Masks

by Dean M. Drinkel

  The woman held a large white card on her crossed legs. “Read.”

  Carol squinted at the text and picked this moment as her one futile act of defiance.

  “No.”

  “Pity.”

  With a simple gesture, Gas Mask released the vehemence that resided within Knuckle Cracker. He brought the back of his hand against Carol's face. He allowed a moment for the muted damp sound of flesh striking flesh to be absorbed into the foundation before hitting her a second time. His mask-smile grew higher as he drew back for a third, but a second gesture from Gas Mask froze his leather-gloved hand inches from Carol's face.

  The woman tapped her finger against the cue card. “Read.”

  Carol's face throbbed, her right eye now swollen to the point of shutting, molding her face into a twisted purple mask of her own. The room spun in a kaleidoscope of bruised colors, causing the words on the card to merge into each other.

  “Perhaps, she would like more?” Gas Mask asked, signaling to the thug already responsible for delivering so much agony.

  “Stop! Stop! Stop!” Carol shouted. Globules of blood that had welled in the pockets of her inner cheeks sprayed out, onto the floor. “I-I'll read it. Ju-just keep him away from me.”

  Gas Mask nodded to Knuckle Cracker who complied by walking behind his employer. He made certain that Carol could not escape seeing him, save for if she turned her head. “Begin,” Gas Mask said.

  Rallying against a combination of pain that bore straight to her brain-stem and only a single eye now seeing double, Carol read. “They just want money, Mom. If you give them one-hundred thousand dollars in non-sequential bills, they will return me. You have eight hours to gather the money. Someone will contact you with further details for the drop-off. If you don't follow their exact instructions, you will never see me again.”

  “Good.” The team stripped the make-shift movie set down and hauled the bags back up the narrow stairs, leaving behind only Carol and Gas Mask. “If all goes well, you will be home by breakfast, yes?”

  She patted the top of Carol's head the same way one would reassure a scared dog and left her alone in her windowless tomb, shutting the dim lights off as a final act of indifference towards her suffering.

  These people must know that Mom can't get her hands on that kind of money in eight hours! she thought.

  An empty room is not as empty as one might expect. The pit was, in fact, down-right boisterous. The subtle popping as the foundation settled provided the baseline for the symphony. Decades-old dust and petrified rat droppings, knocked loose as her captors moved around upstairs.

  Carol spent her time in the abyss thinking of all the ways they were going to kill her once the time was up. The solitude served as a perfect conduit for negative thoughts. Once they realize they aren't getting paid, the big one will probably come down here and finish what he started, she thought. The image of Knuckle Cracker driving a lead pipe into her skull strangled her remaining rationality.

  She wanted to cry, but the tears would not come. She had to settle for wordless pangs of terror. Her breaths degenerated into ragged shudders as she rocked back and forth in her seat. She tried to hug herself, a childhood safety blanket made physical, but her chains grew taught in the attempt, refusing her even this.

  S'okay, s'okay, s'okay, Carol let the words of false optimism lull her into a kind of waking sleep.

  The lights, dim as they were, rocked her to her core as they were flipped back on. The pain in her head amplified until it felt like the beams had turned to glass and shattered inside of her eyes, cutting and tearing her apart.

  Words of anger transcended the language barrier. Two of the three masked monsters cursed and spat at Carol's feet, tossing their arms in the air in disbelief. But, not Knuckle Cracker. He stood with his arms folded behind his back, calm and composed. The corners of his mask lifted ever-so-slightly as his gaze locked with hers. This sight disturbed Carol far more than his compatriots' animated rage.

  He's going to be the one to do it, she thought.

  The dissent in the ranks quelled as Gas Mask sprinted down the stairs. She stared obedience into her subordinates, who could not bear her gaze for a few seconds.

  Satisfied, Gas Mask pulled a hand-held camera from her coat pocket. “Film,” she said, shoving the tiny piece of plastic into the hands of one of her men.

