Ch. 12 / Pt. 3 : When They Wear the Mask

The night buzzed its song, insects and amphibians, owls and mice, and Bob and the Mask crept quietly through its orchestration. Baldwin and Deer’s Head both bordered Squatter City, more or less, while a wilderness buffer zone protected westward Denton. Bob and the Mask had started their sweep in that very forestation and had moved slowly eastward since sunset. 

Bob had felt something growing inside him since he’d first donned the Mask (we don’t talk until the end), but as he searched the bristling foliage for the boy who had copied his crimes, he felt it more powerfully than before. An instinct, maybe. He couldn’t quite tell where the copycat was, but he knew when he was getting closer or farther away. The Mask helped him know. Combining this profound insight with a lifetime of practiced patience and a reinvigorated stamina and endurance, Bob closed in on his prey one step at a time.

Their prey.

His and the Mask’s.

The forestation thinned along the northern borders of Deer’s Head, the suburb hugging the western and northwestern angles of Downtown Oceanrest, but true dark had fallen, by then, and Bob and the Mask felt sure of their shadow-shade camouflage. A couple miles into the suburb, the new Main Street carved through the woods, heading south, and the last vestiges of wilderness tattered off into sprawling civilization. Bob and the Mask felt their prey nearby, moving skittishly, sometimes drawing closer, sometimes meandering farther away. The boy maneuvered gracelessly, scared and uncertain.

Bob and the Mask crossed (New) Main Street and wandered into the scrawny commercial-industrial zone separating pleasant Deer’s Head from rubbled Squatter City. Nothing looked open. A few tiny stores still glowed their windows, but caught between the nationwide lockdown and the narrowing curfew, most sat darkly empty. 

Closing in, Bob felt heat sizzle through his veins. A quiet excitement gnawed at his calm. 

This kid had used their M.O.? 

Did he think they had something in common?

Bob’s lips sneered, grinned, pursed. (Did the Mask’s?) He restrained a snicker.

Bob had worked his entire life. He’d picked up his first job part-time at fifteen and now, in his late forties, his first stretch of real unemployment unfurled endlessly ahead of him. After the divorce he’d had a couple bad years at work. Clients left. As soon as the COVID-driven furlough had rolled over him, he’d known he was buried. The confirmation came ninety days later, a phone call that took under five minutes. It still echoed against the undecorated walls of his condo. Or it had, until he’d painted the place red.

He’d been married. He’d had a child. He’d lost everything.

This kid believed they had something in common?

They tightened their grip around the hilt of their knife.

The commercial-industrial area gave way to a small pocket of recent mixed-use rezoning. A few short apartment buildings filled space between a twenty-four hour drug store, a plague-shuttered bar, and a ‘consignment boutique.’ A couple blocks farther east, Bob and the Mask passed the invisible boundary between Deer’s Head and Baldwin.

Small houses with small yards rowed the northernmost streets of Baldwin. Some had fences, some didn’t, some had decks, some didn’t, some had stoops or porches, some didn’t. Bob and the Mask did their best to stay out of sight, sticking close to the few fences available. They could feel the copycat, close now.

there.

A shadow darted from around the back of an unlit house, rushing for an unlit garage. In the darkness behind a pool of lamplight, Bob and the Mask watched the shadow open the garage side door and slip inside.

 (How did Bob see so well in such deep night? He didn’t wonder.)

Bob and the Mask approached the same door. A multi-paneled window, situated at chest height, peered inside the structure. Hovering a few feet away, Bob and the Mask stared through the glass.

Two cars sat in the garage, one a decade-old SUV, the other a low-riding mystery protectively sheeted. The kid sat inside the SUV, driver’s door ajar, trying and failing to hotwire the vehicle. In front of the hood, a tall, broad shelving unit supported an arsenal of tools and parts. Next to the shelving unit, a wall-mounted display of the same. A stool sat between the vehicles. The electronic garage door opener glowed a ‘ready’ light from the opposite wall.

Bob and the Mask grinned.

Stepping forward, they knocked on the window.

