Masks

by Dean M. Drinkel

  ~~~

  He used his tools to make the body more manageable, but still cleaning up the mess Phil had made would require a trip to the store, and Spencer put it off for a few days.

  He didn't feel guilty but he doubted whether he'd be able to explain his innocence to the strange and diverse faces outside; he no longer thought in terms of race but simply of himself and everyone else.

  Where Phil, with his endless masks of Spencer's own face fitted into this taxonomy he wasn't sure. Phil had been an anomaly, a paradox Spencer didn't care to think of.

  Spencer deliberately went to the hardware store just before closing, when he anticipated there would be the fewest people there.

  As he drove he found it was easy to avoid looking at the faces of the other drivers. Head down, in the store he went straight to the aisle of cleaning products, which he stared at in indecision.

  The store was a large one, divided into aisles by tall shelves. Although Spencer couldn't see them, he was aware of people moving in the aisles other than his.

  There was no talking but he heard them shuffling, heard them coughing as if they had words they couldn't get out.

  What if one were to turn the corner and came face to face with him - what would they look like? Brown skinned or with rouged lips or long hair or...he tried to remember the stereotypes that the National Pride Party had been so agitated about, but he couldn't think.

  He was finding it increasingly hard to think of any face but his own.

  He picked a carpet cleaning product at random from the shelves and headed towards the checkout. If he could keep his head down, pay by card so the cashier didn't have to hand him any change, he might be able to get out without seeing...

  “Sir? Sir, can I help?” a female voice said; Spencer realised he had been standing a few metres from the tills without moving. “We're closing in a few moments, if you could just...”

  He shuddered; the differences of a female face were so pronounced. Still, something about the perky, Americanised tone of her voice made him look up.

  She was wearing a mask of his face too; he couldn't see the join.

  Spencer stepped backwards and felt his mouth drop open at the same time he saw her (his?) mouth drop open too. He saw his eyebrows knit in annoyance that her customer service training couldn't quite hide. He saw...

  “Here, stop pissing about mate, some of us want to pay too you know!” someone said from behind him. Already knowing what he would see, Spencer turned to the three customers spread out behind him, all with his face.

  Spencer cried out and ran up one of the aisles of shelving, shoving the carpet cleaner in his pocket.

  He heard a commotion behind him, and then an echoing voice calling for security. He knew the guards they sent after him would all be wearing masks, too. He wanted to clap his hands over his eyes but knew they would catch him if he did.

  Already he could hear the sounds of pursuing footsteps and the calls of the guards and some of the more excitable customers as they tried to encircle him.

  He saw a side-door that led to the outdoor section of the store which sold plants and garden ornaments. He hoped he could run back to his car without having to go back inside.

  He barged past a woman pushing a pram; both faces that turned to watch him in surprise were his own, the smaller one the more disturbing.

  Ahead of him the dark shape of a security guard, silhouetted with the evening sun behind, blocked his path to the car-park. Spencer couldn't see the guard's face and this gave him some confidence.

  He charged at the guard and as her arms came round to try and restrain him he reached up and tried to slip his fingers under her mask. It was harder without the screwdriver but he felt his fingertips slide under the cool first layer of impossibly thin porcelain in the split second before he felt hot blood.

  He heard screaming, heard shocked sounds from behind him, and with the slight purchase he had he wrenched with all his strength.

  Only one piece of the mask came away, a cheek and the curve of a mouth, but it was enough to confirm to Spencer that another identical mask lay underneath.

  He didn't have time to go down layer after layer like he had with Phil, and that had proved pointless anyway.

  The piece of mask he had pulled from the guard felt so insubstantial he wondered it didn't waft upwards on the breeze, but instead it fell and there was the same sound of broken china and the smell of white dust.

  He got up, ran towards his car, and this time no one tried to block his way.

  ~~~

  He managed to clean Phil's blood from the carpet, but the sparkling white dust from where the masks had smashed proved impossible to shift.

  The powder got everywhere.

  There were traces under Spencer's fingernails from where he had prised off part of the security guard's mask, traces he couldn't wash or file away.

  It was the same with the dust from the mask of the postman who knocked on his door the next day; Spencer had been more prepared this time, with a screwdriver in one hand and a file in the other.

  He'd dragged the imposter inside and begun peeling away the masks before the man knew what was happening.

  How many layers were there?

  His efforts to find out seemed never ending and he was distracted from his task only by a neighbour come to complain about the noise - he pulled her inside too. He was particularly spooked to see his own, relatively smooth-features instead of her old and lined ones.

  The air of his flat became thick with the white porcelain dust of the masks, twinkling and turning in the light from his windows. Spencer felt it coat his skin and catch in his throat.

  As he became more practiced he sometimes managed to remove a mask from someone without it shattering entirely, and the floor of his flat was littered with thin slivers of his own face: a staring blue eye or an upturned and screaming half-mouth.

  He had more callers to his flat than normal (evidently Phil had made his address known to other National Pride members) and it got so that Spencer couldn't walk without the sounds of breaking ceramic under his feet.

  One day Spencer caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror, and saw that he was wearing one of the masks too.