  “Your people. They do not pay.” Gas Mask took Carol's face in her hand, twisting it to examine her bruised eye, now swollen into grotesquery.

  “N-n-not enough...t-time,” Carol whispered, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps they must be reminded of the penalty. We show them, yes?”

  The woman turned her back and nodded to Knuckle Cracker as she walked past him and up the stairs. The mammoth unfurled a plastic grocery bag. He tugged on the open edges as he positioned himself behind her, preparing for the outcome that all parties knew was the only way this would end.

  The rustling of the bag, in addition to knowing that this act of senseless killing would be a high water-mark in Knuckle Cracker's miserable life proved to be her breaking point. Carol thrashed against her chains, disregarding the pain it brought her. Tears finally came in buckets.

  “Don’t do this! Don't do this! Don't do this! I don't want to die!” A slick of snot oozed unchecked from her nostrils. Her breathing frenzied to the point where her lips grew numb. She knew begging was futile. She knew it, yet, confronted with her own mortality, she did it anyway.

  Carol's pleas stopped the second she felt the tepid plastic touch her flesh. Her words transformed into a guttural yelp that sounded like a skipping record as Knuckle Cracker slipped the bag over her head in a slow, deliberate motion that was almost gentle.

  An abrupt jerk lurched her up and out of her seat. Her chains pulled her from the opposite direction. She felt the skin on her wrists and ankles stripped away as the forged metal refused to relent to the opposing force. The plastic conformed to her features, invading her nostrils and mouth.

  Her lungs, desperate for life-giving air, quickly drained the grocery bag of oxygen. The burning red of the camera recording the crime penetrated through her failing vision, reminding her that her poor mother would be subjected to her child's brutal murder.

