the face and voice going out without him
The woman behind the register at the Shell station last night had recoiled as I approached to present my card before pumping, as if she too had seen something in my expression I hadn't known was there.
Context
The output keeps escaping Hal's control in both directions: a stranger at a gas register flinches from an expression he didn't know he was wearing, and when a housemate leans in with a simple question, Hal produces over a minute of nothing before the boy gives up and leaves. His face broadcasts what he can't feel or see, and his silence answers what he can't muster the will to reply to — the interior sealed off from the surface at both ends.