Page 23 of His to Fear
“Hello? Where is everyone?”
Silence hangs in the air, unsettling in the way it creeps into my marrow with the promise of something being off.
I breathe in deeper, shuddering, when suddenly someone brushes against my back, almost making me lose my balance. I yelp, turning around in haste.
There’s the porcelain mask again, cracked in places all over with two empty, hollow sockets where the eyes should be. The woodsy scent tinged with sandalwood fills my nostrils, sending my careening heart into something calmer. Relief floods through me. Finally, someone I know. Sort of.
But, there’s something else mixed with the previous two scents. It smells like the metallic and rotten odors inside the slaughterhouse. I do my best not to gag.
“Oh fuck. You scared me.”
He remains silent, staring at me through the dark holes of the porcelain mask and tilting his head in the same way he did back at the circus. I shift my weight to my other foot, a nervousness starting to take root deep within my soul.
“W-what are you doing?”
No reply.
Fight-or-flight instinct takes over me, and I stumble backward, closer to the bar counter. He steps forward, not saying a word.
What is he doing?
“Do you know where everyone is?”
His staggered breathing resounds underneath the mask, feeling too artificial and fake. When he takes one step closer to me, following me like in a back-and-forth dance, the unease cripples inside me along with doubt.
I don’t feel comfortable around him anymore. The soothing presence who helped me from my panic attack is long gone, and really, what did I expect?
I don’t reallyknowthis stranger.
My spine hits the bar, stumbling into one of the stools that overturns and cracks upon impact. It catches me by surprise,but the stranger remains collected, only keeps staring at me through that mask.
He’s so goddamn tall.
Before I can comprehend it or even begin to prevent him, he wraps his arms around my waist and lifts me onto the bar counter. He’s so close I can feel his heart pounding underneath the clothes he’s wearing: the same dark ones as inside the slaughterhouse. But there’s an added detail to it that makes my heart stutter, because there, on his shoulder, are specks of something dark.
Is it blood?
Is that why he smells distinctly of metal?
“W-what are you doing?” I repeat, begging him for an answer.
And where before I felt safe in his arms, I don’t anymore. He’s an ominous presence ready to devour me whole unless I run as far from him as I can.
“I don’t know where the others are,” he whispers in my ear, lifting his mask so it’s slightly above his lips.
I can feel the ghost of his breath along my earlobe, forcing a shiver through me that I attempt to ignore.
“But I do know that the park is still open, and we should play.”
I cock an eyebrow, unsteadily breathing out, “Play what?”
“Play a game of tag.”
“Why? Isn’t that a child’s game?”
He scoffs. “Not the way I play it.”
He waits for my confirmation, and I eventually nod, hesitantly. Not knowing where this will all take me.
