The sound of a dog barking from a near-by yard was the first thing he noticed. Even before he could open his eyes the rhythm of the barking beat against his temporal lobes. Struggling against the breaking sunlight he opened his eyelids and regained his senses. The dawn climbed to a point in the sky that washed him light. The dew on the grass was still wet and loose blades clung to his right cheek like green and tan confetti. He pushed his body up and sat cross-legged on the lawn. He sighed and blinked his eyes awake before expressing a large wad of phlegm from his throat. His mouth was pasty and his tongue was a piece of old leather. A sharp pain shot up his spine to his neck. He leaned to one side and dug a half exposed, quarter-size stone from the ground beneath his left buttock. He looked around still holding the stone in his palm. He was seated in a bean shaped patch of grass in the backyard of a suburban home. A handful of beer bottles and cans rested like drunken frat boys, motionless on the lawn. A small tabby cat lapped at the mouth opening of a translucent brown bottle, pawing it gently trying to spill the last remaining sample of stale malted barley.
He threw the stone toward the feline, but it fled a moment before the stone struck the bottle, splitting in two. A lawn mower roared to life somewhere nearby. The sky above him was clean and blue and he felt strangely at peace. The squeal and rumble of a sliding glass door broke him from his thoughts. He glared, wide-eyed in the direction of the patio. The rear door of the house was not visible from his spot on the grass. He had no way of knowing what was coming his way. He was frozen from panic. His mind was not in control of his body.
Two small feet in tiny pink socks stepped to the edge of the concrete patio. A little girl with smooth olive skin stood staring at him. Their eyes locked and he was paralyzed. Fear filled him, but the girl showed no sign she was scared. He watched her as she watched him. Her black hair was parted neatly down the center of her scalp and drawn up in tight little pig-tails, braided and perfect. She wore a two piece pajama, printed with small pink, purple, and white hearts. She stared for several minutes.
“What happened to your face?” she asked in a small voice, breaking the silence. He sat dumb-founded at the young girl’s question.
“Ana?” a woman’s voice echoed, the girl turn to look behind her. “What are you doing out there, Mija? Are you talking to the neighbor’s cat again?”
“No, Mommy.”
“C’mon, Honey, come inside. You can’t play out here until your father cleans up his mess.” The woman stepped into view and scanned the yard slowly. The woman looked around at the mess of bottles and cans and sighed. The woman didn’t even know he was there. She redirected the girl back into the house. The girl look looked back at him briefly before stepping out of view. Her little lips mouthed the words ‘bye, bye’ and then she was gone.
He was alone again, on the grass under the clean sea of summer. The girl’s question still resonated in his ears. ‘What’s happened to your face? your face, your face, your face’. It was a chilling echo. He mustered enough strength to crawl to a nearby window and peered into the glass at his reflection. A monster looked back at him. The flesh that was visible was blistered and pink. His left ear was missing and the meat on the left half of his face was melted away exposing large portions of his skull. The zygomatic, maxilla, and mandible bones were charred and covered in black flaky soot. Where his left eye had been, a dark cavernous pit took its place of and most of his hair was gone. As he looked at the grotesque figure reflected in the window, the smell of burning flesh flooded his nose and the taste of blood washed over his leathery tongue. The lawn mower sound morphed seamlessly into a chorus of screams. He could suddenly feel an intense heat cover him like a blanket. The house and yard stared to fade and he collapsed beneath the window. He felt his consciousness slipping into black.
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