On paper, my school day had been an absolute triumph of mundanity.
No asthma attacks.
No encounters with muscle-bound thugs in the hallways.
No humiliating gravitational inversions in front of Sienna.
Eight hours of pure academic boredom—the dream of any normal high schooler.
But the truth was, I had spent every single second of that day with a lead weight in my stomach.
The kind of gastric knot that stops you from breathing right, because I knew exactly what was waiting for me on my desk.
When I opened my bedroom door later that afternoon, the air seemed to freeze.
It was there.
In the exact same spot.
Just as white, just as smooth, catching the dull late-day light with silent arrogance.
The thread of my sanity snapped with a little imaginary pop in my head.
The visceral fear—the kind that had me shaking the day before—evaporated all at once, making room for a frantic, blind, completely irrational rage.
I was pushed past my limit.
You won’t leave, you miserable parasite?
Fine.
If I can’t dump you, I’ll kill you.
I frantically rummaged through my nightstand drawer and pulled out a lighter.
I grabbed the mask with my left hand, holding it at arm’s length like radioactive waste, and flicked the crackling blue flame to life.
With a manic grin that would have terrified any psychiatrist, I drove the flame straight against the white material.
“Burn, you space piece of shit. Burn!” I spat through my teeth.
I held the fire there for a whole minute.
The blue flame licked the fabric intensely.
Then, my grin slowly faded.
The flame glided over the organic matter like water off a duck’s back.
The mask didn’t blacken.
It didn’t melt.
It didn’t even give off the slightest whiff of burning plastic.
My throat dry, I released the lighter’s button and brushed the tip of my index finger against the area directly exposed to the torch flame.
It was barely lukewarm.
The thing was openly mocking the laws of physics.
I needed brute force.
I crept down the stairs on tiptoe to the kitchen.
My eyes locked onto the kitchen island.
Sitting right there was my mom’s high-end blender.
The birthday gift that had cost an arm and a leg, complete with an industrial-grade motor capable of turning bricks into smoothies.
“Sorry, Mom,” I whispered.
“It’s for the preservation of my mental health.”
I stuffed the mask into a ball inside the glass pitcher, slammed the lid down hard, and pressed the palm of my hand firmly on top of it.
With the other, I cranked the dial straight to maximum power: Pulse / Heavy Crush.
The noise that followed was apocalyptic.
An infernal shriek of grinding metal shattered the silence of the house.
It sounded like someone had tossed a pipe wrench into a jet engine.
Inside the pitcher, the heavy-duty stainless steel blades slammed into the white membrane, twisted into impossible angles, and then exploded into a myriad of metallic shards.
The blender’s motor wailed its death rattle in an electric spasm.
A bleak POOF echoed from beneath the appliance, spewing a thick cloud of acrid black smoke that immediately foul-smelled the entire kitchen.
I cut the power, coughing hard enough to rip my lungs out, and lifted the lid with a trembling hand.
In the middle of a graveyard of twisted metal and shattered glass, the mask lay immaculate, completely intact.
It taunted me in silence.
A new kind of anxiety—a far more human one this time—hit me dead-on.
The S.R.B. and genetic monsters were one thing, but my mother was literally going to skin me alive for murdering her blender.
Driven by absolute despair, my lizard brain birthed the most primitive, stupid idea of the day.
I grabbed the mask from the debris, sprinted to the downstairs bathroom, and hurled it into the bottom of the toilet bowl.
I flushed with the fury of a death row inmate and slammed myself down onto the closed lid to lock any escape route.
The water swirled loudly beneath me.
I heard the distinct gurgle of the drain.
It was swallowed.
I had drowned the white god.
But suddenly, the sound of the water stopped dead.
A shiver of pure horror snaked up my spine.
Between my thighs, beneath the seat, a faint, slimy sucking sound could be heard.
The white matter had liquefied.
Defying gravity and hydraulic pressure, it was crawling up the plumbing against the current.
Before I could spring to my feet, a thin stream of pure white organic liquid seeped out from under the rim of the bowl.
Like a viscous snake, it slithered over the porcelain, oozed onto the floor, and slid away from me to reform perfectly in the center of the cold tile.
Within three seconds, the puddle turned back into a mask.
Dry.
Smooth.
Flawless.
My legs refused to carry me any longer.
I slid down the side of the bathtub and collapsed onto my back, panting, defeated by a fucking piece of unkillable fabric.
The ceiling spun slightly above me.
My dream of a normal, dull, peaceful life was officially buried in that toilet.
I let out a pathetic groan of resignation.
I was its hostage.
Click.
The bathroom door cracked open.
Lily stood in the frame, her school bag slung over one shoulder.
She looked down at me.
The scene must have been a portrait of absolute sadness: her pale older brother, sprawled on the floor in a sweat next to the toilet, staring at a miserable piece of white cloth with the shell-shocked gaze of a war veteran.
She let out a long, exasperated sigh—the kind of sigh that judges you to the very depths of your soul.
“You are so pathetic, Owen.”
“Lily, you don’t understand…” I tried to stammer, my voice cracked.
“It’s… this thing…”
“If you’re that scared of the washing machine, just ask Mom to handle it,” she snapped with total disdain.
“But stop having panic attacks on the tile over a piece of white laundry. And flush the toilet, the house smells like smoke.”
She closed the door without giving me another look.
I was left there, alone on the cold linoleum, face-to-face with my curse.