The Mask
1. October 1st, 20196:00 AM
It was the ugliest mask Lester had ever seen. Bulging, uneven eyes. A wide, screaming mouth. Crooked rotten teeth, and stringy black hair which felt entirely too real. The face's sickly gray rubber felt wrong between his fingers. Too slick. Too viscous. Like it wasn't entirely solid and might dissolve between his fingertips at any moment, even though he could see very clearly it looked dry, and solid.
Lester didn't like it. Not one bit.
But he couldn't seem to put it down. Kept turning it over and over in hands, as if he was searching for some clue as to who owned the damn thing - a name written on the inside, or a store tag - which was stupid. He'd found it tossed into the corner of Clifton Height's Junior/Senior High's dirt cellar. It obviously didn't belong to anyone.
How it had gotten down there was anyone's guess. As a custodian, Lester knew - more than most folks - how the kids liked to sneak around the school after hours. It was a decently sized building, and Colin Smith - a sixty-one year old fart only two years away from retirement, with bad hearing and eyesight to boot - was the only night custodian on staff. If a kid wanted to sneak around the school after hours, it wouldn't too hard a feat to manage.
Also, way too many master keys had been copied over the years, and all of them were never accounted for at the same time. Every couple of years, it seemed like a master key found its way into the hands of a select group of seniors. Lester had lost track of how many times he'd found soda and beer bottles tossed into the far corners of the dirt cellar, crushed cigarettes, and once, several used condoms and a pair of panties. One year, the seniors had even showed the audacity to somehow sneak in a Sony Playstation and hook it up to one of the old televisions stored down there.
As Lester turned the hideous, leering mask face up - so that it's bulging eyes (the color of rotten egg yolk) were staring at him - he figured that's how the damn thing had gotten down there. It was too god-forsaken ugly and downright disgusting to be an old theater prop. At some point, a senior who had a master key and liked to sneak down here to drink, smoke pot, and get laid had brought along the damn thing, (who the hell knew why, because who the hell knew WHAT these kids were thinking today), and forgotten. End of story. Case closed.
He shook himself, fighting off a strange drowsiness. He didn't have time to mess around with the damn thing. He'd come down here because Mrs. Seaver needed an extra desk for her classroom because a new student had transferred in. Colin had been too lazy (as usual) to do it last night, so here he was, humping his ass down here in the morning before school. He had several others things he needed to get done, so he should be finding a suitable desk and taking it to Mrs. Seavers room in the Science Hallway, not mucking around with a weird old rubber mask which felt strange, and made him feel slightly sick to his stomach, for some reason.
But he couldn't it down. Couldn't make himself toss it away into the darkness, where an instinctive part of him said it belonged, where it would safe, where it couldn't hurt anyone (though that seemed a very strange thought, and didn't make much sense). In fact, with a start, he realized that as he'd stood there thinking those odd thoughts, his hands had been working the mask, and now was raising it to his head, was stretching it wide...to pull it down over his face.
No! He thought, suddenly frantic and, unreasonably, afraid, as the smell of something old and rotten filled his nostrils. No, I can't! he screamed inside, as he stretched the rubber mask wide enough to accommodate his head. With hands which seemed to operate of their own free will, Lester McDonough pulled the rubber mask over his hand, and blackness fell.
It was the ugliest mask Lester had ever seen. Bulging, uneven eyes. A wide, screaming mouth. Crooked rotten teeth, and stringy black hair which felt entirely too real. The face's sickly gray rubber felt wrong between his fingers. Too slick. Too viscous. Like it wasn't entirely solid and might dissolve between his fingertips at any moment, even though he could see very clearly it looked dry, and solid.
Lester didn't like it. Not one bit.
But he couldn't seem to put it down. Kept turning it over and over in hands, as if he was searching for some clue as to who owned the damn thing - a name written on the inside, or a store tag - which was stupid. He'd found it tossed into the corner of Clifton Height's Junior/Senior High's dirt cellar. It obviously didn't belong to anyone.
How it had gotten down there was anyone's guess. As a custodian, Lester knew - more than most folks - how the kids liked to sneak around the school after hours. It was a decently sized building, and Colin Smith - a sixty-one year old fart only two years away from retirement, with bad hearing and eyesight to boot - was the only night custodian on staff. If a kid wanted to sneak around the school after hours, it wouldn't too hard a feat to manage.
Also, way too many master keys had been copied over the years, and all of them were never accounted for at the same time. Every couple of years, it seemed like a master key found its way into the hands of a select group of seniors. Lester had lost track of how many times he'd found soda and beer bottles tossed into the far corners of the dirt cellar, crushed cigarettes, and once, several used condoms and a pair of panties. One year, the seniors had even showed the audacity to somehow sneak in a Sony Playstation and hook it up to one of the old televisions stored down there.
As Lester turned the hideous, leering mask face up - so that it's bulging eyes (the color of rotten egg yolk) were staring at him - he figured that's how the damn thing had gotten down there. It was too god-forsaken ugly and downright disgusting to be an old theater prop. At some point, a senior who had a master key and liked to sneak down here to drink, smoke pot, and get laid had brought along the damn thing, (who the hell knew why, because who the hell knew WHAT these kids were thinking today), and forgotten. End of story. Case closed.
He shook himself, fighting off a strange drowsiness. He didn't have time to mess around with the damn thing. He'd come down here because Mrs. Seaver needed an extra desk for her classroom because a new student had transferred in. Colin had been too lazy (as usual) to do it last night, so here he was, humping his ass down here in the morning before school. He had several others things he needed to get done, so he should be finding a suitable desk and taking it to Mrs. Seavers room in the Science Hallway, not mucking around with a weird old rubber mask which felt strange, and made him feel slightly sick to his stomach, for some reason.
But he couldn't it down. Couldn't make himself toss it away into the darkness, where an instinctive part of him said it belonged, where it would safe, where it couldn't hurt anyone (though that seemed a very strange thought, and didn't make much sense). In fact, with a start, he realized that as he'd stood there thinking those odd thoughts, his hands had been working the mask, and now was raising it to his head, was stretching it wide...to pull it down over his face.
No! He thought, suddenly frantic and, unreasonably, afraid, as the smell of something old and rotten filled his nostrils. No, I can't! he screamed inside, as he stretched the rubber mask wide enough to accommodate his head. With hands which seemed to operate of their own free will, Lester McDonough pulled the rubber mask over his hand, and blackness fell.
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