Mask

Remember this simple truth: he didn’t need the job. He wanted it. Working for I.C.E was a small but certain step toward making up for a lifetime of shortcomings. He was a disappointment in all areas that mattered. Not a man of muscle and thick skin, as he appeared, but a little boy terrified of the things he didn’t understand. And like most simple minded people, he didn’t truly understand anything. He simply ate whatever he was fed by those he trusted to feed him.

He has a name but I don’t care to say it. The only reason his story is being told is his is one of the few clear examples of justice in a world where it’s become a rarity. Even though the end of his story is particularly gruesome, I still find myself smiling slightly as I collect my notes. I didn’t use to smile at such things. Maybe the times have changed me in ways I don’t fully understand. Violence is corrosive, yes, but I’ve also come to find it’s life giving, like an electric shock to a dying system.

The restructuring of what I’m about to tell you is fully reliant on the testimonies I’ve accrued, including his personal account:

It was January 14th, 2026. Another apartment building to pull out people that didn’t look like him. Another chance to work out that aggression that small men have in droves.

He was masked, as they all seemed to be. Cowards doing cowardly things. He was the first to enter the building, the lights flickering (a detail his wife thought seemed ominous). They tackled a few “agitators”, made some arrests. It was one of only a few jobs since ramping up in Minnesota that actually seemed to go off without a hitch. The discord supposedly was non-existent; he had become accustomed to being stoned by loud and heavy expletives. It might have been a sign their continued efforts were finally breaking the will of the people. The wife seemed hopeful at the idea…

Everything changed when he met a frazzled white woman standing just outside the door to the building. A cigarette tightly pinned between thin but clean fingers, her nails long and painted black with simple, white eyes painted on each. I find it unbelievable that he would remember such a detail, but I digress.

At first she seemed unassuming, taking a long drag from her cigarette, her eyes carrying days of exhaust. Heavy bags of black under eyes of brown. Again, I doubt the descriptions, since simple people don’t really pay attention to the details. Regardless, a young woman, unassuming in how ordinary she looked, would forever change this man’s life.

“The more you choose to wear the mask, the more you’ll need it.” her voice was soft but steady, fearless, chilling. The wife went white as a sheet at the very mention of the moment.

Even now I marvel at the response. Her husband was on the receiving end of vicious, rampant, growing animosity from all sides, the kind of animosity that threatened to turn deadly any second, and yet this is the moment that haunts them both. A soft spoken, seemingly empty threat…

He doesn't seem to be able to pinpoint exactly when he started feeling different. He mentioned a slight itch at the corners of his mouth but couldn’t say exactly when it began. Was it immediately after she said it to him? Or was there a window where his compliance could have staved off what was to come? Personally I like to think his fate was inescapable. It helps me sleep better at night. It’s inarguable evidence of some kind of divinity at work.

The itching went away when he took the mask off. A fact he noticed later that night, when he was already safely in his hotel room. Two cold sores stamped the edges of his upper lip, the area already inflamed enough that it seemed to pull his expression into a slight smile. He washed his bearded face with hotel soap, the swelling seeming to settle a bit as he washed and dried. He went to sleep that night unaffected. It would be his final night of rest.

In the morning he was hopeful it had gone away, considering the itch was gone. But as soon as he looked in the mirror, they were unchanged. Just as red, just as swollen. And when he touched it, the irritation was biting. Another attempt to clean the area had the same result. It wasn’t getting worse but it also wasn’t improving.

Every morning the team would meet in the lobby, get their fill of continental breakfast, and plan out the day. This morning the constant jokes coming from his other team members made him hurry through breakfast, throwing a cursed rebuttal here and a veiled, empty threat there. He earned the nickname Dick that morning, the implication being quite obvious.

He entered the day feeling small, beat down, aggravated. Not a good ingredient for a simple mind brandishing an automatic weapon. Oftentimes when men feel small they try and act big. They do aggressive things, stupid things. If not for the words on him and the effects already showing, he could have been a truly dangerous wildcard.

Before leaving the hotel, they all masked up again, doing their best small-man impression of a military unit. It was just an old world game to them. Divide and conquer, the long term consequences be damned. An ironic statement, I suppose.

He claims the itching started up again as soon as he put the mask on. He could have taken it off, but they made fun of him. So he kept it on. The stubbornness of his choices. And the itch continued.

The raids that day were violent. Tear gas, non-lethal bullets used in lethal ways, battering rams, people pulled screaming from their homes. He was in it. He was a part of it. But whereas before he felt an old world sense of pride, now he was distracted by the itch. It was worse that day and the pain was only spreading. He didn’t even need to touch the area anymore for it to bite back. Once they stopped to fill up and grab lunch at a gas station/fast food combo, he hurried for the bathroom. It was single use and unoccupied.

Again, as soon as he pulled the mask off, the itch disappeared. But the consequences remained. And it was far worse than it had been. The sores had spread toward the center of his upper lip, split open, and were now bloody, oozing scabs. He put a finger near them, immediately wincing. Just as he did that morning and the night before, he grabbed whatever soap was available to him and washed his face. Except this time it hurt. It continued to hurt. It was something he describes as the sting of a first degree burn, the steady, sore, unwavering pain.

Now he was past a point of no return. He couldn’t go anywhere without his mask, because what started as unsightly, under the surface sores, had progressed to disgusting. Before he left the bathroom, he masked up again. This time the itch was a burn. And he had to do everything in his power not to cry.

People walking by him threw stones of insults his way. Many yelled, even in the gas station. If not in pain, he probably would have pulled out his weapon and threatened them. Maybe even fired. He admitted to this. A bruised ego is a dangerous thing. Arm it and it is a deadly thing.

