AnnouncementContent warnings:

  Spoiler I'm honestly not sure about this bit but just to be safe here's a warning for Religious Trauma, Coarse Language, Bad Parenting, and Violent Treatment of a Minor.

  [colpse]2022 September ??It’s raining again in Almsworth and the drops of rain are rattling on the window as if offended that the dry space I occupy has not had the common decency to become wet like the outside world. The sound is nice; the marching beat of the rain reminds me of home. I’m about to begin my second attempt at a second year here and, as much as I enjoy being at university, out from under the control of my parents, I regret leaving there for Saints. Mostly because I’m in bed again, or more accurately, still. I’m overcome with mencholy. In the rare windows in which I’m honest with myself, things have been bad for a long time. In the even rarer windows when I allow myself to feel things, I remember the reasons I left. Things were already bad, even before I came here. Perhaps if I’d made more of an effort when I first arrived I’d have friends I could talk to about all this. That I decided to take the easy route instead is no surprise. I collected these masks over years, after all. It would have been a shame to waste them. Some of them cost me a great deal - if not in monetary terms then in blood, sweat and more than a few tears - to acquire. I’m twenty-one years old and, the way things have been going, twenty-two feels like an impossible goal. The entire country stopped back in March 2020, thanks to the novel coronavirus (well, Covid-19 now, I suppose), and I had the dubious pleasure of finding out that the rest of the UK referred to my lifestyle as “quarantine”. Life outside this room has been tentatively returning to normal, although those of us with a healthy instinct for self preservation still wear facemasks when in public. Getting to repeat this year rather than dropping out hard like I was going to is a privilege I haven’t earned, I won’t be able to rely on global events to buy me time again.

  My first year at uni was mostly forgettable. Remote teaching meant that the fact I didn’t leave my room for most of the year went rgely unnoticed since everyone was dealing with a simir situation and I somehow scraped through, but the second year sylbus is kicking my ass hard. Lately, just getting out of bed is a chore that barely seems worth it most days. My housemates look at me with what they probably think is sympathy when I do, so it’s just easier if I don’t. I evolved beyond the meaningless concepts of Day or Night some time ago. I ran out of food again today, so I walked to the twenty-four hour Tesco to pick up another bulk bag of pasta and whatever was reduced or discounted. I barely remember doing it, I can’t even recall how I got home. It’s not the first time I’ve zoned out like that.

  I toss and turn in my bed. A good night’s sleep is, once again, out of my reach. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember. The exhaustion builds to the point that I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow, but only for a short while before the dreams wake me at some unholy hour, sweating like I’ve been running for my life. The dreams come every night. Or, as I should more accurately describe them, the nightmares. The ones that aren’t real are the easier ones to bear. The details change, but more and more the things I dream take the form of memory. Living my failures time and time again, knowing that I’m helpless to change the outcome no matter what. The exhaustion becomes too great to resist. I try to distract myself from what I know is coming for as long as possible, in the vain hope of deying the-

  I’m six years old and I’m pying with my best friend. We’ve been inseparable from the moment we met. Our parents look at us and make jokes neither of us understand (not that we’re really listening, but whatever). We giggle as we tell each other secrets, knowing that they will bind us as best friends for ever, because now we hold each other in our hearts in a way nobody ever has before. My secret gives my friend an idea. We start to py a new game and suddenly both sets of parents are shouting and I’m being dragged home and everything is loud and scary. I never see her again.

  I open my eyes in a panic. What happened? What did I say to my friend? Why were my parents upset? I try to find a comfortable position that avoids the broken bedsprings. They don’t seem so bad tonight. I must be more exhausted tha-

  I’m nine years old and I’m pying with my best friend. We’re kicking a football around the garden and his parents are looking on with cautious expressions. Honestly pretty reasonable, I’m sure if I ever get to own my own windows I’d be just as concerned. We stop pying football and spend time idly chatting about school, about parents, about best friends. I don’t tell him about the other best friend. Even though my parents won’t visit because his parents aren’t the same colour as them (which I don’t really understand, but am quite grateful for) I know better than to do things like that now. I have masks that can talk for me if I need them. His mum calls us to dinner and I’m excited because I get to eat something with fvours I really, really like so I quickly sort through until I find the right mask and slip it on. She jokes with her husband and the older kids about how complimentary I am of her food. As usual, I shyly ask for seconds.

