Memoirs of a Cam-Girl - PART 4: An Inaccurately Named Conclusion

So I’m still alive, which is cool. There’s more good news but, considering how the previous update ended with me hell-bent on continuing to make bad decisions like it was my job, I should probably start by filling you guys in on what happened the other night.

Using Google Maps, I found a location that matched up with the coordinates from Enid’s final entry: It was a sizable structure positioned behind a long row of smaller interconnected buildings located near the center of a town so tiny; Google didn’t even have a name for it. Which is, of course, always a good sign.

Looking at how the buildings were positioned, I assumed that my destination was a warehouse located behind a long strip-mall. And it seemed as if I had guessed right. In fact, the narrow two-lane highway that acted as Nameless Town’s impromptu main street was practically lined with strip-malls from one end to the other.

Most of the stores were pretty generic: women’s boutiques and sandwich shops. There were a couple of electronics outlets too, a few sporting-goods stores, etc. All of them were closed and, from the looks of it, had been for quite some time. I slowed as I neared the end of “Strip City” and glanced down at the GPS app on my phone. I was almost on top of my destination now.

I looked back at the road and reflexively slammed on my breaks as the final strip-mall came into view. The car screeched to a halt in the middle of the street, stopping beside a sign that read “MR. MYSTERY’S ADULT VIDEO AND ARCADE!” Above the sign was a 10-foot tall painted wood cut-out of Mr. Mystery, himself. Care to guess what he looked like?

If you answered “a creepy bastard in a black mask”, congratulations! You have a basic understanding of how to utilize narrative clues. Call your dad. Tell him he was wrong. You ARE good for something.

On a related note, it was at this point that I became almost certain I was on the right track. I was about to pull into Mr. Mystery’s parking-lot when an uncharacteristic moment of foresight made me decide to drive a little further down and hide the car in the lot of a nearby gas station instead.

I pulled into the abandoned gas station, which was half a block down from Mr. Mystery’s arcade. Then I realized there was a very real chance I would be running for my life when I left here and that it was probably best if my car were parked as close as possible. I made a U-turn and exited the gas station parking-lot, Bruce Willis’ irate voice in my head asking ''“Who’s driving this car? Stevie Wonder?”''

As a compromise I passed up Mr. Mystery’s and parked one lot over in the Bed, Bath, and Beyond next door. I even backed into the space so that my car was facing the exit. Keeping my eyes on the adult arcade, I pulled the gun from the back of my waistband and checked the magazine to make sure it was loaded. I let out a deep breath and then switched off the safety.

As I prepared myself to exit the car, I glanced in the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of the wild-eyed sleep-deprived unshaven ne’er-do-well staring back at me. This is when, for the second time in less than two weeks, I found myself having a genuine moment of personal introspection while sitting in a parked car with a loaded gun in my hand. And it dawned on me then that I was bad at learning from mistakes.

But you know what? Not this time. Ole’ Clarence was too smart to be THAT stupid. I slid the gun back in my waistband and took out my phone to do what, admittedly, I probably should’ve done a long time ago. I dialed 9-1-1.

I put the phone to my ear as the line started to ring, which was weird because the ring had sort of an echo to it. Probably just the terrible reception out here. It rang again and this time the echo sounded like it was coming from the backseat of my car. I lowered the cell as a third ring, clear as day, sounded from my backseat.

My hand fumbled for the door-handle as I glanced at the rearview mirror just in time to see the masked man spring up behind me and say, “Well this is awkward…”

I was too stunned to react as the masked man grabbed me by my hair and clamped a damp foul-smelling rag over my nose and mouth. So this is what chloroform smelled like?

I held my breath and fought against the initial wave of wooziness long enough to reach a hand back and yank off his mask. The last thing I saw before my vision became one big blur was the reflection of a familiar face in my rearview mirror.

Jay smiled at me and said, “Shh, it’s okay… There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

And then darkness…

The first thing that came back was my sense of smell. My sinuses were still lined with the stink of chloroform. It was awful. Hollywood made getting ‘formed look so glamorous. Like it was all just…

“A rag on my face? Oh no, I’m asleep! Oh no, where am I?”

I didn’t give a FUCK where I was. The first five minutes of consciousness felt like an hour. I could barely keep my eyes open. No response from my limbs. All I could smell or taste or feel or see or think was the god-awful scent of chloroform. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I realized Jay was saying something…

“…Probably a bit too liberal of a dousing and I apologize. But let’s both try and be adults here. You wouldn’t have come without a fight and I’d hate to have to taze a bro.”

