The Faceless Man - Shortlisted story https://themolotovcocktail.com/2019/10/30/flash-monster-2019-results/

THE FACELESS MAN

A woman splashing in the water. Darkness. She’s struggling. I can’t get to her. She lets out a scream and I know it’s her. It’s Bronwyn. She’s dying. A man behind me. I turn. I can’t breathe. The man’s face is missing. It’s replaced with what looks like a blank canvas. He extends a hand and points. He’s pointing at a dock going into the water. It’s the pier near the lake. He whispers something to me that I don’t catch. She screams for help.

I’m covered in sweat as I wake up. It takes a few tries to get my breath back. I turn on the lamp beside me to try and escape the dream. I don’t remember waking like this before. Maybe once or twice when I was a little kid. If only Bron was here. She always calms me when I’m stressed. But thinking of her makes it worse. As the dream comes back to me, I feel my skin crawl. I get up to get a drink.

As I drink my water, the man becomes clear. His blank face isn’t as scary as it should be. Maybe I’m coming out of the dream haze. But he feels familiar, rather than scary. Dreaming of the pier sits badly with me. Why would I be dreaming about it? It’s a spot I used to go as a teenager with my friends. We would jump off the pier and swim and drink and smoke and hang out around there. I lost my virginity out the back of a rowing club nearby when I was 17 with Suzie Gilbertson. It was a special place for me, but not somewhere that I’ve thought of in years.

A thought enters my head without warning. What if I’m supposed to go to the pier? It doesn’t make any sense. I’m not a believer in this sort of bullshit, but the thought feels genuine. Is the faceless man telling me to go? I try to make myself laugh at the idea, but it doesn’t work. I wish Bron was here. If she wasn’t out of town on a girl’s weekend with her cousin, I could talk to her about this and she’d tell me to stop being a dick head and go back to bed. I hate when she’s not here. I’ve become dependent on her presence in our home to feel calm and safe.

I don’t think about it as I grab my keys and head to the car. Before I know it, I’m making the twenty-minute drive to the pier. About halfway there that I realise I have bare feet and I’m still wearing pyjama pants. It doesn’t matter. I just need to get to the pier. As I get closer, I become more confident. I keep seeing the faceless man and he keeps pointing and nodding at me.

I’m out of the car and moving towards the pier. The moon is full, the sky is clear, and I can see easily. As I get closer, I see something out of place. A tent set up near the pier. The embers from an old fire glow gently. I approach the campsite without thinking. The faceless man must have known that I’d find this. He must want me here. I stand outside the door of the tent. Next to the fire I see a small axe, lodged into a stump of wood. I dislodge it. The weight feels good in my hand. It feels more like an extension of my arm than a foreign object. I hear the zipper moving and then the tent door opens.

The first out of the tent is Carl, my best friend since high school. He retorts as he sees me, silhouetted from the moon behind me, holding the axe. Second out of the tent is Bronwyn. She’s only wearing a t-shirt and underwear. She stands behind Carl. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’ Carl asks. I begin to shake the axe in my hand. ‘Wait, Pete, is that you?’ I feel a presence behind me. I don’t turn because I know he’s here with me. He whispers in my ear, ‘Kill them.’

I swing the axe like I’m serving at tennis. It lands between Carl’s jaw and his shoulder. It cuts through the cartilage and flesh easier than I thought. A thin spray of blood hits me in the face and I have to blink a couple of times to watch Carl collapse. Bronwyn, perfectly still in the position that was behind Carl, stares at his twitching body. I know the shock has paralysed her. ‘She has to pay.’ I move towards her and raise the axe above my head. As I swing down, she moves. I only clip the side of her arm, but I take some of her bicep off. She screams and runs toward the pier. I follow. She yells for help. I keep moving. She’s begging me now. She looks pathetic. My face begins to twitch involuntarily and I realise that I’m smiling. I move closer and she jumps into the water. She bobs and gasps in the cold water. She can’t even keep afloat with her arm. I hear her scream and plead again before she stops. I keep watching for a minute or two until she drifts out of sight.

I roll Carl off the pier and throw all of their camping gear into the lake. I don’t throw the axe away, though. I think I’ll be needing it again. The faceless man will want me to use it. I thought that he was sent to warn or scare me, but he was sent to help me. I know that he will be in my dreams again and show me the way. He’ll help me find the people that deserve to feel the axe. Together, we’ll rid the world of those that don’t deserve to be here.