The Faceless Baby

Day after day, I am fated to stand here, hidden from the view of ignorant men and women who briskly walk away from my house in fear of the dark windows and caution tape. Ignorance truly is bliss. If only they knew the things I have seen. That day in 1955 changed me forever. I used to be a well-to-do doctor at the infirmary near my house, but not anymore…

I had signed up as a part of a clinic in the church at the shipyard that had advertised that it could reduce depression in one’s life; you see, my wife had just left me. The meeting was actually a well-disguised cult of Poseidon gathering, and I wasn’t allowed to leave after I had entered, no matter how hard I tried. Punishment for my insolence was the stealing of my face (which I thought was meant figuratively). They strapped me to a table and literally carved off my face. It sounded as if they had put it into a cauldron of some sort. Shortly thereafter, the contents of the cauldron were pored over me and I had blacked out.

When I came to, I was strapped to the side of my house and I was extremely tiny. I tried desperately to call for help, but no voice came from the lips that I no longer had.

I AM THE FACELESS BABY

As I jog down the sidewalk of the neighborhood, I listen to my music. My favorite genre is 80's rock. While i jam out to some Guns N Roses, I put my body into auto-pilot and let my feet guide me on whatever path the universe feels like guiding them upon. I think about my daily trials and tribulations; my petty job at the law firm, my wife who is never home anymore, and my Mom; she still lives with me. (Trust me, there is a difference between living with my mom and allowing my mom to live with me. THERE IS.) Just as one of my favorite rhetorical questions begins to form, that is, "What is the point of it all?" I realize that I have arrived at the old Admiral's house. Or at least, that's what the sign posted on the side of the building says it is. It really is an odd sign; I wonder what kind of person would have posted it. Apparently someone from the "3DSP" project or something.

The house is basically in shambles. I want to believe that the caution tape and decaying boards of wood that litter the ground around the house are signs of renovation, but my better judgement tells me that they only mean neglect and danger to the public. I decide to take a full lap around the building so I can feel as if I have payed my respects to something or someone. The steps in the back look rather unstable, so i opt to go around down the grassy hills. I almost finish my journey around the circumference of the house when I get the mind-shaking feeling that I am being watched. I try to play it off as the stereotypical feeling that all people must get when they're around abandoned places, but I can't shake it; it feels different somehow. Like burning icicles penetrating my skin, I feel that unmistakable sensation of eyes resting on me. I slowly pretend to here a squirrel behind me so I can turn around, but when I do, I see no one, much less someone with a chainsaw or broken glass from the decaying building. All of a sudden, the feeling revives, and I find myself drawn to one of the Romanesque columns on the front porch. It is the rightmost pillar, to be exact, and it is covered in plants just like the rest of the columns. After deducing that inanimate structures are not capable of causing me harm, unless they fall, I decide to investigate.

When I move in closer to the overgrowth and begin my scrutinizing, I find nothing at first. I am about to forget the Admiral and his broken-down old house when something catches my eye. Something orange. I move what I hope is not poison ivy out of my line of sight, and lo and behold, I find an action figure. At least it looks like an action figure, until you reach the head. There is no hair, ear, or any facial feature to be found at all. Yet for some reason, something keeps telling me that this, this thing, is what has been staring at me. "Ironically enough, it has no eyes, so how could it?" I wonder. I decide to pick up the little man. That was a catastrophic mistake. As soon as i touched the thing, A flow of thoughts and images of someone's life pour into me, like a flash drive for the mind. I black out.

I wake up. I am still next to the house, but am facing away from it. This point of view strikes me as odd. And as I try to turn around, I find all my limbs bound. I can't move at all. Through my panic, I see my body standing a few feet away, my face bearing a smug look as it looks back at me before walking away. How did this happen?!

I AM THE FACELESS BABY

As I walk away from that accursed house, I chance a look back to where my old plastic body lies. I feel no remorse for having traded places with the poor fellow who had unfortunately touched the faceless baby body. I was in that body for over a half-century, and I did not plan to return to it just yet. My own body had become a prison. Now I planned to take sweet revenge upon those cretins who stole my face and turned me into that children's toy, and I was not about to let my better judgement strip me of my goal and walk me back to the admiral's house. I would, of course, be returning the body after the deed was done. I did not think it would take long; how much time could a few murders take?

I was quickly walking back to the shipyard's church when an alarming thought occurred to me: Wouldn't the members of the old cult of Poseidon be dead by now? Most of them had been elderly the day they transformed me. I decisively thought to myself, "their descendants will have to do." I didn't even taken into consideration that their descendants probably didn't work there; I was blinded by rage.

As I neared the church, I realized that I had yet to see a single person throughout my run through the shipyard. But somehow i knew that there would be someone in that church. I knew.

I was steps away from the church's front door. As I approached and opened it, that musty smell of mold and old books assaulted my nose; it had been the last thing I smelled before I was transformed. I stepped inside. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the holy building, despair slammed into my gut like a freight train. This church was empty.

I sank to my knees and cried. Regret, that feeling that I had become so closely acquainted with in the past 60 years, flooded my every nerve ending. But I knew I would get my revenge, no matter the set backs.

I WAS THE FACELESS BABY

After experiencing that disappointment at the Church, I decided to check around the shipyard to see if there was someone, anyone, who could tell me where I could find my revenge. I started at the markers and systematically made my way through all the places I remembered; the annex, the markers, the Admiral's house again (taking care to avoid the plastic prison body of my past), and many other places. All of them were barren. Not a soul was to be found in any of the locations that used to be so teeming with life when I visited them before my incident.

Where were all the people that used to walk those paths, breath that air, see those places? I didn't understand. But I knew that I needed to understand this if I ever wanted to understand how to get my revenge. So I decided to find the nearest library, one: because it was a familiar thing to me and I severely needed something familiar, and two: because it was the only way I knew to get information quickly. So, I went to the downtown Charleston Library. Some things were the same as I remembered, but so many things were different. I couldn't believe it. How long had I been in the faceless baby body? Too long; too long.

Once I arrived at the library, I headed to the Local Interest section, hoping to find something related to the shipyard and the reason why everyone had left it. After about a half hour of searching for a book with Charleston Naval Shipyard in the title, I finally found one. I flipped to the center of the book and arrived at a timeline of the shipyard. It told about the various purposes that the shipyard had served throughout the history of America; it was used in both World Wars as a (you guessed it) naval shipyard. But to my horror, right at the year of 1955, the timeline stopped. I checked the next page, but there was no continuation. No explanation was given. I also checked the publication date of the book to see if it had been published in '55, but it had been made in 2008. This, this was not good. Not good at all.

I left the Library with a confused look on my face and an even more confused mind. If the shipyard had no history after the day I had been sucked into the baby body... no, I wouldn't allow myself to think like that. But... if it was deserted on that day... then what significance did my sorry plight have? Did I cause whatever happened? Of course, it wouldn't have been my fault. Those cretins who took my face off were the ones who were to blame. Wait... my face.

MY FACE.

A cold sweat gripped my entire being. I had walked to get to the library and had seen many people on my way here, and none of them had looked at me peculiarly. But I had yet to look at myself in a mirror yet.

I quickly looked into the dirty mirror. I had no face.