I forced my eyes open out of sheer spite. I wanted to look this sick bastard in his face when I told him to go fuck himself. Everything was still blurry but I got the gist: I was tied to a chair. There was a laptop on a desk in front of me and Jay’s stupid face was on the laptop.

After a few moments of concentration, I was able to focus my eyes enough to glare at Jay. I told my mouth to open and my tongue to form the words ‘go fuck yourself.’

My jaw fell slack and a stream of drool poured from the corner of my mouth.

“I forgot you have awful sinuses, don’t you? Maybe chloroform wasn’t the best solution after all. Oh well, as they say… Hindsight is a bitch.”

“Your mom… bitch…” was the eventual reply that I managed to force out through the corner of my partially open mouth.

Jay turned and beamed at someone I couldn’t see. “Three coherent words, fellas! He’s coming around.”

“Hey-ewe-you-talk…” I started to ask but then furrowed my brow as a more pressing question suddenly came to mind. I gave Jay what I hoped was an incredulous glare as I shouted, “Didn’t I SHOOT?!”

He had a nice laugh at this before finally replying, “Yes, you did shoot. Unfortunately for you, what you shot were blanks.”

“BLANGS?!”

“I switched out the rounds in the gun-case you kept under your bed with blanks. You were so excited about shooting me that night; you failed to notice that my ‘bullet wounds’ were actually just prop-squibs.”

“When?!”

“When did I switch the rounds? The night I came over to ‘help’ you try to save Enid’s corrupted video-file. The same night I installed all that stuff on your laptop that let me create time-and-space defying illusions…” Jay looked up and batted his eyes, pantomiming naivety as he continued in a falsetto tone, “How am I watching a video on a thumb-drive of me receiving the thumb-drive with the video on it? It’s not like anyone I know is able to remotely access computers or make them look like they’re doing one thing when they’re really doing another.”

“WHY?!” I screamed, only vaguely aware of the tears welling in my eyes.

Jay tilted his head at me in a condescending gesture. “The same reason I wrote that folder full of fake logs and planted it at Alice’s place.”

“YOU wrote the logs? Like ALL of them?”

Jay nodded, looking almost proud as he said “I knew you couldn’t resist a good mystery. Especially one involving a creative, attractive, vulnerable girl specifically designed to make you fall in love with the mere idea of her.”

“There never was an Enid,” I muttered to myself and Jay scoffed.

“Oh, there were a THOUSAND Enids… But, hey! At least you’re speaking in full sentences again.”

“So I am,” I said and spat at the computer screen.

“Your next question should be how I managed to snatch Alice WHILE I was at your house.”

I considered this for a beat and then turned back to Jay. “Yeah, wait! How the fuck…”

“To quote a true artist, ‘I get by with a little help from my friends.’” Jay reached an arm off-screen and pulled another familiar face into frame.

“Amy?!”

Amy waved at me. “Hey, Clarence… Sorry we had to put you through all this.”

“Fuck you bitch! I’m gonna choke the life from your husband with my bare fucking hands!”

“That’s cute. He still thinks we’re married.”

Jay chuckled and pointed at Amy, “This one is ‘totes lesbian. It’s cool though. She lets me watch. We just do the holy matrimony thing because her ‘rents gave us a huge dowry and plus it keeps my folks from asking too many questions because let’s be honest. Most of the women I sleep with don’t usually survive long enough for me to pop the question.”

“It amazes me that you think I care right now.”

“Dude!” Jay motioned to Amy. “I’m telling you I have access to interactive 3D lesbian porn…”

“And I’m telling you I’m gonna cut both your cheeks open before I bury you up to your neck so the sex-starved baboons I let loose on you won’t have to take turns FUCKING YOUR FACE! DO YOU HEAR ME, YOU GOOFY GRINNIN’ SON OF A BITCH?! I WILL BURN YOUR FUCKING LIFE DOWN…” I was now screaming at the laptop with every fiber of my being and pulling at the ropes holding me in place until the chair almost tipped over, cutting me short as I paused to steady myself.

One of the people off-screen said, “Ewe, I like this one’s energy. Very creative.”

“How many demented assholes you got back there?!”

