Face Down

"Text messages are easier than phone calls—they give you time to construct a reality before committing it to someone else's memory."

"For fuck's sake!" I grumbled, the frustration boiling up from somewhere in my chest as Mum's number illuminated the screen for what felt like the hundredth time. Third call in less than an hour, actually—I'd been counting, each vibration drilling into my skull with increasing insistence. The phone buzzed against the desk like an angry insect, its persistence a jarring contrast to the quiet of my study.

"I'm not answering," I declared to the empty room, as though the device might comprehend my irritation and relay the message to its distant operator. The words felt childish even as they left my mouth, but I couldn't face Mum's voice right now. Couldn't navigate the careful dance of half-truths and misdirection whilst my mind was still reeling from Paul's outburst, Thelma's cryptic key, Kate's grief, Pierre's apocalyptic hints about mass evacuation.

The lies I was telling had started multiplying beyond my capacity to track them. Jamie in Melbourne, relationship problems. Kain somewhere that wasn't Clivilius. Joel simply missing rather than murdered, resurrected, and currently unconscious in an alien dimension. And now Paul—whatever story I'd need to construct to explain why my brother had apparently vanished from his life in Broken Hill.

The ringing ceased, leaving silence that felt almost accusatory.

Then came a different tone—the particular chime of a text message notification. Mum's name appeared on screen, and with it a fresh wave of the anxiety I'd been trying to avoid.

Greta: Have you heard from Paul?

I let out a heavy sigh, my shoulders slumping under the accumulated weight of everyone's questions and no one's answers. Despite my irritation—despite knowing that every interaction risked exposing the increasingly fragile architecture of my deceptions—some part of me recognised that ignoring Mum entirely wasn't sustainable. She was worried. She had every right to be worried. Her eldest son had apparently evaporated from his life, and the only person who might know anything, was apparently me, who'd developed a sudden allergy to phone calls.

As long as it doesn't make her try to call again, I reasoned, my fingers hovering above the screen in reluctant compromise. Text was manageable. Text gave me time to craft responses, to consider implications before committing words to the permanent record of family communication.

Luke: Yeah, Paul is in Hobart with me.

The lie flowed easily—too easily, perhaps. I was getting practiced at this, at constructing alternate realities for everyone who asked questions I couldn't answer honestly. The facility with which deception now came should probably have concerned me more than it did.

Greta: How did he get there? I thought he had no money!

Right. Because Paul's financial situation was common knowledge in the family, his struggles a frequent topic of concerned discussion at gatherings I no longer attended. The story needed consistency, needed to account for practical obstacles.

Luke: I bought him a plane ticket.

Another layer added, although technically, so far most of what I’d said had actually been factual. Paul had come to Hobart. And I had paid for his ticket.

Greta: Is he okay? Claire is worried. I think she's taking the kids to her sister's in Queensland.

The mention of Claire sent a spike of something complicated through my chest. Paul's wife, left behind without explanation, worried enough to be relocating their children. The ripples of what I'd done—of what I was still doing—spread further than I could track, touching lives I'd never intended to disrupt.

But you did intend it, the honest part of my brain supplied. You knew taking Paul would affect Claire. You knew it and you did it anyway.

I pushed the thought aside. There wasn't room for that kind of self-examination right now. There was only the next message, the next half-lie, the next layer of semi-fiction that would keep everyone calm enough to stop asking questions I couldn't answer.

Luke: He's fine. They had a massive argument and he just needs a little break. I'll get him to call you.

The words appeared on screen, innocent enough on their surface. A brother vouching for a brother. A family managing a marital rough patch through the age-old method of temporary separation and neutral ground.

None of it was completely untrue. Paul and Claire had argued—just not in any way that preceded his arrival in an inter-dimensional realm. But now, the break he needed wasn't from his marriage but from the alien dust that was apparently driving him fucking nuts.

But the lie of omission was told now, committed to text and family record.

I set the phone face-down on the desk, as though hiding the screen might somehow contain the deception I'd just propagated.

My mother was worried about her sons.

She had no idea how worried she should actually be.