Delirium (Creepypasta x reader)

•22•

Masky's hand was healed. Had healed a while ago, without the trace of a scar or blemish to denote injury. Still, he found himself articulating it every which way, checking to make sure he had retained total mobility in his dominant hand.

It was a human thought. The Proxy was supernaturally gifted, from his connection to his Lord, in speed, power, and healing - he could heft the couch in his room over his head, if he wanted. There was no reason to worry about sustaining lasting damage from that candidate's bite.

It was most likely his meddling in the lives of the candidates that influenced this line of thinking. His humanity was long gone... and yet the memory of it still lingered in his mind like cobwebs. He was glad that Hoodie wasn't haunted like him, that the past was long dead (literally), and the memories were just that. Memories. Intangible, entrenched in pain and fear and sadness; yet fleeting. He would put up with the moments of disorientation and terror for as long as his second life lasted. His Lord was merciful and gracious and had given him all he could ever need.

So, when he contemplated long term damage... It was a human thought. Nothing more.

The balcony attached to his room was sturdy underneath his feet, a light wind wafting against his unmasked face. Turning his hand into a fist he drew upon the cigarette in his grasp harshly, the acrid smoke filling his lungs and scattering his thoughts. The smoke helped to take the edge off his fatigue and preoccupy his mind. As he exhaled the smoke drifted up, far up, disappearing into the dark expanse of sky.

Masky was in the shitty part of his cycle of sleep. The pills he had been taking to drug himself into unconsciousness had lost their effectiveness, and he had to wait out his exhaustion as the chemicals left his system to do it again. He had done it before countless times, countless cycles of dreamless, only slightly restful sleep to days on end awake, living off coffee and tobacco. Masky couldn't trust himself to stay asleep and not relive terrible memories of his human past life. So, he smoked and stayed awake.

He puffed on the cig until it hit the filter and then crushed it between his fingers. The heat of the burning paper gave a spark of pain that quickly abated, and with a flick he tossed the end into a small metal tin hidden in his jacket. His Lord forbade anyone from littering the mansion grounds, so Masky would have to dump them in a random human forest later.

He retreated from the balcony into his room, shutting the porch door and drawing the curtains. Sitting on the worn brown couch in his room with a thump, he ran a hand down his face and rubbed at his eyes.

Orders were to wait until his Lord's domain was cleaned and reset to enter. Masky hadn't been there in a while, though he had entered it a handful of times.

This domain was a personally curated space that his Lord had complete control over. It was a small, clipped section of reality that was set aside specifically to hunt prey or train candidates. With the Lords of the Gloom unable to enter the human realm, it allowed them to extend their reach into it.

His Lord's domain appeared very much like a thickly wooded area populated with spindly pine and birch trees, interspersed with clearings, trails, and some man made structures. The edges of this space folded over each other so one could run in a single direction for miles and never reach an end, looped on and on forever.

Masky's Lord rarely had an interest in playing with prey (something that could not be said about the other Lords in this realm). However, one of the tasks of the Proxies was to secure food when the mood struck. That was when one of several of them - Hoodie, Toby, Nurse Ann, or himself - would scour a forest for unsuspecting campers or hikers. Their Lord would lay a border of his domain over the forest, and they would then scare and stalk the prey to run right into it. Like a Venus fly trap the domain would snap them up, leaving them subjected to the Lord's whims.