Page 34 of The Kiss Of Death
With music, I could push them back from my mind, but their presence grew suffocating and more oppressive in the silence. Those monsters made the music stop.
You’re safe. They’re gone. It’s not them.
“Is that Levi’s girl?” one of the men whispered, his voice muffled by his mask.
He yanked me toward them, ensnaring me in his unyielding grip as though I were nothing more than a lifeless puppet, manipulated at their whim.
It’s not them.
“Can you remove your masks?” I stuttered. “Please.”
He ignored me. “Who cares? It’s not like he’ll ever find out.”
I thought I had made progress with all my therapy sessions. The nightmares had stopped lately. I was able to go near the opera without seeing them, but now it all came back. My vision blurred with tears, and I screamed.
One of them covered my mouth. “You sure? What if he loses his temper? He’s made it clear—”
“Don’t be a pussy, man.” The other interrupted. “She’s not even wearing a ribbon. Give her the good stuff. She’s a pain.”
“Take off your masks,” I pleaded again, my words muffled by the hand covering my mouth.
He opened a small box with pills. “Why? Are you scared?”
The power went back on. The room was now bathed in a bloody red light as the bulbs flickered, threatening to burst. The man snapped the box shut, taking a pill, and I closed my eyes.
Mom.
It was Christmas Eve. Men in skull masks held guns, shooting randomly in the screaming crowd. I was pushed, trampled, witnessing the instruments falling off the stage in shrieking, painful, agonizing sounds. I rose. Why did I stand? I was searching for Mama. I should have stayed hidden like she told me to. Because Mama was now running toward me toprotect me. No. Why didn’t she just hide like she told me to do? Why did she run to me? She was visible to those monsters now. They’d see her. She was calling me, telling me to drop on the ground, shielding me from the spectacle of horror behind me. Close your eyes. I couldn’t. I just wanted to hug her. There was so much blood. So many deaths. Instead, I watched her drop on the floor. The color drained from her face as her hand reached out to me. Behind her, this bloody monster with a skull mask held out his weapon. Blood flowed down to my feet. I screamed for hours until someone got to me. When I stepped out, it felt like the white carpet of snow on the outside became red too, just like the blood in my hair.
I’d repressed that memory for so long. They called it a coping mechanism to maintain a connection to Mom. I couldn’t let them win over my promise to her.
The gun. The blood. The skull mask.
Twenty-seven names.
Twenty-seven deaths.
And I’d survived.
“I’ll tell him!” I blurted out, half screaming. The devil I knew was less threatening than the devil I didn’t. “I’ll tell Levi everything.”
Don’t look at them.
“You’ll be too high to remember what happened, and we’re masked,” the other assailant snickered. “He never bothers to come play with us, so no one will come for you.”
I struggled against their hold, fury and helplessness boiling within me. “You have no right—”
“No one will know. That’s why the rules don’t apply to us tonight, my dear. We’re all-powerful.”
So this was what Hazing Night was about. Bullying without consequences. Taking away our consent. My father had warned me about this: men who took what they pleased and reveled init. The world was an unforgiving and perilous place, and I was weak.
“You better start calling us masters. Before you join the others, we’ll have a little party of our own,” the other one whispered.
Then the door swung open, and we all turned to it. Levi stood there with an air of chilling composure, his arms crossed, a skull mask in his hand. For some reason, I felt relieved.
“There you are,” he said.
“Levi, we—” both masked men started but were swiftly silenced by Levi’s menacing voice.