  I remember Kamal. It’s been years since I saw him. His family moved to Scotnd. I wish I could have a bowl of his mum’s curry again instead of the cheap pasta that is the only thing I can afford. My eyes still feel heavy this time. I’ll probably fall asl-

  I’m twelve years old and I’m visiting my uncle with my parents. He says he has big news, but I don’t care what it is. I let the grown-ups have their silly grown-up talk over their silly grown-up coffees (yuck!) and find my favourite room of his house. The one where he keeps his books. I always shut myself in here to read when we come over, enjoying the dry, papery smell and gentle rustle of the pages as I explore a new world. I pick up my favourite, the one with my name inside, the one about the soldiers who are all pretending to be boys so they don’t get thrown out of the army. One time, he took me to a book signing where we got to meet his favourite author, and he was so excited he almost said the wrong name when he got to the front of the line. He ughed and asked for it to be signed to me for when I was old enough instead. He keeps it here with the others because he says he wants the whole collection to stay together until it’s finished, and as soon as I’m a grown-up with my own book room, they will all be mine. I don’t get far through the book before the grown-up talk becomes grown-up shouting and my mother storms in and grabs the book from my hands and drags me out to the car.

  My favourite uncle. Mum’s brother. He was actually closer to my age than to hers, which is probably why they never got along as well as the two of us did. I try to open my eyes but this time it feels like they’re stuck shut with salt and sleep gunk. I’ve been crying in my sleep. Seems like the only time I can really feel emotions these days. I rub them free of the crust and blink a couple of ti-

  I’m fifteen years old and I’m in school. I make myself as small and as insignificant as possible because every day is a challenge to see how long I can survive without being attacked. Mostly it’s verbal, because this year I’ve been growing a lot and the bullies are starting to have second and third thoughts about assaulting someone almost twice their size. I fought back just the one time, st week, and I’m still being punished both here and at home for it. Because you can have your ego broken down to nothing several times a day, every day, for years with no repercussions, but if you ever give someone a bruise in retaliation you are Wrong and Bad and Evil. Everybody keeps telling me that. My parents especially like to tell me that I am Wrong and Bad and Evil since this st incident. They took away my privacy and found it. I can’t do anything to fix this. None of the masks fit properly any more. It’s like I’m the wrong shape.

  The sheer body horror causes me to scream, and it escapes in the real world as a moan that wakes me briefly. Even though I’ve been trying my hardest to avoid being Wrong and Bad and Evil, I can’t help but feel that on the inside nothing has really cha-

  I’m nineteen years old and I’m going to university. I managed to alter some of my masks in order to get through the st few years of school, but I spent more time on adjusting them to fit than I did studying. I’m reading biomedical science at Saints. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, because science doesn’t really change based on how you’re feeling, I managed to do well enough in my A-level exams even though I’d been checked out for most of that year. Also luckily, taking a year out turned out to be one of my better ideas, even though I didn’t expect to spend it in lockdown, because I could catch up with some of the reading for my course before getting thrown in at the deep end. Being a recluse means less chance of getting sick, anyway. My parents tell me constantly that they expect me to find a church that meets with their approval, and have enlisted people they know in the area to keep an eye out for me every Sunday so I don’t just end up backsliding, as they put it. I cannot escape their judgement even when I am two hundred miles away.

