About Face

About Face

Short Fiction

By Stephen Geez

One particular Friday, a rather remarkable day, 34-year-old Jeremy P. Wilkins started the morning like he would any other: he looked himself in the face.

But this time someone entirely unfamiliar looked back.

Yes, it sounds rather fanciful, theoretically impossible, practically incomprehensible; but there staring at him from the mirror appeared the understandably stunned-looking mien of a complete stranger.

Now, being typical, Jeremy P. Wilkins immediately undertook a series of troubleshooting protocols similar to what any of us could be expected to employ, what we might call “reality checks.” First, he touched the offending face and determined that he could feel it with his fingers and feel his fingers with the face. Then he examined the looking-glass itself and, having concluded it to be the same unaltered mirror that had never previously betrayed him, initiated a rigorous regimen of testing for some form of heretofore unexperienced abnormality of vision. Blinking several times, closing his eyes longer to initiate a form of optical reboot, rubbing vigorously, dousing thoroughly, and even alternately covering one eye at a time . . .  all produced no change. A cursory survey of his environment confirmed the complete lack of other visual anomalies, so he quickly stripped off his clothing and conducted a thorough body inspection, both directly and by using the unreliable mirror, until he found himself forced to conclude that only his face appeared to have changed.

Seven mirrors, Jeremy P. Wilkins managed to locate in his modest apartment, not counting reflective surfaces such as the side of his toaster and the pane of glass fronting his microwave oven. All featured the same unfamiliar face, after which this thoroughly befuddled and, admittedly, rather alarmed young man briefly pondered, then discarded, the notion of religious significance. That left him considering the possibility that he suffered some sort of dysfunction with his mental faculties. What kinds of illness or intoxication, he wondered, might produce such a localized and limited distortion?

That quickly failed to yield meaningful results, so he decided to see if the appearance change could be detected by others. He found his elderly neighbor, Mrs. Rotwood, in the lobby, retrieving her mail from the key-boxes. Disguising his voice and adding a hint of non-specific accent, he made eye contact, then busied himself sifting through a stack of flyers on the bench as he casually greeted her by name.

“I’m sorry,” said the surprised woman, pausing to peer at him. “Have we met?”

“You don’t remember? We met last year?” He glanced at his watch, pronounced himself late, and mumbled apologies as he hurried out the door.

From across the street, he watched her dither a bit, perhaps lost in her own confusion, before she closed the key-box and disappeared upstairs, after which he slipped back up to his place and called his friend.

“It’s my fault,” Randall Q. Caruthers said so matter-of-factly that it startled his caller. “I caused it.”

“I’m serious, man. My face really changed.”

“I believe you. Happened to me, too. That’s why I was off the grid last weekend. Pulled together some cash and drove to Atlantic City for three days of nobody-knows-your-name.”

Now, what’s remarkable about the subsequent exchange is that Jeremy P. Wilkins ultimately found himself accepting Randall Q. Caruthers’s outlandish explanation, primarily for lack of any other, and because it did manage to account for the facts of the situation, facts that persisted as plainly as the nose on his new face.

It seems that Randall Q. Caruthers had received his own temporary face change from his brother-in-law. After three days the recipient’s face reverts to his original, it was explained, and he is thereafter able—required, as it were—to pass that experience on to the first person whose face he touches. In this case, Randall Q. Caruthers had casually tweaked the nose of his friend, knowing full well that, several days hence, Jeremy P. Wilkins would wake to find a substantially altered visage peering back from his mirror.

“You’re telling me,” Jeremy P. Wilkins demanded, “that you looked like this for three days?”

“Well, no,” his friend explained. “I’m told it’s a different face every time. In fact, mine showed the rather pronounced characteristics of markedly different ethnicity.”

Randall Q. Caruthers cut off the expected barrage of questions before it could even erupt, ending the conversation with one simple—if cryptic—admonition: “Look, just be careful, and since it’s a one-shot deal, think big.”

Think big, indeed.

Jeremy P. Wilkins started his big thinking with a rather small notion: not wanting to explain this face change to anyone. Thus, he concluded, he must miss a day of work before his customary two days off for the weekend. He called in sick to the dealership where he normally would have spent his day matching finance-approved buyers to the vehicle models and options that generated the best commissions.

The only salesman who routinely outsold him answered the phone. Augustus O. Crabtree barely concealed his delight over the pending absence of his chief competitor, which sparked two thoughts in the mind of Jeremy P. Wilkins: loss of a day’s sales would put him further behind in their comparative monthly totals, and having a new face presented quite the unique opportunity to spy on the practices of his nemesis.

