I heard sirens and an ambulance arrived almost immediately. I tried talking through the gel, but my voice came back as a muted echo. Four EMTs pulled my cube out using medical shovels and carried me to the ambulance. Smoke was rising from my car and I saw a jeep had hit me from the front. Each of the EMTs had hats covering their faces. Crowds were watching me from the sidewalk, curious as they’d probably never seen a collision in real life. One of them opened the back door of the vehicle and I saw his face, or lack of. He was one of the Colonel’s men. Another faceless EMT grabbed a syringe and injected it into the gel. I became drowsy.
IV.
I was strapped to a bed. My clothes were still on. There were eight faceless guards I could see. We were in a basement, or was it an abandoned hospital room? There were stretchers in front of me, medical signs covered with dust that looked like they hadn’t been washed in years. The main faceless guard was dressed in a doctor’s blue surgical garb. He played with a scalpel, twirling it between his fingers like it was a pencil-sized baton.
“I thought I was going to see the Colonel,” I said.
“You will,” Dr. Faceless told me. “But we have a few hours to get acquainted.”
“Hooray.”
“Did you ever wonder how we became the way we are?”
“I actually did.”
“Good, because you’re going to find out directly.”
“What do you mean? I don’t wanna be part of this. Hey, man—”
“One more word without permission, and I will cut out your tongue. The only reason I haven’t done so already is the Colonel would prefer your tongue intact. But she’s open to having you type out your answers when she interrogates you later,” he said. “Anything more you want to say?” I kept my mouth shut. “Good. All of us were like you at first, uninitiated to the pleasures of pain. I promise you, by the end of your trials, pain will cause you bliss.”
I’d never thought I had a handsome face. But I still liked my mug the way it was and I had no interest in becoming “faceless.”
“None of us wanted it either,” the doctor continued. “I know what’s going through your mind. All of us experienced it the first time. You wonder what lovers, what family, what friends will think? The good news is, they won’t recognize you. Not unless you try to expose yourself. But if you do, you’ll find out how superficial all relationships are. Only when you lose your physical identity can you find your real self.”
Was he trying to convince me what he was doing was going to be good for me? I was eager to retort with some smart-ass remark, but I didn’t want to risk losing my tongue. It was cowardly to threaten my tongue which ranked second only to my manhood in terms of organ priority. Not that I looked with diminishment at any other part. I liked my body intact. Was there some way I could pull a Sampson, blow up my body and take all of these thugs with me? Just on principle, if I was going to die, I wanted to take as many of my enemies with me as I could. Unbelievable. He was still talking. Would he ever shut up? Many of these bad guys had to put on such a tough exterior for their followers, the only chance they had to relieve stress was with their opponents. In this case, I was more victim than opponent. Well, as long as he was talking, it meant he wasn’t going to cut my face up. Did I have any options? My hands were sealed too tightly for me to grab anything. Could there be a self-destruct button on my armor I didn’t know about? If I ever got out of here, I had to make a request to George to add it. I knew in Africa, they sometimes gave the infantry poison-capsule teeth so they could kill themselves rather than suffer torture. The only problem was a few of them set it off accidentally during visits with prostitutes that caused a huge scandal and resulted in the banning of poison teeth throughout the world. Why was it that idiots always got laws changed to accommodate their dumb proclivities?
“When this is done, you will be as obedient as a dog, more ferocious than a bear, and more deadly than a viper,” he said. Great examples, asshole. “But first, we have to change your face. I will tell you, we will not be using anesthetics. You will have to endure it directly.” He waved the knife in front of me. “You two will become intimate. You must learn to control and channel pain. Pain is pleasure. Repeat it for me. Pain is pleasure.”
“Pain is pleasure,” I repeated.
“You say it without conviction because you haven’t experienced it yet. But soon, it will be your mantra, your creed of faith.”
The sock-puppet motion of his mouth disturbed me. Usually, thugs like this had deep crevasses in their faces, a grave look about them that was all business. But this guy appeared as though he were talking out of a mask made from flesh. And he wanted to make me like him? Why couldn’t people suffer in misery by themselves? I’d complained about friends in the past that hoped friends could be a sponge for their interminable negativity. This faceless doctor took that to another level.
The knife came down along my neck. I didn’t feel anything at first, just warmth along my neck. The pain followed a few seconds later as my sensors cried havoc and let loose the Chihuahuas of war. Blood slithered down the side of my neck.
“What do you want to know?” I asked. “I’ll tell you anything. Larry is dead. The Larry out there is an impostor. I don’t know who set off those explosives, but I wasn’t involved. I just came back after I was nearly taken a slave by—”
The doctor laughed. “We don’t care about your secrets,” he said. “All we care about is carving away your face and making you one of us.”
The knife landed in front of my ear and slowly slid its way towards my nose. Again, the same delayed pain response.
This guy was serious and there was nothing I could do. Or was there? Did I have to give up on my face?
Next time I saw Beauvoir, would she even recognize me? Or would she be horrified by me, thinking I was a thug there to take her away? The pain was intensifying. He wasn’t cutting deep. Just the surface. But my skin ruptured along its surface and all my cells were panicking that their ozone was being penetrated by a foreign object. Cell broadcasters projected potential Armageddon and many unbelievers became proselytes in these dismal times. No matter how old I got, my mind felt young, but my body was there to remind me that I was getting older by the second. I couldn’t believe this doctor had endured the same thing I had at some point. The cycle repeated. So many cycles I’d been part of, jet streams of violence I rode, trying to escape, finally reaching a current I couldn’t get out of, stuck in a whirlpool that meant I would drown. Fighting for oxygen, seeing the shore just at a distance, blood tattoos for my face ripped in strident lines. I wanted to close my eyes, but the doctor used his fingers to pry them apart. His hands had bulbous veins. He flashed the knife next to my eyes, wanting me to see the blood dripping at the edge. I could have sworn he was smiling, though his lip corners couldn’t stretch that far.
I refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was breaking me. With his next cut, I screamed out loud and laughed.
He said, “You think this is humorous?”
“Not at all. You don’t need to convince me pleasure is pain. I already know it. It’s what everyone’s been trying to tell me my whole life.”
“That was just the warm up,” he said. “Prepare yourself for the Colonel.”
A visual projection of the Colonel appeared. Her arms were behind her back as she approached me. “I gave you a chance, didn’t I?”
“I had no idea they would attack you. I was just chasing down Larry. I—”
“Don’t play the fool! You think I don’t know about your power play?”
Power play? “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But as long as you don’t have faceless guy here cut up my face, I’ll do anything you want.”