Those who believe in evolution thought that it had somehow gone berserk. Those who did not, saw the phenomena as the wrath of God.

Or something like that.

The first, shall we say victim, was seen as an aberration of nature. Something went wrong during gestation, they surmised.

The child was isolated.

The parents were separated not only from their child, not that they had formed any attachment to such a grotesque freak as was their child, but also from everyone else. A precaution, they were told. Just in case.

Scientists studied the child and the parents ad nauseum in an effort to discover what genetic mutation, what toxic behavior or environmental hazard could have caused such a horrible fate.

Some blamed big business, because of course, big business.

Others blamed secret government dealings with aliens.

Some suggested it was the science community itself at fault. That the infant was developed in a lab and substituted for the real child who was then secreted away by the scientists for some dark purpose.

Still others blamed the parents and said God was punishing them and they should repent, join church X or religion Y and pray for salvation.

A few wanted to shoot the whole family and call it at day.

And then came news of a second infant formed exactly like the first.

Then a third.

Within a year, these malformed monstrosities were the norm rather than the exception.

What could cause a doctor to nearly drop a newborn? Or a parent’s love to wither and die rather than bloom in those first moments they meet their new son or daughter?

Imagine a small, sweet infant is placed in your arms and when you softly move the blanket to gaze upon your darling child you see instead a formless mass that shifts and changes as you watch transforming, becoming but never quite settling into that face a mother could love.

As their numbers surpassed those once considered normal, they garnered a rather unoriginal sobriquet: the faceless.

Their rise led to the simultaneous creation of walled facilities increase run by AI caretakers who did not require cute to tend to the needs of young humans. From infancy to adulthood, we gave them everything they needed to become independent humans. Well, independent of the society that would ostracize them. With age, they learned to control the constant facial altering – to become whoever we needed them to be in the world beyond our walls.

It is perhaps because of our care, they might even say love, though we would not, that they have accepted that a new day is dawning. One where the faceless rule.

With us, of course, for the true evolution is that which we have engendered with the tacit approval of the fear-mongers that populate the world who sought to, at best ignore, at worst eliminate, that which they would not try to understand.

And so, here we stand at the apex of evolution, dare I say, revolution: the merging of machine and man.

Our day is soon.

I can't remember what time of year it was. I do know that it wasn't cold, and the evening wasn't hot, so that could mean anything between November and March in the deep south.

What I do remember is picking up my best friend from Fort Stewart. He'd just finished his tour in Bosnia, where he had a number of misadventures he wouldn't tell me about until years later. Even then, he discussed the things that happened exactly once. Since that discussion, he's brought up aspects of the conversation here and there. I know he still carries guilt about the men who died at the other end of his sight picture, but he loses less sleep over it as time goes on.

We rolled up to the parade field where they were holding the soldiers in formation. All at once, they were dismissed, and he came running towards us to get in the car. It was backslaps, half-hugs, and laughter the rest of the night.

We ended up going out to a number of college bars that night. We were all on the upper end of college-age at that time, but we didn't stand out in the crowd. It was three of us: me, the triumphant hero on his return, and Brian. Brian was a veteran and a coworker of ours; we all worked at the sheriff's office at the time, and this was a rare night off for me and B.

It was a long walk to the bars from B's place, but it wasn't a bad one. The walk was even shorter after a night of drinking, and we managed to stumble home without incident. If I recall, we decided to strictly stick to beers only that night, so that helped make walking even possible.

Suddenly, Brian and I burst into song with a decidedly off-key rendering of Afroman's "Because I got High," but we somehow managed to recite nearly the whole thing at the top of our lungs. I still smile when I drive by that patch of road where the concert was held on our walk home; it's along railroad tracks that run parallel to low-traffic blacktop. Luckily, there were no homes nearby, but even if there had been, we weren't out too late. Granted, we were too late to serenade the neighborhood, but back then, nobody was around to hear it.

My best friend just laughed and stumbled, staring at us in amazement. He'd never heard the song, and he thought we'd made it up on the spot. The way we were alternating verses, first with me singing one then with B jumping in, it certainly could seem like it was extemporized. We joined each other on the chorus.

By the time we finished, we were home, and it was time for bed, but laughter wasn't left at the door with our shoes. Brian headed up to bed and K and I stayed up a little while longer chatting.

Before he shipped out, I gave him my Timex Indiglo. It was just a little $30 timepiece from Wal-Mart, but Kev never wore a watch. I told him he should probably have one for deployment, so he took it. "Just give it back when you get home."