Jay turned to address one of said assholes and shrugged, whispering “I’d say it’s as good a time as any.”

“It’s your pledge, your call.”

Jay turned to address someone else and asked, “Wes, thoughts?”

“Hello?!” With Jay and his inane rambling no longer holding my attention, I felt a sudden mounting dread begin to overtake me as the reality of my situation finally and truly set in. I glanced around what appeared to be a break room and saw nothing particularly nefarious looking; jut a kitchenette, the table I was sitting at, and an old pre flat-screen television mounted to the corner of one wall. Near the door was a hand-dolly with a stack of small brightly-colored boxes. The picture on the boxes was of…

The picture on the boxes was of a large purple dildo.

I continued to struggle against the ropes, this time even more frantically. The chair began to tip back and I tried to force my weight forward but the ropes held me in place as the chair crashed to the floor. I banged my head pretty hard but was thankfully still a bit numb from the chloroform.

I blinked and my vision refocused to reveal a very tall, very muscular, very naked, VERY erect man standing over me. He was wearing one of those old-timey doctor’s plague masks with the long beak-like appendage that admittedly acted as a fitting parallel to his turgid member.

From the table above me, I heard Jay say, “Toby, be a dear and assist Mr. Worley here.”

Large, naked, erect Toby positioned himself almost directly over my face and began to crouch down and for a moment it was like Cthulhu coming in for that awkward first-date kiss. They say in these situations that the abyss stares back but I wouldn’t know because I recoiled in terror far too quickly to find out.

I shut my eyes tight and then started to scream as I felt my chair being gently lifted upright. A moment later, I opened my eyes to find myself now facing a room full of people staring back at me from the laptop. They were all wearing creepy homemade-looking black masks and seated around Jay and Amy in what looked to be a small theater.

“Meet the Order of Smeghead. Over the years, it has counted among its members some of the most powerful and influential people the world has ever known,” Jay said as he lifted his arms and motioned around the theater. “World-renowned artists, business moguls, reality TV stars, former heads of state, and even a Time Magazine Man of the Year…”

“Was that last one Hitler?”

“Specifics are not important.”

One of the masked audience-members raised their hand and said, “I write children’s books.”

I grinned at him, “Oh, really? Which ones?”

He started to say something but Jay quickly interrupted the man by shouting, “Damn it, Randy! Don’t TELL him! He hasn’t passed yet.”

“Passed what?” I asked.

Several people groaned and Randy lowered his head in shame as Jay turned back to face me, saying “You wanted to know why I would kidnap your girlfriend or enact a cunning plot that required countless hours of espionage and planning; all to lead you on a desperate journey of fear, isolation, and eventual catharsis? It was all a test. There you go. THANKS, Randy.”

“Hey, I’m not the jerk who said ‘passed!”” Someone grabbed Randy by the shoulder and he turned back around, his hands clenched into fists.

Jay sighed as he looked at Randy. “You know what? You’re right. I was about to tell him anyway and I was just mad at myself for not sticking the reveal. I’m sorry I blamed you.”

Randy’s fists unclenched and his posture relaxed. “I’m sorry I yelled.”

“No, you had every right…”

“GUYS!” I shouted, getting Jay’s attention. “What do you mean test?”

“The order has an opening and we’d like to invite you to join.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“To be honest, you’re the only candidate who’s made it this far into the initiation, so you might as well hear us out.”

“Hear you out?! Jay! You abducted Alice, made me think I shot you, fucking CHLOROFORMED me and basically ruined my life and all because you want me to join your stupid sex-cult?!”

“Hey!”

Jay lifted a hand to quiet Randy and then smiled at me as he said, “It’s not a sex cult. It’s a secret all-powerful order that worships a pagan god that, YES, happens to use sex to eroticize the most deeply rooted fears of mortal men so that he may one day fill their hearts with his own darkness. All I’m asking you, Clarence, is: Will you let his darkness come inside YOU?”

At this point, the entire audience including Jay shouted in unison, “He’s coming! He’s coming! Oh god, HE’S COMING!”

“Yeah, you guys might wanna cut the singular refrain from your ‘not a cult’ sales pitch.”

Several people in the audience began to murmur between each other and Jay smiled awkwardly as he turned back to me and said, “I feel like we’re getting off on the wrong foot here…”

“Yeah? Kidnapping someone’s girlfriend will do that. Make a note!”