The kid jumped. He spun around, reaching for something. Seeing them on the other side of the door, he stopped reaching and stared. Gulped. Rising to his feet, the kid let his hand fall to his side. Dried brown-red blood stained his shirt and the top of his pants. A long blade, not much smaller than their own, waited, sheathed and hungry, at his right hip. Around his neck, a medical mask and a black bandanna dangled like empty talismans, shields from a faith the boy didn’t wield.

“Is it—is it really you?” the kid asked.

Bob and the Mask nodded.

“How did you find me?”

They didn’t react.

The kid sniffled, wiping at his eyes and nose. “Fuck,” he said, leaning his back against the heavy shelving unit at the hood of the SUV. “Fuck, I don’t know what to do. I didn’t think…I just…”

Bob and the Mask kept the knife out of view. With their free hand, they gestured for the kid to come outside.

“I just…I’m so sick of it all. I try so hard every day and nobody respects me. I don’t have anything,” he ran his hand through his hair, tousling the mop of it wildly. “I do all the right things but what do I have to show for it? Fuck. You know what I mean, right?”

Bob frowned. Did the Mask?

They inclined their head, implying both familiarity and curiosity.

“People like us, you know, the world just shits all over us and expects us to take it. And everyone’s so surprised when we don’t.”

‘People like us.’ Bob flinched. Molten heat seethed behind his lips. He—

—we don’t talk until the end—

He said nothing. He and the Mask nodded.

The kid kicked the SUV’s wheel well. “Fuck,” he muttered, barely audible. He kicked again. “Fuck!” he repeated, more loudly. Turning back to Bob and the Mask, eyes glistening glassy as the window, he continued his monologue. “I just wanted her to…to…” he trailed off. “It’s just like with you, right? How your ex just took your house, your kid…that’s why you’re doing this, right?”

Bob and the Mask bowed their head, not-quite-nodding. They tried the doorknob and found it locked. Lifting their gaze back up to the kid’s, they gestured for him to join them. They gestured ‘quickly.’

The youth-cheeked killer almost opened it.

But then he hesitated. “I need you to say something.”

Bob and the Mask stared.

“I need you to promise me we’re on the same side.”

They lifted their off-hand and put a gloved finger to their lips.

“Could you just take off the mask, then? Just look at me, man to man?”

They shook their head.

The kid stepped back, shaking his head. “I don’t know…I don’t know, I don’t know…”

They nodded. Fair enough.

But they were done waiting.

Their gloved fist blew through the glass. Shards and sprinkles cascaded everywhere, crash-sprinkle-splintering across the concrete floor. Bob and the Mask put their arm through, reached down to the knob, and unlocked it. The kid leapt back and reached inside his blood-stained sweater. The lock undone, Bob and the Mask kicked the door open just as the kid wrestled free a pistol and opened fire. The first volley missed, bullets pulping wood or zipping off into the night.

Pulling away from the threshold, they waited outside. They took deep, calm breaths. The kid’s shoes squeaked and scuffed concrete; he edged toward and away from the door, afraid both to advance and retreat.

After a few seconds, they heard him move for the SUV again.

Surging through the doorway, they saw the kid climbing into the vehicle. As they rushed toward him, he slammed the driver’s side door shut. He hit the locks before they reached the handle. An expression of relief, almost triumph, eased the kid’s fearful features as he twisted around to grab his pistol again. The expression vanished when Bob and the Mask gripped the sides of the industrial shelving unit in front of the hood and tipped it sharply away from the wall.

The steel dented the fiberglass hood but didn’t wreck it. Tumbling tools and paint cans, however, burst holes in the windshield, fracturing it. The kid shouted inside, misfiring his gun once through the roof as he tried to shield himself from the debris. Left-handed, Bob and the Mask cocked and threw a fist. His knuckles burnt like cinders for a second but the blow cratered the window next to the kid’s face.

Writhing away from a mess of hardware, a small cut on his forehead sheeting red, the kid tried to point the pistol at Bob and the Mask. They pulled away just as a bullet blew through the window they’d half-broken. Turning, they walked along the length of the SUV. Inside, the kid continued shooting. Aimless rounds drilled through glass and chassis, hitting nothing.

