by Daniel Mignault
I admit it: I had been warned not to take a breath, to lead-line my lungs, but nevertheless when the door opened I let out a little breath and apparently that was all the man in the Halloween mask needed. By the time I realized that I had been detected the rifle had already come out. It was a little battered carbine and it had a stump for a handle like someone had ripped a piece off but when I saw it I saw it like an American atom bomb, all painted up in red and blue over the cartoon Radiation sign and the promise of a few square miles of sand turned to glass. The Halloween mask sighted along the rifle and turned around the room like a cameraman trying to get a good angle, and hell, that's all he was trying to do, I guess, get a good angle.
Ten minutes later he kicked open the fruit crate and shot my sister with a rattle that I had theretofore not associated with any sort of firearm. There's a first time for everything. The round went through the wooden lid, painfully small as she held it like a Testament, chipped it, but my sister wasn't metal but meat, and therefore was susceptible to the kick-back that hurled her against the ground and back into the crate's roof. The impact tipped it backwards and as she fell back she dropped the lid onto the crate again. By the time it hit the ground she had already been boxed up for a funeral so halloween mask opened some holes for earthworms, being polite to the little squirmers, salt and dirt of the earth, and opened some holes in my sister too. She coughed a little and that was it. She was a wailer, and I'd expected wails. That little cough was a letdown for me n' him alike.
All this I watched with... not so much horror. Horror wasn't attending me, horror was more on the sidelines and maybe ready to call by later and see how I was doing. More like - I don't know - I anticipated it? Not a premonition. All I know is I knew they'd die, I knew how they'd die. Halloween mask was mostly just the climax of something a few days in the making. Like a ghost. Except ghosts don't usually carry guns, much less ratty carbines.
Feel free to stop enabling my delusion any time. No? Buy another few shots then. I'm dying of thirst here.
Jesus that stuff's hot. I swear, the bartender here makes cocktails with hot sauce, goddamned if it's cost effective, he's just fulfilling some deep complex or mania or fetish or what-have-you, getting his rocks off or appeasing the demon worm in the tequila bottle by putting Tabasco in booze. Love that guy but he's an awful person, I can't lie here.
Where was I? Halloween mask. He shot my sister. After that.
After sister came brother, after brother came mother, after mother came father. My brother was three short bursts through the closet door which missed and a golf club from a backpack which didn't. Far as I could tell he'd been praying to whatever damn deity he'd found on the internet this week. My mother was all set to beg him for life but he just hit her over the head and then teed up a swing, took out a few teeth, sent them on little pilgrimages to unexplored territories. While she was keeled over he rolled her down the stairs with his foot. She thumped on every step. I could hear her cursing and crying all at once. Mom was always
Scream! What, no. Shut up, okay? Yeah, that was the movie where Halloween mask got his mask. Scream. Except I think the left eye was out and the little pump for the fake blood was leaking, so it drizzled a little. Which wasn't a huge problem as regards all the real blood that was there. Sorry.
Dad died with a pistol in his hand, the old bureau pistol and the cowboy look in his eyes, except I guess he wasn't white hat or black hat. Just an extra, maybe. No. 3 murdered man. I could tell he was planning a real do-'r-die situation, hero beating all the odds. Dad wasn't too bright. Pistol weren't loaded. The carbine rattled at him and Custer's Last Stand turned into Custer's Last Fall on the Couch, and then it rattled again and nearly jumped its handle and Custer just plain died.
Hell with it. Get me another glass.
Good, y'all got the good stuff. The rest is piss. Piss with hot sauce in it, I can't lie about that, I really cannot lie. God.
What was next? Well I had been there the whole time, watching, and I knew that I wasn't going to die. I knew they were dying, but I knew I wasn't going to die and I needed to fulfill that. So while he was shooting my father I picked up a paperweight, old glass deal, coral-decorated coral-covered gimcrack from some Caribbean resort, and I shattered it over his head. He didn't look hurt, really, just shocked and a little angry, but it had cracked and so I drove the pointed end through the back of his mask like Neanderthal man on a mission. He didn't like that.
He turned his little jumpy gun and pulled the trigger, I said thanks to my head for telling me I wasn't going to die. It jammed though, so I retroactively declared the thanks genuine and hit him in the nuts - no point in aiming anywhere else really - and when he turned green, or what I could see turned green, and he felt that particular burst of trauma that characterizes that specific biological rattling, I popped 'im one across the face. Another one went into the stomach and on the third the paperweight went through his hand. Then he dropped the carbine, and the fourth hit was a rattle-clack of lightning that turned his cheeks into little red abysses and sent his teeth caroming back into his mouth and turned the damned Scream mask into threads and plastic. I think I burst the fake-blood bulb, too, but again, I cannot lie, there was enough of the real to make up for that. I think he might've had a face behind there. But if it was it was lost in a few seconds of heat and metal and a cough that stilled my predictions. For the first time in the whole damn spree, after a few days of knowing What Came Next, it was over.
So there I stood, my entire family dead, some stranger in a Halloween suit dead, me in the middle of the room carrying a little rattly rifle and a glass shiv. Pretty shaken up, still just a kid. Guess what happens next. Just keep my luck in mind and look at this face, covered in rips and tears, and think about it, and guess.
Yeah, that's right. The police showed up.
Three weeks later I walked out of the woods wearing an outfit made out of stitched-up police uniforms and biting down on a copper badge while I pulled bullets out of my arm. The blood showed but I convinced the grunge kids that it was a fashion statement. They loved me out there. They bought so far into my monster mask, my little knife and my rattly gun. I remember they tried to take it off once. I remember their faces when they realized it wasn't rubber, that there weren't any ear hooks. Wear this kind of Nosferatu face long enough and everyone will convince themselves it's a mask. Maybe that was what happened to him.
But I should shut up. Who do you need dismembered? And get me another drink while you tell me. And some crackers. My mouth is on fire. Jesus H.
Daniel is so close to discovering the secret. He can smell it in the tang of ozone before a storm, and the hot-flash scent of rain on concrete. Every time his arm is numbed by blood loss and his eyes dilate in the brightness of a high-watt light bulb, he can taste the supernal Secret that governs all things. It is so close. He enjoys medium-quality fast food, writing and the internet. He does not believe much in anything, yet. Thank you.
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