Behind the Mask

by Link, Kelly; Rambo, Cat; Vaughn, Carrie

  “Do you know what he sang?” Atlas asked. She’d never found that information listed in any article about her father.

  “I don’t even know if they were words, dear. It was just emotion. Like a sound we’d been searching for since we’d been born. By the end of the song, the rest of the musicians on stage were playing with him. He played for half an hour, said he was the Madjack, and that he had come here from the stars. And we believed him. Good god, at that point, how could we not?”

  “But there was a birth certificate!” Atlas protested.

  “Not until seven years later.”

  “What? Seven years?”

  “Yes,” Indra said. “A very helpful clerk provided one for him in 1975. He never stopped claiming he was from space. He never lied, dear. Not really.”

  “Fake. Birth. Certificate.” Atlas felt her pulse accelerate. Calloused fingers dug into her legs through her jeans. One slow breath and then another and the wave was past. She looked up at her mother who had waited patiently. “I’m sorry.”

  Her mother tutted. “I understand your confusion. We were very clear it was a fake certificate. But it was a necessary document so that your father and I could get married.”

  “Wait. So he went and said, ‘Look, I know this is highly irregular, but I need a legal birth certificate saying I’m Brian McVittie, which is totally a made-up name, because who is really named after a brand of digestive biscuit, right? You can pick the birthdate as long as I’m a Leo. And we’ll all know it’s fake, because I’m really from outer space.’ And they just did it?”

  Her mother bobbed her head, lips pursed. “Well, in so many words, pretty much exactly like that.”

  Atlas threw up her hands in confusion.

  “You had to understand, dear,” Indra told her. “The mid-seventies in Britain was a very interesting time. And it was rock and roll. I’m sure you understand that much, at least.”

  “The world doesn’t work like that, Mother.”

  “Everything is a story, Atlas,” her mother said. “Everything. How we got where we are. How we will get where we are going. Who created the tools to take us there. History, science, even math, at its core—all a story. The system of courts and laws, contracts and money, arbitration and legacy—a story. This story needed a birth certificate, so your father procured a birth certificate. And the clerk who furnished him with it went to his grave delighted to have been a part of that story. And now the story passes to you.”

  Atlas blinked at her mother. For several long seconds, she was no longer monitoring or controlling her emotions, no longer open to the emotions of anyone nearby. For a blissful eighteen seconds, the ache in her head and heart was a void. “I . . . I don’t understand.”

  “While there is much of your father’s estate that will be sorted out when we have the reading of his will in two days, his story is yours now. There is no one else to inherit it. No one else he would have wanted to inherit it.”

  “What?”

  “The Madjack, dear. You’re the Madjack now. Certainly you’ve felt it.”

  Garbled alien language in her father’s voice.

  Halo of white hair in the sun.

  A hand reaching down.

  “Fuck me.”

  She was happy she had blacked out before her mother could admonish her over her language.

  • • •

  The Madjack had been one of the most influential rock musicians of his generation. Social media flooded in the hours after his death with condolences, tributes, and touching personal stories.

  The Madjack had been a superhero for a while. He’d fought alongside the Icons in Cobalt City for several years. He’d saved countless lives. Brought peace and hope and love in the most desperate of circumstances. Heroes who had been moved to follow in his footsteps recognized his memory as well.

  The Madjack had been an alien.

  The stars, bitter and cold in the vault of sky, reserved their judgment.

  Atlas lay on the unforgiving mattress and gazed through the skylight overhead, fingers softly strumming random chords in the quiet room. It helped channel her emotion, freeing her brain to process. Sadness that Dad was gone, regret for not spending more time with him, anger at him not trying to spend more time with her, anger at herself for being angry at him, dread at the storm of reporters and ghouls she’d have to deal with because of it, anger at herself again for thinking about how the death was going to affect her, worry about the future set in motion by the tragedy.

