On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 246, of 266 so far.

Faces

I wake up each morning with a woman I don’t recognise. We’ve been married for almost ten years.

Each day she’s a different woman, but she’s always my wife. The face is new, but when she speaks I can hear that it’s her. When I lean in, still tentatively even though so much time has passed, I can smell that it’s her. When she stretches, I can see from the achingly familiar catlike movement that it’s her. But she’s a stranger to my eyes.

I can’t really watch television anymore. Movies don’t work for me either. I used to love science fiction shows; I’d watch them all the time. They were my comfort viewing. But have you ever noticed how similarly everyone dresses in sci-fi? Uniforms in a handful of colours, or interchangeable drab future-clothes for dystopian civilians. They all look alike.

My life has two eras: Before, and the present period that I call After. This is the year 2 A.D. for me: After Damage.

It wasn’t a bullet, or a beating. Not a car crash. Not even a stroke. The prosaic truth is that I fell down some stairs when it was dark and cold. My foot slipped on the way down a flight of eight stone steps at the train station, and away I went. I landed badly, the back of my head hitting the concrete hard, on the right side. I had a concussion… and of course the Damage.

I woke up in the hospital, amidst unfamiliar faces. Nurses and doctors I’d never seen before, and a panicked-looking woman sitting beside the bed, tapping out a message on her phone. I cleared my throat, and she looked up at me, the panic immediately replaced with relief. She stood up and clasped my hand tightly, saying she was so glad to see me awake again. I gave a smile that was probably more like a wince, and I asked if she could call my wife for me. Then the panic returned to her face once more.

I subsequently learned — as did my doctors — that I’d suffered damage to my fusiform gyrus, which is the part of the brain predominantly involved in face recognition. The name for my particular condition is acquired associative prosopagnosia, which has something of a lyrical quality to it. The reality is substantially more bleak.

The strange woman by my bedside was in tears by the time the nurse came, even though it had only been half a minute since my request, and the resulting return of her own panic. She claimed that she was my wife, and over the course of the following hours I fought with the conflicting evidence of my senses. She pleaded with me, and I knew her voice. I knew her smell. I knew her mannerisms. She even showed me her driving license in desperation, but I couldn’t even tell whether the photo on the card matched the person I was looking at.

Hours of tests, scans, questions, consultations, and finally the conclusion. I could physically no longer recognise faces — not even my own. No matter how well-known. The ability might return of its own accord someday, but it probably wouldn’t. That was almost two years ago.

I exist in a world of perpetual strangers. No face is ever familiar. I wake up each day to find the same environments, but an entirely revised cast. The same names and roles and voices, but every time a new face. If I look in a mirror, I see an eerie trick: an unknown man trapped within the glass, mimicking my every movement perfectly. His face changes each day too.

I don’t look in mirrors very much anymore. I avert my eyes while I brush my teeth in the morning. Then I leave the bathroom and go downstairs, passing an arty black and white photograph of a happy couple getting married. I wonder who they are, just for a moment, before I catch myself. I push the sadness and frustration deep down within my chest, and I head for the kitchen to see what new and unknown face my wife is wearing today.

You can understand why TV and movies don’t really work for me. I didn’t used to read very much, but now I devour at least a couple of books per week. No faces; just names, and dialogue attribution. It’s almost like life used to be. The one thing I manage to watch is cartoons like The Simpsons. They always wear the same clothes, so I can tell who’s who. Lisa is red dress girl. Marge is blue hair lady. Homer is bald white shirt guy. I can recognise them even when they don’t speak.

It’s the same for my friends, though honestly I don’t meet up with them very often these days. We used to go to the pub regularly enough, but it’s a minefield now. I walk into a place that used to instantly relax me, but now I’m scanning for any clues about which table I should approach, or who I should talk to. When I’m at the bar, I’m nervous about whether I’m standing beside a life-long friend, or a complete stranger. Even when I do find my group, I have to quickly try to memorise which clothes go with which identity, so I can have something approaching a normal conversation.

When I was discharged from the hospital after nearly two months, there was a big party. Friends and family, all rallying around to lend their support, and convey their relief, and offer their help. They all wore name tags on their chests, and I laughed even though I was crying inside. I wish the name tags were universal.

They’re not, though. Because nobody else needs them. Everyone can glance at someone, and just immediately know who they are, as long as they’re a familiar face. I used to be able to do it too. I remember what it was like. Now, it’s just… gone.

I wake up, and I go about my routine.

I catch sight of a reflection and I don’t realise it’s mine. I go into the office, or into the pub, or I drive to visit my family. I see a face, and it’s smiling at me, the body language all saying that this is someone who knows me well. I greet them, warmly but a little ambiguously.

I know that I must know them. I search for clues. I scramble for a name. I want to say hello.

But to who?

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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