The Borrowed Face
Key art
Prologue
Nessa stands at a mirror in a service stair and powders a face she has been asked to wear. The likeness is not a costume she can joke off.
Watch
Permanent screening
2:57 · 16:9 · not filed.
One line
Before the synopsis
It is a set of features a room will accept in place of her own.
Synopsis
Nessa Quade
She knows the weight of the powder and the sound of a door that answers to the wrong name. She holds the small photograph beside her jaw and matches the brow, eyes on the paper. Her own name is not on the list downstairs.
The powder sits heavier along the cheek the photograph asks for. She blends it with a finger and stops before the jaw is fully covered.
The mirror gives her the likeness and, at the hairline, a narrow remainder of the face she came in with. She does not cover that remainder yet. Minutes pass as the stair staying empty, a drip somewhere below, and the photograph not changing its brow.
Extended sequence
The likeness, in order
She pins the photograph where she can see it. The list downstairs is not in this room. She does not go read her own name back onto herself.
At the door a man asks for the name that is not hers. He opens the door, and the hinge answers that name with a smooth, practiced swing. She enters, stands at the edge of a lit room where people greet the likeness, and does not correct them.
Still
Nessa Quade · a likeness that is not hers to keep
Figures in the frame
Nessa Quade
The second face
Work. Also a climate.
Their greetings land on the powdered brow. No one asks the stair's name. When the hour ends she is walked back to the stair.
No one strips the likeness away in triumph. Alone, she wipes at the powder and stops. A pale outline remains along her collar and the side of her jaw, the borrowed face still describing her after the room has emptied.
Codex fragment
She does not turn the lamp back up to test it. Powder still marks the collar in the stair light. The borrowed outline remains on her skin, and her own name is not spoken again before the lamp is turned down.
The scenario is filed in the Codex.
Sound of Imagination
The pinned photograph keeps the brow she matched, and the mirror keeps the outline after the brighter light is gone. The drip below the stair keeps its slow time. Nessa does not wipe the collar again.
Showcase
Object
She touches the outline and does not finish erasing it. The photograph stays pinned.
The wipe-cloth in her other hand has taken some of the powder and not the outline. She sets the cloth down. The outline darkens a shade as the stair's lamp is turned down, not because she adds powder, because the lower light makes the pale edge easier to see.
The Craft
The Craft · Memory / Identity
Image · Motion · Sound · Result
The photograph's pin throws a small shadow that lengthens as the lamp goes down and then holds. People from the lit room do not follow her up to reclaim the likeness or to return her name.
The hinge downstairs stays quiet.
Read it as written. The scenario.
The next room
After this filing
The pale outline along her jaw is still the brow the photograph asked for, and the narrow remainder of her own hairline is still uncovered, neither of them spoken for in the darkening stair. The next room is Memories for Sale.
After the frame
Mark · keep · letter
Released rooms keep a mark from one to five, a keep on this device, and letters that stay with the page after the feed has moved on. The Borrowed Face is ready.
Letters under the frame
The Archivist · held
Filed in the archive. The page does not expire.