  Two days ago, she’d been gearing up for something of a comeback tour, rising from the ashes of a toxic contract with Goblin Records. It had been more than a year of fear and uncertainty—that she may never get to record again unless it was for that witch Ruby Killingsworth. Though she could never prove it, Atlas strongly suspected that Dad had intervened behind the scenes to get her released. He never said anything about it, and she never forced the issue, but he’d been unhappy with the Goblin Records contract from the beginning. If she hadn’t been so goddamned cocksure and arrogant, she never would have questioned his judgment on the matter.

  He had given her a second chance. Now, it seemed he was giving her something else. A legacy that she didn’t understand and wasn’t sure she wanted. I’m the Madjack now. And that means, what exactly? I’m a superhero? I get to spend my life like an Elvis impersonator, a constant reflection of a person I never was?

  Things used to be simpler.

  She remembered the Olive, the taste of diet cola and lime on her tongue as she took the karaoke mic in trembling hands. The lyrics for “Against All Odds” appeared on the tiny screen in front of her, and she just shut the rest of the world out. The murmur of the bar, the anxiety about her life, expectations that others had saddled her with, her tightly-held fears of inadequacy: gone. She walled it off, replaced it with the memory of hearing the Phil Collins classic as a child at her father’s feet. She closed her eyes and she sang.

  The die had been cast. The seal broken. She went up on stage questioning everything. She stepped off the stage knowing the only thing that ever really mattered: who she was.

  It hadn’t been easy going, and more than once she wondered if she’d made a mistake. She didn’t need to work. In fact, Dad had tried to talk her out of it more than once with cautionary tales of unscrupulous producers and villainous show promoters, each more garish than the last, until she could almost picture them twirling little cartoon mustaches between fingertips.

  She could have lived on her own in Cobalt City, rent free, with a chef and a housecleaner. Could have moved to Jaipur to stay with Mom, though they always ended up getting under each other’s feet before too long. Hell, if she’d completely lacked ambition, she could have been a permanent member of her father’s entourage, following him around the world on tours and benefits and general frippery. Though God himself only knew what MadJack was doing on most of his travels.

  The thought sent a shock wave through her heart and she sat bolt upright.

  From a distant room, she heard a gasp and the sharp sound of a dropped glass. Moments later, “Is everything all right in there, dear?”

  “Yes. Sorry,” Atlas replied. Maybe going to live on a mountaintop with goats was a good backup plan. No messy emotional surges that way. “Surprised myself. It’s nothing.”

  Her mother shuffled to the doorway trailing wet footprints from what Atlas assumed was a doomed glass of water. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

  “Where was Dad when he died?”

  Her mother’s eyes flickered nervously about the room. “Indonesia.”

  “What was he doing there?”

  “Consulting,” Indra said. But she didn’t sound certain.

  Atlas had been conscientious about not trying to pick up on people’s emotions. It was an invasion of privacy that she would have hated were someone to do it to her. There had been several frosty years with her father, where she couldn’t be sure if he stopped reading her emotions or simply stopped acting on th
e information it provided. Despite all that, she knew her mother. And Atlas knew how to read her.

  “You don’t know why he was there, do you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Do you know who he was with?”

  This Indra did know, telegraphed by the defiant tilt of her chin. “Yes. He was traveling alone.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I spoke with Martzen that morning.”

  Martzen. Her father’s driver at his home in Montreux, Switzerland. “Why was he in Switzerland?”

  “Because . . . he lives there,” Indra said, reflexively covering her mouth with her hand almost as the words left it. She peered guiltily from behind the hand, reluctant to offer the clarification she needed to tender. “He hasn’t lived here for over a year.”

  Tears erupted from her mother’s face. Atlas took her hands and held her until the worst of the tears had passed. “Mom. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “We told ourselves it was to protect you. Honestly, I just didn’t want you to think less of him. Of me. And I didn’t want you to feel sorry for me, like you had some obligation to come ramble around this crypt to keep me company. It was for the best.” She patted her daughter’s hands. “I’m sorry I’ve hidden that from you for so long. That was the difficult part, really. I’ve grown used to him being . . . elsewhere.”