Thus, when an unfamiliar face walked into the dealership and approached the most aggressive salesman, Augustus O. Crabtree never suspected prior acquaintance. The “customer” fished a scrap of paper from his pocket and read off the name of the salesman to which he had been referred.

“No Wilkins here,” Augustus O. Crabtree insisted, “but I can help you.”

“No no,” replied the customer. “I was told specifically to ask for Wilkins. My aunt bought a car from him years ago.”

Thereafter followed a pitch that broke nearly all the dealership rules with its intent to steal the referral from—and tarnish the reputation of—another sales associate. Jeremy P. Wilkins left angry, but gratified to have surreptitiously recorded the exchange, which he might well use in several productive, even vindictive, ways.

Enjoying the possibilities of his new identity, he undertook to shop the competing dealership across the street, then several others in the area, always expressing a seller-challenging strong-but-swayable preference for the models sold at Jeremy P. Wilkins’s place of employ. The lies, false promises, unsubstantiable claims, and unethical tactics he found so surprisingly prevalent at first shocked him, then stirred him to adopt a new outlook regarding his approach to the cutthroat field of vehicle sales.

Come Monday, Jeremy P. Wilkins might well expect to recover his customary face, but an important part of him likely would never be the same.

He sat in his modest apartment’s dining area that Friday evening, failing to muster enthusiasm over his microwaved dinner of salisbury steak and vegetable medley, pondering how “loss of innocence,” the stripping of one’s practiced naïveté, can sow doubts in the fertile fields of imagination. This reminded him how he had long found vague discomfort in his girlfriend’s insistence that he not show up at the rock-band lounge she assistant-managed, her busiest times Friday and Saturday nights.

“You won’t like how I have to flirt with the customers for tips,” she always explained, “especially when I work the bar.”

He understood salesmanship, or so he thought, but here at home alone on yet another lonesome night, he found himself surprisingly curious about her boundaries. It comes as no surprise, then, that Jeremy P. Wilkins decided to take his unfamiliar face out drinking, a chance to observe his girlfriend’s behavior without her suspecting his presence.

Five beers and several hours into the evening, what for a while appeared to be the kind of situation his girlfriend had always described now started transforming into something entirely different. The man he’d noticed her smiling to in a store several weeks before—“He was in a class I took at the learning annex last year”—arrived to an overly friendly welcome. Situated at the end of the bar, he earned considerable attention from the assistant manager, and even managed to drink without paying. Twice, the man and assistant manager, hands all over each other, giggled and groped their way into the back office for brief periods; and when break time came, they left the premises together looking very much a couple.

Jeremy P. Wilkins followed, dismayed to discover that they ventured no farther than a dark blue SUV parked in the back of the lot, its windows growing steamy within minutes. Impelled by anger, emboldened by his false face, he stumbled drunk-like past the vehicle. Surreptitious interior glances confirmed the worst. Come Monday, his original face intact, Jeremy P. Wilkins would undertake his extrication from any kind of personal relationship with such a two-faced so-and-so.

And in that knowledge, he found some measure of relief. It seems that even a hint of fear that monsters might lurk in the closet had proven more difficult to bear than obtaining proof that one does.

Thereafter, in the late hours of dark night, alone in his modest apartment, the story of Jeremy P. Wilkins’s weekend of facing the truth took a very dark turn. Like some criminal on a burgeoning crime spree, he had tasted the sweet fruit of reaching beyond the fence with little risk of accountability. He sat on the side of his bed, the faint odor of discarded salisbury steak permeating the air, and considered the facts before him: he had two other-face days left, and there still existed in his small world one man he wanted very much to deal with, the one man he wanted very much to confront, the one man he wanted more than anything to see . . .

Dead.

And the more he thought about it, the more want became need.

Carl T. Tomlinson had persisted, a few years back, in the role of “boyfriend” to the younger sister of Jeremy P. Wilkins for approximately eleven months. In that time, the man’s caustic style of interpersonal relations had grown increasingly violent. Why the young woman had kept the facts hidden from family and friends for so long, let alone put up with such abuse, proved beyond comprehension for Jeremy P. Wilkins and others close enough to care. Still, as the truth became more obvious, the man’s methods of intimidation came to the front, and cooler heads conceded an inkling of understanding for her reticence, an inkling that nevertheless escaped the young woman’s older brother.

