Dinner at the Frey house that night tasted like an oasis in the middle of a desert.
Sitting around the small, round kitchen table, bathed in the warm, yellow glow of the ceiling light, I listened in silence.
My mom, Elena, tossed her salad while sharing an anecdote about a stubborn patient in her hospital ward.
Despite the exhaustion etching her face, she smiled.
Beside her, Lily was pushing her peas around with the tip of her fork, complaining with the tragic grandiloquence of a ten-year-old that her history teacher was clearly trying to ruin her life with a presentation on Ancient Times.
It was mundane.
It was boring.
It was absolutely perfect.
I watched them, my throat tight.
The smell of the pot roast, the clatter of silverware against chipped porcelain, my sister’s laughter… it all formed a fragile bubble of normalcy.
If I kept this thing with me, if I let the world of Supers cross the threshold of this house, that bubble would shatter.
I couldn’t impose that on my mom, who was already working herself to death, or on Lily.
I wasn’t some tortured hero ready to sacrifice his loved ones for the greater good.
I was a cowardly older brother who just wanted peace and quiet.
The decision anchored itself in my mind with the solidity of concrete: I had to get rid of this fucking suit.
Back in my bedroom, I turned the key in the lock with a sharp click.
Court was in session.
I pulled the white membrane out of my bag and placed it prominently on the fabric seat of my desk chair.
I stepped back and sat cross-legged on my bed, facing it, the way one sits across from a defendant or a partner during a disastrous couples therapy session.
I took a deep breath, gathering all my courage.
“Look. We need to talk,” I began, in a voice I hoped sounded firm and authoritative.
“I know you have high standards. You’ve known glory, cameras, pure power. But look at me. We are not compatible. I’m asthmatic, I’m a coward, and I hate violence in all its forms.”
I leaned forward, clasping my hands in a secular prayer.
“Seriously, you’re better than this. Find yourself a highly trained soldier. A top-tier athlete. Someone who has a driver’s license or who doesn’t get a panic attack when a girl asks him for a pen. Between us, it’s never going to work. It’s toxic.”
Silence fell again.
On the chair, the mask obviously remained perfectly still.
Inert.
Devoid of any terrifying aura, it suddenly looked like a cheap piece of latex forgotten after a Halloween party.
Not a single filament twitched.
Not a single pulse of light contradicted my argument. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
The silence stretched for a long, very long minute.
A sticky awkwardness washed over me.
I blinked.
I had just spent five minutes pleading my case, using structured arguments, to an inanimate piece of fabric sitting on an Ikea swivel chair.
I felt my cheeks instantly burn up.
I rubbed my face violently with my hands, crushed by my own stupidity.
“What the fuck am I even doing…” I muttered in the gloom.
The shame instantly morphed into determination.
Enough talking to the laundry.
I bolted up, grabbed the mask by the very edge of my fingertips as if it were a dead rat, and shoved it ruthlessly into the bottom of an opaque, plastic grocery bag.
I tied a tight double knot.
I unlocked my door, crept down the stairs on tiptoe so as not to alert my mom, and slipped out into the cold street.
I marched at a military pace to the next intersection.
My eyes locked onto the target: the filthiest, foulest municipal trash can in all of Northbridge.
A rusted metal bin that reeked of rotten cabbage, warm beer, and urban regrets.
I lifted the greasy lid with the tip of my index finger.
I held the plastic bag over the abyss.
“It’s not me, it’s you,” I muttered.
“Goodbye.”
I let go of the bag.
It hit the garbage below with a dull thud.
I slammed the lid shut, spun on my heels, and sprinted back up the street all the way home, my heart hammering, fleeing the scene as if I had just robbed a bank.
The next morning, waking up was a revelation.
I opened my eyes and stretched my limbs with an incredible, almost intoxicating sense of lightness.
I felt like I was floating—but this time, thanks to the normal laws of physics and a good mood.
The lead weight that had been crushing my chest for the past three days was gone.
I was free.
Even the police sirens wailing in the distance through the Northbridge grayness sounded like the sweet song of spring birds.
I jumped out of bed, busted a ridiculous dance move while pulling on my jeans, and hummed a commercial jingle as I buttoned my shirt.
The cockroach was back in his natural element: joyful anonymity.
Ready to face my day as a normal high schooler, a normal brother, and a normal son, I turned toward my desk to grab my school bag.
It took exactly three seconds for my brain to process the image.
Three seconds where reality fractured in absolute silence.
There.
Sitting perfectly in the center of my desk.
Right between my math textbook and my pencil holder.
The mask.
It was there.
A brilliant, immaculate white.
Its smooth surface caught the soft morning light with a terrifying insolence.
There wasn’t a single trace of the opaque plastic grocery bag.
Not a single stain of trash juice.
Not a single whiff of rotten cabbage.
It had simply “come home.” Obediently.
Like a loyal, monstrous dog waiting for its master.
My neural pathways rejected this impossible data.
My knees instantly turned to jelly.
Unable to bear my own weight in the face of this aberration of nature, I fell backward.
I landed hard on my butt, the wind knocked out of me, my back hitting the wood of my bedframe.
My eyes, bulging to the point of hurting, remained locked on that white anomaly ruling over my desk.
A nervous, hysterical laugh died in my throat.
Pure supernatural dread had just crashed into the wall of situational comedy.
The verdict was final, chilling, and permanent.
You don’t break up with a god.
I was bound to it for the rest of my miserable existence.