“Toby, can you untie Mr. Worley? Maybe get him something to drink? Would you like a Vitamin Water?”

“Is the vitamin in that water Cialis?” I asked as Toby finished untying me and his erect penis once again entered my field of view. I quickly glanced up at his masked face. “I mean damn, dude… It’s cold in here and everything.”

“Ah yes, Toby is a brood of the dark one… He is truly blessed.”

Toby grunted at me through the plague mask and I tried not to whimper as I said, “I can see that.”

“Let me ask you, Clarence, have you ever been a member of a secret all-powerful order?”

“I have not.”

“Do you like money, fame, beautiful women throwing themselves at you, all the free drugs you can ingest, and the power to dictate your own destiny?”

“What’s the catch?”

Without missing a beat, Jay smirked and replied “A single sacrifice.”

“My soul?”

The entire audience erupted with laughter and Jay had to wait several moments before it was quiet enough to respond, “That’s a bit of a common misconception among outsiders. See, people like us? Our souls are useless when we’re done with them. Selling your soul to an evil entity is like telling someone you’re going to trade them a cheeseburger after you’re done eating it. What’s left isn’t really worth the effort.”

“Yeah, I get the analogy. So what’s my sacrifice then?”

“The flesh and blood of someone you love.”

Jay nodded off screen and suddenly I was looking at Alice through a security camera feed. She was sitting in a small room surrounded by steel doors with tiny windows set into them at eye-level. “Alice!”

Jay’s voice was still audible through the laptop. “I’m sorry to say she can’t hear you. Trust me. It will make this next part a whole lot easier.”

I leaned in close to the screen. Alice looked just as confused and terrified as someone who’s been kept in a small room for almost two weeks. “Do you really expect me to kill my girlfriend?”

“Oh, no. That’s what we have Toby here for. He’s big into wet-work. A real natural. All you have to do is watch.”

“That’s it, huh?”

“Either that or Toby kills you both. Though, spoiler alert… With him, rape and murder are sort of a package deal. You’re not Toby’s typical type but he seems to be fond of you.” Toby nodded and I was suddenly aware of the heavy muffled breathing emanating from behind his mask as it intensified and grew more labored.

“You sure those are my only options?” I said as I reached back to feel the gun still in my waistband. Amateurs…

I pulled out the firearm and Jay scoffed as he said “I already told you that thing is loaded with blanks.”

“Apparently you’re not familiar with former television actor Jon-Erik Hexum,” I said as I quickly pressed the barrel of the gun to Toby’s chin and fired before he could respond.

The explosion of compressed gasses and paper wadding slammed against Toby’s lower jaw like an uppercut from a sledgehammer. His plague mask went flying, along with a splatter of blood and several small bits of debris that I assumed were teeth, as Toby’s limp body toppled to the floor. “Or, you know, how blanks work.”

“DUDE!” I heard Jay scream through the laptop as I hurried out of the room.

I exited the break-room and found myself at the back of a dimly-lit warehouse full of porn DVDs and assorted sexual paraphernalia, just as I guessed I would after seeing the inventory on that hand-dolly. This was the large building behind the adult arcade, which meant I had a good idea where Alice was.

I hurried across the warehouse and then into a utility hallway lined with several doors. I found one that said “PEEP SHOW” on it and pulled it open to reveal a small room containing an open doorway to my right and three curtained-off sections to my left labeled: BOOTH 1, BOOTH 2, and BOOTH 3.

I yanked Booth 2’s curtain aside and entered a dark foul-smelling recess with yet another door at the other end. This one was steel and had a window set into it at eye-level.

“Alice?” I practically shouted as I hurried to the window and peered inside.

There she was! I let out a small cheer as I banged on the door, which got her attention. Alice threw a hesitant glance at the window before pulling a literal double-take and turning back to shout, “Clarence?”

“ALICE!”

“Oh my god…” She smiled as tears began to pour from her eyes. Alice jumped up and hurried to the door. “It’s really you! Clarence, how…”

I examined the padlock on the latch holding the door closed and then held a finger up to the window. “Give me a sec. This is gonna be loud.”

I pressed the barrel of my gun to the top of the padlock, shielding my eyes with my other hand and praying this would work as Alice shouted, “No, wait. There’s the key right there.”

She pointed to my left and sure enough there was a key right there, hanging from a small hook. “That’s convenient.”

