The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Persecutions and Photographs

by Masktrix

Previously: "Punks and Persecutions" 

Leave it alone, you mutter, flipping back to page 7, once again backing away just as the story could begin to turn into a horror that feels all too real and familiar. This time you’re prepared for the queasy sense of the story resetting itself, the paragraphs aligning into a world that is familiar yet different.

You take a deep breath and read on.

***

You’re sat on your board, a cool breeze blowing through your wet hair. The long curve of the coast twists away to your right, while the white sands of Carmel Bay stretch behind you and off to the left. You kick your feet in the warm, clear waters of the Pacific, staring out into a tranquil infinity of blue sky and blue sea. Ahead, a wave has begun to crest, and you kick your legs, ready to get into position to ride it back to shore, spray in your eyes and dark red locks thick and damp against your wetsuit.

Paradise… if this wasn’t a dream.

You wake with a jolt. Next to you, a sweaty businessman has gradually expanded his girth beyond the confines of his seat, pushing you against the cabin window. That’s the problem with regional jets: no class seating. You take a breath, trying not to suck in his body odor, and look down at the lush green below. The hum filling the cabin tells you that you’re landing. It’s the third flight of a day that started far too early (especially when you factor in time zones), connecting in Las Vegas, then Chicago, and finally arriving here.

Jocelyn Moss. At 17 years old, already a continental traveller.

From your small window you watch the cars roll along the highway like ants scurrying to their hive, and see the sleepy, one-horse town that is Saratoga Falls before it vanishes behind the treeline and the small jet comes into a bumpy landing. More like Saratoga Fails. So, so good to be back.

Ten minutes later, rucksack slung over your denim jacket, you are walking through the airport with your head down, typing furiously away on your phone. You have five group chats open. It's the usual shit– half of it memes about returning to school, the rest chatter about room assignments. Prefects, the six students selected by the faculty to enforce the school’s honor system and conduct dorm inspections, get their own rooms, of course. But you have to squeeze in with one of the other girls. Alexis Garnet-Jacobs has already arrived at school, it seems, and is spilling the details on who’s been picked as everyone’s roommate for the coming year.

NO ONE!!!! OMG I got the spare rm! Sux 4 u!

Fck u, Alexis. Who mine? Corinne’s far more direct in chat than she ever is in life – usually she only speaks when spoken to.

Ur good, in with Bailey. Mary wth Sam T I thnk. Macklin and KWW together opposite Steiner. ::eyeroll::

You enter the chat, taking a deep breath. Who hv I got?

A pause. Those dreadful ellipses to show people are typing. Then: Sry, JM. U with Tammy-Lynn.:( :( :(

You tap you reaction, even as you drop your head and sigh, feeling the weight of the world compress upon your spine. FML.

Your final year at boarding school before university and you’re cursed to spend it with Tammy-Lynn Acker, a girl who can’t keep her mouth shut if she tried. Any contraband in your room is going to get sniffed out immediately, and any trips outside to vape are going to be reported by that blabbermouth to anyone who asks.

You mutter a curse and head to the cab stand, hopping in to the first one available. You’re supposed to head straight to your home for the next few months – The Francis Xavier School, an elite boarding school some 11 miles from Saratoga Falls on the banks of the Mohegan river. But you don’t need to be on its campus until the evening, so you’re going to relish every hour of freedom you have left. “Take me downtown,” you command.

“Just downtown?” The cab driver says as he begins to pull away. “Any particular place?”

“I don’t know, it’s only one street isn’t it?” you snap back, letting your irritation at being stuck with Tammy-Lynn for a year creep in. You put your phone down. “Sorry. I guess…” you search your mind for any kind of landmark, “uh, the courthouse.”

“The courthouse,” the taxi driver says tersely. “Which one?”

“I dunno, whatever the oldest one is.” You return to your phone, watching the conversation waterfall.

