2011 Sobriety Rocks Runner Up – Writing
"The Poison Masque"
by Jerilee Cameron
Gabe's stomach tied itself into intricate little knots, his brow beginning to moisten. His palms grew clammy and his hands started to shake. He had never been with the "in crowd," the bunch of athletes and beautiful girls that the normal kids were only allowed to envy from afar, so for a geeky guy like himself to get invited to a party like this was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. He wasn't going to mess it up by being a dork.
"Hey, Gabe, you ready for this? It's gonna be the party of the YEAR. All the cool kids will be there." Marty's big, meaty claw pounded down on Gabe's sinewy shoulder. Marty, who was the football team's star wide receiver, looked a little less than his normal, handsome self tonight, Gabe noted. There was something a little off. Marty's face looked a little dark, almost fuzzy with a strange hair growing from forehead to cheekbone. As strange as it seemed to Gabe, he tried to brush off the silly idea, focusing on the task at hand.
"I was born ready." His abnormally sweaty palms dared to disagree.
"There is gonna be a lot of awesome stuff there, like chicks and BEER. You will love it! Oh yeah, and don't ruin it, okay? My reputation is on the line. If the crowd caught word that I brought some wimp to a kegger, I could lose my spot." There was a certain menacing quality to Marty's last words that made Gabe wonder what would happen to him if he would happen to politely decline his peer's offers of booze.
"I'm cool, man. I do this all the time." Gabe then proceeded to surreptitiously wipe his palms off onto the faded blue of his Levi's when Marty had turned to look at a dead deer splattered all over the road.
The heavy bass thrumming from inside the house was nowhere near to matching the racing jump of his heart. Even though he hadn't entered the corrupted Victorian-style mansion, Gabe could sense the nervous energy, the vibes as sharp as razorblades. The stench of alcohol hung heavily in the air, as if some unseen drunk was exhaling his nauseating breath.
"It's okay," he whispered to himself, "I'm with the cool kids. I gotta be COOL."
With his head held high but his confidence nowhere in sight, Gabe entered the house, which was buzzing with activity as if it were alive itself. Indescribable colors filled his line of vision; acidic smells filled his nostrils. The air was so charged with electricity that Gabe felt the fine hairs on the back of his neck bristle. People, of all shapes and sizes, stood around, sat, laughed, or talked loudly amongst themselves, trying to drown the next person out.
Each hand, whether male of female, white or black, was holding some form of alcohol. Poison, his mother used to say to him. The kind of poison that can wreck even the strongest of men...alcohol.
As he looked from face to face, Gabe tensed. There was something wrong with this picture, terribly wrong. A girl, no older than 17, with a head full of cascading red locks, was wearing a pink piggy mask. She was apparently unaware of the ridiculous fashion statement though, because she continued to try to out-drink her friend. He was also wearing a mask, but this one was rich, black velvet that looked like a cat with little whiskers.
Gabe's heart started pounding, his stomach dropped to his knees. No one had told him that this was a masquerade.
As his eyes quickly traced the room, he saw others: a frog doing a keg stand, a little bunny passed out, a panda bear hugging the white porcelain bowl in the bathroom.
"Hey, Marty!" Gabe grasped his shoulder in a failed attempt to get his attention. Marty continued to talk to the mask wearing girl in front of him. "MARTY! You failed to mention that this was a masked party. I didn't even bring one. Now I look stupid, man!"
Marty slowly turned to Gabe. His mask, jet black feathers with an exaggerated beak nose, reflected the light like a pool of slick oil. Marty's mouth was plastered into a counterfeit smile, exposing his set of too-white teeth. That explained why Marty's face seemed off to Gabe...he was wearing his mask, just a lesser form of it.
"Didn't you know, Gabe? We all earned our masks, if you don't wanna stand out, I guess you will just have to earn yours."
"Whatever, man. What do I have to do?" Gabe swallowed, acid trickling down his esophagus. He could sense the pairs of eyes all boring into him, eyes hooded by masks of all shapes and sizes.
"All you gotta do is get a little buzzed." He produced a bottle of whiskey out of the pocket of his black hoodie. The amber liquid sloshed against the terribly impartial clearness of the glass. "Just a little bit. Don't you wanna be cool like us?"
Gabe's mind raced. His mom...
The cold beam of the headlights flashed against the dew-soaked windshield. The screech of tires on asphalt. The warm trickle of blood that laced her temple, matting in her raven hair. The little boy screamed, cried until he was hoarse, trying to wake his mommy up. Her chestnut eyes, with a small but growing patch of scarlet in the corner, gazed at nothing. His mommy was dead.
Then the man came. He smelled of vomit and beer, and his eyes were glazed over, but not the way mommy's were. He was wearing a mask, a sable bear mask. There was lots of shouting, and an ambulance with shining lights, but the little boy didn't care about the pretty lights because his pretty Mommy was dead.
Gabe's mind slowly floated back into the present, where Marty stood with his Onyx mask, tar feathers glistening. He slowly glanced down at the glass bottle that Marty held, cuddled in his hand like a precious egg.
"Do it." Marty's voice was a growl. "Do it or you won't get to be cool like us. You won't have your own mask. You'll be different."
"Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it!" The chant, that odious sound, ebbing and flowing from nowhere in particular, swelled around him. He felt soft cat masks brush against his shoulder, feathers tickle his earlobes, whiskers trace circles around his fingertips. The masked people were closing in on him now, each breath painfully drawn in enclosed them closer and closer. Gabe grabbed the bottle, his fingers clasping around the metallic lid. He unscrewed the top. The ebb and flow receded into waves of nothingness. Gabe felt the bottle being raised to his lips by some unseen force. His lips prepared to touch the cold glass of the poison, let it run through his veins so he could wear his own velvety mask. He felt the strings starting to form, the fine fabric start to take shape on his smooth complexion. This was it, he thought, as the fur started to morph on his face. He was about to be turned into a monster...
Be he saw something.
It was something so insignificant that he couldn't but his finger on it. Something that made the chant, still being melodically repeated, quit simultaneously with a sharp intake of breath.
A girl, about 18, with sunshine hair and eyes the color of a spring day. She held his gaze with a queer curiosity, almost like a look of boredom. Her porcelain face, which held an ethereal aura, was unmasked, shining in all its glory. Her lips, like rose petals perched above her pearly whites, mouthed something. And again, and again. Like the terrible chant of the masquerade, but different. These words felt comforting, like a heating pad on a pulled muscle.
"Be different. Be different. Be different. Be diff..." The mantra slithered through his brain, leaving a sharp beam of reality which lead right to his conscience.
Gabe felt the cold glass slip from his hand as if it were as aqueous as the amber poison that had, as of late, threatened to pump through his veins. The fine threads gripping his every face muscle convulsed, then tore free.
The whole room was absolutely silent, the whiskey spreading into a thin sheet of gold across the floor, touching the toes of some of the masked people. Gabe felt ice running through his veins, his heart keeping time with the ache in his cerebellum. He was dead.
But, nothing is ever as it seems.
The perfect, unmasked girl, the angel, floated over the crouching Gabe. Grabbing his arm gently with her perfect little hands, she coaxed him to his feet.
Together, they walked off together, bare faces emitting ethereal rays of light.
From that moment on, Gabe never once thought about donning a silly mask, no matter how "cool" it was, no matter whom else was doing it.
About the girl" Well, let's just say that there were many happy, mask-less filled years spent between the she and Gabe, the kids who had dared to be different.