Unmasked

by Kevin J. Anderson

  He blocked the view behind him, down the few steps where she imagined a dangerous array of rebels mingled in a soup of sweat and odor, taunting the capricious virus. In such close quarters she supposed it could jump person to person, from the careless or the bold, to the lonely or the jaded. Desperate people, like her. It was everything she’d been told to avoid, and had avoided, until this point, swiping her sanitized phone right or left on the app, carrying on long disembodied text conversations with fingertips instead of intimate words you’d have to lean in to hear. She’d even had a few distanced dates, too remote for any spark to leap that divide. But this was another chance. Their banter back and forth was fun and easy. She wanted to meet him, see his face, hear his voice unstifled by mask, shield, or that new kind of trepidation she’d found and tried to bury in herself.

  “Just read.”

  The host brought her attention back to the tablet. His scrutiny groped her face and body, intruding on the skin bordering her mask. Her face burned underneath it. Breathing her own recycled breath oppressed her and made her feel she might swoon one of these days if she didn’t get fresh air instead. She wanted to meet this guy named Carl, but why here of all places, she wondered. She re-read the long list of dangers he was exposing her to, that she would defy if she stepped past the roped-off threshold and down the few steps into the place called the Speakeasy.

  “Okay, so you gonna sign?” She checked the tablet one last time, scrolling to make sure she’d read it all, then holding her thumb above the space indicated, hesitated before pressing it down on the touchscreen. As if this was a defense in any court these days, she thought, but did it anyway. He checked to see that it registered and scanned her i.d. Watching what she could see of his face, she figured that finally he smiled. His eyes had tender little crinkles at the edges and narrowed again, but in a friendlier sort of way. Just how much had she misjudged him, and whether his lips were thin or full, and if he showed his teeth when he smiled, she wondered as he beckoned her to step past him and unclasped the heavy velvet rope. She stopped just beyond him on the top step, preparing for her descent down to the coffee shop itself.

  “Oh, and …” he spoke gentler to her now. She stopped, looking up at him. “You will want to …” He gestured at his mask and she hesitated, but then understood and turned away, as if now she had to strip naked before going any further. She reached up and slid the straps of her own mask off her head, then stowed it in her bag.

  The noise implied that there were many more than the ten or less allowed into any venue of this size, public or private. The sound rose up to draw her toward the gathering of people. She remembered how it felt entering a crowded bar, meeting the mysterious men that inhabited the world of the past.

  In the dim light of those bars or clubs you’d never know who was getting close enough to press against your body, exhale their steamy breath on your neck or attempt to whisper provocative words to you while watching your lips for a clue. They might be the worst loser or greatest possibility, but those were the chances you’d take—that you wanted to take—back then. She remembered the auburn beard of her last boyfriend in that other time. He had shaved it off so he could wear a tight-fitting respirator, and she still mourned those crisp little hairs tickling her skin.

  With the mask off her face now, she flushed as the heat rolled up to engulf her in the sudden pleasure of being open and unrestrained. Her cheeks tingled and the back of her neck felt like some breeze nestled in her hair.

  She made her way down the few steps, studying the small area, then stopped again, leaning on a bannister to orient herself. The couple who’d arrived after her hurried past, veering too close.

  The wave of smells greeting her began to have nuances, and she almost took a deep breath, then froze and cautiously let herself inhale slow dribbles of air rich with a variety of vape flavors, something fragrant like her grandfather’s pungent pipe tobacco, and all the odors her mask would have blunted. The combination of aromas and noise from people together in the tight space gripped and pulled her like a firm, warm hand she could not resist.

  Underlying the dark scent of fresh coffee, tea, and the earthy perfume of so many bodies closer together than normal, there was something else, undefinable and elusive. It wafted across the boundaries between people, pushing her into the invisible maelstrom toward the long counter with the busy baristas. She hadn’t located him yet, the guy named Carl. She’d get her drink first, then go find him. The aroma of the coffee made her once again breathe deeper than she meant to until she pictured that spiky little juggernaut of a virus, infiltrating and latching onto the careless and unwary.

