Story 1 - The Unclaimed face

Welcome to the first story of Cassandra’s Tales and Truths, an anthology series utilizing the wisdom of the Delphic Maxims. On this episode, we visit one of the three main maxims: Know thyself. Do you know who you are? It’s actually a pretty important question.

(Beep. Music fades in)

Before I opened my eyes, I felt the faint chill that came from my body being pressed against a cold floor. It drew the heat from me, but there was nothing else there. I was left without any sort of comfort to chase this chill away. A faint shadow of all that panic should be flickered in me. My body called out to its many pieces, and the answer was an unarticulated wholeness. Panic’s shadow dissipated. I inhaled to chase it away, and that was all it did. No scent or smell greeted me, and I realized that I was alone in a way I had never known before. 

I opened my eyes. There was a vast space before me. It was endless, and there was dotting the horizon. It was empty space, unoccupied and unblemished. 

Slowly, I pushed my body up, and for my achievement, I was rewarded with yet more nothing. There was the floor beneath me, this cold surface whose presence was demanded lest I fall into oblivion, (Music fades out and new music fades in) but there was nothing else but the implication that in the distance somewhere were the walls that form that space, this room, this void, this emptiness. But that was an assumption. I was given nothing to support it.

My mind raced with no track to guide it, no sign post to beckon it to slow down, and no place to stop and rest. Panic’s shadow returned, more demanding than before. And I did not know what to do. My first instinct was to call out, but I opened my mouth to find that I had no voice. My hands reached up towards my throat, but they could not find their way. I, too, was absent but0t here, and I did not have it in me to dread this disjointed state. I had no strong will or impulse. There was nothing in me, and there was nothing around me. This was equilibrium, but this was not a place to rest.

The stretch and pull of the horizon nipped at my skin as it tried to get a stronger grip on me. It had already succeeded in some ways. My eyes had already been ensnared, leaving me staring out into the distance and unable to break free. It was the beginning of my end, I knew. This was the hook that will pull me to my demise. I knew it, but I feel nothing about it. 

Instinct arose again. This time, it gave me the compulsion to step back and away. Then again and again. In technical terms, I took three steps, but I certainly didn’t cover much distance. A warring instinct has objected, and it made a valid point. I did not know where it was I was stepping. I did not know what there was behind me. 

It was a plight I found easy to dismiss. Was it possible for things to be worse, I briefly wondered. But in all likelihood it would be much more of the same. That was what it meant to be immersed in such nothingness. But if that was what it was, then I had nothing to lose. With that, doubt was silenced. So I turned around. (Music cuts) And it was not nothing. 

(New music fades in)

My breath caught. I was quickly overwhelmed by the sight before me. I no longer had nothing but a sea of paintings standing upright before me. Frames of all styles and materials stood as steadfast as tree trunks with branches locking them to another, to an embrace that protected the fruit deemed by human hands more precious than anything nature could provide. It was a strong message but an unclear one because I could not see what these fruits were.

It did not have to be that way. Curiosity beckoned me forward. Though the argument was not persuasive, I obliged its calls. After all, what choice did I have. I still dreaded the pull of oblivion that was now behind me. It could have reached out and seized me at any moment. I was not so far away as to be safe, but what was ahead promised some level of increased safety, though I could not be sure how much it offered. It was better to have the coverage of these trees. Whatever else they may have brought just seemed irrelevant.

I did not think. I only walked.

(Music cuts.)

Faces, I saw suddenly as I crossed over an invisible threshold.

(Music fades in)

  I was standing before a sea of portraits. Human faces immortalized in different paints stared back at me from their resting places on their canvas homes. Each crafted with a different set of strokes each having their own personalities just like the faces they construct. There was beauty all around, but aesthetics aside, I found it all deeply unsettling. It was the shift, I suspected, as a way to dismiss the thought. It was a drastic terrain change to go from nothing to a sea of eyes staring me down, questioning me. The questions were just as numerous and varied as the faces; they did not want a single answer. They wanted something far beyond me, but I knew I cannot offer up what they seek. I was still empty. I had nothing to give. 

One picture poked out from the masses. A corner of it strayed from the de facto border its peers created. The lacquered wood created a sharp line, but the dark mahogany brought a warmth that welcomed me. And unlike some of the pictures that towered over me, it stood hardly beyond my gaze. It served as good a doorway as any, and I came closer to see the full-body image of an older man. He was middle-aged, I would say, but those things are hard to judge. However long he had, it had been enough time to put on a bit of weight, which balanced out his square shoulders, bold and imposing but held back as a display of internal control. His fully body posture conjured up a heroic image. His expression was confident as well. Allknowing, some would say. I would say. That was what my eye was drawn too: this place to lay my head and rest. But I knew I couldn’t do that. This was just a picture, nothing more. 

And yet, I fell into temptation. I pulled closer to the picture and almost felt it come alive.

“Who are you?” the man seemed to ask me.

I did not know. I did not know who I was. I tried to avoid the question and lifted my gaze to hazel eyes beneath a fiery red mane. I beseech him. Comfort me, I silently begged. Do not rebuke me.

“Who are you?” the man asked again.

I did not know. I tried to feel for my body again, but I could not make sense of the silence that came back to me. I did not know where my body was. Or what that made me. 

“I am lost,” I told him.

My plight did not move him. “Who are you?” the man asked a third time. 

I tried to draw closer, pushing past his question and the answer I could not give. But though I could feel something there for me to find, something just behind him, it was not mine to claim, and I was gently pushed away. 

(Music fades out)

“I do not know who I am,” I finally said.

