by Gary McMahon
“I’ve taken care of it.” My voice is booming, confident, and I remember the man I used to be before everything started to go wrong. That man remains distant, but he is getting closer, and I am certain a reunion cannot be far away.
Adi begins to make a strange high-pitched whining sound. Her lips have gone white and her eyes are bulging from her head. She is clawing at her face with long nails, drawing blood from the thin lines on her cheeks.
She is staring at my hands.
I look down, raising the mask to eye level.
Then I stare helplessly into the ragged, empty eye sockets of my son.
2
Blood on my clothes. Terror in my heart. Something ancient and unknowable roaring in my blood, under the skin.
Max’s papery face stares up at me, imploring, begging me to explain what has happened and why his daddy can no longer protect him.
Realisation, if not true understanding, flares darkly behind my eyes and reality creases, turning in on itself like an origami figure, a collapsing Möbius strip made out of material thin as skin.
By now Adi is flat-out on the kitchen floor, unmoving, barely even breathing. I kneel down beside her and touch her face, feeling for the familiar lines and contours I once adored. They are no longer there; this is not my wife.
I take off my jacket and lay it down next to Adi, placing the mask on top of the folded garment so my son has a good view as I reveal the true nature of his mother.
This time I have no knife close to hand and I am reluctant to break off and go hunting for one in drawers and cupboards, so instead I use my teeth and my fingernails. It is hard going at first, but I am a patient man. I have to be.
Laughing now at the sheer absurdity of it all, I dig into the deceitful softness in one final attempt to uncover whatever is lurking there, in the skin.