  Around her a buffet of faces talked and laughed. Their expressions blossomed in the heat and attention, smiling or frowning, not noticing her as they focused on each other. Lips in luscious colors surrounded her with marvelous, disconcerting variety. Her own felt pale and uncertain. Jawlines and mouths, some framed by emerging whiskers or full-out beards, presented her with a range of unsettling possibilities. They were within reach. She could have extended her awkward, inhibited fingers and touched them.

  Meanwhile, laughter spewed germs into the air. They hovered everywhere, targeting her and the heedless crowd. Invisible enemies rose from their hot bodies, hitch-hiking on their confidence, sweat and pheromones. As she stepped closer, still waiting to order her coffee, she couldn’t stop visualizing miniscule sprays of the most virulent kind, escaping each person to fly through the confined space. You didn’t know what was let loose from those unhindered mouths. But she did know every admonition. The contagion could travel farther than you thought possible on the most ordinary human function: a yawn, a giggle, a smile, a word spoken too enthusiastically, a cough or worse, a sneeze. Somewhere deeper in the room, the man who’d lured her there, watched. She peered around, looking for him. She checked her phone but there was no message. She told herself she could still leave.

  Four people sat at a table just large enough to hold their mugs, their heads drifting too close together. She pictured the virus jumping like opportunistic fleas from one bent head to another. In a tiny booth a couple faced each other, their hands on the table, his resting on top of hers. She imagined their sweat mingling and with it the virus, crossing from one to the other, sweet, deceiving and perhaps deadly.

  Something nuzzled her again, like an insidious idea, carrying unknown threats or promise. It played with her, brushed her skin, making her tremble and look around the room again. The press of warm bodies moved closer to the till in contrast to the isolated people outside, slogging their separate ways through the cold and wet streets. Even if the guy named Carl turned out to be all wrong, at least she could still have just the simple pleasure of sitting close enough to eavesdrop on strangers again.

  The miasma of smells enveloped her, pressuring her to almost bump against the person in front of her. The straps of her mask had left marks that she still felt, clinging to her face, impressing upon her the rules of proper pandemic behavior. She always donned it first thing in the morning before leaving her place. The marks made a border around the usually censored part of her face.

  She inched closer to the counter. Just as her phone vibrated in her pocket with a message, she glanced up at the wall behind the counter and noticed an old bumper sticker pinned there amid a few other haphazard decorations. Puzzled, she saw that once it had read “Live Free or Die.” Now the first two words were crossed out. Handwritten in big black letters above them was one other word, the name of the coffee shop so that the sticker read, “Speakeasy or Die!” Her eyes opened wide, and startled, she took in a deep breath as her hand rose in reflex to her own once familiar cheek. But that was taboo. She pulled her hand back down and glanced around.

  That’s when she caught him, phone in his hand, but watching her. His look reached out from across the room as palpable as a touch about to soothe her cheek. His own face was unmasked, and the promise of a smile rested there.

  She blushed. His smile spread, a hybrid
of two emotions, she thought. Which would win, humour or desire? With that question, she hesitated, wondering if she could tip the response on his face one way or the other. She turned away from the counter then and slipped out of the lineup.

  She walked toward him, cheeks burning, and smiled at him the way people used to do. Of course, she thought, the virus still lurked somewhere nearby—hiding, cajoling, bargaining and tricking them all. She checked his smile again, and let her fears fly up into the air like confetti, a bit like the virus disguised in the droplets of a sneeze. That mysterious small draft—a wish or a hope—blew through the confined hot atmosphere of the tiny shop so they could speak, face to face. Easily.

