by K. Weikel
Chapter 20
“Becca.”
The lights in the library go out, and everything is dead silent. Becca feels her blood run cold and her body start to tingle in fear and anticipation. Apparently someone knows who she really is. But who?
“Beccaaaaa…” The voice almost gasps. The all too familiar voice, distorted by a mask.
Becca can hear the grumblings of other masked. They complain about the lights being off, and how the building is just old… but nothing about the voice saying her name, sending chills up her spine, making her breaths come out as if she’d just ran a marathon. The voice…
The lights flicker on. A man in a black mask with white pinstripes and a black cloth to cover his hair stares directly at her, his body covered, not with a cloak, but with a tight black shirt and pants that cling to his thighs. Muscles protrude from every inch of him, each one flexed and ready to strike. Suddenly, she feels as if she’s standing before that puma again, standing before Banshee’s gun.
She’s unarmed. She can’t protect herself, and even if she could, she can’t fight. She can’t defend herself from anything this guy throws at her.
Done-for is the only thing that pops in her head, surfacing through the sea of fear and the waves of helplessness.
This feels like the end of the road. This is it.
The man steps forward, and Becca scoots back, falling out of her chair. The ground, as it hits her, sends an uncomfortable pang through her, creating even more coldness inside of her.
“Becca,” He says again, almost pleading as he advances toward her at an alarming rate. “Becca, destroy me.”
“What?” She cries as she scrambles to her feet in the flickering lights. The glow contorts his mask, creating almost a different image with each flash.
“Destroy me!” He cries as Becca runs into a wall.
She looks around quickly, trying to find something to protect herself with. Why is he saying this? What’s going on?
A gun has appeared on the table she was just at. Who put it there? Did this man put it there?
What is going on?
“Destroy me, Becca Reed!” He screams, standing only a foot away from her now. He reaches forward and grabs her by the shoulder.
Becca hits the table on her right as she falls down, and she twists around as she lands on the ground, feeling pain in her side where the table had hit. The man in the mask reaches down to the back edge of the table and starts to lift.
She tries to scramble to her feet once again before the surface comes crashing down, but it catches her left calf and she cries out in pain. The table is definitely heavier than it looks.
Becca tries to slide her leg out from under it, but the man steps onto the overturned table. She cries out again, unable to twist around to help pull her leg out with her arms.
She feels one of his feet step onto the back of her knee, pulling the skin this way and that. She feels hot tears jump into her eyes as the man’s weight presses down on it. He leans forward and she can feel his mask as he creeps over her shoulder to whisper in her ear.
“Destroy me.”
Becca rears her head back, hitting the mask and hearing it crack. The man stumbles back, stepping off of her leg.
She pulls it to her and stands up, limping as she walks to the gun. Her hands close around it and she turns around to point it in the man’s direction.
Short, blonde hair pokes out through the crack that made its way from the top of the mask to the eyehole. Short, blonde, familiar hair.
The man’s fingers move sporadically as he takes a step forward.
“Don’t move or I’ll shoot!” Becca screams, knowing she can’t really do it.
Can she?
“You won’t shoot,” the man seems to beg. The voice is so familiar… “Destroy me, Becca Reed.”
He takes another step towards her.
“I’m warning you!”
“Destroy me,” He says, quieter. His voice seems like it’s full of pain. “I deserve it.”
“Why?” Becca asks, taking a step back herself as he takes two more forward.
“Do it!” He screams as he starts to run forward. “Do it, Becca! Destroy me!”
Scared, Becca pulls the trigger.
The man’s chest explodes and he falls to the ground.
She runs over to him.
What has she done?
The breaths come too fast from the man that lies beside where she kneels. He’s dying. Only moments to live.
“I betrayed…” he breathes.
The breaths disappear.
His heart has stopped.
Becca’s eyes fill with tears as her stomach twists in tiny knots. She reaches down and those small knots make even bigger ones. She did this.
But the biggest one comes as she lifts the mask from the man’s face.
It’s not a man at all.
It’s a boy.
Twitch.
