Hiding Behind A Mask (The Maskless Trilogy #1)

by K. Weikel

  Chapter 7

  The feeling of insecurity follows Becca as she walks down the street in her new mask. The people in her path seem to split like a canyon as she nears. Her hands stay clenched around her arms as her stomach twists inside of her. Today was supposed to be a great day, a fun day, a celebration. Instead, it turned out to be a disaster.

  She catches a glimpse of her reflection as she passes by a store window. She had hastily tried to decorate her mask to where the black is barely visible. She covered it with green paint and gold sparkles, the only colors available to her after she had been masked. She was just glad they were her favorite colors.

  The way she painted the green onto the black material reminds her of the boy’s in the jury, Eduard’s. She had tried to make it almost fade into the black, and had almost convinced herself she did a good job with it—if she were four. She’s never been good at decorating her masks… The gold sits on the outside, starting heavy and working its way thinner as it goes in. She kind of likes it. Of course, she’d like it so much better if it were white…

  Becca still wears her bloody white dress. She was told she doesn’t have to change until tomorrow, but she’s dying to get out of it. The horrid events of today make her want to throw up. 

  And then she does.

  She leans over the trashcan that’s only a step away and hurls into it. Her stomach feels better, although the terrible feeling inside of her still tries to claw its way out through her skin.

  She stands up, wiping her mouth and searching for somewhere that has water available to her.

  Spotting a small coffee shop, she jogs across the unused road. No one has used cars since the late twenty-second century, when oil had been exhausted. Electronic and air/water powered cars were being worked on, but money had declined and scientists weren’t able to work on cars. The human race took a step backwards, and that’s how the masks came about.

  No one really knows how it started, exactly. It just did, and then everyone started wearing masks and no one could take them off. 

  Bells ding as Becca steps inside of the little shop, and several pairs of glass-tinted eyes look up at her. She walks up to the counter, and the man behind it ignores her as she watches him wipe up a spill on the marble surface.

  “Excuse me, can I get some water?”

  “Sorry, you’re in the wrong shop, Miss,” He says, and the color of the masks finally reached Becca’s brain.

  She’s a black mask now. Black masks and white masks hardly ever intermingle, besides school and on the street.

  There are several places that don’t serve the Dark Clan, and quite a few that don’t serve the Light Clan, no matter how little business any of them they might have. It’s just the way things are.

  She nods and taps the counter with her stained fingers, stifling a tear.

  The bells chime again as she sees herself out, the taste of puke still lingering in her mouth. Her throat burns and she looks for another place to go into.

  Becca starts to walk across the street, when someone knocks her down.

  “You’re right now, Becca.”

  She looks up to see Banshee standing over her. 

  “You’re right.”

  Becca says nothing as the man cloaked in black stares down at her. Her heart races and her breathing is shallow. 

  She hears the click of a gun. 

  Banshee raises up his arm, his sleeve falling away from the dark, cold metal that brings death upon all who it is aimed at. 

  “You’re right. And it will get better. You’ll come to your senses.”

  Her heart is pounding in her ears, as it always does when she is around this man. 

  He pulls the trigger. 

  The gun makes a clicking sound and he cocks it again. 

  She’s not dead.

  “Run.” He says darkly as he slowly points the gun back at her. 

  Becca scrambles up, hearing the gun click again. She finds herself wondering in a brief thought if the gun is really loaded. 

  He pulls the trigger again and a bullet whizzes by her. 

  It’s loaded, she thinks to herself as she turns a corner. 

  A narrow alleyway stretches before her, the same one that she had been in the first night she encountered Banshee. 

  She keeps running, clicks following her, yet seeming to get further away at the same time. She’s outrunning him.

  Once more, the gun sends off a loud bang, the bullet colliding with brick. 

  “You live,” she hears Banshee scream. "You live for now! For now you live! But you will die! And you will be alone!”

  She takes a few more turns in between the buildings just in case he had decided to follow her. Why is he doing this to her? What did she ever do to him? Why does he want her dead?

  Out of breath, Becca’s shoulder collides into the wall as she gasps for air. The mask is cutting off her oxygen and pulling the carbon dioxide she produces back into her system, creating spots around her vision. She tries to slow her breathing, but she can’t. Her lungs aren’t getting enough air. Her vision is going out and her body is feeling numb. 

  Darkness greets her like a cold, hard brick flying through the air as she falls to the ground, unconscious.

  . . .

  Becca’s eyes flutter open to a bright light. Voices surround her as her senses slowly start returning to her. Sleep weighs down on her like a blanket, and as the memories of earlier return, she wishes she could slip back into that sleep, that safe, safe place where nothing can actually harm her.

  “She’s awake,” someone says and walks toward her. 

  Eduard.

  “Hey,” he says, kneeling down beside her. 

  Becca realizes that she’s laying on a cot in the center of the room with a small pillow stuffed beneath her head.

  Eduard helps her sit up and a dizzying head rush makes her sway a bit. She puts her hands to her head to stabilize herself. 

  “What... where am I?” She slurs, looking around the room. 

