The Masquerade

by Rae, Alexa

  "I'm sorry about the other night. I shouldn't have mentioned your brother." He said sincerely.

  I frowned, remembering the other night. He had claimed our brothers weren't actually dead and it sent me over the edge. I didn't want to talk about it. Whatever drugs he was on isn't my business and I didn't care enough to ask.

  "It's fine," I promised him.

  He nodded. "I need you to be careful. That rock star isn't who you think he is and I know you know that. I'd tell you to break it off with him, but it's useless."

  My head tilted slightly to the side. "Why?"

  His hands dropped from my shoulders but his eyes remained locked with mine. He made a gesture to my face with a nod of his head. "The look on your face whenever I mention him is all I need to know."

  "Know what?"

  "You're in love with him."

  The word itself, spoken out loud, sounded foreign. It hovered over me like an anvil ready to drop on my head. The four-letter word wasn't sugar coated. I didn't see any rays of sunshine or flowers around it. The word brought with it a threatening storm forming in the distance, ready to destroy. The doom seeped into my bloodstream, draining me of the happiness that such a word should provide.

  I swallowed and cast my gaze to the ground. Loving him was wrong and I couldn't explain why. I was suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion. I needed sleep. I needed to escape, even to a place where my dreams collided with haunting nightmares of my past.

  "I don't know what that means to you," I heard Eli say and my eyes flashed back to his, "But it makes you incredibly stupid."

  That was all he said before he was gone. Kellan and Chester quickly followed him out the double doors at the end of the hallway. They sent glances over their shoulders with apologetic eyes over their abrupt departure. I stared at the doors until they closed, reminding me that if I wanted, I could trick myself to believe I never ran into them. There was no evidence of their presence and I could pretend it never happened. I continued to stare at the double wooden doors until my vision blurred and I briefly lost concept of reality.

  I finally blinked and forced my vision to focus. I couldn't ignore what just happened. The feeling in my chest was another forecast of the formidable future. Something was wrong. I could feel it. Eli knew it. The guys knew it. Ben's actions when we were together proved it. There was something tying them all together. I needed to find out what. I wasn't going to sit back and wait for the eerie presence I felt to grow stronger.

  Twenty

  It was a solid yellow line. My eyes were entranced with the color fading into the blackened asphalt. I took one step forward and found my feet were stuck on the line that curved to fit the bend in the road. With every step I put one foot carefully in front of the other, both like magnets pulling them back to the yellow line.

  I could not fall off.

  I must not fall off.

  "She doesn't know," a voice said from the left.

  Ben stood on the shoulder of the road. He was motionless with his hands at his sides and his hair brushed into his face. I wanted to run to him. I desperately tried, but my feet would not budge from the ugly yellow line.

  I could not fall off.

  But his eyes, his beautiful blue eyes were not for me. They stared past me. I wanted him to look at me. I craved the attention of his crystal orbs. Why wasn't he looking at me? I tried to move again.

  I must not fall off.

  "She's in love with him," a familiar voice said to my right.

  Eli stood on the right shoulder of the road. He too, stood frozen with his broken eyes locked in front of him. The wind picked up and the leaves from the woods around us swirled into the air. They danced below an angry, grey sky. Eli didn't sway in the growing force of the wind. I looked to my left and noticed Ben stood perfectly still. Both wore hard expressions with intense stares for the other.

  "She's a risk," another voice said. There were four figures around Ben, their faces clouded and their bodies shadowed.

  "I'll fight for her," Ben said, his voice deadly calm.

  "She knows too much," another voice said from the right where Eli stood. There were figures around him too. I recognized Vlad, Chester, and Kellan, but the rest of the figures were blurs and I couldn't care to identify them.

  "She can expose us," threw a voice from the left.

  I turned to Ben's side again. I wanted to run to him. I was afraid and I didn't want to be. I wanted his arms around me. I wanted to tell him I loved him. I wanted him to keep me safe, but my legs constricted any movements away from the line.

  I cannot fall off.

  I will not fall off.

  "She's one of us," Someone on Eli's side said.

  Ben's voice shot through the whirring wind. "She's mine."

  "She will tell," a voice hissed from the same side.

  Ben's eyes finally switched to mine when the thunder tumbled out of the sky. I gasped when I found his eyes were cold and shut off like the day I met him in the alley. He stood with his shoulders back and head up, he did not claim, he conquered. His sinister stance struck me with vague familiarity, but I couldn't allow my mind to place it.

  "Her lips are sealed," Ben stated abruptly.

  I opened my mouth to speak to him, but my lips refused to separate. I tried again and the outcome was the same. I wanted to scream. The sound boiled in my chest and thrust against my lips, banging against them, begging for release. I whimpered, but the sound was locked in my mouth.

  My hands flew to my mouth only to find something laced through the top part of my lip and out the bottom. My fingers ran across the line my lips made together, feeling the familiar pattern tied them together.

  I could see myself then. I stood in front of myself, watching as I frantically touched my lips. My eyes were frozen on my lips. They were sewn together with a thick thread of black wire forcing them shut. A few splotches of blood smeared the corners of my mouth where the wire was tied at end. I watched as my trembling hand rose to my mouth. My finger lightly pricked the wire poking out of the corner of my mouth. My eyes watered, feeling my screams bouncing off the roof of my mouth and the tip of my tongue.