  My room is pitch bck and yet I sense my parents’ eyes on me, disapproving and judgemental. Despite the difficulty, I get up every Sunday to appease their assigned watchdogs. I hate that I can’t just tell them no. I fantasise about someday just screaming cursewords at them, telling them to go fu-

  Outside the club in town there’s a queue to get in. I saw a couple of girls I’d met as I was moving into my first-year dorm and they said they were heading there ter that night. My parents had disapproved of them, and I’ve never been to a club before, so I decided I should go as a tiny act of rebellion. I don’t know anybody here, but everyone else seems to be in small groups. I’ve ended up in the same situation I did at school, with the only friends I managed to make being ones that share a specific interest that I never speak to about anything else. I’ve been waiting outside for an hour, uncertain whether or not I even want to join the queue, when the girls I met earlier arrive. I wave but they don’t seem to have noticed me. I head over to try talking to them again and a guy I didn’t realise they were with tells me loudly that I’m intruding on their bubble and intimidating them by hanging around near them and I need to fuck off now. It feels like everybody on the street turns to look at me. I make eye contact with one of the people standing nearby, a girl with short red hair. She looks upset. I turn away quickly, sit down on the edge of the road and put a mask, any mask, over my face so nobody sees me crying.

  Now I’m uncomfortable. I wanted to try to make a friend without relying on a mask. I thought we were getting along well. But clearly everyone else sees how Wrong and Bad and Evil I am too. For a second, I think about my pn again, but the fear of eternal damnation is still th-

  The girl across the table from me is talking, telling me some story about growing up in Sweden and how her dad used to py professional hockey. There’s another girl sipping coffee behind her, earpods in, listening to something on her phone. Her dyed-red hair draws my eyes for some reason I can’t expin. I only vaguely remember what my brunch friend just said and she's looking at me with an expectant expression. I reach inside for one of my masks and slip it on, telling her about how I used to py field hockey and how an incident on a skating rink many years ago put me off ice skating for life. The story makes her ugh. This mask is good at making small talk, and unlike me seems to have some degree of ability to charm people. We finish our coffee and sandwiches and say polite good-byes, telling each other we had a lovely time. I offer to walk her back to her dorm, but her other friends have arrived to meet her. They seem nice. She smiles as she waves goodbye. The mask smiles back. It can't help it. That's just how it looks. The girl with the red hair is gone when we leave.

  I’d met her at the church one Sunday. She was nice. I had hoped we would be friends, and maybe more. I never saw her again. She could see what I was. Something dangerous. Something Wro-

  I’m pying football with my friends and our keeper’s kick has sent the ball on a trajectory right towards me. Rory is trying to get there first, to head it clear, but I already know he won’t make it. I control it on my chest, which hurts more than I expected for some reason, and then I’m running, clear of my some-time friend and current mortal enemy (no time for outside retionships during a five-a-side tournament), bearing down on the opposing goal with only their goalie to beat. I stab the ball into the bottom corner of the net on my off-stride as he rushes out, sliding across the astroturf and just narrowly avoiding contact. I pce the mask with the smug expression on my face, the confident one who knows they’re good and just proved it to everyone, and turn to accept the accodes from my team. They rush up to me but stop, halting short of the usual congratutions. Everyone is looking at me like I did something weird and I realise people are staring in shock at my broken ankle and my leg with all the missing skin and... The mask shatters and I feel the pain and I colpse and people are surrounding me and the girl with the red hair rushes over to me, concerned and -

  I start awake in a panic. The pain is gone. These are recent memories, from the st couple of months, but I broke my ankle at school years ago. Things don’t add up. I don’t know anyone with dyed hair, unless some of the girls at church are bottle blondes. I grab my chest in confusion, too, why did that hurt so much in the dream? It feels wrong, somehow, although it feels the same as I remember. Or perhaps it was the dream that felt wrong. My confusion steadily worsens as I realise my sleep shirt seems more scratchy and thin than usu-

  It’s Sunday and that means I get to put one of my oldest and safest masks on. The church is… well, the church that was most like the one my parents took me to back home, and it’s unpopur for several reasons. I ugh softly to myself as I think about how they would consider even this one to be “too permissive” despite the street harassment we were all expected to join in with st weekend. I don’t really want to be here, but it keeps my parents off my back and it’s several hours where I barely have to think while the mask does all the work. I nod along as if I’m listening to the words rather than only the mellifluous cadence of the firebrand preacher and take my mask off to risk a look around. There’s a girl with chin-length red hair and subtle but pretty makeup sat at the back and she looks disgusted. I wonder to myself what might have disturbed her so much and I put the mask back on and pay attention, the speaker’s words hitting a crescendo of righteous fury as he lists his “enemies of God”. I look back, but she isn’t there. The mutters of “convicted of their sins by the Spirit” coming from the people around me make me feel vaguely uncomfortable, but the mask remains firmly in pce and I don’t follow her.