  It’s not very large. The walls have graffiti scattered on them and there are three wooden doors that seem to be swallowed up by the mixture of the black walls and the dim lighting. They rest on the wall Becca faces and the wall to her right, one open and showing a bathroom with a flickering light bulb hanging from the ceiling, while the other two are shut.

  “Safe,” Eduard says as he squats beside the cot. “This is a little place that was abandoned in the Dark Clan’s housing building. No one’s lived here for years.”

  “How did I get here? Why am I here?” She asks, taking in the masks around the room that hide the faces of the other four people. 

  There is one girl with a black mask who had decorated it with white eyelashes lining the eyeholes on the top and bottom. They’re long and over-dramatic. She stands with her arms crossed and her hip popped out, her black sleeves barely covering her wrists. 

  The other three people are all boys. 

  The one sitting with his back against the wall has a mask with a scowl. There are thin white lines all over it, possibly to show the anger the mask is trying to portray. 

  The second one stands by the door with his arms crossed. His black mask has a goofy smile on it. There are painted-on green and purple diamonds all over the face, with the black color of the mask acting like borders for each shape. His clothes seem to droop in almost a comical way as it covers his thick arms and his long legs. 

  The third boy stands with his back against the wall by the bathroom door. He picks at his fingers and is mumbling something to himself. His black mask has white paint splattered all over it, more in a chaotic way than an artistic way. His clothes almost cover all of him like a cloak, signaling to Becca he had been here for a while.

  She looks back at Eduard as he begins to talk.

  “We saw you in the alleyway and we didn’t want anything to happen to you, so we brought you here—not the safest place in the world, but safer than an alleyway.”
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  “I don’t think anything would have happened,” she mutters optimistically, rubbing her head and hoping she’s right.

  “You’re a black mask now,” he shrugs. “Black masks aren’t the best of people. Think about the worst thing that could happen. That’s happened here, and it would happen again in an instant—and without a second thought.”

  Becca looks down at her bloody white dress and shivers at the eerie and scary memory of her party. He was right, after all, although she hates to admit it. She’s heard so many things about the Black Clan, so many things people should not do… and then there’s Banshee…

  Eduard sighs and holds out his hand as he stands up to help Becca to her feet. She takes the offer and hold onto him briefly while she makes sense of the blurriness of the world around her. It goes away soon and she lets go, embarrassed she had touched him for that long.

  “This is Victoria,” Eduard says, motioning to the girl with the eyelashes. She nods. “That—is Mikey,” the guy with the smile waves, “Nixon,” the guy that wears the angry mask nods, “and Twitch.”

  “Twitch?” Becca asks quietly as she looks over at the boy wearing the paint-splattered mask. His face snaps upright and his mumbling stops as he looks between Becca and Eduard. A moment later, he goes back to picking lightly at his fingers.

  Eduard nods. “He was caught in a fire. Ever since then he’s never been the same. So we just call him Twitch.”

  Becca nods.

  “And, as you know, my name is Eduard.”

  Becca smiles beneath her mask. “I knew it,” she chuckles.

  He shrugs. “Good thing then, I guess. I mean, I was the tiebreaker to see if you’d die or not. So you’re welcome.” He chuckles softly.

  “So why did you choose not to let them kill me?” Becca asks suddenly, the new side of her that she had caught a glimpse of inside of the courtroom slipping past her lips.

  “Because we need a Face,” he says.

  “A Face?” She asks, the word almost unfamiliar to her mouth. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we need someone to put on the front lines. And then I was surprised you still remembered me.” Eduard chuckles.

  “What?” Becca asks again, her head starting to hurt more from the waves of new information. What front lines is he talking about? What does he mean by that? Becca almost feels like he’s speaking a whole different language that she can’t comprehend.

  Eduard sighs. “Wow, you don’t know anything do you?”

  “Excuse me?” Becca spits.

  “I mean—no, not like that. I mean...” he looks around the room as he bounces on his toes. He takes another breath before looking back at Becca. “Come with me.”

  He takes her arm and leads her out of the room as he nods to his companions. Behind them, Mikey, Victoria, Nixon, and Twitch follow, lost in conversation and laughter. They bang on the walls as they trot down the rusty stairs, creating a riot of sounds, and Becca can hear and see other people start to come out of other rooms, whooping and shouting in pure glee.

  It’s like an apartment complex in here. The stairs wind down to the ground, and soon a large group of black decorated masks are trailing behind the six of them, hooting and howling and laughing and making every noise known to man to make a ruckus.

  “We got a new one,” Victoria shouts at the loud crowd and they all cheer and laugh. She pushes Becca lightly on her shoulder and lets out a shout.

  Eduard holds her arm until they’re out the back door of the building, and suddenly, he starts running. She watches him curiously, still walking, until she’s pushed forward by the rebel-yelling mass behind her, and she breaks out into a run herself. They sprint through an open field and into a cluster of trees, the air sticky as the skyline darkens with night. The sounds of the forest are taken over by the chatter of the people in black masks. They all stop around a medium-sized patch of dead grass, making a circle around it. Eduard and Victoria step onto the patch and the crowd cheers. Victoria laughs and raises her hands, as if she was victorious of something that happened. Becca feels like she should be scared, but something inside of her sprouts happiness and makes her want to smile and cheer along with the swarm of black masks that surround her.