  It fit more neatly to his face than anyone else's so he hadn't noticed before, but just at this angle and in this light he could see the minute misalignment of it. Now he had noticed it looked so obvious, and couldn't be unseen.

  He reached his fingers to it but the mask was so expertly fitted that he couldn't feel the join.

  He went downstairs to get his tools; then came back up to the mirror.

  It was harder, removing the mask from his own face, because everything in the reflection was the wrong way round, but he managed it. He dropped the screwdriver and carefully lifted the mask away...

  It will just be your face underneath, Spencer thought, and again underneath that and again underneath...

  But it wasn't.

  His face, his real face beneath the mask was completely different.

  A different colour, a different shape, a different structure.

  The brown eyes in the mirror looked alien and calm; Spencer felt panic rise inside him. The fact that his panic wasn't reflected back by the face in the mirror only panicked him more.

  Clumsily, he tried to put the mask back on his face, and for a moment the feeling of cool porcelain made him think he'd succeeded.

  But then the mask collapsed in his hand; he coughed in the sudden white dust and heard the shards of his face clatter to the floor.

  He looked at his hateful features in the mirror; they fit him perfectly. He wanted to weep but the strong proud brown eyes wouldn't let him.

  He was struck by the thought that everyone else in the world now looked the same except him.

  He wondered if they would notice, and what they would do to him when they did.

  BLOOD & GINGERBREAD

  D T Griffith

  Everybody was there who had to be there, which meant o
nly the dozen or so infants and small children in the village nursery, along with their two caretakers and the overnight militia guardsmen who protected the gates were exempt. Tessie Montgomery presided over the affair, being the elder council member and most senior resident.

  “The council has chosen this year’s selectees,” Tessie said to the crowd packed into the meetinghouse; the flickering candlelight danced in and around the wall of iron death masks of past honorees.

  Her timeworn scratchy voice still held the commanding presence of her first years in communal politics beginning at age twenty-one, when she co-founded the village with her late husband and other long-dead compatriots. She had presided over this ritual for the last twenty-eight years and displayed no intention of retiring.

  Eva watched her grandmother pontificate over the benefits of this tradition with her own trepidation: keeping death at bay…maintaining morale…ensuring a productive year in farming, hunting, propagation, and heists. She lost her father to this process only one year ago, and her mother when she was too young to remember anything more than a rosewater scent and the warm tones of her mother’s voice.

  “As is stated in our community’s bylaws,” Tessie announced to the crowd, “tonight’s first step of this esteemed practice must be held no later than twenty-four hours following the winter solstice and not a day sooner.”

  No one had ever seen the bylaws as far as Eva was aware, no one but the council. “Which brings us to this commencement tonight,” she motioned to Second Councilmember Hanna Lee rocking on an uneven stool behind Tessie, smiling as she stared past the crowd as she always did at some imaginary object or event no one else cared to know about.

  There were bylaws prohibiting the chewing of food in public spaces and the prohibition of outsiders to live within the community’s walls without thorough vetting and approval by the council.

  Not like anyone from the closest towns, a good fifteen miles or more Eva reckoned, would want to come here.

  The bylaws explicitly stated women could not wear pants, and out of gender fairness that men could not wear skirts.

  Items taken through force or heist from outsiders passing by on the highway service road must be thoroughly reviewed by a council member, those containing electricity must be smashed and dumped in the designated hole next to the communal latrine behind the jailhouse.

  The bylaws stated that each year a member of the community must die on the first day of the winter season.

  This was said to control death, to prevent that old grim reaper from making an unwelcomed appearance in this fine mountain community.

  It worked, or so it seemed.

  There had not been a single recorded death for more than thirty years that occurred on a day other than the winter solstice.

  This did not account for the few members who had deserted the compound and mysteriously turned up dead in one of the nearby towns. Eva considered those people lucky, her heroes, as she had prepared for her desertion for the past four months.

  This last night of autumn was the perfect time to disappear as the village folk were stirred into commotion over the three selectees for the gingerbread consumption. This was no life to raise a child in, and as of now, no one in the village knew she was carrying, but they would not be able to overlook her body’s pregnant state before the winter was over no matter how quiet she kept.

  This night’s ceremony was the perfect distraction.

  “Blood, gingerbread, and life,” exclaimed Hanna Lee followed by her diminishing cackle.

  Polite laughter fell over the room. It was considered rude not to entertain Hanna Lee’s musings and therefore punishable by law as Tessie saw fit.

  “Ah-ha,” said Tessie, “we appreciate your enthusiasm, dear Hanna. Now let’s move forward.”

  I can’t be here for this, Eva thought, never again.

  “The first name on the council’s list of honorary selectees is Charlotte Emerson,” Tessie said squinting at a wrinkled page she held in front of her face. She looked around the crowd. “Charlotte, be a good dear and step forward.”

  All head’s turned to Charlotte, whose face, naturally devoid of most color, was now paler than a baby’s first teeth.

  “Mommy,” cried one her three young daughters, “Mommy, don’t go!”