  A fiery pain erupted in her chest as she began to inhale the bag. She felt her body go limp; her brain chasing suit shortly after, shutting the lights off as it left.

  ~~~

  The chirping of crickets and grasshoppers, a familiar and quaint staple of the countryside in evening, sounded like bombs exploding to a city girl like Carol. Her good eye snapped open, expecting to see a judging God looming over her. The glow of the moon shining through a slightly overcast night sky greeted her instead.

  Her view of the corpse-white orb was obstructed by a rubbed-lined lip that curved down and inwards at a steep angle. Tilting her head back, she saw the open lid and held her breath.

  They shoved me in the trunk of a car!

  Voices halted any thoughts of scrambling out of the vehicle. Carol edged over to the opening and peered out. The three behemoths were passing a shovel between themselves, yelling at each other in the same fierce foreign language. The argument was stopped in its infancy by her would-be murderer.

  Knuckle Cracker snatched the tool from his subordinate and stuck it into the earth, rending free a spade-full of wormy loam and tossing it into a pile of long grass. He repeated the motion a second time before tossing the shovel to his slightly less-massive compatriot. He pointed to the hole in the ground, challenging the man to defy him. The man submitted and continued with the midnight excavation.

  They don't know that I'm still alive! Carol's thoughts careened through her brain, fuelled by manic emotion. They didn't even bother to tie my hands or feet together!

  The chains proved to be a cruel lover. Jagged scrapes lined her wrists and ankles. The wounds re-opened, weeping blood as she ran the tips of her fingers over them. Carol winced. They would s
car horribly but she pushed those thoughts away, forcing herself to think of a way out of the trunk and to safety.

  Jumping out of the trunk is out, she thought, edging back from view of the three men. They would have me on the ground and bash my brains into the mud in two seconds flat.

  Carol ran her bloodied fingers against the rear of the trunk. Coarse upholstery was all that she felt. Her frustration boiled over into panic. If this is like my car, there has to be an emergency latch or button that folds the rear seats back. She pressed against the backseat with the strength she had left, hoping that the engineers that built this particular model had planned for such an event and the backseat would fold gently open.

  After tiny fibers of the carpeting embedded themselves into her palms, Carol gave up the assault. She rolled onto her back, biting her knuckle bloody to stem the tide of curses and tears. She lay there staring up at the early autumn sky; the sounds of her shallow grave being dug providing the soundtrack.

  Carol was about to lose all hope and simply lie there awaiting the inevitable when something caught her eye. The moonlight that shone in her one good eye kept getting interrupted, broken by a small foreign invader. Squinting until a migraine formed in her head, Carol realized that she was looking at the small rubber loop of the trunk's rear-seat release.

  Carol gulped in a huge lungful of air and held it as she raised herself upwards. Her fingers rubbed against each other in nervous anticipation, something she couldn't stop if she tried. Her nerves were too tightly wound. The stakes far too high.

  The entire upper portion of her body was raised up out of the trunk. All it would take for her great escape to come to an end would be for one of them to glance over their shoulder.

  Stop thinking! Just grab the stupid thing and move! Stop thinking!!

  Her middle finger looped through the cold rubber and Carol pulled; too hard, as the entire trunk swung down on her head. Mercifully, the latch caught before the trunk closed shut, entombing her in a temporary coffin until the brutes came for her. The back seat glided down with a quiet hydraulic hiss.

  Oh, Yes! Yes! she thought, as she saw the glint of the car keys, still in the ignition.

  Carol gently released the trunk, holding it in place so it would not rattle and crawled further into the vehicle. Deep muscle bruises pulsated with pain and cuts that had begun to scab over were freshly torn open as she navigated her way into the driver's seat.

  The sounds of the shovel blade violating the ground continued, accompanied by the cursing of the brutes, still arguing over whose turn it was to dig. Carol smiled; an act that she had written off as a thing of the past.

  Her relief, her euphoria, betrayed her. As her guard dropped, so did her hand on the steering wheel with just a touch too much pressure. The horn obliterated the nights' relative stillness. Time froze, forcing Carol to listen to the fading wail of the horn as its echo rang through the surrounding hollow of trees.

  God, No!

  A palm the size of a child's basketball batted against the window of the driver's seat. Carol shrieked as Knuckle Cracker cursed at her in his devil tongue. Without thinking, she twisted the keys hard, bringing the engine to life with a roar. The driver's door swung open hard; Knuckle Cracker nearly ripping it off the frame.

  Carol screamed as death reached in to claim her, this time for certain. She jerked the shifter all the way down and slammed on the gas. At first, the car did not move. The tires spun in the wet ground, fish-tailing the car away from Knuckle Cracker, who was still reaching for her like the undead, until the wheels found traction rocketing the car forward.

  She drove in pitch black, screaming still as she blindly probed the console for the headlights. She flipped them on, illuminating a very old and very thick looking willow tree mere feet in front of her.

  God, No!

  A swift crank of the wheel to the left brought her back onto a well-trodden dirt road. Her voice had finally given out from the strain, yet, this did not deter Carol's screaming, which now emerged in dry rattles.

  She looked behind her, seeing no pursuing headlights. A brief flash of light burst in and out of existence, reflected in the rearview. The sound of the gunshot was drowned out by the engine and the explosion of the now missing rear windshield.

  Carol ducked behind the headrest as much as she could; trying to avoid the influx of shattered glass. Tiny stings bit at her shoulders and arms as the glass struck her, drawing fresh blood.

  Two more gunshots chased her. The first took off the side-view mirror. The second put a hole through the front passenger headrest, leaving a cloud of stuffing that caused Carol to choke and sputter.

  She put the pedal to the floor and sped away from her unmarked grave, not slowing up until the dirt road ended and merged with one of the earmarks of modern-day civilization, asphalt.

  Carol had no idea which direction she should go, so she whipped to the right, leaving behind a foot of rubber as she steered the car towards whatever fate had in store for her.

  It's okay! Just keep going and don't stop for anything. She gripped the steering wheel with both hands so tight she felt the stitching of the leather cover loosen under her broken fingernails.

  Untold minutes later, a reflective green shone at the side of the road.

  The sign read: 'I-95: 5 MI'

  Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

  The highway was empty, all the decent, normal folk tucked away safely in their beds. Never in their wildest nightmares would they even dream that it could be them sitting where Carol was now.

  It took her several hours to get home. Carol parked the shot-up car in front of a fire hydrant and glided into the foyer of her building. She had no keys, of course. They, along with her purse and phone, were a sacrifice to the patron saint of kidnap survivors.

  The doorman mumbled something about 'domestic situations' not being a part of his job description and handed over her spare key, avoiding eye contact with her. She made straight for her fourteenth floor apartment.

  On the long march down the corridor, her fear returned, twice as ruthless. The incident of the night took on a dream-like quality. The masked beings, the assault, grew foggy until she could not recall them clearly. Perhaps her mind was shutting down all the non-essential parts to protect itself from the stark truth of the very near death experience she had survived.

  She felt like an intruder in her own home. Her post-modern furniture, methodically planned and chosen, seemed like someone else's in light of the kidnapping. Carol sat on her sofa and surveyed the room.

  The urge to paint over the so-called 'street art' that was nothing more than spatters of spray-paint on her wall was overwhelming. All she could manage was to close her eyes and sink into the couch. Sleep pushed aside all other thoughts.