After five minutes of chat you set the phone in your lap and watch out of the window as the cab weaves its way along empty streets. Saratoga Falls: the kind of lame Americana that people who haven’t been anywhere interesting think is charming. You drive past a park and some run-down, gothic hospital, then along a street lined with fast food franchises and not much else. You glance back at your phone.

Hey JM. Decided on yr photo prjct?

“Shit,” you hiss out loud. You’d forgotten all about it. Last week an email came through. As part of your final year’s photography class, you’re supposed to put together a project on ‘Your American Life’. Ironically, you’ve been so busy living your American life you hadn’t given it a moment’s thought.

You leave the question hanging for a moment. The taxi’s lurched to a stop outside a quaint building filled with fake authority called the ‘Old Court House’. You check the meter, then slip the driver a $20 that easily covers the ride. “Keep the change,” you mutter, grabbing the arm of your rucksack and climbing out. You take a deep breath and smell the familiar scent of smalltown USA. To someone used to a sea breeze, it’s got a slight note of manure to it.

You sling the rucksack on your back, pick a direction at random, and walk down the leafy street with no real destination in mind. Photo project. What the hell are you going to do? Then it hits you: Saratoga Falls isn’t exactly inspiring, but, you think, it’s a lame enough excuse to get the hell out of St X! If you make your photo assignment something to do with this stupid town, you can probably convince one of the prefects to give you an exeat, permission to leave school grounds, whenever you want. Being stuck in Saratoga Falls isn’t great, but at least it’s better than having your every movement reported back to the powers-that-be by Tammy-Lynn Acker.

Gng to do a project on Saratoga Falls. you type. History and modern life. A then + now kind of deal.

The replies trickle down near instantly: Rly? WHY?

This Inbred Life? C’mon, JM.

Sounds boring Joss-Moss LOL.

You sigh and tuck your phone away, agreeing with the girls’ verdict. At least it will get you out of the school. Without really thinking about it you find yourself turning into an old bookstore, a vast depository of tomes, and begin looking for any crap about the local area. It’s a huge place, stacked with old junk. It immediately reminds you of a vaster version of the St. X library, with its own rows of dusty volumes that haven’t been touched by student hands for decades.

“Hey,” you say to the owner, a man with a white beard busy marking a stack of acquisitions. “Do you have anything on local history?”

He looks up at you, then indicates dismissively with a pencil toward an aisle. “Have you tried the local history section?” he asks, voice tight and peevish. “Be quick. We’re closing in 10 minutes.”

You give him a half-assed smile and walk over to check the aisle. Five minutes later, and you decide this is a dead end. Saratoga Falls’ history seems to be about railroads, farmers and the land-grant college: about as photographically interesting as a website dedicated to rating poop. You shove the books back and walk back to the entrance, brushing past a glass cabinet as you do so. The door creaks a little as it opens from your accidental nudge, and it stops you in your tracks.

“Young lady, do not touch,” the owner calls out. “That’s our rare items collection.”

You’re about mutter an apology and turn away from the cabinet when a glister from one of the books catches your eye. The shop’s light has caught golden pentagram, etched against a blood-red cover. With a defiant glance back at white-beard, you pull the book out, and look at it more closely. For a moment, the cover seems almost hypnotic, with dancing, swirling patterns that seem to change in the light. You open it up, and look at a title page complete with stylised faces along the bottom that seem to shift as you turn the book in your hands. Huh, it’s some kind of old fashioned hologram.

“Young lady,” the owner says again. You take a breath, snap the book shut, and walk over with it.

“How much?” you say. You still don’t know if you’re going to buy it, but you can at least put this guy in his place, wave a few bills in front of his face before he shuts up shop without a sale.

The owner flicks his pencil up again, taking the book from you and opening up the title page. With a withering gaze, he slowly circles the $225 in the top right corner. “A little out of your price range?” he asks sarcastically.

The face he makes when, without hesitation, you pull out five crisp $50 bills is worth the cost alone.

* To buy the book: "Unpacking Your Life" 
* To put it back after flashing the cash, turn to page 53

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"