  “Do you know why he was killed?”

  Her mother nodded slightly, her eyes dark. “Yes. It had been a long time coming. He’d failed in his mission. He had been sent to subjugate us. Conquer us. But he changed his mind. They couldn’t let that stand.”

  Atlas had felt her understanding of the world tilt so precipitously since her dad’s death, and this revelation threatened to unmoor her. She struggled, trying to find anything concrete to hold on to. Anything that might anchor her to bedrock again. She reached for her guitar, fingertips seeking a melody by instinct.

  It took a few bars for her mother to recognize it. “Phil Collins?”

  “Dad always liked this song.”

  Indra placed a strong, soft hand on her daughter’s back. To Atlas, it felt like home. “Dear. Everyone liked this song.”

  • • •

  The reading of the will was an intimate affair, with just Atlas, her mother, and two dozen of Brian McVittie’s closest friends and longtime employees. That was for the best, as far as Atlas was concerned. The emotions were strong in the room, but they were largely of a similar hue, and there were not as many to block out as if it had been a public event like so much of his life had been. Even so, most of her concentration was taken up erecting and maintaining emotional distance from how deeply her Father’s life and death had touched everyone present.

  Even half-distracted, she heard nothing surprising disclosed in the will. Employees were given a lump payment, as if in apology for their sudden unemployment. Friends were given things of sentimental value. Infrequent writing partners given full share of the royalties. The bulk of the estate had passed to Indra, just one more part of the story that the fake birth certificate had set in motion. Atlas had been given the condo in Cobalt City, along with enough of the estate to keep it staffed and stocked on the interest payments alone.

  The sole surprise in the will was a small recording studio in Mar Vista, California, that Dad had also left in Atlas’s care. The unexpected show of support for her music from beyond the grave provoked such profound sadness and gratitude that Atlas had the entire room crying before she knew it. She reigned it in after a minute, but she expected it had made enough of an impression to make ripples on social media. There were too many big names in the room for her to expect anything less.

  As people began filing out, the lawyer approached with a sealed envelope. “Your father also left this in my care. I was not informed of what was inside, just told to pass it along in the event of his death. Now if you’ll excuse me, I also have one for your mother.” With a polite nod, he vanished into a small knot of people giving their condolences to the widow.

  The envelope felt heavy in her hands. Cool, like it had been held in an underground vault, waiting. Knowing her dad, maybe it had been.

  • • •

  “Are you sure about this?” Indra asked, fastening the ivory scarf around her head.

  Atlas looked up from her bed, where she was jotting possible lyrics into one of her Moleskine pocket notebooks. “There will be too many people. Too many questions. Too much emotion. Until I have a better grip on this, I should stay here.”

  “I understand. There is some Kashmiri rice left over. I noticed you didn’t eat much. And you’ll be able to see the fireworks from the pool. Small display of gold and pink fireworks, then the band will play ‘Reign of Hearts,’ then we return your father to the heavens. I’m told you won’t be able to miss it.”

  “I always loved that song,” Atlas smiled sadly. She wondered if she’d ever be able to enjoy it in the same way again, or if it would always be tinged with this sorrow.

  “I loved all of them, I think,” Indra said.

  Atlas thought of one of her dad’s early songs, some loopy thing about a white dog, probably recorded as album filler or as a joke. “Even the bad ones?”

  Indra laughed with her. “Especially the bad ones. Woof woof.”

  Before her mom could leave, Atlas stopped her one last time. “Mom. Did you know? Did you know why the Madjack was here?”

  “To conquer and enslave the planet?” her mom said. “I figured it out pretty quickly. I am very smart, you know.”

  “But you loved him anyway?”

  Indra crossed to the bed and kissed Atlas on the forehead. “Of course I did, dear. He was your father. Everyone loved him. He changed his purpose once he realized he loved us, too. He belonged to the world. And in, oh, less than an hour, he’s going back to the stars. So I should go. Try and eat more. You have a long flight tomorrow.”

