"I know who you are."
WILLIAM PALMER
I know who you are.
You have given yourself away in comments you have posted in
certain internet discussion forums.
You have given voice to your innermost fears while I was listening.
Now those fears are eating you alive, though I, the listener, am of
course the dedicated agent of your immediate demise.
What is it about a face, even in its barest outlines, which can provoke
so much terror in you? All it takes is a few lines, really, to send
you into a panic.
The black rectangle of a mustache...
The hair combed down over the forehead in a certain fashion...
Why does that make you so nervous?
What sort of guilt have you been hiding, in order that a mere face
can inspire so much dread in you?
Remember when you were walking by that deserted shop
near your home the other night? The way you shuddered
to see that likeness staring at you from the placard I put up
because I knew you would walk by?
You hesitated there in front of that empty store. Then I saw
you, after glancing in both directions to make sure no one was
watching, reach out and rip at that picture, yanking it down and
tearing it into small pieces. You walked casually away, as
if nothing had happened.
Where does your hatred come from? After all, that placard
was really was not more than a blurry photograph of a male
face with a black, rectangular mustache and with hair combed
over the forehead in a certain familiar fashion.
Then, remember how upset you became over the clown on the
sidewalk, the clown with the large, helium-filled balloons? You
seemed terribly agitated because those white balloons bore a
black line-drawing suggesting the same photograph you ripped
from the window of the closed business.
Oh, I have set the fear growing in you, all right. The fear of a
face which represents nothing other than a few moments in history,
now long passed.
What is it but the face of a dead man, a man as dead as the Great
Kahn? Or as dead as Shakespeare's Yorick?
What harm can a face with a mustache do you? Why has
terror been gnawing at you with increasing ferocity?
Of course, it is because of me. I confess again that I am the
agent of the terrible things that have been happening in your life.
Things like the occurrence the other evening, when you finally
lost control completely. It started innocently enough, while
you went outside for a stroll in the fresh autumn air. Was it
your intention to slough off your fears, to show you had no
dread of the night?
I heard you scream and I saw you break into a panicked dash
for home.
Fingers shaking, you finally unlocked your door, after dropping
your keys twice. You darted inside and slammed the door
behind you.
I head you screaming and sobbing for a long, long time.
Why did you give in to your worst fears? After all, I was simply
following you in that white van, while playing martial music over a
loudspeaker. The music was not loud enough to wake the entire
neighborhood, but just loud enough so that YOU would hear,
and suffer terribly, especially because of the gigantic image of the
mustachioed face which was carefully painted (in washable
poster paint, of course) on the side of the van.
You are very predictable, you know.
You have now guessed the truth. I am going to keep after you,
going to find new, unexpected ways of tormenting you with the visage
and the memory of someone who has been dead many years.
I am going to inspire your fears to gnaw at the inside your belly until
they kill you because you are a cowardly worm afraid of the face
of a long dead person which can no more cause you physical harm
than can a dead fly.
I am going to keep on your case and finish you off very soon because
you are a quivering lump of squirming, irrational fears, and as such
you deserve to die screaming.
I am go to destroy you because, in alt.psychology--when the
wrong person was listening--you told everyone that Charles
Chaplin, the great actor, was the object of your virulent phobia...
Twinkles, the alt.genius.dwarf