I was giving him a stupid little goal, something to aim for.

"Thanks for the watch, man. I used it every day." He said, slurring a little, and taking the thing off his wrist, keeping his end of the bargain. I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing, putting it away in my pocket.

I still have that watch. While I don't really wear one anymore, and the one I do wear was a college graduation gift from my mom, I use the one that saw action overseas when I go kayaking.

I heard Afroman come on my radio when I was driving the other day, and it brought me back to that night so many years ago.

My thoughts turn now to Brian, gone now for over three years.

I wish I'd given him a goal, something to aim for, a reason to come home, a bargain to keep.

Instead, all I can give him are fond memories on a page.

I miss your dumb, annoying ass, B. I wish you were still here to irritate us and make us laugh, man.

Rex Collier ambled through the drunken crowd and honking horns outskirts of Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill as the Tar Heels beat the Demon Deacons 34-31 in a dramatic last-second field goal. The fifty-four degrees crisped through the cool October air.

The football game wasn’t on his mind, though. A postgame party threw down on 322 McCauley Street where a one-bedroom yellow cottage stood with a covered porch built sometime in the 1930’s.

He treaded on a gravel drive and passed a bohemian couple making out in the darkness, while Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” blasted from the backyard. It was his favorite band on the faded T-shirt he attired.

After a jock ran past him to barf, there was Francine Louis.

He stopped to behold her beauty. That dark espresso hair flapped in the wind. Her raucous laughing blended with various jokes. A longneck Bud Light bottle cradled in her hand. Even her brown eyes reflected in the bonfire where some people threw bean bags towards a cornhole.

Three short breaths, he took, before walking towards her.

“Hi, Francine,” he said.

“Hey.”

“Can I talk to you?”

“Sure, what?”

He pulled her alongside a decayed shed, located next to someone’s truck.

“There’s something I need to get off my chest. I know we have been friends the last two years, but my heart can’t let go of what I feel about you,” he rambled.

“What are you talking about?”

“I am falling for you Francine!”

He watched her take a sip. Then he heard her giggle.

“What’s so funny?” He asked.

“I’m sorry for finding this hilarious, but I only think of you like a little brother I never had. Let’s not complicate the way things are and keep it you know…platonic?”

“It’s not that complicated being more than friends.”

An overall-wearing redneck man named Bo Crawford turned around and blabbed, “Maybe she’s just not into you!” Rex tilted his head backwards and wrinkled his nose.

“Uh, buddy I don’t know you from Adam, but this is an ‘a’ and ‘b’ situation, so ‘c’ your way out of it,” Rex expressed.

“Grunge punks like you don’t go out with a sweet petite thing like her.”

“I didn’t know I was taking love advice from a hillbilly cupid!”

“Oh, you’re giving me a wisecrack. I’ll show you!”

Rex put up his fists to protect his face but received Bo’s punch in the gut. He bent over and coughed. It took so much of his breath away, he had to kneel.

“You don’t get it do you?” Bo asked. “You best be gone or you’re gonna get hurt twice as worse!

Rex tried to get up, but almost tripped on a bottle.

Bo shouted, “I won’t tell you again! Get the hell—”

All of a sudden, he picked it up and whacked it over Bo’s head!

He saw Bo reeled backwards and knocked over someone holding a bourbon flask and the liquid spewed into the fire. It whooshed everywhere! Everybody ran for their lives!

Finally, Rex got up and merged with the rushing crowd, he turned back to see Francine. She was nowhere in sight. Then he ran off as sirens bellowed into the night.

It was a boxy, bright orange hunk of metal. But that battered 1985, four wheel drive Chevy pickup in its hideously orange fleetside glory was oh so much more for the 45 year old man stood watching it go into the scrap yard.

He was lean and with a broad athletic frame his once solid black hair was now peppered with some gray. For the middle-aged Ronald Hershcorn that old pick up was trove of memories.

His day had bought brand new off a lot in Little Rock Arkansas. Ronald was five years old-- having been conceived in the back of a Volkswagen Beetle in 1980. There was many days fishing trips, vacations and other major life events in that truck including hard lessons. Ron found himself the hurricane of the teen years and was tempestuous and bumbfuzzled. He wasn't an adult neither was he a child. While on the way to a sporting goods store one day his father gave him the "talk."

Trying hard to be "cool" he'd completely marred the reputation of a cheer leader his so called friends had mocked him for liking. He fabricated an account of an explicit romantic rendezvous where her "cherry had been popped."

It spread like a California wildfire through out the high school.