A pause in the gunfire brought Bob and the Mask to a stop at the vehicle’s trunk.

The passenger-side door opened, the kid spilling out. He regained his feet in a second.

“What the fuck!?” he shouted. “What the fuck?”

Bob and the Mask made no response.

“We’re the same!” he wailed. “It’s the fucking bitches! It’s them!”

They rolled their gloved fingers along the hilt of their blade.

“Come on, Bob. That’s your name, right? Bob? I know about you. What happened.”

They took deep, slow breaths.

“We’re on the same side. Come on. I know we’re on the same side.”

They moved as if to charge him. When they pulled short at the edge of the trunk, the kid fired a pair of bullets into the garage door. 

“Fuck.”

The mess of papers and files and junk stacked on the sheeted car unraveled to the floor as the kid shoved them all aside, throwing himself over the hood. Through the tinted glass of the SUV’s rear windscreen, Bob and the Mask watched him back up to the electronic garage door lift. Outside, a pair of muffled voices shouted conversation. People had heard the gunfire.

The kid glanced between the battered SUV, the electronic controls, and Bob and the Mask. His eyes swam, rolling with consideration and confusion. With an uncertain shout, he slapped the button that raised the garage door. The motor hummed, pulling chain.

The kid ran for the driveway and they moved to intercept him.

Seeing his escape cut off, the kid stopped running and brought his pistol up instead. “Don’t move!” he shouted. “I said don’t fucking move!”

They kept moving.

The first bullet missed, gone to the night, and the second—

—drilled into Bob’s body slicing meat and muscle and tendon—

—hot lead death, cold heat, a tunnel gored through—

—something caught it and tore it apart, disassembled it into component molecules and ate them—

—stitched the broken fibers back together—

—the second one didn’t do anything, either. And when the kid squeezed the trigger a third time, the weapon dry-fired, emptied.

Bob and the Mask grabbed him by his left arm and spun him toward them. They plunged a seven inch blade into his guts and put their shoulder into him. He whipped at their back with the butt of his gun as they crashed him into a wall. The motor overhead groaned, chain rattling to its finale. Bob and the Mask drew the blade halfway out and shoved it back in again. The kid shouted and spat, slapping the butt of his gun into their back. They ripped the knife out and shoved it back in.

Bob and the Mask continued jerking the blade in and out of the kid until the pistol clattered to the concrete floor. Loosing their crimson-slicked blade, they let the kid’s half-limp body collapse. Stepping over the kid, they kicked the gun out into the short driveway. Stepping over his groaning, whimpering heap again, they pressed the button that closed the garage door. The motor reversed its groan.

 By the time they’d returned to the kid, he’d pushed himself up to his hands and knees. They grabbed a handful of his greasy-tacky hair and slammed the side of his face into the rear bumper of sheeted vehicle. They did it two more times for good measure.

Bob felt his cock getting hard. His mind raced.

(iamnotamessenger)

I am not a messenger.

(iamamessage)

I am a message.

The thoughts whirled through his consciousness in whispers. Bob wasn’t a mere messenger, he had no screed or manifesto. This pathetic child believed they had things in common? That the world had cheated them both? That’s what the world did: it cheated people. But the Mask and Bob were beyond that, now. It didn’t matter how the world had cheated Bob, anymore. Bob and the Mask were the cheat that the world played.

The universe could point at anyone at any time and take everything it wanted away from them. So could they. And what they wanted was—

(whatsunderneathhismask)

Grabbing the kid’s leg, they dragged his drooling, barely conscious remains toward the slew of scattered papers and folders and notes haloing the car. They threw him face-up on the blanketed hood and wiped blood from their knife on their pants.

“You don’t have to do this,” the kid said—or Bob and the Mask believed he said it. They couldn’t really hear and the kid couldn’t really speak. He whimpered and choked and the noises made a close enough facsimile. “You don’t have to…”

They approached with the knife and Bob—

Bob blacked ou—

who are you?

face to face with

(a lock and a key)

take off your—

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