(Music fades in)

Such was the truth. I did not have a body. I did not have a name. I carried nothing but apprehension and a sense of being lost. This was the truth. This was my reckoning: adrift with no anchor in sight. Once again, my plight--now in its fullest form--was not met with compassion. Now that he had the answer he wanted, he would ask nothing more. He gave me silence. A cold and isolating silence. I could not stand it. His hand was set in gesture towards the rest of the forest. Perhaps it was an artistic choice, true, but I took it as a sign and wandered deeper in the forest of different woods and metals, seeking another face.

I was found by many. Eyes seemed to follow me as I moved about. These faces were asking me the same question I could not answer. Their shared dedication to an impossible conversation suffocated me. I did not need air in this state I was in, but I could not breathe. 

This was not a forest or a sea but a prison. I was trapped between two terrible storms, having to chose between navigating this maze or throwing myself into the oblivion I had just left. I did not know which one was worse. Either way, I would be swallowed alive.

After some time, I drew closer to another painting: of a young woman in an iron frame. She was a water-color creation and pulled away from the foreground but not begging her to follow you. She was hard to see, but I think that was her point. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

But dark hair and eyes stood out to me, though. The other features of her face, however, were unfamiliar. They stood as reference to a place I had never been. Those eyes pulled me deeper, past a body I had been taught to disregard for its imperfections. I did not find her unpleasant to look at, all the same, but it was those eyes that drew me in. Those eyes were disconnected from the world before her, but they had a world within them. She was not friendly, but she was wise. 

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered again. 

I tried the same thing. I tried to approach her only to be pushed away.

“This is not your face,” she said. “You must find your face.”

That was an impossible act in and of itself. 

I told her my truth. “I do not remember my face.”

“You don’t think you do,” she said. “But it calls you. If you listen to your voice, you will find yourself.”

But I didn’t know my voice either. I did not have it. I had tried to yell out, but nothing had come. 

Panic returned to me with its sister Distress. It was content to abandon me out in the distance, but now that I was here, it found me. It attacked me and beat me down. From this pain, I wanted to cry and scream and so much more, all at the portrait before me. Nothing I had heard made sense. Nothing could help me. I needed help. 

I glanced around. No face seemed familiar or all that willing to help me. (Music fades out)

I was stuck here: with her. (Music fades in) But at least she spoke with me. The sound, however light and useless, of her voice was not nothing. I was sick of nothing. I was desperate for something. And so I did not want to let go.

“Stay with me,” I begged.

“I am not there,” she replied. 

“Then come here,” I urged her.

With a soft undercurrent of genuine sadness, she told me, “I cannot go back. Find yourself, and your way out will be revealed.”

There was more to say to her. A thousand words lingered on my lips, but I could sense that she was gone. She had said her piece, and I was left to figure out what she meant. 

Her words handed me some sort of path, however invisible it was. It was not comforting, but it was something to do. So at her behest, I wandered through the many frames, glancing about, trying to figure out which one was mine. The few pictures I started with became dozens, which became what I thought were hundreds as I searched, staring into eyes of every color hoping I had found the right ones. Faces of every shape and skin of every colour surrounded me, but none of them belonged to me. At some point, they started to blend together, and I could only feel the pull behind the paintings, a different pull than what came before. This one was softer, less demanding, and one that sought my wholeness. It did not pull at my pieces to rip me asunder but promised more than this or even more than I could imagine. And it waited behind each of the paintings. But I couldn’t have it. Not until I found my face.

Before despair could set in, I thought it best to be more methodical. I looked at all the beautiful faces, I looked at all the smiling faces, and I looked at those who commandeered the foreground. None of them were me. I looked at those at the helm of things, I looked at those who placed before crowds with roses at their feet, and I looked at those who bathed in praise and admiration. None of them were me. 

There was disappointment in these failures, but it wasn’t what one might expect. It wasn’t that I wanted to be any of those people, though I’m sure it would have had its benefits. It was that I didn’t want to be where I was anymore: trapped in this sea of prying eyes and nothingness. I wanted more. I wanted whatever stood behind the canvases, a world of mystery but so much fuller than where I was. My face was the door to it, specifically the only door I could pass through. Regardless, I couldn’t seem to find her. And I wrestled with what that meant.

The only thing worse than searching was stopping to rest. My stillness opened me up to the judgment of prying eyes as they stabbed my core with invisible pins, unsaid comments that I could still feel and a cold chill worse than the floor outside. This dread led to a dangerous thought. Maybe the void would be kinder than this search, I thought to myself. The memory of being pulled apart lingered, but it was not so fresh as to still bring pain. As I remembered it, accurately or not, it was far more tolerable than this. Maybe I should return to where I was. Maybe that was the fate that was assigned to me, and whatever was on the other side of these paintings was never meant for me. It seemed plausible. Increasingly so with every face that rejected me. Despite how many portraits were waiting, I had already searched through so many with no sight and no hope. Worse yet, exhaustion continued to set in. The will to search was waning, and I had nothing to supplement or replace it. And I would be left alone to be picked apart by teeth and not air.

But then I heard it: a soft hum. A hum that I knew was mine. Quiet and unassuming but still present. Relief smothered the panic rising in me, and all I could do was race towards it. I moved as quickly as I could, shaking off the eyes that had plagued me so. Their questions were to be answered soon enough, and they did not matter to me, anyway. 

My face awaited me, and I thought of nothing else. It would adorn my form. Soon enough, I would slip into my skin and into whatever awaited behind the painting, and I would do so without hesitation. For whatever came with it was certainly better than this.

(Music fades out. Beep.)

Cassandra’s Tales and Truths is a production of Miscellany Media Studios. It is written, edited, produced, and performed by MJ Bailey with music from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. More information and transcripts can be found at oracleofdusk.online. That’s one word. Oracleofdusk.online. Thanks!