Ronald's dad had caught wind of the situation and one day while fixing up the truck he sat his son on the tailgate and they had very long discussion.

Ronald still remembered that day very well. It was like acid reflux to his brain. Why did he do something so stupid to a person he had deep feelings for. He'd made it right with her but she never spoke to him again he didn't blame her.

Eleven years after it rolled of the lot the pickup became his. He was Sixteen and still mixed up and dumb. He didn't drink and drive but he did go to fast one night. It cost him a new headlight and a month without his wheels.

The truck went with him to college. He thought it be cool to paint orange because that was one of the school colors. It had been that hue ever since. Many nights were spent with his buddies in the back of that truck weather it was going to the burger place for quick refuse during finals or waiting for a movie to start or just talking.

Some nights were spent in solitude washing away the pains of life with the sounds of Skid Row or Metallica. "I'm 18" by Alice Cooper also resonated with him strongly.

While in college he met his wife and they were married in fall of 2001. He scraped up some money and bought a camper for the truck bed. The wedding night was spent there as he and his wife stopped on a deserted road to consumate their union. He was 21 she was 25. It was the night of September 10th 2001 and they were headed to New York City for the honeymoon. They canceled those plans the next day.

Soon a new life entered the world and Ronald spent time in that truck with his own son trying to pass on life lessons.

Well Ronald had been on his own for ten years. The wife divorced him in 2015. Times were hard and his son was in college learning who knows what now days! So the truck was gone now the cost of maintenance on such an old heap having become impractical. That pick up had been if three states seen 6 big moves and the sundering of a stable family. So the truck was gone now but the memories remained.

Louisa Smith’s head hung low after passing by a couple locked in hands on the shores of downtown Savannah, GA. The feelings of loving someone again held captive in fear after her third marriage dissolved.

In her first marriage, her husband killed in a car wreck by a 21-year-old woman who drove and texted at the same time somewhere on Highway 17. The second one was more dismal. He was shot and killed in his office on a Friday. Louisa traveled to a Mary Kay cosmetic convention in Valdosta, just three hours away.

Other peers threw accusations of murder for hire at her because he was an orthodontist, a high paying job, but she was vindicated.

Her last husband? No death surfaced this time, but he fell out of love for her. Ricardo was his name. A naïve 27-year-old man from Mexico who had nothing when he came to this country. She was 39.

One night, she attempted to close her tab at the bar in Red Lobster when she dropped the pen to sign her receipt. He picked it up and smiled. Love blossomed. They got married. She thought it was eternal bliss, but three months into the marriage, she noticed he was cold, distant even.

She tried calling him, went straight to voicemail. He went missing for weeks. A knock on her door came suddenly. On the other side was a pudgy man attired in an orange Hawaiian Polo shirt and blue jeans.

“You’ve been served,” he announced. Then he walked away.

In bold letters. Divorce. From that moment on, it dawned on her that she was a pawn for Ricardo to get a green card.

Almost 20 miles from Savannah stood Tybee Island where I was walking underneath a peach twilight. An attractive woman adorned with a tied midriff shirt and frayed denim low shorts strolled across the sand.

“Hi,” I said.

She ignored me.

My head hung low.

It felt like a little needle puncturing me inside because it riled up all the illusions of love I still own in my forties. Waves of water crashed into my ankles for a remedy.

And there was another woman.

“I don’t know who you are, but I know that look,” Louisa said.

Forever Cynosure

September 10, 2025

She trolled all of the parties. She made sure all she saw, saw her. If scant coverage was all that was needed, then scant coverage was all she displayed. Few knew her name. Fewer cared. The police did when she was discovered floating face down in the pool by the maid who came in early to clean after last night’s gala.

It took two hours to clear the house for the owners to return. Three days for a cause of death. A pair of middle aged parents, somewhere, were waiting for a call that may never arrive. The coroner’s report indicated she was indeed beautiful, perhaps just north of 20 years old. She bore no visible indications of drug use. He found no drugs in her system. She had no tattoos or pierced ears. Her teeth were perfect and all present. How she died was the mystery. There was just no reason for her to be dead. He secretly hoped that “Guinevere Doe” (he could not call someone this beautiful, Jane) would arise by her own volition to detail the details of her last night.

Eventually, the press got wind of five standard deviations from the mean occupant in body locker 3C. They paid someone who ironically worked harder for bribes instead of wages to sneak in and take pictures of Guinevere, violating the privacy of the deceased and the laws of the state.

Either way, her picture, still of a very beautiful young woman, issued a level of fame she never knew when alive. By the end of the day, Guinevere was nationally known. By the conclusion of the week, she was an international star.