  Keltie Zubko is a Western Canadian writer, born in Alberta and now based on Vancouver Island, BC. She has an extensive background doing research and writing legal arguments, as well as writing about free speech and Western Canadian politics. She now prefers to explore in fiction our human relationships with each other and with technology. Her work has appeared in Canada, the U.S. and internationally.

  Framing Marta

  James Romag

  Normally Marta enjoyed bonfires in the town square on autumn evenings, though not this time. Not when she was secured to a post atop a waiting mound of kindling and logs. She understood it was standard procedure for exterminating witches—as outlined in the village “Igniting All Mannere of Bad Thinges” manual—but she also knew she was not a witch. Of that she was certain. Absolutely certain. She also had no intention of ever becoming one, regardless of what Sorcerer Drycreek prophesied. Yet here she stood in her best black dress and new boots, falsely accused of said crime and scheduled to be burned alive at the stake shortly after sundown.

  She cursed Drycreek for trying to impose on her something for which she had neither enthusiasm nor inclination. More than a decade earlier, when she’d been content learning the cobbling and sewing trades by day and studying her passions of Latin and astronomy by night, Drycreek had called upon the shoe shop “purely by chance” one afternoon with glorious ideas and grandiose plans and proclaimed she was destined to become one of the most celebrated witches ever. It seemed innocent enough at the time. So how did things reach the point where she was about to be served up hominum flambé?

  As she pondered Drycreek’s persistent misdirection that had led to this moment on the platform of a soon-to-be raging bonfire, a rotten tomato smacked her on the cheek, smearing across her jaw and concealing half her face. She peered at the small crowd gathered around her and focused on Younge Ethan, a local boy perpetually in need of a bath. He started to laugh but fled when he caught her evil eye.

  Marta flicked her tongue and shook her head to free the bits of Younge Ethan’s tomato face covering and sighed. Surely, they’ll see the real me behind this contrived drama and agree I’m but a lowly cobbler and seamstress, she thought. In the meantime, must I endure this theatrical twenty-four-hour viewing? I know many of these folk. They wouldn’t really burn me, would they? She squirmed a bit up on the platform. And where’s a loo when you need one?

  Over the course of the fifteen or so hours she’d already endured on public display, she’d accumulated plenty of fruits and vegetables—enough to start her own market stand and soup kitchen—but no offers of assistance. A church bell tolled somewhere in the village, a reminder that her scheduled incineration was approaching a bit too quickly, in the hour after dusk when the moon began its rise. Would she really be set ablaze?

  A soft breeze ruffled her long dark curly hair, sending it swirling around her head, masking half her face. Someone in the crowd whistled as the breeze lifted her dress just enough to show a bit of striped stocking over the top of a tall boot. Marta squinted at the man, whose whistle turned into an uncontrollable cough.

  Her initial fear and anger following her capture yesterday had worn off long ago and been replaced by boredom, with a dash of impatience. She scanned the crowd before her.

  “Mrs. Winslow,” Marta called out. “Ahem.”

  A woman in a dark dress and gloves talking with a man next to her lifted her head.

  “Yes, you, Mrs. Winslow. Did I not tell you that black was a mistake due to the way it accentuated your pale complexion? When you came to me—somewhat prematurely—for mourning attire, did I not provide the draught that brought your husband back from death’s door?”

  Mrs. Winslow’s reply came in the form of a displeased snort.

  “You’re best off with that medium blue frock I stitched for you,” said Marta.

  “But you’re in black,” said Mrs. Winslow. She held her hand above her eyes to shield the sun.

  Marta looked down at her own dress. True, her original pattern called for a simple frock of red fabric, and that’s what she started with. For reasons still to be sorted out, when she finished sewing it, she had a ruched dress and cloak in black, which she now wore as she stood for all to see above that waiting heap of dry wood.

  “Well, yes,” said Marta, “because it suits me and my complexion. Plus, one can’t deny it goes well with my boots. And my stockings.” A gust of wind raised the dress just enough to show a flash of leggings. This time, no one dared whistle and instead most of the men in the crowd averted their eyes.