  “Now, now,” Tessie said. She leaned from her waist to mimic the children’s heights, though she still stood a half-foot above everyone on the wooden dais. “Sweet dears, your mama is a hero for participating. I’ve consumed the gingerbread seventeen times, a most beautiful and enlightening experience, and here I am in front you at the ripe ol’ age of sixty-three.”

  She completed the statement with a tight grin revealing her withdrawn and blackened gums barely grasping what few yellow teeth she had left.

  “Hush, children,” Charlotte whispered. “All will be fine. Stay with your father.”

  “But mommy…”

  “Hush and do as your father says.” Charlotte stepped forward at Tessie’s urging to take her position on the small stage. It creaked under her added weight.

  Tessie resumed her upright stance. “Next on the list is Reginald Goodfellow. Please approach, Reginald.” All heads turned his direction.

  Reginald was the only dark skinned resident left in the community. Eva was taught that his brown skin was an affliction, a curse on his family, all of who consumed the gingerbread in the earliest days of the village sacrificing their lives for the greater benefit; their faces adorned the meetinghouse walls.

  He had no children; his young wife was an honoree three years prior forced to give her life to keep the community in good health before she could bear their first child.

  There were rumors that she was carrying, but Reginald forbade Dr Miller’s request to perform an autopsy at gunpoint. The matter was left settled and his wife buried unceremoniously in response to Reginald’s dissent. Her death mask tarnished and reddened from exposure to the rain and snow, as it hung above the meetinghouse entrance as a casual reminder never to disrespect and disobey the council.

  He quietly walked up to join Tessie and Charlotte on stage and stood in front of Hanna Lee as she continued to rock her stool, never once looking up from his feet.

  “Finish this already, I need to leave,” Eva mumbled. She turned her gaze from Reginald to meet her grandmother’s dark brown eyes. Her pulse quickened.

  “It is with a heavy and beloved heart that my own descendant, Eva Montgomery, is our third selectee.” Tessie extended her hand toward Eva, “come my dear, join us if you would.”

  Eva froze. This couldn’t happen; she had a baby to bring into the world and raise, away from this backwards village. She had been introduced to the outside world. Her child’s father, her first and only love, was an outsider.

  The community didn’t know of him and it was her intention to keep it as such. Their plan was to meet at the guarded back gate as this ritual dispersed, on a path leading into the woods where they first encountered.

  He would take out the guard as he described it, allowing her free passage with her belongings.

  “Eva dear,” Tessie’s voice violated her thoughts, “approach.”

  “Uh…I can’t Gram; I’m your last family member. You cannot risk my sacrifice.”

  “All the more blessed this event makes.” Tessie scanned the room. “Jackson, where are you boy? Take her to me.”

  Jackson Marlowe, a large silver-haired man who was an excellent builder and the militia’s councilmember, swooped his arm around Eva’s back and held her opposite elbow.

  He forced her to her knees at the edge of the dais before Tessie’s feet.

  “You my dear are a disgrace to this family,” Tessie whispered. Her cane tapped the crown of Eva’s head with a light, but deliberate thud. She crouched supporting her frail body on the cane bringing her mouth closer to Eva’s ear.

  Tessie’s exhale spattered bits of saliva tinged with tooth decay and that all-too familiar stench originating from her ulcerous stomach. �
�No one in this family will outlive me and that includes your unborn bastard.” Eva winced. Her grandmother smiled as she resumed her stance.

  How could she know? Eva recycled every waking moment since she and Rob met while he was hunting deer in the nearby woods and he found her foraging for wild leeks and mushrooms.

  A quick motion along the wall of death masks caught Eva’s eye. She focused on the spot realizing it was her father’s mask.

  Do not consume the gingerbread, it will contain my blood, she could hear his faint voice whisper above the crowd’s murmur. This is your time.

  “This isn’t real,” Eva said out loud.

  “Of course it is, my dear Eva.” Tessie continued. “As tradition holds our three selectees will remain in captivity until noon tomorrow when the moment of honorary reckoning is beholden upon us.”

  Jackson and two other militiamen escorted Charlotte, Reginald, and Eva from the meetinghouse to the adjacent jailhouse. The crowd followed them outside and dispersed.

  “How could she know?” said Eva in the jail cell. “This is a damned militant compound full of crazies, just like Rob told me.”

  She shared the cell with the other two selectees, a modestly furnished space reserved for this annual ritual that did not discriminate between the sexes.

  One exposed latrine – a rough wooden bench with a contoured hole on top positioned over a larger hole in the dirt floor – was available for the three prisoners to share, as was a single table with three folding chairs at which they could eat their meals, and a washbowl perched on a small shelf with a pitcher of water.

  Three metal cots with rusted springs stolen from a hospital some forty years earlier lined the stone exterior wall. The floor was nothing more than cold, packed earth. A notepad and pencils were available on the table for selectees to write their final thoughts for their families, according to one of the guards.

  Eva did not eat the honorary venison dinner that was delivered by the ladies who ran the central kitchen.

  Looking for anything that resembled comfort, she wrapped a knitted blanket smelling of mildew and moist dirt around her small body and covered her head.