  Minutes later, Atlas watched the taillights as Jasper drove them to the memorial site. For half a second, she almost regretted staying behind. But she meant what she’d told her mother. And things would be stressful enough soon. She’d already received four increasingly frantic voice mails from Frankie back in Cobalt. Recent pictures of Atlas had hit the web, hair now fully as white as her father’s, and the internet was exploding with speculation that Atlas McVittie was going to adopt her father’s Madjack persona.

  Considering she’d spent her adult life trying to get out from under his shadow, it was, at best, a setback. Or she could steer into the skid and own it—outrageous costume and everything. It wasn’t a decision one made overnight.

  Atlas took her guitar out by the pool and left it on one of the wicker chairs. She came back a few minutes later with a bowl of Kashmiri rice and a bottle of soda. The sun set behind her as she ate, the sky a purple bruise above the famed Pink City. And before her, the first of the stars began to appear.

  She opened her father’s letter, expecting to find some grand explanation. Maybe some tearful farewell. Instead, she found the deeds to the condo and the recording studio, as well as a concise, handwritten list of fifty-four close friends and their contact information. Allies, should she need them. The letter still smelled like him—sunlight and licorice root.

  With a pop and crackle, gold explosions lit the sky across the valley. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry, but the world was crying for her father. Who was she to deny him her tears? Atlas exchanged the soda for her guitar, idly checking the tuning, eyes on the glory in the sky before her.

  When no more fireworks came, she played “Reign of Hearts,” note perfect, just like she’d heard her father, the alien, play so many times in her childhood, on so many scratched vinyl records in house parties, in so many karaoke bars. And she sang. She sang as if there was no tomorrow, because for some, there wasn’t. And they’d never know until it was too late. She sang about a better world, as if singing about it could make it real. Because maybe it could.

  An unnamed planet had sent a single man to su
bjugate an entire world. And in his failure, he succeeded in ways they would never understand.

  The final note faded, swallowed up by the high Indian desert. Seconds later, her father exploded across the sky in a masterfully engineered sequence of majestic red and blue fire.

  The sparks faded, leaving wisps of smoke and a curtain of stars behind. Maybe one of them had been his. They’d been wrong. Brian McVittie hadn’t belonged to the stars. He belonged here. He’d been the star around which they’d orbited for so long. And now a new star was needed, otherwise this planet was forfeit.

  When Atlas set down her guitar again, she closed her hand into a fist. Somewhere within her grip, on some quantum level, she felt the scepter. It would be there when she needed it. She could learn the rest. After all, it was part of her story.

  Nathan Crowder is a Seattle-based fan of little known musicians, unpopular candy, and just happens to write fantasy, horror, and superheroes. His other works include the fantasy novel Ink Calls to Ink, short fiction in anthologies such as Selfies from the End of the World, and Cthulhurotica, and his numerous Cobalt City superhero stories and novels. He is still processing the death of David Bowie.

  Quintessential Justice

  Patrick Flanagan

  9:23AM - HAVE-A-JAVA, CORNER OF MULLANEY AND BROADWAY, DOWNTOWN UPTONVILLE.

  Jaleesa found her boss in his usual spot. He liked to sit at the window booth, right below the store marquee, so he could smile and wave to any fans standing outside who were too timid or awed to come in and shake his hand. It never hurt to be optimistic.

  He was mumbling his morning litany as she set his breakfast down on the table. “Queen and country, queen and country . . . Ah, good morning.” He tore into the Styrofoam container from Quinones’ Cantina. “Still piping hot. Que bonita.”

  She slumped down in the seat across from him. “Just don’t get any on your costume.”

  He smiled around his mouthful of chilaquiles. “Because of my generally equable nature,” he said, “and because these are so exquisitely piquant this morning, I elect not to quibble over your use of a certain disquieting term.”