Sliding Faces

Saturday 30th August

It was not uncommon on a Saturday afternoon in London to walk through a park and come across a group of teenagers sitting on a bank staring at what clouds remained in the clear blue summer sky. Today it was not a group nor was it teenagers, it was a man in his late twenties lying on the grass, dreamily staring at the clouds alone. To any observer he was very clean cut man, short brown hair, light stubble, dark eyes, handsome in his own way.

"Excuse me," she said, "Are you okay?"

Kevin was startled, very rarely did anyone talk to him, let alone a girl. He sat up looking dazed for a moment whilst his eyes adjusted to the light. The silhouette slowly gained features as his eyes adjusted to the new focus, first her dark brown hair, almost black, with pink tips at the end, next her eyebrows, nothing particularly special to say about them except the bar sticking through the left one caught Kevin's attention, and then there was the piercing through the lip. Kevin didn't really have a type, but if he did she definitely wasn't it, however he felt himself strangely attracted to her. She was plain but exciting, a pretty face that had been pierced just enough to give her bland features some character.

She wore a white t-shirt with something that resembled a band name he had never heard of, short denim shorts and hi-top black converse. She looked concerned that he was now staring at her body and not saying anything, that's when he finally snapped out of his daze.

"Err, yeah fine, I was just relaxing a bit that's all. Looking for things in the clouds." He was still blinking from the adjustment to the new light.

"It's just me and my friends saw you here three hours ago as we went to the shops, you don't seem to have moved since."

"Three hours? Is that how long I've been here?" Glancing down at his watch, "Bloody hell."

He forced himself up on to his feet, she stood several inches shorter than his long lanky frame. She was with three friends who were still standing on the closest path staring at the two of them, one was incredibly attractive, way out of his league. The other two were most definitely not but Kevin still could not help but be fascinated by the girl in front of him.

"Sorry, do you mind if I ask your name?" Taking the plunge, it was so out of character for him to ask a girl for any information what-so-ever.

She giggled, briefly staring down at the ground smiling, "I'm Victoria...Anyway I've got to head back, we come through here a lot, so maybe I'll see you again...?"

"Kevin, my names Kevin." He smiled as she walked away and peered back over her shoulder.

For the duration of his walk home Kevin could not get Victoria's face out of his mind, he felt a little like a stalker but surely that was an invitation, "maybe I'll see you again." It sounded like she was hoping to bump in to him again. His journeys normally involved a significant amount of people watching. He imagined what they did for a living, where they had been that day, what they were going to do when they got home, but today the walk was a blur, he couldn't focus.

Before he knew it he was home. He let himself in to his studio flat and popped open his laptop and sat on his sofa bed. His next column was due later that evening and he would have to submit it soon. As his phone uploaded the images he had taken that day he had his obligatory browse on social media, he had searched Victoria but with very little information to go on he struggled to find her, it was unlikely they had any friends in common seeing as his totalled sixty-three, all people he had gone to school with, most he had never spoken to.

He didn't have a bad job, the pay was pretty rubbish but enough for a one man to get by. He had been writing a blog a few years back when a magazine had got hold of him and asked him to write a few hundred words every week. He had titled it 'Sliding Faces.' It was all about seeing faces in objects and naming them, creating a life story for them, making them come alive. Sure it was a little weird but people seemed to enjoy it:

As I stared at the clouds in the park I had seen the face of Maria, an Italian American. She had been beautiful when she was younger but the years had caught up with her, the years and 3 kids. Her well defined features had all the men falling at her feet in her early twenties until and one man had swept her off hers. He had been handsome, charming and chivalrous that was until he had returned from Iraq and the night terrors had begun.

He had lashed out when she had tried to wake him from his nightmares. The heavy hand soon became more frequent than the shock received after awaking from a nightmare. She dreamed of leaving him but with two small children and one on the way she wanted desperately to keep the family together, plus every now and again she saw the man she had fallen in love with and thought she could save him.

Maria was a church goer, she had been since she was young, she never forced it on the children and her husband had given up on it since his return, he said the war had made him lose his belief in a god. This is when I had seen her, reaching out from the clouds. She had left the church, it had been a lovely service, father Johnson was such a great priest, she had told him how well her children were and that her husband was still struggling with the nightmares, she had omitted parts of the story.

She sat alone in her car crying, she had kept it together so long and it had all just broken out. She just needed someone to talk to.

"Wow that was dark," he whispered under his breath. Rarely were his columns so grim, normally there was something that had gone wrong in their life but they were recovering. Poor Maria was still in the depth of it. He didn't really even remember writing the majority of it, it wasn't until he read back he understood her story. Staring at his laptop he had wondered if he did this every time, maybe he was just noticing going in to autopilot this one time.

He reread and reread the column until it was perfect and sent it to the editor. He closed his laptop and sighed, rubbing his eyes. Looking over at his clock it was half nine, time for cup of cheap coffee and a book to go to bed with

That night he dreamed of a girl, one with dark brown hair and pink tips and how she couldn't see him, however hard he tried. He chased her, calling out her name. She was always just out of earshot. When he stopped she did, when he ran she did. He bumped into people as he waded through the misty air, they told him to stay away but he just couldn't, he couldn't let her out of his sight.