  “Attention, company!” Eduard yells, his voice going deeper than what Becca has heard.

  The volume of the crowd lowers, the words of Victoria and Eduard covering the whispers as they continue with their speech.

  “We have added a new member to our little organization!” Victoria shouts. “Eduard brought her in from an alleyway, unconscious and covered in blood.”

  Eduard walks up to the side of the crowd Becca is on and she shies away from him a bit, scared of what is going to happen next.

  He grabs her arm gently and leads her into the center of the ring, nodding to her assuringly. The crowd cheers and looks her over.

  “She didn’t kill anyone,” Eduard shouts over the crowd, and it falls silent. “But she was blamed for it. And although she isn’t “black mask material”, I say we let her in. I say we’ve found our Face.”

  The crowd starts to talk all at once and Becca looks up at Eduard, who stands a whole head taller than her. He looks down at her and nods.

  “Does anyone challenge Eduard?” Victoria circles the inside of the crowd. “Does anyone want to question our leader?”

  So he’s their leader…? Becca thinks to herself as she looks back out at the people.

  “I do,” a girl steps forward through the thick crowd.

  “Oohh,” Victoria laughs sarcastically, skipping a circle around her and stopping beside her. “We have a taker. What’s your reasoning, Trishah?”

  The girl has a pink-rimmed mask, the color only on the edges, and her clothes are about at the same state as Twitch’s is.

  “I’ve been working with you for a few years now, Eduard,” she begins. “I’ve been a part of this little rebellion almost since the beginning of its creation. What makes her the Face and not me?”

  “Did you stand up and question the leader?” Eduard asks. “No. None of us did. She did, though.”

  “I’m sure one of us questioned—”

  “Nope,” says Eduard. “Before joining, you had to tell me your story of joining the Dark Clan, and from there I would decide to let you join or not. None of you did that to Quill. If you did, you would have been dead, mostly because all of you are guilty of what you did. And on the other hand, I have been in the jury for most of your trials, so when any of you tried to lie, I took that into consideration as well.”

  Trishah nods and steps back into the crowd.

  Victoria points a finger at the girl and shakes her head like a bobble head before springing off of her toes and walking around the circle again.

  “Anyone else?”

  “I have a question,” Becca chimes in.

  Victoria stops where she lands from springing around inside the little group, and turns to look at her. All eyes flicker to Becca and she starts to feel uncomfortable.

  “Yes?” Victoria asks.

  “What do you need this—face for? I don’t understand what’s going on…”

  Eduard and Victoria look at each other and then turn back to Becca.

  “I’m not going to make you do this unless you accept,” he says, his warm hands touching her arms gently and sending chills through her body. “But before you decide, you have to see something first. Okay?”

  “But I don’t know what anything is!” She says, exasperated. “You’re not explaining yourself!”

  “We need a leader. A face that everyone will see.”

  “I thought you were the leader? Of whatever this is. This… little… group-thing?”

  “Unofficially,” he shrugs. “But we need someone who will do what we need them to do, and you have that spark and that fire to do it.”

  “To do what?” Becca asks, still confused.

  Eduard turns to the audience. “Did you guys bring them?”


  Everyone starts talking at once and Victoria and Eduard start to retreat back into the group, followed by the lost and confused Becca.

  Someone lights a match and throws it onto the circle of dead grass. It lights immediately, and Becca jumps back, not able to take her eyes off of the flames. She turns to look at Eduard and her brain starts to panic.

  He’s removing his mask.

  “Throw,” He says once his mask is in his hand. He tosses it into the fire, and it’s followed by dozens of other ones. He looks at Becca, the fire illuminating the right side of his face.

  Her breath catches in her throat as she sees the first real face that isn’t hers. His eyes are bright blue and his hair is a deep brown and his lips are full and a light pink color glows with the light of the fire.

  “Would you like to stop hiding behind that mask?” He asks her, his voice soft but audible over the cackling of the fire and the noise of the black masks behind him.

  Becca looks around at all of the faces. People touch one another, amazed by what they’re seeing. Many of them have patterns drawn on them like on Eduard’s arm, some have triangles, and some have squares, and they’re in different spots, Becca realizes as she looks around the circle. The moment conflicts her on the inside. For so long, she’s been told to never take off the mask, no matter what. No matter the scoff. Never take it off. But in this moment… this is the moment she chooses. And she can choose to either be a part of the society, or a part of something completely opposite, something completely whimsical, almost magical, it seems…

  She turns back to look at Eduard.

  “But we could…” She trails off as she touches the rough surface of her mask.

  “I know,” he says quietly. “That’s why we’re going to put on a different mask.”

  “Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose?” Becca asks, her throat closing as she thinks of the terrible possibilities that could happen if she went back without a mask.

  “Not for what we’re trying to do,” he says.

  “And what is that?”

  “We’re going to get our freedom back.”