I returned the gun to my waistband and unlocked the door. As I pulled it open, Alice pounced on me and gave me the tightest hug I have ever received. And then we kissed and it was like something out of a movie. Then she hugged me again, even tighter this time, and said “I’m sorry. I must smell terrible.”

“It’s okay. You’re squeezing me so tight that I can hardly breathe, let alone smell anything.”

“Always the smartass,” she said and sighed and hugged me even tighter. I rested my cheek on the top of Alice’s head as I held her in my arms and glanced inside the enclosed dance floor that had been her cell. And that’s when I finally noticed the pale figure huddled in one corner.

“Um…” I said and Alice turned to glance at the young woman seated with her face buried in her knees. “Who’s that?”

“I don’t know. I think she’s been here a while. She doesn’t talk.” Alice leaned closer and whispered “I know she CAN talk because they would give us a piece of bread with every meal and she would always give me hers and I asked her why one time and she said ‘carbs’, so… But I don’t like know her name or anything.”

I knew her name.

Alice looked more than a little baffled as I pulled away from her and began to sing, “And though it hurts me to treat you this way… betrayed by words I’d never heard… too hard to say.”

The girl in the corner lifted her head enough to see that she was now staring at me.

“Up, down, turn around. Please don’t let me hit the ground. Tonight I think I’ll walk alone. Find my soul as I go home…”

Alice suddenly gasped as she saw the girl’s lips mouthing the words to the refrain along with me, “Up, down, turn around. Please don’t let me hit the ground. Tonight I think I’ll walk alone. Find my soul as I go home.”

The girl gave me a baffled smile as Alice asked, “How the hell?!”

“Is your name Enid?”

Enid slowly nodded.

“I’m Clarence. This is Alice. We’re getting the fuck out of here. Care to join us?”

Enid nodded again and then stood up. As she started across the room, Alice turned to me and muttered in an irate tone, “You have some ‘splaining to do.”

“Baby, you just said a mouthful but right now we need to get you two out of here…”

I was suddenly interrupted by the door to the utility hallway slamming open. Enid froze in the doorway of the cell as Alice and I turned to see Toby tearing open the curtain divider to our booth. He grinned as he spotted us, revealing a mouth full of shattered teeth and blood.

I pulled the gun from the back of my waistband in the same moment I remembered that it was still loaded with blanks. Enid gasped and quickly pulled the steel door closed, shutting herself inside the cell. Thanks!

I pulled Alice behind me and backed us into a narrow corner beside the door. I held the gun out in front of me as Toby charged at us. This was it. I was about to be mauled to death by a giant naked madman while my girlfriend watched. Hell of an obituary though.

And then, just as Toby was about to reach us, the steel door suddenly flew back open just in time to nail him square in the face. There was an audible “CRUNCH” as his nose was flattened and Toby slowly stumbled back.

I felt someone pulling at my hand and turned to see Enid trying to take my gun. I let her have it and she slowly approached the still-daze Toby.

“They’re blanks, so you have to hold it super close to do any real damage.”

“Thanks,” Enid said as she pressed the gun to Toby’s now finally flaccid penis and fired. Toby howled in pain and I quickly looked away, wincing out of reflex as she fired two more rounds. I heard his body collapse to the floor and turned to snatch my gun away from Enid.

“Damn, girl… Can I get a heads up before you start shooting dicks off?”

The three of us exited the booth and I lead them back through the utility hallway to a door marked by a sign that read EXIT in glowing green letters. I pulled the door open to reveal a large pitch black room that I at first mistook for a lobby. I spotted a second glowing EXIT sign on the far wall and turned to wave the girls inside…

Then I saw Jay standing behind me and holding a gun to Alice’s head.

“Aw man…” Jay said as he spotted Enid. “You ruined your surprise.”

The lights came on behind me, revealing the small theater I had seen on the laptop earlier, the seats still occupied by several dozen masked creeps. I heard Enid mutter, “Oh god no…”

Jay motioned for us to enter and what could we do but comply? He led us up onto a stage containing a bare altar and under the house lights I could now see that Jay had been crying. “I mean fuck, dude… I told these guys you were cool! And then you’re nothing but completely rude the entire time. You insult our order. You maimed our brood. Poor Toby is probably gonna need twenty grand worth of oral surgery after this.”

