By Carma Shortess
There is a man without a face, dressed in fine clothes and a hat. Some call him Death from his sunken, bleached visage, but he is not. Death is an inevitability, a certainty, a fact. Death has no more agency than you or I, no way to accelerate it's coming just as we have no way of slowing it. Death does not kill, yet the man without a face has. I’ve seen him shoot dead a bandit who accosted his carriage.
Should he not be Death, then people have called him the Devil, but he is not. The Devil is an angel, though fallen, a presence surrounds him, enrapturing. The Devil’s golden tongue could rouse the dead, spinning tales of gold and power to rouse the mass. The Devil may mislead but he does not lie, yet the man without a face has, I’ve seen him whisper sweet promises and reassurances into the ears of weeping men and women before vanishing into the night.
Should he not be the Devil, then people have called him a man, but he is not. Though I have dubbed him thus, he does not bleed, yet a man does. A man is tangible, grounded, yet the man without a face is not. He is otherworldly in his wanderings, traveling impossible distances at a whim. He has walked this earth for years and he will walk many more after I am gone. I do not know what he is, and though I have talked to him as an uneasy friend, he would not tell me.
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