By then, Carl T. Tomlinson had drained the young woman’s life savings, totaled her car, trashed her modest home, and beaten her often enough and harshly enough to leave her dentally damaged, not to mention facially disfigured with a scar below her right eye. That she steadfastly refused to cooperate with any legal action testified to her fear of the man.

Jeremy P. Wilkins and his new face slept fitfully that Friday night, and rose early to plot the demise of Carl T. Tomlinson. He considered hundreds of details, then visited an internet cafe not too close to his modest apartment, logging on in a very public way to search details about the life of the object of his wrath.

He withdrew funds from his account in order to move about with cash. He purchased the smallest, most compact crossbow that would do the job, and quickly resurrected his college-team archery skills by repeatedly targeting an overstuffed chair in his modest apartment. He obtained accessories from rubber gloves to the face-concealing gear he would need during the later portion of his escape. He traced and retraced the routes, rehearsing every detail, then arranged transportation that allowed his car to remain visible in its customary spot at the modest apartment’s garage.

On Sunday evening, with only hours remaining for him to possess an unaccountable face, he walked into the small convenience store where clerked Carl T. Tomlinson.

The man’s current girlfriend lingered this side of the counter.

Careful to show his face to every obvious security camera, Jeremy P. Wilkins produced the small crossbow from under his jacket and ordered both to step behind the salty-snacks rack and fall to their knees. Speaking with his altered voice, he assured the young woman she would never be hurt—at least not by the intruder—then turned his attention to Carl T. Tomlinson.

Knowing he must accomplish his goal and escape quickly, Jeremy P. Wilkins promised the kneeling man that his days abusing and robbing women would end here and now, then lashed out with a kick to the face that sent him reeling, a pronounced gash on his cheek bleeding profusely. He lifted the crossbow and aimed . . .

And felt sick to his stomach, so sick that he risked vomiting DNA evidence all over the floor.

Jeremy P. Wilkins reeled at the notion of killing a man, and found that even the briefest outburst of violence had proven more than he could abide.

It seems that new faces are but masks, a means to pretend another, but they change not who we are.

“That’ll leave a scar on your face to remind you I’m watching, and I’ll be back,” Jeremy P. Wilkins warned the man on the floor before beating his carefully rehearsed hasty retreat.

After sleeping fitfully again, Jeremy P. Wilkins rose exhausted, but raced to his bathroom mirror, relieved to find his familiar face back where it belonged. He studied it for several minutes, perhaps seeing it in new light, and realized he’d not preserved his own photographic evidence of the other face.

And with that he considered the notion that maybe, just maybe, it never happened, that maybe he had never foolishly allowed himself to indulge that which he might otherwise never dare face; but like legions before him, he avoided dwelling on the facts of his prior choices in order to focus, instead, on moving on.

He called his girlfriend to wish her many nights of happiness in the back of a dark blue SUV. At work, he advised the sales manager about his day-off silent-shopping expedition, then enjoyed a productive discussion devising counter-strategies. After pulling his chief competitor aside to hear the recording, then implying he also possessed evidence of illegal business practices, he managed to bluff and bully Augustus O. Crabtree into resigning his position.

Over the next few days, Jeremy P. Wilkins considered but failed to decide whose face he would touch, whom he would select to experience the gift and the curse of finally seeing oneself clearly. That gradually gave way to a bigger issue, though, the question of whether that unfamiliar face had merely risen from the ether of unexplainable mysteries; or if maybe, just maybe, it had otherwise belonged to another living soul.

He moved much closer to an answer later that week when he recognized the face of his friend, Randall Q. Caruthers, all over the news. It started with a montage of security-camera views showing him robbing banks and convenience stores and a bakery and hapless shoppers who had just withdrawn money from ATMs, all in upstate New York, then perp-walking in handcuffs, asserting his innocence while the news reporter countered that claims of spending the weekend in Atlantic City remained unsubstantiated.

And immediately Jeremy P. Wilkins realized that someone he never knew, someone he had briefly met only by face, would have borne full responsibility and suffered the severest consequences had plans of crossbow retribution been carried out.

And for many years thereafter, Jeremy P. Wilkins weighed the gravity of having assumed moral responsibility for protecting the reputation of another man’s face.

And Jeremy P. Wilkins thereafter endeavored to conduct his affairs in a manner by which he could start each morning, well, facing himself in the mirror.

For you see, nothing makes a man appreciate the integrity of his own face like spending the rest of his life pondering three very remarkable days and wondering . . .

Just who did what with mine?

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