  My head suddenly turned to where I stood outside my body. The girl with my face smirked. The malice I caught in my eyes sent a pang of terror throughout my mind. Horror stricken, I watched myself as my two fingers pulled on the wire that was tied in a tight knot at the corner of my mouth. An instant strip of pain shot from the insides of my cheeks, paralyzing the roots of my teeth in my gums. I tried screaming, but the scream stuck in the back of my mouth. My hand pulled the wire until it slipped out of the knot. Then slowly, my hand tugged the wire further up its length so that it was pulled through the first small hole, puncture above my lip.

  The pain surged again, electrifying every sense within me. My eyes spilled over with tears as I watched myself pull the wire from each puncture wound, slowly releasing my throbbing lips. The skin on my lip made a pop, the sound drove me to near madness that rocked within my brain and shot more pain down my spine.

  "She can never tell." The wind from the left echoed.

  "He can't save her." The right followed. "It's his fault."

  "She's not dead."

  The last voice from the left was faint, but distinct. The thunder clapped directly above us, vibrating the trees into a dance swaying from one side to the other. The unendurably excruciating pain scratched and pulled at the flesh inside my mouth. I watched as I continued to pull at the wire in my mouth until my scabbed lips were free and dripping with fresh crimson that trickled over my chin and slid down the side of my neck.

  "She's not dead yet." The words echoed in my mind.

  The spine tingling scream vibrated through the house as my eyes snapped open. I shot up from the couch, my chest heaving and my forehead dripping with what I first assumed to be blood. My hands came away from my face to find the warm liquid was sweat. I sighed, but it escaped my mouth in a whimper that left my body shaking. I needed to get up.

&nbs
p; I slid off the couch and peered at myself in the mirror hung in the hallway. Beads of moisture balled up at my hairline, wetting bits of my tangled hair. I scowled, feeling how gross and oily my hair was. I needed a shower.

  The previous events of the day flooded back to me at once. I left school early, claiming bad cramps to the school nurse. When I got home, I crashed on the couch without making my first run to the fridge, which was where I usually went right to after school. My mom wasn't there when I came home so I didn't expect her back until the morning. My eyes trailed over to the clock on the microwave. It was just past six. I was supposed to meet Ben at eight, which gave me time for a shower and a visit to the graveyard. I needed my brother.

  My shower wasn't long, despite my longing to stay locked away within the tile walls with the steaming water pouring over my body. I quickly changed into comfortable black jeans, a red tank top and pulled another longer sleeved black shirt with a neckline that exposed my shoulders, over it. I decided with my plain black converses. I was out the door fifteen minutes after waking up from that horrible dream.

  I decided to walk, rather than drive to the graveyard. It took only fifteen minutes of a light jog that I desperately needed to stretch my legs that ached from the tense position I slept in. My small run allowed my darker thoughts to evade me and I could picture nothing more than my brother's headstone.

  The graveyard was behind an old church that was abandoned a few years ago due to financial issues. Apparently, the priest wasn't so holy after all. The church itself was your stereotypical building with faded white paint, a pointed roof, and a cross at the tip. Although some kids in the area must have taken a slingshot to it with full force because when I looked up at it now the top part of the cross was missing.

  I moved around the side of the old church, purposely removing my gaze from the broken stained glass windows that allowed peaks inside. I didn't want to picture the sort of creepy things my imagination told me lived in there. I quickened my pace and pushed past the iron gate and broke into a sprint for Noah's gravestone that was located near the back of the home for lost souls.

  I sighed when I read his name across the headstone that I had become familiar with over the past six years. Brown roses, once red and fed of life, withered to nothing but crippled petals and a shriveled stem on top of the stone. With a sad smile, I picked them up, feeling the fragile pieces of dry plant crush in the palm of my hand. I tossed them to the side and wiped away the remains. The caretaker of the graveyard was arrested for battery a couple months back and no one bothered to hire anyone else to check up on the graveyard.

  I glanced down at his name engraved in the dark stone.

  Noah William Moore

  1989-2007

  Brother, son, friend...among other things.

  I laughed again at the short and simple scripture that I had read hundreds of times in the past. It was what he would have wanted. Noah was a character that scarred the entire town when he left. His personality still lived in my heart as it did in the others he'd affected.

  I plopped myself down in front of his stone and leaned my forehead against the cold grainy surface. The nightmare washed over me, but I refused to let it consume me completely. I remembered bits and pieces, including the pain. I could feel it in my sleep, but the second the dream snapped back from my conscious the pain disappeared.

  "Hi Noah," I whispered softly. Of course there was never a response, but I always waited. I knew he could hear me or at least hoped he could. Maybe that stretched the line of my sanity to its peak, but I didn't care.

  The wind whirred. My eyes shifted to the side where the end of the graveyard met the woods. The trees thrashed from side to the side, making me wonder if there was a storm coming I hadn't heard about. The thought of the storm brought the dream back. There was a storm in my dream just before I felt the pain...

