The Mask of my Father
When I was a child, my father used to scare me with this rubber Halloween mask. It’s burned into my brain like the remnant image left on a TV screen after you power it down. It covered his entire head and changed his skin from pale white to black and red with a piercing set of yellow eyes. The smile that stretched from ear to ear was filled with sharp teeth that promised nothing but death. The hair that covered the top was stringy, black, and unkempt, and I remember, from pushing his head away from my own, that it felt like bristles from an old broom.
When he first started using the mask to scare me, even though it didn’t feel like a game, I treated it like one. My father would jump from behind a corner of the house and growl, I would scream, and he would cackle. I wasn’t really laughing, but I didn’t want him to think of me as a coward, so I cackled too. He would take off the mask, and we would go on with our days. I always knew that it was my father who was behind the mask.
On Halloween, when I was seven, something changed. I hadn’t seen my father all day, though he always took the day off. From morning until nightfall, I felt eyes on me. My mother grew impatient and told me to get ready for trick-or-treating without him. Disappointingly, I walked to the bathroom and closed the door.
When I was finished, I washed my hands, swung the bathroom door open—and froze.
He stood in the doorway. Yellow eyes glowed faintly in the dark. The grin split wider, showing every jagged tooth. I wanted to scream, but my chest locked. My heart hammered so violently I thought it would kill me. I told myself it was my father, but when I looked at the family photo on the wall, I didn’t recognize him. I collapsed, sobbing, as it…he leaned closer.
Then my mother appeared, ripping the mask from his face. He still carried the mask’s grin, frozen and empty. When she shoved him and told him Halloween was ruined, his eyes cleared, and he frowned. He snatched the mask from her hands, stormed outside, and I heard the back door slam.
I ran to the window and saw him force the mask into the trash. Relief washed through me, heavy and dizzying. That night, I stayed home, glad to crawl into bed and hide beneath the blankets.
Sometime past midnight, the back door slammed again. I scrambled to the window. My father stood in the yard, mask in hand. This time, before he pulled it on, I could have sworn the yellow eyes shifted and looked straight into mine. I dove under the covers and cried until dawn.
I never saw my father again after that night. But sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I swear the mask is smiling back.
About the Author
P.J. Arloro is a fiction writer from Boston, Massachusetts. Arloro’s work crosses genres, drawing on influences from Grady Hendrix to Brandon Sanderson. His fiction has appeared in the zine Fig Jam.