  It feels like any other Sunday. The preacher always rails against Evil, without realising that Evil is sitting in the congregation towards the back but not too far back so as not to arouse suspicion, nodding along like a good Christian boy. Evil spends time with them every weekend. Evil joins them for lunch, on occasion, and out on the street passers-by look from Evil to Church, from one to the other, and cannot tell them apart. It reminds me of a book I read once. I’m not sure which of us were originally the pig. I can’t help but try to picture the girl I dreamed about in my mind now that I’m awake, but her features are fluid, and I can’t make them out clea-

  I’m at home on the battered old couch in our living room, talking with my friends and drinking way more than I should be. There’s a party happening and my housemates have invited a lot of people I don’t know. I look around and notice a red blur disappear behind the doorframe. It’s too quick and by the time I’m wearing a suitable mask she’s nowhere to be seen. I’m annoyed at coming up empty-handed so I change it out for the one that lets me vent and compin to my couch buddies. The track changes, leaving my voice to hang in the air by itself and a couple of people nearby look at me with distaste. Well, that’s embarrassing. The look on the face of the girl who just walked in is almost calcuting.

  I hate that one. I made it so that I would have somewhere to live. Will and Joe aren’t the best housemates ever, but as long as you don’t go against the flow when they express their more fucked-up opinions they’re tolerable. Everyone else looks at me like I’m a monster when I use it. I massage my forehead with a hand, willing myself desperately to stay awa-

  I’m pying a gig with my band at the student union bar. We’re shit, but people are having a good time. I’m fucking ripping into it on my bass and it’s the best feeling in the world. There’s a mosh pit forming in front of the stage - more of a mosh swamp really given how sweaty the boys are getting. I ugh and sm into the next verse with abandon. I retreat to the mic for my backing vocal part and catch the eye of someone in the front of the crowd. It’s a beautiful girl with shoulder-length hair dyed blood-red and a maroon leather jacket and she’s smiling at me as she dances. She sees me looking at her and winks and of course she’s wearing smokey eye makeup because her eyes are smouldering. Something catches in my throat and I miss my cue. Sam gres at me from the front of the stage and shakes his head minutely. I understand instantly what he means. I left my mask off. A beat ter, it’s on and I turn back to the mic and my raw bass vocal matches my riff. I look back to see if the girl is still where I saw her but all I see are -

  I remember this after I wake. It happened two months ago. We started the band as soon as lockdown was lifted, and for the first time in years I actually felt good. That feeling stopped as soon as the music did, though. The worship leader at church has been on at me since I started going there to py bass for them, but I’ve been putting it off with the excuse that I don’t think I’m good enough yet. He probably knows I’m lying. Luckily there’s little crossover between the two poputions, church and student, so it’s not likely he can prove it. Now that I’m thinking about it, the weird thing is I think the girl actually had brown hai-

  I’m at the bar after the gig. We’re knocking back the beers and people keep coming up to us to gush about the show. I’m scanning the room for the girl I saw during the set and probably not being as polite as I ought to be to our “fans”. Chris the drummer is chattering away in my ear about the Female Freshers? he’s pnning to get to know next semester at the earliest opportunity, he won’t let it go. Sleazy bastard. I tip my head back and drain my pint and when I look back down she’s just there. I try to find the mask I wore earlier in the dream, the one that knows how to talk to people, but I can’t find it. I start to panic. She ughs at me and waves it in my face, then crumples it carelessly in her hands. I bck out.