  It didn't mean anything, but I didn't like parallels connecting reality to my imagination. My dreams were usually the same. Ever since The Masquerade concert last year I lost the dream of the girl who was being mutilated by the stranger. That dream never once surfaced after my first encounter with Ben. However, others nightmares followed where my demons taunted me and I woke up screaming with my bed sheets drenched in sweat.

  "I hope you're okay, wherever you are," I said, trying to give him a real smile. "If you've tuned into my life recently then I'm sure you know I'm not exactly okay. I don't. I just. It's like," I paused and finally let out an exasperated breath. "I really don't know what the fuck is going on anymore."

  As if on cue, a scream pierced through the woods around me. I jumped, startled by the pain induced sound. With my heart beating rapidly in my chest, I glanced around the woods searching for the source of the sound. Seconds passed and I almost thought I imagined it until another shrill ripped through the trees.

  I sat frozen, my ears now tuned as I waited for the sound again. The high-pitched scream echoed throughout the area a third time allowing me to realize two things. The sound belonged to a girl and she was hurt. And I sat there doing nothing about it.

  I got to my feet. My hand reached into my pocket for my phone and found it empty. I groaned, remembering that I put it on my nightstand just before my shower and must have left it there. Who would I have called anyway, the police, because I heard some girl scream? It would have taken them an hour to get to the church to investigate and by then it would be useless.

  My tooth dug into my bottom lip while I debated playing hero or just going home. Another paralyzing scream shot through the trees. I couldn't help but think she needed someone and the only person around was me. Whoever she was, whatever was wrong, she needed help. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if something horrible had happened that I could have put a stop to.

  I ran to the back to the end of the lot where the rod iron fence linked around the perimeter of the graveyard, caging me in. For the second time in one week I jumped a fence, although this time I managed to carefully maneuver my body over the other side without hurting myself. Once on the ground, I was at the foot of the woods. Before I could hesitate I surged into the darkness, unsure of where I was going, following my memory of where the sound had come from. It wasn't the smartest decision in the world, but it was the one that would allow me to sleep at night.

  Another cry came from the direction I was running. The pauses between her screams grew longer, so I picked up my pace. Apprehension rather than adrenaline pumped through my body. I feared what I would find, if I found anything at all but I managed to run faster in spite of my fear. When I heard a voice closer to me than I expected I skid to a stop.

  "Oh God, please no," the voice muffled into a choked cry. A faint gargling sound followed.

  I ran, jumping frantically over vines and tree stumps. As I moved through the woods I started to see a clearing with a dark, glistening pool of water in the middle. I judged it to be a pond, but I wasn't exactly sure until I approached the clearing. I stopped myself abruptly, my shoes scuffed into ground, flinging a cloud of dirt into the air. I was out of the woods before I had a chance to brace myself for what I would see. I kept my hands back, grasping two trees behind me as a sense of false security while I overlooked the scene.

  Three figures came into view. Two were kneeling while the other was lying on the ground. It was difficult to make out faces or even tell genders in the darkness. I squinted and noticed the girl on the ground first. She had to be the one the screams belonged to. One of the guys kneeling above the girl, wiped his mouth, a dark liquid substance spread over his chin caught my attention when it glistened under the dim light of the moon. The other guy was bent down, his face at the girl's throat. I thought he was kissing her at first until I heard the loud gargling sound from before and then the noise I'd come to refer to as paper ripping, or flesh tearing.

  My breath caught in my throat. My fingers grew numb, clenching the dry bark of the trees so hard that small jagged splinters began to seep into the tips of my fingers. Any warmth left in my b
ody was now gone. I was afraid I couldn't stand for much longer without making a scene.

  His teeth bore into the girl's skin below her chin, ripping through it like paper mache. I heard another faint cry for help escape the girl's lips. My eyes grew wide feeling sharp ice jab into my chest. She was still alive and I was standing there watching.

  Without thinking, I stepped fully into the clearing. My feet crunched into the dead grass. Neither of them seemed to notice. The one with blood on his chin lowered his head to the girl's hip where her shirt was lifted, exposing bare skin. His mouth opened and I panicked.

  "Stop!" I shouted impulsively, hoping to drag his attention away from the girl. The two heads snapped up and slowly turned to me. A sickening feeling washed over me as I felt the weight of their eyes on me. I was a young girl standing alone and defenseless, but in much better condition than the girl beneath them. "Let her go!" I shouted at them, but my voice was swallowed by the wind. My command was stupid, but I didn't know what else to say. Me next? I don't think so.

  Their lethal gazes moved over my body. I swallowed loudly, the saliva in my throat tasted sour when I noticed the whites of their eyes were glowing in the darkness. The girl's small whimpers caught my attention. The moonlight seemed to cast a spotlight over her body, highlighting the bleeding wounds on her small body.

  "Please," I begged the two vile strangers, "Let me take her to a hospital." I knew my words were useless. The girl wasn't going to make it, but I was stuck in an irreversible situation. The two figures exchanged looks that I couldn't catch, causing the trepidation to seep into my pores and chilling every part of my body.