It had been a while that people had been covering their faces through fear, fear of the new, fear of the unexpected, fear of the consequences. But soon Julie was going to react, to rebel against the blankness.

The noise in her head was of late spring orchids, dried to straw by summer, rustling and whispering underfoot as she walked through the field, up the slope to the cliff top.

She would go to the city and get on the underground train. She’d sit down quietly. The voices would whisper through the static, some inside her head, some inside others’.

She’d sit down quietly then as quietly stand up and take her mask off to show her empty face, the space where her nose had been, and her teeth.