  ~~~

  The first light of the morning peeled Carol's eyelids open. No chirping birds sang to her the promise of a brand new day. No fresh pot of coffee and sizzling bacon either. Instead, Carol woke almost paralyzed from her wounds, the pain worse than the evening before.

  It's like a hangover without all the fun, she thought as she rolled onto her hip.

  Carol's beaten face stared back at her through the polarized lenses of a gas mask. The gas mask, that lay on the coffee table.

  They're in the apartment! she thought, snapping upright on the sofa.

  The owner of the mask sat in an over-stuffed chair two feet from Carol, her face hidden no longer. She was a younger woman, with raven-black hair and lipstick to match. The former Gas Mask did not say a word, seeming content to let the big questions linger in the space between them.

  “You parked my car in front of a hydrant,” Gas Mask said after a time, her voice sultry now that it was free from distortion. “That's a tow-zone, you do realize.”

  Before Carol could will a reply, Gas Mask produced a familiar sight from within her over-coat. “As promised: your purse and phone. You will find an itemized inventory list of the contents pre-and-post abduction in the front pock
et.”

  “Thanks,” Carol said. She turned her phone on first, thumbing her way to her bank's mobile app. “Sorry about the car. I was kind of out of it during the getaway. How much is the ticket?”

  “I've already sent a revised invoice to your email.”

  Carol accessed her email and discovered a message with the header, 'Revised Invoice from Spirit Away, Inc.' “All right,” she said after reading the cost. “I'll wire the rest to your account now.”

  “Thank you. That can wait until after we do the required exit interview.”

  Carol rolled her one good eye. “We go through this every year. I keep telling you people that I don't need crisis counselling post-abduction. How many waivers do you need me to sign so we don't have to go through this?”

  “You know the rules, Carol. My boss was particularly insistent that we go through this after how far you requested us to go this year.”

  “Fine, but I am taking a shower first. I can feel the mud and blood caked on my skin.”

  Gas Mask consented to Carol's request with a slight head nod. “When you are finished, we have a medical professional waiting outside to look you over. Your eye looks particularly nasty.”

  “Yeah, that really big guy you hired this year, that's his handiwork,” Carol called from the bathroom. She ran the water in the shower for a few minutes until it was scalding-hot. “Where did you find him?”

  “Funny you should mention that. He is actually the medical professional I spoke of.”

  Carol poked her head out of the bathroom door. “Seriously?”

  “He's a hospice nurse for his day job.”

  Knuckle Cracker's touch came through Carol with such raw energy; her body recoiled from the memory of it. She touched her swollen eye and smirked. “He's good. I want to book him in for next year. I've got something really special planned for year thirty-six.”

  She shut the door and let the water cook her to a near boil. “Hey, could you put the edited tape of last night on the coffee table? I want to watch it after you leave.”