Ch. 7 / Pt. 1 : When They Wear the Mask
Bob had arrived home panting, the drive from the scene to his new condo a blur in his carousel memory.
He hadn’t expected the kid. The kid wasn’t supposed to be home. He hadn’t expected a gun, either. Nothing in the family’s social media had suggested gun ownership. They hadn’t even had any photos at the range. Maybe that explained how Bob had gone unwounded in the boy’s hail of gunfire.
(Maybe.)
A lot had happened that he hadn’t expected. But he’d coped. He’d adjusted.
After parking his car in the lot at two thirty in the morning, Bob had had the wild luck to encounter no one on his way to his front door. Once he’d entered his unit, he’d found his clothes too slicked and blood-stained to save. He’d stuffed them all into heavy duty garbage bags. His black sneakers showed no visible traces of gore, but he’d cleaned them thoroughly anyway. Waiting for his shower to heat up, he’d stared at his reflection in the growing fog. He’d only remembered to take off the Mask when he’d opened the curtain to step into the heat.
Later, he climbed back out of the shower with a throbbing erection. He didn’t allow himself to touch it, at first. He returned to the mist-opaque mirror and the Mask. His left hand fell almost naturally onto the Mask’s visage, caressing it.
More than anything else, he hadn’t expected her.
She’d arrived before the police. Long before the police. Lying in wait.
He remembered that moment. He stared curiously down at her and she stared up at him with rage and sorrow and grief and fire. Her eyes had blazed galactic and he knew that if she could have spit on him from her position on the ground, she would’ve hocked a thick gob right into their face—his face.
Allowing his right hand to drift down, he gripped himself and remembered. Their gazes locked and a sea of sensation had rolled-rushed-crashed-flooded down his spine. Her. She’d been there, waiting. She knew him. She’d seen him. Not the Mask, not the Bob-mask under that, but the thing that lived beneath even that. She’d seen him.
He needed her. They needed her.
His breath husked and quickened. He wondered what masks that woman wore to protect herself. Every force of nature needed its anonymity. Could he peel them back until he found her nude? Would she spit on him, then? Pressure building at the base of his spine hoped she would.
As his breaths convulsed to shudders, Bob lurched forward over the sink. He thought he glimpsed some shadow form standing behind him in the glass, but when his head cleared and his lungs opened up again, he found his silhouette alone against the mist-smudged glass.
That night, he dreamt of chasing.
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