The rest of his team were sitting down and eating. The idea of putting anything near his mouth was already excruciating. The soft fabric of the mask alone was catching on the scabs. He needed to take the mask off but he couldn’t. Not at this point. Not with everyone watching. They would have recoiled in disgust. Nobody knew what was happening under the mask. He even admits he didn’t fully understand the damage that was being done with every moment that passed.

The words of that young woman now sat over his head like an anvil. All of the discord around him didn’t compare. It was her soft spoken threat, not even a day old, now having proven to have teeth. Was it a curse? A plague? Was she from God? Or was she from something else entirely? It was the first moment in his life that he was forced to admit to how powerless he actually was.

I bask in the fact that this isn’t a story that has a redemptive arc. And I must remind you, sympathetic reader, he wanted the job, he didn’t need it. When the mother was killed in her neighborhood, he cheered, jeered, kicked over the candles at her vigil, helped teargas children, broke bones yanking people from their cars, caused concussions slamming them to the ground. He helped cover up rapes at the holding cells, ones that the government had no interest investigating further. To put it simply: this is a story about one bad man getting exactly what many more deserve.

Forced to separate from the rest because of his condition, he bought a couple soft granola bars and headed out to their unmarked SUV. The pain was persistent and only growing. A crowd of people were gathered nearby, lobbing heavy, loud insults as he entered the vehicle. He sat in the back seat, the windows darker there than in the front. He didn’t take the mask off but instead pulled the bottom down so he could attempt to eat. He didn’t even want to see what it looked like now. Instead, he broke off a small piece of granola bar, opened his mouth slightly and tried to chew with his back teeth. The attempt alone was extremely painful.

Immediately he felt something shift and when he bit down to chew further, he realized he had lost a back tooth. If I only could have been a fly on the wall of that moment, to see the abject horror fall on his face as he realized it was only going to get worse from here. I imagine his mouth was agape, his eyes were wide and frenetic, as if looking everywhere trying to find the source of why this was happening–how her words had done this to him.

When he took a sip of water, the taste was metallic. And he recalls the sound that followed his swishing being something like pool balls clacking into each other. It seemed more teeth were loose, so loose in fact that no contact had disturbed their roots. I must admit, even I was surprised to hear how quickly it had progressed. Though there are medical conditions that could technically explain what happened, to a degree, nothing goes from 1 to 100 in such quick succession. A cold sore doesn’t lead to extreme bone loss over night.

He kept his mask off as long as he could before he heard the team returning. And when he pulled it back up, it was clear that the corrosion was continuing to progress. He could feel it in the mounting pain across his mouth. He missed when it was just an itch. The itch had been bearable. This was indescribable. And he had to keep it hidden, because nobody would understand. Nobody would care.

… One person did care, sadly. It was early evening when he had the chance to face time his wife. It was her first exposure to any of it. And, as he feared, she initially recoiled when seeing it. The hairs of his mustache had begun to recede away from the sores. The blood a step below coagulated, still tacky in spots. This call was not recorded, so I only know what I was told. She claims that he looked thin in the face, his cheeks gaunt, and that for a moment, she saw his eyes black as burnished stone. She said it was like looking at a curse. And then it went away, and what she saw instead was him. She saw the sores, the swelling, the fear in his eyes. She is adamant it is not the sores that made her jump but only the curse. They were never people who believed in such things. That has since changed.

She urged him to seek medical attention. He agreed with a half shrug. A stubborn person doesn’t admit to anything easily. It was sometime in the early hours of the next morning that he noticed flies were gathering around him. And he could smell something rank, like meat that had sat out too long. He admits that some part of him knew it was coming from his sores but he didn’t want to believe it. He tossed and turned, trying to find some kind of rest. Instead, a building fever had caused him to slip into a level of psychosis. He ended up losing six more teeth that night while thrashing back and forth.

When he finally did fall asleep, it was because his brain was overheating. He doesn’t remember dreaming, but the team member that found him claims he was screaming. When help finally got to him, he had become necrotic. In order to save his life, they had to remove most of his upper jaw bone. The infection had also spread to his nostrils, which required extreme reduction to remain usable. In total he lost over a dozen teeth. As of now, he is not able to communicate clearly through words; he is no longer able to eat solid food. Currently, his bottom teeth jut out from his face in the same way it does on a llama. His attempts to talk are cartoonish, something similar to Sylvester the Cat with far less clarity. Doctors have told his wife that many reconstructive surgeries could give him a semblance of normality. But that’s definitely up in the air, hinging on probabilities and statistics and thoughts and prayers... and, most importantly, money. I.C.E, and the government as a whole, sends their condolences but will not be covering any kind of surgery for a condition they consider to be outside their responsibility.

Of course they try to explain it away. Maybe it was an abscess tooth that became necrotic. That’s the common theory. And I suppose there is a modicum of science to support it, as long as you throw out the man’s personal account completely.

But as far as I can tell, despite being chronically underwhelming in life, he was completely healthy. And it was the words from an unassuming woman that carried the power to forever alter his life. I don’t know if it was a curse, a miracle, or something in between. And I can’t help but wonder if that man is still under her words. If he wears a mask of any kind to cover the embarrassment, will the corrosion continue? A prosthetic nose to cover the disproportions? A hospital mask to cover his face? Was she purposefully vague so there was ultimately no escape? Is this only the beginning of a curse that after years of agony and false hope, will ultimately take his life? If justice truly exists, this is only the beginning.