Nightmare with Faces

The room is dark and filled with the tensions of dusk.  Quiet voices from across the street shimmer through a window.  I sit with silent cement walls, sipping red wine from a yellow glass; sharp, thin ice crystals drift through my mind.  I get up, walk to the table where the wine bottle stands, refill my glass, and return to my chair.

Hours slip past.

Midnight finds me awake and apprehensive.  I go to the door of the 
room, step into the hall, and descend the stairs.  I hesitate at the front door, not wanting to go out, but something urges me on, and I step into the street.

It is cold.  Mist glistens around me like a shower of tiny diamonds.  I sense something . . . something cold and indistinct, like a stirring of air in midwinter.  A crumpled piece of paper crackles by, carried by the wind.  I pace back and forth, wondering why I left the warmth of my room.  As I walk, I hear the crisp, rhythmic click of my shoes on the pavement; there is no other sound.

Shapes begin to emerge from the fog.  At first they are obscured by the mist, but slowly they clarify into faces, hundreds of them, silently staring at me with eyes of broken blackness.  I turn to run, and discover that I am surrounded.  A scream twists in my throat, trying to escape.  Not knowing what to do, I rush at the faces.  They scatter as I approach. Disoriented, I stumble up to my room and lock the door. I slide trembling to the floor.  My eyes adjust slowly to the dark; my breathing becomes more regular.  After a few moments I stand up and reach for the lightswitch.

Faces.  They appear instantaneously, filling the blackness of the room with glinting obsidian eyes that stare remorselessly at me.  I fumble with the lock, open the door, and rush into the hall.  I run up many flights of stairs, pursued by the faces.  Suddenly there are no more stairs.

I push through a door.

The moonlit roof of the building stretches pale and cold before me.  I can go no further, but still these night-faces close in on me.  I am drowning in a sea of eyes.  Finally, with a scream, I lunge into the shadowed canyon beyond the edge of the building.  I fall for a long time.  I lose consciousness as I hit the pavement.

The hours pass; dawn comes.

Slowly, a small group of people accumulates around my body.  They crowd around me with empty eyes to stare at this lunatic who jumped from an apartment building and died in the street.  I can feel them stare.  I can feel their eyes, their merciless, unemotional eyes.  Their eyes penetrate me with a blackness that grows like a cancer and absorbs all my thoughts and emotions and dreams.

And still I feel them stare.