The Mask, Chapter 3

3.
October 3rd, 20193:45 PM
"Did you see the look on that Oakley bitch's face when I told her 'get bent, you old hag?'" 
Jasper Riley brayed like a donkey, exposing big teeth, and spraying a fine mist of spittle which thankfully didn't hit Scott as they walked west toward Black Creek Bridge on the edge of town. Scott forced a wide sneer and said, "Sure did. Looked like she was having a seizure, or something."
Jasper guffawed again and slapped his leg. "Priceless, man! She didn't know what to do! I'll bet she won't even  give me a zero for not doin the damn homework, it messed with her so bad."
Scott shook his head, amazed at Jasper and his self-perceived hilarity, but not in a way which would've flattered the dime-a-dozen small town bully-in-training. Jasper Riley was a walking, talking cliche. Danzig t-shirt with the sleeves torn off, dangling skull earrings, peroxide-blond mohawk, torn and ripped jeans, and worn but wicked-looking engineer's boots stomping down the sidewalk. Smoking cigarette in one hand, a can of Skoal in his rear pocket. A textbook juvie who spent the weekends sneaking into bars and strip clubs, thanks to older cousins who "knew people."
Jasper stuck his cigarette into his mouth. Took a long, slow drag. Puffed it out leisurely. Honestly, if he'd managed to blow smoke rings, Scott wouldn't have been surprised. "So are you comin out with this weekend, Taylor? Been in town for two weeks, been hangin with me an Terry, an you still ain't been out."
With his free hand, Jasper struck Scott's shoulder with a good-matured slap. "Gotta give you a proper Clifton Heights welcome, dude."
Scott managed another sly grin, knowing that he was an even worse cliche than Jasper. Jasper was a cookie-cutter, carbon-copy bully who would someday grow up to be a senior who drag-raced on the outskirts of town, dated eight girls, and beat up seventh graders like them. Not any different than thugs found in small towns across the country. 
Him? Hell, he was an even worse stereotype. Mom and Dad split in the middle of last year. He decided screw it, stopped doing homework, traded his As for Ds, quit sports, and started spending every weekend drinking behind barns or out "camping with the guys," smoking weed and drinking even more.
What's Mom do? Follow the plot of every bad family movie in existence. She moves him from the already pissant small town of Old Forge to the even smaller and more pissant town of Clifton Heights, to "escape bad influences." And what's the first thing Scott does? Attaches himself  to the worst possible influences he can find, just to spite her.
He took a puff from his own cigarette and held it, until the smoked buzzed against the back of his throat. He exhaled. Funny, how he'd never smoked or taken a drink in his life, until the week after his parents broke the news of their impending divorce. Cliche upon cliche, compounded by stereotype, Amen, Hallelujah. 
Jasper swatted him on the shoulder again, as they came to a stop just past Bassler Memorial Library. "Well, c'mon. Are you comin out this weekend, or not?"
Scott puffed. On one hand, he didn't see why not. It wasn't like Mom could stop him. With her working nights at her new job waitressing for The Skylark Diner, she was pretty much tied up all weekend evening. And he certainly had nothing else better to do. But a weird feeling had nagged Scott all day long. He couldn't pin down what it was, or where it came from. He just felt unsettled. As if something invisible had tipped slightly off balance. 
He'd felt the same at school all day. He thought others had felt it too, even if they couldn't identify it. Even Jasper. Sure, he cut up rough in class all the time and played the cutthroat punk to the hilt, but telling Ms. Oakley to "get bent?" That seemed a bit much, even for him.
The school had just felt weird. There'd been whispered talk about a custodian who'd walked out of school a few days ago and had never come back. Rumors had been spreading among the students that the guy had gone a drinking binge; he'd been a kiddie porn perv and had been fired, all sorts of crazy things. 
And today, Mrs. Seaver had been out, and no one seemed to know why. Not that he cared one way or another. In his still young career as a delinquent, Scott had learned quickly that most substitute teachers were fresh meat, easy to intimidate. Ms. Vaverchak, a thin, blond, meek young woman who couldn't have been over twenty-five years old, had been no exception.
"Well? C'mon. My older cousin is the bouncer at The Golden Kitty. He'll get us in. We can get wasted, and have real live naked girls dance in our laps!"
Jasper struck him in the shoulder again. Scott snorted. "Yeah, sure. You do know those dances cost money, ri..."
He looked away, across Black Creek Bridge, and his voice died mid-word. Though he hated to admit it, what he saw on the other side of the bridge sent a chill up his spine, and he shivered. "What..." he coughed, not from his cigarette's smoke, but from a strange anxiety which clawed at his throat. "What the hell is up with that?"
 Jasper followed his gaze and frowned when he saw the same thing Scott did. Standing on the other side of the bridge were two people. Too hard to tell from their distance, but though they were shaped differently - one of them taller and lankier, the other shorter and stouter - something about their faces looked similar. Almost the same. Like they were related, or....
