In a dream I had, there was a fuzzy TV screen. It was slowly revealing a picture, but I was too impatient to wait for the reception to clear up. Walking downstairs, I turn a corner looking in a mirror. I am without any features, a pale flesh-colored and perfectly flat face staring back without eyes. This doesn't scare me. I expected it somehow. Downstairs, a whole family of faceless people are in their nightly routine: Faceless Mom sewing, Faceless Dad with a blank bundle of newspaper, and Faceless Daughter listening to a CD player, volume up, and I can hear white noise coming through the earbuds hanging from her long, thin neck.

Someone is missing.

Running outside I call her name, but I only hear it inside my head. A gurgled, muffled noise only escapes my throat, but there is no tongue or lips to express the sound correctly.

Snapping out of first-person perspective and into a third-person viewpoint fixed on the TV screen upstairs the reception has cleared. My mother's ghost flickers onto the screen.


That's when I woke.