New Day

Big face, sad face, proud face, silly face, round face, strong face, fat face, annoying face, dumb face and so many more! I’m surrounded. It’s taxing, exhausting.

Some says the faces are composed of distinct elements, and well, I kind of perceive the eyes thing because I could often feel them on me, but the additional parts left me doubtful. Nose, mouth, cheeks, eyebrows and the other. Well, I don’t understand them at all. For me, there is only the faces, the stares of those eyes thing and nothing more.

I took great care to put myself behind a desk on the edge of the room, right side. I don’t want to be too conspicuous, especially on the first day.
Even like that, it’s overwhelming. They’re all over the place, staring, thinking, some even are talking to each other. Too much, too close.
I need space.

I’m in here for less than ten minutes and it’s already a nightmare. Well, I presupposed it’ll be like that from the start so it’s nothing surprising, but still!
Some says you just have to imagine naked people to feel better. How could you fear naked people, right?

That’s utter bullshit! See! Take one of those jungle guys who have no clue whatsoever about technology, even the most basic one. Well, they’re really close to be totally naked, right? So, picture one of them with a spear, looking at you as if you’re just complete trash. See? Now if you’re not on the verge of running for your life, I don’t fathom what could do it.

And picturing naked men … before you start to shoot about how homophobic I could be, let me say it’s just I don’t see the appeal in that kind of takes. I absolutely don’t understand how girls could like boys. I mean, we’re so disgusting you know, dysfunctional, roughly made, despicable, ungraceful, like a vaguely human shape clay mold.

Some says that, because girls were made from a part of a man, they have to be basically man’s slaves. Isn’t it another proof of man’s failure as a whole? Have they no brain at all? It just means we’re a kind of failed prototype, for the final, operational product, being the women. It’s so plain to see, right?

And naked girls? Well, that’s totally another problem. It’s just too painful to dream, you know. Some says you can’t miss what you don’t know? I can say it’s bullshit, but well, I suppose there is a part of truth in it too. It’s not the same, say, to live with someone for forty years and then mourn their death, than being left alone, and never, ever, not knowing what it is to live like that in the first place. At least, I am supposed to.

You can feel as if there is something missing, I know I feel it. But at the same time, I know it’s way better to stop here, to not probe further, and not hoping for more. Worst, I’m fearing knowing more on that subject, because then, I know it couldn’t last more than a minute. I mean, I’m trash. I’m not someone who is allowed to live like that, so if it happens, it can’t last long. It has to be ephemeral. See? It’s obvious! And then I’ll have more loss to feel every other minutes of the rest of my life. Something like that. See? Ignorance could be a blessing sometimes.

So naked girls? Well, even just for lust, it’s kind of painful too, so … that’s too close to masochism, in my opinion, if you want to know… Anyway! That’s not helping at all!

So! I’m in that room full of faces, behind my desk, on the middle along the right wall, brooding about all that. Trying to determine what should I do to avoid all those stares and absolutely not make a scene like … where I couldn’t breathe for example, grasping for air and ultimately, being forced to leave the place. And that, even before being here for less than half an hour.

Yes, I put my goal on half an hour’s time. And I thought I was just badly optimistic on that one. But somewhere, I know I could stand my ground for at least that much time, probably. I want to at least! And, well, I need to, in a way … probably. But that’s another subject.

Breathe in! Out! In! out! It’s easy, right? Until I imagine that all the faces are breathing the same air, that the same air had gone through their lung. In, and mostly out too. For each of them.

Do I have to write the details of what follows after that? Let’s say I just added the puke perfume on the top of mine, if I was wearing some that is.

It took me close an hour to get the will and strength to come back to that room. The keeper of the damned should be in here now, giving instructions to the pack of faces.
I’m just in front of that dumb door but I can’t even find the resolve to open it. It’s so easy to picture it, you know? All those stares, assailing me from the moment I entered the room and staying put on me after that. And the air! Why am I not forgetting the damned air thing?

And of course, thinking about not thinking about something, like the air, never, ever work. It’s the complete opposite but you knew that, right?

Half an hour later, I’m back, again, in front of the hell’s door. The meet is probably close to the end now. But that time I didn’t stop there, I just open it and pass through. No thinking, empty-minded, I just did it, see?

The room’s keeper is in there, of course, and he seems badly surprise to see me but I really don’t care at all.

See, I don’t even know what he told me, I mean, I suppose he talked to me, right? That’s what they do in those situations, right? The faces. I was way more concerned about enduring the stares.

So, I’m in that room, two steps from the door and closing it. Voluntary entrapping me in that nightmare. Talk about masochism again. And I feel that breeze. That’s when I saw they opened all the windows. How could they …? Is that hope I feel? Or pure terror?
And worst, none of them are currently watching me. None! They’re all deliberately looking elsewhere. What the hell! right?

So it’s nice and all, but in the same way it’s worst, because even if they don’t stare at me directly, I could feel all the side glances full of questions, inquiries, thoughts or just plain scorn.

So, I checked with the master of the room but all he’s doing is gesturing me about my empty desk. The last empty one in the room. And so, I lowered my head, watching my feet and started my journey there. The worst I could do now is to trip on something and get to know the floor more intimately than I wanted to.

The only thought in my head is that they all know. Well, they already knew my misery in the way I ran out of the room before, but now, it’s just way worse than that. They know! Every each one of them. And from then on, they couldn’t act as if they don’t know. They will act accordingly with that knowledge, we’re built like that, no way to avoid it.

I was already doomed but I could hope about moments of respite here and there; now, how I’m supposed to live with a pack of tormenting devils who don’t even know what they’re doing. For now, even their non-stares will be fully loaded with thoughts, whatever the kind. I could already feel it under my skin, like thousands of insects’ legs crawling all over. Their heads are full of me, I’m in their field of view for good and long, it’s nauseated.

That’s when the words of the head devil, who was speaking non-stop since I sat down, get through my mind. Well, he got my full attention now, I’m the one staring for once. Like he cares … depressing.

" … see you individually in the week to come. If possible, take time to learn about each other and make yourselves familiar with the place.

Like I said, I’ll also give you all a peculiar assignment. I want you all to write me something peculiar. Yes, I said write! With a pen, on paper, with some ink!
And on that paper, you will all write me a story, the story of your own marriage, but not with someone you know or fantasy on, but between each other!

So look around you! You’re all newly wed husbands and wives! At least on paper!

I leave you one week to do that! Do your best!

Now, don’t forget to also check the schedule…”

Oh gods, what did I do for all of you to hate me that much?

I’m staring. I’m staring at the void, and the void stares back like they said. Good thing, now I can just let the emptiness fill me all to oblivion.

Later, much later, before leaving the room, I tried to look at that thing they gave us. You know, where you got people’s face with their name on. There is a word for those kinds of things, but I never remember it.

It’s not like I kind of see those faces anyway, they’re all one and the same for me, as always, or bother with the names, I couldn’t care less, but at least I can count them. Again, pure masochism from me.

Twenty-three. With me, that make twenty-four.

Just imagine the look on the faces of those church’s priests if you go before them at twenty-four, to be married, all together, to each other. When they can’t even really accept the union of three peoples or the gender fuzzy thing.
That thought made me laugh, madly. A good thing I was alone in that room.