"Fuck me," Jasper spat. "Are they wearin fuckin masks?"
Scott narrowed his eyes. The strangers on the other side of the bridge had to be a good hundred yards away, so he couldn't make out specifics about their faces...but something in his gut said Jasper was right. The general shape of the faces, the long stringy black hair...did they look like their mouths were hanging open, screaming, with no sound?
Yeah. Fuck yeah. They both had masks on.
"What the hell is this, Jasper? Some sort of hazing prank? Your older cousins all dressed up, trying to get the new kid to shit his pants?"
Jasper didn't say anything. He glanced at his newfound friend (a bad influence, as his mother would say), expecting a wide grin, followed by another one of Jasper's braying laughs. 
What he saw unnerved him. Jasper was scowling, almost growling, like a dog faced with something threatening. Underneath, he could see Jasper was just as creeped out by the masked duo as he was. 
"No way," Jasper finally muttered through clenched teeth. "I ain't got nothin to do with this. Mother's better not be thinkin of messin with me, 'cause..."
In perfect synchronization, the masked duo stepped onto the bridge and started walking toward them, their gait stiff-legged, arms hanging slackly by their sides.
Jasper's bravado fled at the sight. "Fuck this, man."
He glanced at Scott. "I'm headin home. There's another bridge across the creek about a mile that way," he pointed past Bassler Library, up Kovac Road, and was already moving in that direction. "It'll take me to my house the back way. You wanna come?"
But Scott was already moving across the street. One of the few cool things he'd found here was a little junk store called Handy's Pawn and Thrift, which was on Acer Street, only a few steps away. It boasted an oddly interesting collection of this and that, and - unbeknownst to his new crop "of bad influences" - Scott liked to kill time there after school, looking at all the odd things. "I'm good," he tossed over his shoulder, pointedly not looking at the weirdos in masks crossing the bridge, "I'm gonna stop into that junk shop. Kill a few minutes there."
Scott expected a sneer or a jab at that, but Jasper must've been spooked bad, because he just nodded and turned down Kovac Road in a jog. "See you tomorrow!" he called out over his shoulder.
"Yeah! Sure." Scott turned and trotted across Main Street. When he hit the opposite sidewalk, he dared look back at Black Creek Bridge, his stomach tightening. They were probably across the bridge now, and he didn't know what he'd do if he turned and saw them striding toward him, those rubbery masks (he felt sure they were made of rubber) leering idiotically at him...
The bridge and street were empty.
Scott sighed explosively, not realizing how frightened he'd actually been until now. He turned around quickly, suddenly thinking somehow they'd gotten behind him, but he saw nothing but empty street back that way. 
He was alone.
Even so. He was three steps away from Handy's, right around the corner, down Acer Street. He'd go hang out in there for a few minutes (being in Handy's always made him feel better for some reason; the tall, white-haired but solidly built storekeeper friendly and welcoming), then go home. He may hang out with an idiot, but that didn't mean he was one.
*
By the time Jasper had reached the small bike bridge which branched off Kovac Road and over Black Creek Bridge, his spiteful and arrogant facade had reasserted itself. He sneered, willfully forgetting the pants-pissing fear (which he'd never admit to Scott) which had shaken his knees not ten minutes ago. 
Fucking loonies in this town. Running around playing dress up in damn masks. They were lucky his cousin Marcus from Utica hadn't been here. Marcus would've cut those crazy assholes up. Jasper couldn't wait until he turned sixteen. Soon as he did that, he was quitting school and going to live the good life with Marcus in Utica, hitting strip clubs, smoking pot, getting laid...
Something scraped against the road behind him.
A boot on asphalt.
And something sharp and hard slammed into his back, right near his spine, and punched through clothes, flesh, and muscle. Pain worse than anything he'd ever felt exploded through him, and blood rushed up his throat and geysered out his mouth in a deep red fountain. 
A deep, burning cold spread through his body, from that point. He felt the object (a knife, his brain thought dully) pull out, and then felt it slam into another part of his back. This didn't hardly hurt at all, however. Just felt colder, and the knife sawing against his insides felt strangely distant. Like a dentist tugging on a Novocaine-numbed tooth. 
The knife pulled out again. Hands roughly spun him around, and pushed him. He flopped onto his back, arms and legs twitching uselessly against the ground. A form bent over him, face hovering a mere inches from Jasper's, and his eyes - the light fading from them - registered two things before everything went dark for good.
One, a breast pocket name tag on what looked like a work uniform, which read McDonough.
Two...the figure indeed was wearing a rubber mask. A mask which was bubbling, stretching, melting off, and dripping onto his face. As his skin burned, Jasper was able to muster one final mewl...before gouts of molten rubber fell from the mask into his mouth, and pushed down his throat.