checked his pockets before going out the door, knife, keys, wallet, he forgot his cigarettes, he would like to at least light one after slashing his wrists, and die smoking, if it was possible. They are right there in the cupboard beside the door, next to them is the lighter, which he will also take, and next to it is the smartphone, which he will leave behind. One more thing, he goes back to the living room to the liquor cabinet, there he will find a flask, carelessly pour whiskey into it, and then lick the bottleneck, he can feel the light sting of alcohol in his tongue, but when he has the idea to try to grab it with his fingers, there is none to grab.
Given what we know so far the place he chose to die could be easily predicted, it makes all the sense in the world and provides the kind of closure that every story asks for, and indeed his wife had suggested it, that way she would know to place an anonymous call the next day to the police reporting the corpse found in the abandoned factory, Yes, officer, the one where the accident happened. The drive now, with the benefit of a highway built in the meantime, is a mere forty minutes, faster if we drive like maniacs, which the creature won’t do. What used to be a farm village on the outskirts of the capital city, in time grew due to the establishment of a large chemical factory employing men and women from nearby villages, his father had been one of them, and then the explosion happened, the factory closed, the village died and was abandoned. The few decrepit houses that still have a roof have been occupied by squatters, and around the old stone structures there are others, made out of whatever scraps are found, the first signs of a shanty town. It isn’t exactly safe to drive through here, but his car is too old to draw too much attention, it could be a customer, illicit substances and services are sold there. His own house is no longer standing, only parts of walls remain, protecting a tent pitched in the middle of what used to be the living room. The lemon grove is still there, every tree has become a tangled mess of branches bending with the weight of lemons no one has any use for, the floor littered with rotten ones that fall every time it rains heavily or the wind blows strongly.
The car is left by some ash trees growing on the other side of the road. The abandoned factory is fenced off, but it is an easy climb if one does not mind some scratches and bruises. His right leg gets caught in the barbed wire, he is hurting and bleeding, but it doesn’t matter. Once inside he can see that not much has changed since the last time he was there. All that could be stolen had been stolen long ago, only rubble and broken glass remain where they first fell. The years have brought the addition of plastic wraps for food and drink, glass bottles and cigarette buts, metal spoons and hypodermic needles, one can imagine the place to be a haven for teenagers and junkies to unwind after a hard day. And of course, the walls are covered in graffiti. Further back there is a room that is flooded. During the day the water looks green, at night it looks black, the half submerged vats have even more algae growing on them than the walls
The first thing he does is sit with his back against a wall, take out the flask from the coat pocket and pour some on his wound, and then take a sip. The leg stings but the throat, and then the whole torso, and then the head, are relieved by the alcohol. Then he took out his wallet and started to empty it. So many receipts, a picture of his wife, plastic cards of all types with his name, a couple of banknotes and a few coins. He started to throw the receipts into a metal bin and then the cards, and by this time he was amused with the game. He picked up the ones he missed and tried again. The last card, government identification, face, name, number, this one he set on fire, From now on my name is x.
He sat and emptied the flask as he reminisced, reliving the nightmare as it first appeared, in the flesh of his father, and then as it returned over the years, over and over, the details from one merging into another, infinite variations on a single theme, a leitmotif explored by different sensibilities, and there were so many that by now he had forgotten a crucial fact. Before he saw his father’s skin melt with his eyes he had seen it just as vividly in his sleep, and that it had been this that made him run towards the factory in the first place. It was a mistake to relive his old nightmares, and it was especially pointless since it had become true. Glad that the transformation had not erased the possibility of intoxication, he now had the resolve to go through with his plan, they do not call it liquid courage for nothing, and strange as it may seem it appears there was yet another part of him that remained human, or at least alive, that part that is afraid to die. The fear is not gone but it is numb from the whiskey, enough for the cigarette to be lit and for the pocket knife to slash through the left forearm, he can see the blood, it is too dark for any redness at all to shine in it, if there is still hemoglobin in that dark, thick slime it is completely hidden, there is both pain and relief, and seeing the blood bubble from the line carved into the flesh and start to run down through his hand and fingers, he feels the eyelids closing even though he knows he has none, but the image disappears nonetheless as if they had shut, and gently but not slowly he is lulled to sleep.