The Frowning Man

A Very Short Story

Friday afternoon. David Fellers, with a frown on his face, walked home from work. He had been frowning all week. His eyebrows were stuck in some kind of spasm, he reasoned, which made it impossible for him to stop. His coworkers had asked him whether he was quite alright, if things were okay at home, with the missus. His wife told him to stop looking so god-damn chagrined during every single meal. It was getting out of hand, David thought, and he felt his frown deepen.

“No, no, stop it, absolutely not!” he yelled as he furiously started massaging his face. “Relax, I need to relax.” The latter phrase turned into a rhythmic mantra as David synchronised it with his footsteps. Need to relax – step, step, step. Like a worker’s song, he thought, cringing at the thought, and his face contorted yet again. “I wish there was nothing to make me frown,” he mumbled. “I wish everything that makes me frown would just disappear.”

David saw his vague reflection in the windows of other people’s homes, floating through their living rooms. Across children’s toys and sleeping cats. Through expensive orchids and antique book collections and stacks of dirty dishes. There he was, insubstantial. He would never know his neighbours’ neighbours.

The front door needed a lick of paint. David rummaged around in his pocket, finding an elastic band, some questionable liquorish, a receipt from drinks at the pub last week, a coffee bar stamp card that he always lost before managing to completely fill it in, and finally, his blasted keys. Frowning, he brought the front door key to the front door. Then it disappeared. There was no front door key. Only the one for the back door and the one for the cellar. David could have sworn he had it in his hand two seconds ago. And yet, it was gone.

He forgot about his frown, which re-established itself in all its former glory, intending to stay on his face indefinitely, and ran around the house to try the back door. No good. Apparently he had hallucinated having seen the back door key, because that was now also gone. David ran back around and tried the doorbell. Nobody answered. “What?” he said, because it was all he could manage. “What is this?” His voice went through the street like a ping-pong ball would bounce through a metal pipe.

Calling Natalie was the next obvious solution, and so David reached for his mobile phone. No recent contacts, it said. Had it been so long since they called each other? That couldn’t be right. No, it was all wrong. His list of contacts was entirely empty. No contacts, his phone said. He tried to find Natalie on his socials. Find friends, the apps said. “What?” David said, feeling the need to express his confusion out loud, in search of connection.

The only logical explanation was that Natalie had gone off her rocker, and wanted him out of her life, so she had stolen his key and deleted herself from his phone. But that still did not account for losing all of his other contacts. It also did not account for her warm breath in his neck this morning as she wished him good luck at work today, and the softness of her lips as she kissed him goodbye and ‘see you later’. This was later. Where was she?

One quick solution was to ring the neighbours’ doorbell and ask for the spare key. Natalie had given them a spare in case of emergency, and David had argued against it because he said they would burgle the house first chance they got, but Natalie apparently had a cup of coffee with them once, and she’d wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. He straightened his jacket and tried to relax his face before pressing the button. It was an elegant doorbell, a classic ding-dong, so to speak, and David solemnly waited for the sound of footsteps or a hallway light.

None came. This was strange. It was like everyone had vanished into thin air. Perhaps he’d gone home from work too early. Perhaps he was ringing the wrong neighbours’ doorbell. He had to be doing something wrong. David frowned at himself. For a split second he could see his reflection start to frown in the little window in the door, and suddenly understood: it seemed his wish had come true. And now he had given himself a reason to frown.

Then he disappeared forever.