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I've considered it many times while trapped in this hell, yet I find no need for it. The cyanide pill lodged in my back tooth is a fake because it’s one I switched myself. It will grant me no salvation. I have no regrets, dying in such a way would leave too much unattended. After death I must remain a phantom, or at the very minimum attempt to keep my dignity as a “Master of Disguise”.
Sitting in this cell is rather depressing, though I have no way (or reason) to find company.
The guards stationed outside my cell do nothing but glare at me— I wouldn’t be surprised if they couldn’t wait for the gallows to swallow my soul and wish to strangle me myself— but don’t attempt to hold any conversation. I presume they cannot. It’s not in their job description to keep conversation with any inmate, let alone a… “special exception”.
The cell where they keep me is a unique one, fit for a man like myself. Every wall is padded and white, and the room is empty except for "necessary utilities”. My bed in the corner is a simple one, built using metal bars with a thin mattress on top. I was, unlike other inmates, also given a blanket (perhaps as a pity-present to further humiliate me) but my prison clothes won’t let me wear it. How useless, if you offer someone a gift you must remember if they can actually use it. Give a deaf man earphones and he’d laugh at you, give a blind man a pair of cinematic glasses and he’d remain confused, and give a man in an unremovable straightjacket a blanket…
Before I didn’t wear this jacket. They let me walk around in an orange jumpsuit like everyone else. I could blend in, once again, with the masses, despite wearing my own “true face”.
But that “true face” was the problem. It wasn’t mine. It couldn’t be mine. My face, my face… I wore so many and forgot how it felt to wear my own, it was horrifying… They could see me, every part of me, everything that shouldn’t exist, they could see everything I wasn’t meant to be—
I went off track, apologies to myself, and nobody else. After coming here, it seems my mind becomes convoluted with false assumptions, much faster than when I wasn’t here. A weakness, my biggest weakness, which I was never able to prevent. They trained me and taught me and I achieved perfection, so, why…?
I wasn’t perfect. I am not perfect. I was unable to achieve perfection, shouldn’t that have been obvious when the psychologist from seven years ago obtained a sample of my true voice which shouldn’t have existed? That should have been the start. I should have known my position back then, and yet…
…it doesn’t matter. Despite now being nothing but a lowly inmate, I remembered what they taught me. I had enough sense of mind to complete my final orders. They wouldn’t provide me safety if I returned, but nothing could prevent me from completing my instructions. I have a reputation to keep (or rather had one).
Sometimes regular, barred prison cells had sharp tools hidden somewhere in them. These were… “gifts” from previous inmates, who wished for nothing but to see the sun one more time. They weren’t considerably common, so it was a gamble when I searched every nook and cranny of my cell after “lights-out”. Lady luck was on my side when I uncovered a sharp knife from a crack in the wall— maybe she took pity on me— and at the time I had no care for who put it there, but now I wonder if it was a gift (or even a trap). The previous man in the cell… who was it? It didn’t matter.
In an emergency or an act of capture, I was instructed to discard all previous orders. I would find a weapon, specifically something sharp, which could cut through flesh. Then, the one thing which granted me nothing but the inability to achieve perfection, my own, true face…
I sound as if I’m a machine, though the description of my identity according to a psychologist I “knew” could be comparable. “The subject's emotions rarely fluctuate and they don’t experience feelings like normal people,” was what the profile said, or maybe that’s not what it said, and I made it up as an excuse to kill her.
But my final order… my final order was to destroy my true face— to grant myself the ability to become “perfect” and gain immunity from recognition.
So of course I went through with it.
After that, my memory is a blur. The cell floor was horribly cold, so much so that I considered lifting my face, but the pain didn’t let me do so. A guard must have screamed, then two, then three, and I was dragged away while a beautiful red liquid blinded my already hazy vision. I must have blacked out, because when I awoke I was in a hospital bed, my “true face” covered in bandages.
Had I finally done it? Had I managed to grant myself salvation, so I could die in peace?
Of course, I didn’t. Lady luck granted me the option to finish my orders, not fulfill my selfish desires.
A nurse placed a mirror in front of me, and took off the bandages.
And there it was.
The true face I was cursed to wear for life.
The true face that would haunt me until the day I die.
It was merely scarred, since “Modern medicine works wonders”. It looked as if I merely fell down a set of stairs, and could be passed off as an accident.
So then, I realized something. I would die a cursed soul. I wasn’t alive, but I would die with this face engraved into my flesh.
And now I’m here, in this special cell, waiting for my execution. They still demanded information from me, so the torture of interrogations wouldn’t end just yet. The jacket is to prevent me from attempting to grant myself peace, so I could not cut short the hell granted to me. Would such an opportunity be granted again? I suppose not. Security must have tightened, and a sweep for more tools was possibly conducted.
I must wait for the day of my execution, or the day someone my employers send comes to break me out. I would die either way. With my face revealed to the world my value was deemed null and they decided I knew too much. I will either be executed by the Law, or have my head chopped off by those who gave me my reason to exist.
I can only wait for death, though, if I try hard enough, I can force a guard to shoot me in the face. But such ideas are remarkably foolish and even laughable.
I won’t require faking insanity, because by then I'd have already gone mad.