Faceless

Chapter 1

It was 7:30 in the morning, I reached for my stale coke and took a sip. I gagged a little as I swallowed the flat drink, everything around me was still. I could faintly hear the birds chirping outside in the cool breeze. I got out of bed and stretched.

I stayed up all night organising the school photos for the following term. I yawned and walked out my room, downstairs and into the kitchen where a packet of chips was lying on the ground with a bottle of soft drink. Stale. Like the coke.

I sizzled some eggs and got out some juice as I sat on the table to see what I had done the night before. I went from photo to photo to photo seeing if the printing or the sizes or pictures were right. I looked at the last photo of the graduating class, I smiled, I loved all the kids I worked with, I was about to flip over the photo, but something caught my eye. A girl, her face was blurred out, probably the printing. I yawned again and got out my computer to print the photo again. I looked at the picture once more and saw her whole body in the picture was grey. 'that's odd' I thought 'I've never seen this happen with the printer, it's a perfectly normal printer and usually prints just fine'. I shrugged it off and grabbed the paper from the printer and looked at the girl again, it was normal. I thought 'it was probably just the printer', I swapped out the photo with the good one and threw the other in the bin. Everything was silent until I heard the phone ring.

"Hello" I answered, but no one replied.

"Hello, who's calling?" I asked, I rolled my eyes when no one answered and hung up. Just as I put the phone down it rang again,

"Hello", no answer.

"Stop calling this line or I'll call the police-" I said to try and scare off whoever was calling, but then I heard someone talk.

"Lippy? What are you talking about?" I heard.

"Oh- oh Charlie in sorry" I said holding my head from my headache,

"It's okay, how are you?" she asked.

"Hungover" I joked.

"Yeah, yeah so did you print the photos?"

"Yeah, but something weird happened with the printer".

"What- what do you mean?"

I giggled, "well, I must have printed a photo of the graduating class last night and I was looking through the photos and saw one of the girls face was blurred out like it had been rubbed out" I said.

"Huh, hey what girl was it?" she asked again.

"Oh, I think her name was Milly, why?"

"Oh, n-no reason"

I was confused and let her go, saying I had to do some more paperwork though I was just going to go out for some coffee.

As I got in the car and closed the door, I got out my phone and scrolled through the endless photos of kids over the years, and landed on the one that we were talking about over the phone. I zoomed in and saw her; she was wearing a flowy pink dress for graduation. 'I wonder why she sounded freaked out on the phone' I thought, I shrugged it off and went to get coffee.