“Actually…” I said, holding up a hand. “We also shot his dick off and he’s surely bled out by now. So all you freaks are gonna need is about six feet of hole and one big fucking casket.”

Numerous audience members gasped at this and I nodded at them. “I know. I had to see it and believe me… Not pretty.”

“You’ve dismembered the brood?!” Jay shouted in disbelief. “The ritual had already begun! The brood must spill his seed in the corpse of your loved one or the dark lord will not be sated!”

“Yeah, that’s not happening, so…”

“FOOLS! You have doomed us all!”

I was about to ask Jay who he meant by “us” when the ground began to shake and an inhuman moan erupted from the utility hallway. Jay slowly lowered the gun from Alice’s head and started toward the open doorway, looking transfixed, and the rest of the order seemed just as dazed as him. Alice and Enid noticed the same thing and the three of us cautiously started toward the exit sign at the opposite end of the room.

No one tried to stop us. They were all too busy watching the hallway as a loud sound, like gnawing, began to filter into the auditorium. I pushed open the exit door to see Mr. Mystery’s parking lot and hurried both girls out through the exit as the source of the sound reached the auditorium doorway.

It was Toby, at least in body. Though it was clear that whatever was controlling him at this point was not something accustomed to walking around in human flesh. Jay dropped to one knee and bowed his head. “Dark lord… please forgive us.”

Toby’s body bent backward, twisting into a full-on spider crawl with his hands and feet flat on the ground and his belly pointed toward the ceiling. Then, what can only be described as something resembling a four foot long jet-black lamprey eel erupted from the mangled mess that remained of his genitals. The gnawing sound was coming from the eel’s circular mouth, which was rapidly opening and closing, revealing a razor-sharp ring of blood-stained fangs.

Toby’s contorted form began to crawl toward Jay at an inhuman speed. Jay screamed as the Toby thing pinned him to the altar and the monster eel protruding from his groin began to snake its way toward Jay’s rear. I heard the tearing of pants and turned to exit the auditorium as Jay’s screaming crescendo’ed into a final solemn whimper of, “Owe…”

Alice and Enid were waiting for me outside, both looking more than a little weary. Boy, was THAT an awkward car ride home. I wish I could tell you it all had a happy ending but that would be a lie.

Enid asked if I could take her to the nearest Western Union and then maybe a bus station. I offered to give her money for a bus home but she refused, saying “I’m sure my boyfriend will wire me the cash.”

She borrowed my phone to call him and I could hear the excitement in his voice even from the front seat. I smiled at Alice as I remembered our own reunion but she was staring vacantly out the passenger window and didn’t notice. Enid used my phone’s browser to find where she needed to go and then directed me to exit the interstate a few miles later.

Thankfully, the small town we entered had a 24-hour place that did wire transfers. I brought her to pick up the money and we offered to wait with her at the bus station but she declined. I don’t think she wanted us to know where she was going and so we didn’t question her. Enid never asked about the New Order song or how I knew her name. I’m pretty sure she had more important things to worry about and so that was where we parted ways.

On the nine-hour drive home, I told Alice everything. From Enid’s logs until the moment I found her. I showed her my previous entries on here and then things got really awkward. I was hoping it was mostly just exhaustion setting in to the both of us but now that I’ve had time to think, I realize that she couldn’t help but at least partially blame me for everything she’d just been through. And that’s fair.

So, we broke up. I also lost my job because I disappeared for a week without even a phone call, but in my defense I thought I was on the run from a murder charge at the time. But yeah, I am now officially alone and unemployed. Ladies…

One last point of interest worth mentioning: After we got back last weekend, I cleaned out my car and found Jay’s mask under the front seat where it must have landed after I pulled it off his face. I was going to burn it but I don’t know. Maybe it was simply the fact that I lost so much over the past two weeks and this fugly black mask was really all I had to show for it, but either way I kind of wanted to keep it.

Honestly, it wasn’t even that scary-looking in reality. The mask appeared to be made out of a patchwork of cloth gaffing tape which made it look slightly different depending on which way the light hit it. But just holding the mask in my hands made me realize how silly I was to have ever been afraid of such a cheap hobo-prop.

Then, last night I awoke to find myself standing half-inside my bedroom closet while wearing the mask and holding my phone out in front of me. Apparently, I had been taking pictures of myself and texting them to random numbers in my sleep, along with the message: HE’S COMING!

So, yeah, I’m starting to reconsider holding on to it.