  Chris is my oldest ‘friend’ (that I still speak to). We started pying music together at school, and somehow both ended up at Saints by way of a year of lockdown, but in very different fields of study. I’ve barely seen him since we got here, until he sent me an email a little while ago saying he’d met a guitarist on his music course and did I want to try being in a band again? He’s always been a bit of a dickhead, but a dickhead I can tolerate is better than one I can’t. Why do I keep dreaming of this girl? I can’t remember her at all. And what did she do to m-

  It’s 7pm and I’m still in bed. I’m sorting through my masks and trying to find one I can use, just so I can get out of bed and start interacting again. It barely matters, since none of us can leave the house thanks to Joe bringing the virus home. Some time passes. It’s two days ter, and I’m still in bed, even though we’re clear of infection at this point. My housemates gave up trying to rouse me the day before. I find the distorted shape of the mask the girl at the bar crushed, and put it on. It doesn’t fit the same way as it used to anymore, but it stays in pce well enough that I can get out of bed. I head to the bathroom - I smell - and wash up. Everything feels wrong, but I can’t stop now or I won’t ever start again.

  My eyes are open. I’m in bed, slowly rotting, and dreaming about being in bed, slowly rotti-

  Almost all the restrictions are now lifted, so I’m standing just inside one of the dorms on the edge of campus, wearing the crumpled mask under my N95. I’m looking at a corkboard noticeboard and cursing Chris, who had decred my pn for this afternoon “creepy as all fuck” as if his idea of getting in the pants of every new uni student was somehow virtuous. I knew this was majority-female (and non-binary, whatever that meant) housing, so it was the natural first pce to look if I wanted to track down the girl I’d been dreaming about. I scan the notices and I realise I don’t know what I’m looking for. I step back and bump into a Bck woman a few years older than myself. Mature student or postgrad, most likely. I apologise but the mask doesn’t fit properly, isn’t as easy to wear as it used to be. She raises an eyebrow questioningly. My cheeks burn with… embarrassment? Guilt? I leave in a hurry and I can feel her eyes on my back as I walk quickly away.

  This isn’t what happened. That wasn’t the girl I was looking for. I was looking for someone else. I’m almost positive she had brown hair, not red. What was her name? Begins with a ‘B’, I think. Shit. The second part of the memory burns like a shard of ice in my brain. I was caught. Running away wasn’t a great look, eith-

  It’s the middle of summer and I’m sitting on the grass outside the building I fled a week ago. It still feels strange to be outside again after everything that’s happened. I’m working out some new lines on my bass so I have my performance mask on. I watch the people coming and going but the red-haired girl I’m looking for never appears. A couple of them give me odd looks as they leave through the big double doors. One turns to the other and says something while looking at me, but they’re not close enough for me to hear what they are saying. Nobody is close to anyone anymore. It’s getting dark and I’ve been here for hours. I see some of the same people return and they give me even stranger looks this time.

  Pying my bass and people-watching. Not much of a nightmare, by my usual standards. It’s still not right, though. I was waiting for ‘B’ to show. I think the ones that saw me might have warned people inside about the Evil sitting outside on the grass, noodling away and making notes in a book. I remember the faces they made as they returned. They definitely knew someth-

  I’m lying curled up on the cold, hard floor of a featureless concrete box. It’s dark. It’s hard to think. I’m wearing… not my clothes? Something green. Something institutional. I check my masks - they are all still there, still within reach. Not worth taking away. I choose one but almost drop it when I realise the girl with hair the colour of blood is silhouetted against the door. She smiles at me, and it doesn’t reach her eyes. Her grin widens impossibly. Too many teeth. I dip my head down and fit the mask to my face. I look back up. She’s gone.

  I open my eyes, and blink away the terrifying dream image.

  I’m lying curled up on the cold, hard floor of a featureless concrete box. It’s dark. It’s hard to think. I’m wearing… not my clothes? Something green. Something institutional. I check my masks - they are all still there, still within reach. Not worth taking away. I choose one. A burst of incandescence blinds me. The sun is directly overhead - no, wait - somebody switched the light on. I take inventory of other body parts as I sit up. Nothing is missing, I don’t know what I’d even do if anything was, but I have the mother of all headaches and it’s hard to focus. I dip my head, wondering if I chose the right mask for this part, and when I look up a figure is standing in the now open doorway. It speaks, and the words are entirely new. With a jolt of shock I know I’m no longer in the dream.

  “Welcome to Dorley Hall.”

  DaughterofKhaos