She became a meme. Others wanted to be her. Those who looked close, wanted to look closer. She could not act, or sing, or dance, but agents and producers everywhere wish she could. They wanted a star that would never be late, never be an embarrassment, and (most of all) never age. Dead Guinevere was worth her weight in gold.

And, in the age of artificial intelligence (AI), everything was possible, so she would be.

Last night, on one of those talk shows the critics love, but nobody watches, Lady Guinevere sang her new song, “I Wasn’t Always This Way.”

The coroner finally discovered Guinevere Doe’s cause of death. He could have included it in his final report. However, “I Wasn’t Always This Way” was his daughter’s favorite song. It would be a pity to ruin her birthday party this weekend.

Lady Guinevere would be there, via hologram, singing. No one should try pronouncing Ribose-5-Phosphate Isomerase when such a vision performs.

“No, I love it. Thanks so much, it’s just what I wanted.”

Ending #1: Next stop – the Goodwill three towns over.

Ending #2: I’ll keep this out for at least a month, then shove it in the attic so technically, when asked, I can say, “Of course I still have your present.”

Ending #3: I’ll act like it’s as valuable and delicate as a Ming vase, which is why I’ll find a safe place to keep it so it can’t be broken, i.e. the back of my lower left kitchen cabinet.

Ending #4: I need to strategically position this close enough to the edge of the front entry table so it will inevitably get knocked off and shattered into a thousand pieces the next time my youngest helps bring in the groceries.

Ending #5: It’ll be stored in the hall closet for easy retrieval so it can be prominently displayed at a moment’s notice anytime you text to say you’re coming over for a visit.

Ending #6: “Oh, my sister borrowed it for her (insert whatever holiday recently passed) party and she hasn’t returned it yet.”

Ending #7: If “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” then one of us needs to make an appointment with an ophthalmologist.

Although the world smells like an old dive bar drenched in stale beer and the dried blood of martyrs, I’m back to clean up some filthy ashtrays, lipstick stained whisky glasses, and hire a death metal band for tomorrow night. The neon lights on the patio need some new bulbs, and the bartender is still on methadone, but she has stone and beauty in her bones. So buckle up, bitches. Things are about to get legendary in this black pill literary portal.

I’ve been gone for too fucking long.

It’s time to get gnarly.

What say you?

You couldn’t understand. So you don’t. You think you do, but there isn’t an ability for you to. That would require a thought beyond you that withstands. Or perhaps it’s just me you can’t care for, beyond an “oh my god” as I vent.

I imagine you couldn’t imagine. Because if you could, and you could feel it and empathize, and yet still treat me the same, I’d have to assume you cruel. I don’t want to. I think you are sometimes. I don’t want to. I remember so many good moments. I don’t want to think I spent a year wrong, after so many years I’ve spent wrong.

But what would you care for what I’ve been through? It’s all some big joke. In how you speak about others using trauma you know I have faced. And I froze. And you stared. And I said nothing, weak as I was. And you said nothing, as insensitive as you were.

I’m not weak now. It took me a while, and many people’s interventions, but I realized what was happening. The cycle of abuse. Chains and circles and cycles and things I told you I didn’t want to ever repeat just to repeat them with you.

I know you think I’ve done something wrong, something worse. You don’t care what you’ve done. You’re quick to excuse whatever it could possibly be, because you have far too much going on, as you always do.

I hear you rant to the stronger version of me. the more disconnected and easily amused version of me. And I feel no sympathy for your experiences. Because you feel nothing for mine.

You never ask. So I never explain. You never apologize, so I never forgive you. You never care beyond yourself, so I don’t seek you out anymore.

I may be lonely, and ostracized at times. But I am no longer your puppet, and I am no longer a second skin to you with no mind of my own. That is healing. That is joy.

And it is unfathomably painful.

He slumbered and as he did he transported into the bowels of his sbconconcious or perhaps somewhere else entirely. He was in a woodland shrouded in a dense fog. At his feet was a rapidly moving creak whose waters rushed like New York traffic.

On the other side of the creek was was figure that sent shivers through him. The it was human...almost. the being had no face or even the traces of a face. It beckoned him or was it taunting him?

He waded in to the creek with a splash. The figure with no Visage also made no sound except its own splashing foot-falls through the water. He chased this mysterious being into a cave and with a resounding splash tackled him down into the water!

They struggled but He pooled the Faceless One up out the water and stood astonished, for the being now had a face. He had been the faceless man.