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The Face

Russ Bickerstaff

    Chase always saw the same little man every time he went to work. He never really thought much about him, so in a sense he never really saw him. Perhaps his mind was too lost in the thoughts that usually accompany a trip to work. Perhaps thoughts of that had so consumed his mind that he couldn’t see another face in the crowd that was always looking at him just a little uneasily. He really had no idea where the uneasiness had come from. It was something in the background of his trip to work at a job he wasn’t thrilled about having to work. He really had no idea that some of the uneasiness may have come in the face of a passing stranger that always looked like it knew him a bit more intimately than he did.
    The face was a little bearded face attached to a little bearded man that kept looking at him. It wouldn’t stop looking at him with a high degree of intensity in its eyes for the entire duration of the time it was passing by. One might think that it might be kind of obvious. One might think that this sort of thing would be readily apparent, but as the face was always in a crowd of others, it may have been difficult for Chase to spot right away, buried as it was in the parade of faces that would shoot by him in the strange barrage of reality that extended from one edge of the daily journey to the other.
    Somewhere along the line, Chase started to notice that there was something about him that was feeling bad that didn’t necessarily originate within his emotions. It definitely had its effect there somewhere in the backwaters of consciousness, but it only came there from some subtle awareness of something that was going on somewhere in his body. The face kept looking on and he kept failing to notice it. He kept going to work. He kept feeling slightly off physically in some way. Not always. Some days were better than others. Some days he got to work a bit later than others. But he always got to work.
    Always in the flow of things over the course of a day, Chase would forget about whatever it was that would make him feel ill-at-ease until the next morning came around and again there would be vague physical sensations of something effecting him around the edges of his mind originating somewhere in his body and always there would be the face of this little bearded man that would be looking on with the same uneasiness that he felt within himself. And always he would fail to notice it in the parade of other faces that would wash by him in the course of the journey to work every morning.
    Chase had slowed down over the days that were weeks that were months that were seasons that were years and beyond. He started to leave early for work to ensure that he would make it there on time. He left progressively more and more early but he would always see the same face of the same little bearded man that keep looking at him uneasily every single morning on the way to week. Always he would fail to recognize the face of the little man in the steady flow of images that would wash over him in the course of any given day. The faces were always there. The faces were always in motion.
    Before long he was always feeling a bit ill at ease from some part of his body. He wasn’t entirely conscious of the situation while it was rolling over him, but he knew in a sense that it was always there. Work itself had been getting ever so much more difficult to manage lately. Chase was on some sort of a break halfway into the journey out to work when he noticed the face flash across his conscious mind for the first time. He needed to rest roughly halfway into every journey to work these days. He saw the face of the little bearded man for the first time even though he’d been seeing it every single day on his way to work for days that could have been years.
    Having seen the face for the first time, Chase felt as though he’d seen it before. It was all he could think about. He would close his eyes and see it burning there in his mind. The face itself didn’t seem nearly so disturbing to him as the look of concern. He wasn’t sure why it was that a clearly sympathetic face would be anything more than friendly to him. Having woke-up a few times with the image of that face in his mind, he decided to confront it the next time he saw it.
    Chase rushed out the door a bit earlier than usual. He stared eagerly at the oncoming rush of faces that were passing him by on his way to work. He hungrily devoured the image of every last face that he saw on his way to work that day, finally landing on the face of the little bearded man. Most of the faces on the way to work that day only would look at him when they noticed the intensity with which he was staring at them. The little bearded man’s face was the only one that even that day had been staring at him from the moment it came into view.
    Chase ran headlong into the crowd and grabbed the little bearded man by the shoulders. The little bearded man’s look of sympathy became a look of shock. Chase was shouting at the little man in a vaguely intelligible shout that seemed to overpower everything on the sidewalk. Looking at the terror in the face of the little man, he let him down. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the little bearded man would wonder over the course of the rest of the day where he had seen the big, angry man before. And perhaps he would remember that he had seen it on his way out to work every single day. And he would realize a sympathy for someone he never really saw until that man was lifting him into the air and shaking him as he demanded something the little bearded man could not give him.

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