The Dancer and the Masks by Bea Paige

Chapter 13

CHRISTY

Ifloat like an apparition, inky darkness making way for muted colours as I watch the scene unfold before me. It doesn’t feel like a dream, it feels like a vision and yet this one, this one is different from all the rest. This one is from the past...

“No, Father, please don’t. I won’t do it again. I promise!” the little boy begs, cowering on the floor. He looks sickly, malnourished. Bruises litter his bare chest and back. Some old, most new.

“What have I taught you, boy?! You don’t beg for mercy, and you never, ever, disobey me,” the man replies, gripping his son by the hair and yanking him to his feet. “This is your punishment. Take it like a man!”

“I promise to be good.”

“Good? I don’t want you to be good, Jakub. I want you to be bad. Very, very bad. You cannot be the man I need if your soft heart makes you weak. I will beat the kindness out of you before I ever allow a son of mine to choose kindness over brutality, or weakness over strength. This is for your own good!”

Jakub whimpers, his slim frame shaking. That angers his father. Enrages him.

Pulling back his fist, the boy’s father slams his knuckles into Jakub’s cheek, sending him flying backwards against the rough ground. He lands awkwardly, his wrist twisting under his weight. The loud snap of a bone breaking pierces the air, and a scream rips out of Jakub’s mouth. He throws up, puke spewing out of his mouth and nose in a violent explosion.

“Father!” another boy shouts, stepping forward. He’s a little older, taller, more muscular, but still a child. Thirteen, maybe fourteen?

“What, Konrad? What?!”

“Jakub’s sorry. He won’t do it again,” Konrad says, gritting his jaw and lifting his chin. He moves to stand in front of the younger boy.

“Move aside, Son.”

Stubbornly Konrad shakes his head. “Don’t you think he’s had enough?”

“You dare to question me?!” their father responds, raising his fist and slamming it into Konrad’s stomach. Konrad doubles over, winded as he sucks in air. Unlike his brother, he doesn’t fall. Instead, he stands back upright, fixing his cold gaze on the man before him.

“He’s only nine.”

“You think I care how old he is? Last year he brought a baby into my home, hid her with your help. It’s been a year since that day and still this boy is as weak as he was then. I should’ve killed her, maybe I still will.”

Konrad flinches. “He’ll learn. Leon and I will make sure of it. None of us have gone anywhere near Nala. She means nothing to us.”

“And what makes you think that you and Leon will do any better, huh? Beating the kindness out of him doesn’t appear to be working. He’s still a fucking pussy! He couldn’t even put that mutt out of its misery. I had to do it!” he spits, a huge glob of phlegm flying out of his mouth and landing on the dead labrador, its brains blown out of the back of its skull.

“We’ll deal with him. We’ll make him strong,” Konrad retorts. His gaze flicks to the animal. There’s a hint of sorrow before he covers it up with a firm nod of his head.

“It makes me sick to my stomach that this pathetic excuse of a boy is my own flesh and blood,” their father spits, glaring at Jakub who’s cowering behind Konrad. “You and Leon aren’t even my blood, but you’re both more my sons than this gnojek! Get him out of my sight. I don’t wish to see him again until he’s learnt to do what I ask of him.”

“Yes, Sir,” Konrad responds.

As soon as their father walks back inside the castle, Konrad drops to the ground beside Jakub’s shivering form. “You should have shot her like he asked, Jakub. What were you thinking? He’s testing you. He will kill Nala without a second thought if you disobey him again. We have to protect her.”

“I know, but I couldn’t do it. Star wasn’t sick!” he protests, clutching his arm against his chest, tears pouring down his face. “She was pregnant. He wanted me to kill her because she pissed on his rug! I couldn’t do it!”

“I know it’s hard… But next time he asks you to do something, you have to do it! No matter what.” Konrad shakes his head, gently pressing his fingers against Jakub’s arm, who winces in pain. More tears fall. “You’ve broken it.”

“It hurts, Kon.”

“I know, but I can’t take you to Renard to fix it. Not now…” he says, pulling off his shirt and tying it around Jakub’s arm in a makeshift sling. “I’ll fix you a splint. You’ll be okay.”

Jakub nods, sniffling. “What should I do? How can I be what he wants? How do you and Leon do it?”

“We do what we have to do to survive. We always have. You must do the same.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“You have to. Turn off everything. Turn off every last emotion apart from the ones that will help you to do what he wants. Become cold, hard, empty. You have to surrender to the darkness, Jakub.”

“I’d rather die than become like him!”

“He will kill Nala, and then he’ll kill us. Is that what you want?”

“I don’t want to be like this…” Jakub cries, more tears falling as a biting wind wraps around his thin frame, making his jaw chatter and his body shake with cold.

“Then become someone else…”

Konrad and Jakub look up at another boy approaching. He’s slightly smaller in stature than Konrad, but still big for his age, with the same dark hair, and piercing green eyes. In his hands he’s holding a mask. It’s black, with two holes for the eyes and two smaller ones for the nose and mouth.

“How long have you been watching?” Konrad asks, helping Jakub to his feet.

“Long enough. It’s time. Malik—Father—will kill Nala the next time he refuses to do as he asks.”

“I know.”

The two older boys look at one another, a silent conversation going on between them before Leon steps towards Jakub and lifts the black mask to his face, securing it behind his head. “When you wear this you become someone else. You’re not Jakub anymore. You’re not kind or sweet. You’re something else. Something dark. Kon and I have one too.”

“But I’ll still be me underneath… I’ll still be me.”

“Eventually that will change. You’ll wear this until the boy underneath becomes the man he needs to be to survive. Do you understand?”

“I think so… b—but what happens when I take it off? I'll see what I’ve become.”

“Then we don’t take the masks off,” Konrad adds, swallowing hard as Leon hands him a mask too.

“Never?” Jakub asks.

“Only when we’re alone together. The rest of the time we’re The Masks,” Leon says with a firm nod of his head, securing his own mask in place. “Agreed?”

“Yes,” they agree.

“We should go,” Konrad urges.

Jakub flicks his gaze to the dead dog, his jaw gritting. Stepping towards her, he lays his hand on her bulging stomach, whispering words that are too private to be heard. Then, agonisingly slowly, he removes her leather collar and leash with one hand, holding it lovingly against his chest. “Goodbye, Star.” Climbing to his feet, Jakub faces his brothers and nods.

“Who are we?” Leon asks.

“We’re The Masks,” all three say in unison, the howling wind dragging the declaration from their lips and throwing it out into the frigid air.