  Marta had taken the idea for the stockings from the uniforms she’d designed for a team of young men playing that new Rugby Sporte over in the town of Luna. Initially, she wasn’t sure she’d like the pattern when she was stitching the socks, but the black-and-white horizontal stripes turned out to compliment her whole ensemble.

  “If you say so,” said Mrs. Winslow, who returned to her chat with her companion, ignoring Marta.

  Marta puffed her cheeks and blew her curly locks from her chin. The curls fell right back to wrap across her nose and mouth. If only she’d had time to get her hair trimmed before they came with torches and pitchforks to pull her from her thatched-roof cottage in the woods. Seeing how it was midafternoon when the clumsy mob showed up at her home the first time, she felt the torches were overkill; nothing but an overwrought, melodramatic trope used by unimaginative witchfinders.

  Thunk! Instead of a tomato, this time it was a rotten cabbage that hit her and pulled her from her thoughts. She cursed Drycreek again and searched the gathering crowd. Where was that reptile of a man in her moment of need?

  From the time a good twelve years ago when he’d proclaimed she had an aura, through her lackluster efforts at witchcraft schooling, Sorcerer Drycreek had taken credit for any of her successes, however minor, and blamed her for her failures. Now, though, when she was erroneously accused of full-blown witchcraft and counting down the final hours of her life, he was absent.

  Their most recent argument had been over her dedication to the craft. That was three and three and three days ago in Marta’s cottage. The argument had started during her usual Friday midnight lessons when Drycreek exclaimed once again that she wasn’t trying hard enough. She knew he was right, but she simply didn’t care. After all, she was not and would never be a witch, so what was the point?

  At first, when she was barely a teen, the prospect of witchcraft was new and exciting, but soon it was dull and dry, and who had the patience to collect gnats’ wings and midnight shadows and wolves’ howls anyway? For Marta, it was all a bit eyeroll inducing. Give her a sturdy piece of canvas or leather and she could make the best shoes or boots this side of Styks. Give her a swath of fabric and she could stitch an outfit that would make a person look like someone new.

  The night of their fateful disagreement, she explained to Drycreek yet again that that was where her skills lay. “Stitchery, not witchery,” she said. Expect her to cure a wart on a big toe, well, that was something entirely different. Hard to find inspiration there. Unless it was a wart on her own nose, which she did remove rather handily a year ago, and yet when she checked herself in her silver mirror last week it seemed to be returning. Nevertheless, Drycreek still wouldn’t listen and implored her to learn the witchcraft trade.

  Mid-argument,
Marta picked up the besom from the wall near her fireplace and shooed him out the door. Drycreek threw his hands in the air and walked away, through the cobwebs and down the thirteen steps in the overgrown path, cloak flapping behind him in the darkness, voice trailing off with distance: “You’re living a masquerade behind your well-crafted façade, not showing yourself as you really are. Someone needs to light a fire under your scrawny little ….”

  Following the altercation, Drycreek simply disappeared. Presently the rumors started: Marta was placing curses on the villagers’ cabbage patches, Marta was the head witch in a secret coven stealing children’s dreams, Marta was making the mayor’s hair fall out. Not a word of it was true. She assumed Drycreek would drop by to quash the gossip, she’d then show her gratitude by paying closer attention to his lessons for a couple weeks, and in time things would return to normal.

  Drycreek, to Marta’s disappointment, never showed. Given her predicament, Marta surrendered her pride and felt it best to locate him. It was at that moment she realized she’d never asked where he lived or where he spent his time. He always came to her, most often when she didn’t want him. Still, she searched, starting with her favorite haunts. She tried the moor. She explored the cairns. She checked down in Reaper’s Hollow and Goblins’ Grove, with no luck in any of those places. Marta gave up looking. She was better off without him. She returned home and stayed there, avoiding her shop and the townsfolk, waiting for the imbroglio to pass.