The Waiting Face

I saw him for the first time in a cheap restaurant, amid greasy plates and trivial conversations. His bald head gleamed like a freshly polished skull, and his eyes—too large for any human face—looked like spheres torn from a dream that should never have been remembered. He seemed vaguely familiar, as if I had seen him in another time, another body, another world. From that moment on, every place I went became a mirror that held him: at the end of the subway, crossing the street, watching me from the shadows of a hallway. He never spoke, never approached; he only waited, as if silence itself were a language my memory was meant to decipher. The fear eventually became unbearable. One night I hurled myself at him with the rage that had been building for days, determined to demand an explanation. Face to face, I discovered his skin was smooth, artificial—almost like a mold… and beneath that surface I recognized my own features, distorted, perfected, as if I were nothing but a poorly drafted sketch. I tried to scream, but his smile cut through me before the sound could. In that instant, I understood I had never been pursued. I was the shadow that had forgotten who its master was. The man with the oversized eyes wasn’t following me… he was patiently waiting for me to remember that I had always been his reflection.