This is my submission for
Literotica's Magical Mystery Tour.
©Etaski, 2018
Dedicated to the creators of my favourite horror tales (and I am using British spelling in this story).
When I Wear the Mask
She always slept light.
To be snoozing when someone else was ready to play only left her disoriented, scrambling to catch up. Her reflexes were good, but not
that
good. She must have had more than her share of good luck so far, possessing a face prettier than the norm. Those two things coupled with the ability to study a game with a willingness to play was probably why she was both still alive and on the
outside
of the human cages at Depot.
A chain dragged along a gritty, cement floor. It was right by her ear.
She started awake. Eyes wide. Trying to pierce the dark.
Nothing yet. Listen.
No breathing but hers. No creaks of armour or scrapes of boots along the floor. The rain was on the outside, hitting a ceiling very high up rather than her cheeks and forehead. The constant patter and rattling metal drifted through empty space to settle over her like a blanket as if warning her to be still. To curl up and hide beneath it, and hope whatever made the skin prickle on the back of her neck went away.
Fat chance.
Bruises and scrapes were mild. A sore spot on her head. He had taken her clothes.
Fuck.
Her eyes adjusted to the deep shadows. It wasn't solid black in here as the place still had high windows with a catwalk along the wall to make them accessible. Distant streetlamps filtered wan particles of light through the falling water, orange but stubborn. Some of the windows were broken, letting in a louder call of rain yet appearing darker and jagged than the whole panes still able to spread the light around.
Gauging the main floor of this building—not simply a warehouse but some defunct operation, a factory—she learned that her neck still had its full range of motion and that it was collared. Her own neck dragged around that chain she'd heard at first.
Fingers touched the rough leather gingerly in case it pricked her, but it was plain, thick, and strong. Attached to it was a leash which led into the blackness around her. The first metal ring was smooth and perfect, without any clip or mechanism. It was a permanent attachment.
Her skin was cold where it touched the hard floor. She had ignored the smells up until now, though they had been there since she'd first opened her eyes before she could see. But now she couldn't.
Something's dead in here.
~~~~
"Can't say I'm impressed," Mason remarked without much inflexion. "You must have pissed off your bosses, sending you here to keep tabs on me."
Cammie kept her face placid and still. "I've been trained."
"I don't care."
The Stage Boss stood cheek and jowl to apathy since before closing the door behind them to talk. Wariness and weary bitterness seemed to be the only emotions he felt. He repeated there weren't any surveillance ticks to spray.
"This is a blind spot in the levels of Hell, kid. Your bosses always try, but not even my bosses can get the animals here to accept being watched."
Kid.
Michael Mason wasn't even ten years older than her; she could tell even with the tired face and rumpled, dark hair with the stubble on his jaw. He dressed fairly well for his position— business casual, being a manager and all—but it was clear he didn't really care about either.
His dossier suggested he just wasn't quite ready to die yet.
"It's a given where you come from that someone's watching, collecting video and data, waiting for someone to act out," he said, moving to sit down. "Here, best assume you're on your own. Even if someone hears you, they'll pretend they don't."
So she'd read. Terrifying if she clung to anything familiar. Exhilarating if she didn't.
Nothing had been familiar since Jareth had been taken away, so she might as well not be afraid of the vertical sheer of that figurative skyscraper. She had been required to scale or repel it every day since.
Like the man in this room, she wasn't ready to die yet.
Mason sat in a chair which seemed as though it was about to fall apart at any moment. It was covered in silver tape, dirty-white stuffing poking out, and it shrieked like an injured thing as he sat at the broad, green-metal desk that had seen at least one shoot-out. Cammie thought she recalled reading that the previous guy in this position had been ambushed and riddled with bullets in an office.
The report hadn't said where.
"So how about you practice keeping your mouth shut," Mason said, "while I give you an idea what you're in for, and how you can help avoid getting both of us killed."
~~~~
The heavy chain leash was wrapped around the leg of a five-hundred-pound, rusted meat processor that hadn't seen a fresh carcass in decades. It was secured with a combination lock; no key required except the right order of numbers that she couldn't read and were too small to trace by feel. Goosebumps crept up her arms when she nudged something right next to it, cautiously investigating that as well.
An extremely obvious lead. A penlight, whole and undamaged.
Turn it on, and he knows something's moving on the operation floor. Might as well click a stopwatch counting down the time when he'll appear.
But he'd like that cue. He already knew she was here anyway.
The penlight might not work. It might only be a tease.
She pressed the small, flat button.
Strong, yellow light flooded her vision, turned the metal surrounding her a reddish-black and the concrete floor light grey with dark smudges and spots. She didn't have to look far above where the chain was anchored to see what he wanted her to see.
You must be shitting me.
Freshly scratched in a crude hand on the belly of the processor was a jumbled word puzzle. Three nonsense words, with a matching number of empty boxes just below each letter. Two boxes of each word had a circle embedded inside. Like in an antiquated gamebook, it invited her to rearrange the letters into a word and collect the circled letters to create another word.
Cammie stared at it, grit and tiny pebbles and metal shavings digging into her thigh and hip and palm as she sat sideways on the floor, aiming the flashlight at the scratchings. The chain leash clinked quietly whenever she moved and she looked around her again, not able to see the windows now that the penlight was on. The production floor was quiet.
She turned back and studied at the jumble puzzle, then the combination lock, then the puzzle again, seeing the trio of twin circles in each word.
Alphabet equals numbers equals combination?
Maybe. He claimed once to work on crossword puzzles. Of all damned, outdated things.
