Don't Blink!

Against The Light

I was with my best friend, Tory, at the end of the line, regretting we didn't bring umbrellas. Clumps of freshmen roamed around the campus led by a teacher and two alumni.

"New people, new faces, get your butts off here!" One of them, a big guy with curly hair mockingly said. Our teacher, dealing with the heat herself, heard but didn't mind. I rolled my eyes.

No trees could roof us in the perimeter. What only stood were tall buildings, eight to nine stories at least. Mostly covered in windows, mirroring everywhere. Reflecting the mid-noon sun that made my eyes hurt. It felt like my head was wrapped in a plastic bag. My vision was blurring and my breath was becoming heavy. The balloon of plastic around my head is white and it's getting smaller and smaller.

I asked Tory if she still had water left in her tumbler but it was a dessert when she checked. Dying of thirst, I closed my eyes and faced skyward. I feel the sun directly at me. As I savored my last remaining spit, I saw it.

Up there. High above one of the 9-story buildings. A figure of a person, against the light, looking down on us. Behind him, the sun had no mercy showing its full radiance. Making the shadow of that person's face so dark, I thought it was the abyss itself.

I stared back waiting for my eyes to adjust but no matter how hard I squinted, I still couldn't see its features. I could see the shape of his head, his shoulder, and his torso. It was a man. But his eyes, his nose, his mouth... where is it? As if his face was absorbing all light. Vanta Black, is that what they call it? The blackest black. More than that, it was disturbing, like OCD shit, telling me that it shouldn't be there. A dark spot in the great blue sky. But what irked me most was the way he could see me but I can't see him.

I pulled Tory's sleeve and asked, "Do you see that?"

"What?" she replied.

"Up there." I pointed.

"Where?"

"That silhouette."

She propped her hand like a salute and squinted her eyes too, "That's just a random person."

"But can you see his face?" I asked eagerly.

"No, my eyes hurt too much. What's wrong?"

"I can feel it. Even though I couldn't see his face, I could feel him staring at me."

"It's just the heat getting into you, Sam. Come, let's go under the shade."

In the distance, our teacher clapped her hands, ushering us to the nearest building.

But when I reverted my glance to the rooftop, there were two of them. Two imperceptible dark figures, menacingly, looking down on us. Then there were three.

Four. I looked at the other rooftops and there were more of them, watching us all around. Even on the buildings where the sun should be lighting their faces, they were still just pods of blankness.

New people.

New faces.

Are they after us?

Tory pulled my sleeve this time, "Everything okay?" she asked.

I reverted my glance to the rooftops once more and...

They were gone.

"Are you looking for something?" the big guy with curly hair asked.

"Nothing," I answered, "I thought I just saw someone up there."

"It didn't have a face, does it?"

"Yes," I gasped, "how'd you know?"

"I saw them too when I was a freshman. Some say those were the afterimages of those who passed away. Their empty husks that the soul or the face of the person left. They dwell on rooftops that are closer to the heavens to, you know, hopefully, get up there."

"Or they're just waiting to steal our faces," Tory interrupted,

"In our superstitions, it's a bad omen when you can't see someone's face. You know, that person would die and all?

I made no reply.

"Lighten up, think this one's gonna faint," the alumni said, patting my shoulder.

I tried to shake it off my mind, but I checked the rooftops just to be sure.

The tour ended in the oval with the sun still high. Our teacher decided we should take a photo before we went home. There, we took stances, Tory and I went to the back and held our poses. The camera clicked, we smiled, and made wacky poses. And when we looked at it, I felt a chill from my soles all the way to my spine.

"It's against the light," one of my classmates complained. So we tried another angle. And another. And another. But still... Tory and I looked at each other, blood already drained from our faces because in the photograph, our faces... our faces...

like those ominous shapes on the rooftops

they were all blank.