Shatterproof: Masks

I stood again in his doorway, blinking stupidly at the neatness of everything.  The desk chair creaked as the occupant turned, and I stared at the face of my dad.

"Hello, sweetheart," he said, smiling.  "What are you doing here so late?"  He checked his wristwatch, shaking it forward on his arm so he could read the face.  "It's almost midnight."

I said nothing, my mind reeling.  Finally, after what seemed like years of silence, I found my voice.

"What happened?  Are you alright?"

It was his turn to stare blankly at me.  His grey eyes looked huge behind his coke-bottle lenses.  "What do you mean, sweetheart?" he asked.

I gestured to include the whole of the room.  "Your office was trashed!" I said, my voice leaping a pitch or two.  "Ransacked!  And you left without your phone!"

He frowned at me, removing his glasses with one hand and using the other to wipe the lenses on his shirt-front.  "I don't know what you're talking about," he said.  "Everything's just the same as it has been since I arrived this morning for work."

At that moment, I saw it.  Resting back on the third shelf, in front of all the books was my fourth grade pottery piece.

Unbroken.

Wordless, I stepped over to examine it.  Taking the item gingerly in my hands, I felt its heft, traced the unblemished surface.

"You know, Leslie, you're awfully strong," said her father's voice.  "So strong, that I can't let you get any stronger."

I felt cold as I stepped back from the bookshelf to stare that the stranger resting in my dad's desk chair.

"Why me?" I asked, wishing Collin would show to help me out.  The hallway remained devoid of sound.  The man behind the desk rotated his neck, the vertebrae snapping loudly.  I took another step back.

"Because," said the Devil, "You stand in my way."  He rose from the chair, stealthy even in his portly trappings.  "Because, if it weren't for you, I would have owned this man long ago."

My toe brushed up against something light and hard.  Looking down, I saw the porcelain shard of the broken piece of pottery, long and sharp as a knife.  I bent, retrieving it as he advanced.  Around me, the illusion of tidiness shattered, and the room screamed of its chaos.

"I had great plans for this man, Leslie," he said, continuing forward as I backed up.  His eyes were no longer grey, but flame-red, bright and pupil-less.  "I had years of painstaking work behind this sorry chunk of meat, years that would pan out wonderfully….  If not for you."  The creature in my father's flesh grimaced out at me, some horrible combination of sharp teeth and razor-edged flesh inside the shell that was my Dad.  I felt the edge of a bookcase, an unyielding line up my spine, and I gripped my shard tight between my fingers, a link with reality.  I found myself reaching for my gun, and it gleamed black and deadly in my hand as I raised it.

He laughed, a rolling, sinister snicker.  "Leslie, sweetheart, you wouldn't hurt your old Dad, now would you?" he said, and it was Dad's voice, but I closed my ears to it.  He laughed again, then, "Sweetheart, you'll hurt yourself; put down the gun.  Let Daddy take care of you."

I was crying now as he drew near, hating myself for wanting to run to him like the little girl I'd always been.  His eyes blazed redder than before, and so I raised the gun.

"My, my; what would your mother say if she could see you, threatening your father."  He tsked disapprovingly.

I glared at him through the blur of my tears.  "You are not my dad," I said, and squeezed off a bullet.

* * *

(This piece is part of an ongoing serial story. You can catch up on the plot via the Serials page. If you liked this work, please consider purchasing one of my other stories, or some of my music for your collection. )