The Atrocious Faces

Vapours of morphine - Flash fiction

This story is part of a collection of dark and noir stories called
Vapours of morphine
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The Atrocious Faces

They are behind the door, piled one on top of the other, with their ears pressed against the wood that’s as cold as our conversations. They aren’t even all that clever; we’ve seen their shadows moving restlessly under the door, and we understood it was them, positioning themselves there to eavesdrop on our words, to steal some secret from the meeting. Well, it’s understandable: they hope to prepare themselves as best they can for our traps, our deceptions, our little games.

Their faces are pale due to scarce food and their reluctance to expose themselves to the autumn sunlight. Just as they don’t like being seen by the inhabitants of that generic world that still exists outside this place. They are foul-smelling, silent, apathetic. I don’t know exactly what they hope to hear, but I’m certain that on this side of the room there’s nothing for them: nothing they could overhear would help them in any way.

They delude themselves, that much is true.

I suddenly fling open the door, and they tumble clumsily to the floor. They get up, grumbling, then scurry off to hide in their rooms. I look at them with contempt as they shuffle away, hunched over. One of them returns my gaze, then barricades himself behind the white bedroom door.

They’re so predictable that I no longer even know what point there is in punishing them for their transgressions. It would be enough to make transgression the rule, and they’d become as obedient as altar boys.

I step outside to smoke a cigarette. I feel like I could use a drink too, something strong. On the terrace, the clotheslines have been electrified, sparking like small lightning bolts. They serve as protective barriers, useful both for keeping those outside from coming in to do as they please and for preventing any of the house’s inhabitants from escaping.

The sky is gray above us, a grim backdrop to the abandoned factory next to the property where our building stands. I sense that the presences inside the factory have noticed me, but they, too, have no intention of exposing themselves to scrutiny. Both they and we can be predators or prey in this universe, shattered like a mosaic.

What did they make in there? Glassware? Cups?

Sometimes, something very large circles around the rusted towers.

Fortunately, it usually doesn’t come near us.

I go back inside so the meeting can resume. Maria has short hair and a thin but graceless body: neck too long, legs too short. I desire her, I desire her flesh, tainted by the ink of cheap tattoos. Her dog, Goran, an ugly coffee-colored pitbull terrier wearing an equally ugly spiked collar, is up on two legs, busily rubbing his small, pointed penis against his owner’s ankles.

Everyone in the room wonders why she insists on letting him do it, but no one intervenes, no one ever says anything to Maria. In the building, no one ever has the courage to take a step forward or back, or to change anything about the way things are. For now, Maria accepts only this as a sexual act, and so it will be, until this place crumbles, eroded by the inexorable grip of time and our cruelty.

Maria is a horrible person, just as everyone in the office is horrible, myself included.

Those out there are squalid, dirty, and deceitful, poor wretches confined to this small, untainted corner of the world, God knows for how long, but they aren’t evil, no, they’re just kids. Kids are truly all the same, in every corner of the world and the planet: from the behavioral schools in Kero, to the organic material refineries in Cline, always the same thing.

They behave as they’re supposed to, while we, faced with the bitterness of choice, tailor our own damnation, like blemishes stubbornly fighting against our own extinction. All we could do to salvage the shred of decency that lingers in our souls would be to go down to the basement and disappear forever.

The meeting resumes.

We check the model of our solar system, placed in a display case on one side of the office.

We must acknowledge that the time of the Moloch has come.

The fire in the basement is dying out.

We don’t know who built and placed the small planetarium there, but its precision is astonishing: the planets are perforated balls supported by metal ovals, rotated by a spring-loaded mechanism that marks the passage of time. When a particular alignment occurs, one that still eludes me but that Inedya always predicts with precision, the flames burning in the basement grow paler, weaker, less imperious, less authoritative.

If we don’t act quickly, no one has any idea what terrible calamity might befall us. The last time, with pagan fervor, we tried to ignore the signs from the beyond, and the blood tribute we had to pay was devastating.

We were attacked by a Goudar.

We found it in the garden waiting for us, calm and silent, with its pear-shaped metallic body, its green, scaly face, and that row of large, dagger-sharp teeth lining its stomach, closing in a malevolent grin.

It was armed with a sacrificial sword, at least two meters long, finely carved. I remember Bongri’s guts hanging in tatters from its jaws, while, as a last resort, we offered it five of the youngest boys in tribute.

I remember the fear, the sense of powerlessness, and finally the humiliation, the shame of punishment for that foolish pride.

Inedya says the times are shortening.

The fire is extinguishing more and more quickly.

One day, the crackle of virgin flesh consumed by flames might no longer be enough, and then I truly don’t know what we’ll come up with.

But for now, everything is fine as it is.

We just need to conclude the meeting and choose a boy to take to the basement.

We choose them based on how they behave, what they say, and what they do.

We give them small tasks to carry out, see how they perform, and record everything in the Black Ledger. Then, when Inedya deems it necessary, we gather in the office, read the ledger aloud, and choose one.

The criteria have been codified for a long time, but the reality is different.

We pretend to choose the one who’s been the least cooperative, but even that could be seen as a choice born of a nobility we don’t possess.

Many things come into play.

We choose the one who pisses us off the most, the weakest one, the one who means nothing to us.

Sometimes you feel like changing your mind, picking one boy over another.

But i don’t know how in the end they know who’s next.

They already know who’ll go to the basement.

They stand there analyzing every little inflection in our voices, making conjectures, but more to fight boredom than for any other reason. It’s all already written: one of them stinks more than the others, and there’s nothing they can do to truly change anything.

In truth, the Black Ledger is just another manifestation of how despicable we are.

Everything is already known, everything is already written. While we sit in the office, taking pleasure in it, they stand there listening, behind the door. At least they’re spared what might be the greatest torment of all.

That of seeing our atrocious faces, while we take pleasure in it.