A Change of Face

"Woah! Cool mask!" Noah Caldwell breathed as he noticed the greenish face resting on the kitchen table. He remembered seeing Carly Beth wearing it earlier that day, but he hadn't had a chance to look at it too closely before she'd run off to go Trick-Or-Treating. Now that Halloween night was coming to a close, however, Carly Beth had clearly discarded the mask. Now it was Noah's chance to get a better look at it!

"How cool!" he muttered again as he quickly took it to his room, locking the door behind him so Carly Beth wouldn't find out that he had her mask.

For a while more, he continued to study the hideous thing with interest. It was the most lifelike mask he'd ever seen and he was blown away by how scary and cool it looked. But then, just for a moment, he was sure he'd seen the lips move slightly.

"Huh?" he narrowed his eyes and looked at the mask closer, but it did not move again. Certain that he had just been imagining things, he shrugged and turned it over in his hands, amazed by how warm and soft it felt. It was then when the Mask began to speak to him.

"Noah, Noah, Noah," it whispered, and it seemed to swirl in the air all around him. He could hear the Mask speaking as though it were directly inside of its head, and in the very air around him. Instead of growing frightened, however, he seemed enthralled.

"Woah! You can talk?" he gasped, turning the Mask back over to look in its yellow glowing eyes. "That is so awesome!" and the Mask paused for a moment, genuinely taken aback by the sheer innocence and joy in Noah's voice. The Mask had met a lot of people in its days, but none of them had been so chipper, naive or excited as Noah.

"Where did Carly Beth even find you?" he continued to ask the mask, sounding a tad bit jealous that it had been his big sister to find the special talking mask and not him. That one small note of envy was just enough to bring the Haunted Mask back around.

"It does not matter," it rumbled, voice filling Noah's head once again. "She has abandoned me, discarded me."

"Why would she ever do a thing like that?" Noah asked with a scoff. Gosh his sister was weird! Who would ever willingly part with a talking mask?! But the Mask did not respond verbally, choosing instead to grin up at him, horrific and grotesque smile stretching even wider across a sickly green face. It was a silent response but Noah still got the message loud and clear. The Mask didn't just want to tell him about his relationship with Carly Beth, he wanted to show him. With an excited smile, Noah wasted no time in pulling the Haunted Mask on, completely unaware of what he had just done. The Mask, meanwhile, felt a dark thrill tingle across its scalp as Noah began to pull it on. The Mask quickly changed sizes so as to better accommodate Noah, slipping easily over his small head and fitting snugly around his neck.

"Cool!" Noah again cheered as he ran over to his bedroom mirror and studied his new face intently. The Mask was still a tad unused to how genuinely and innocently elated Noah was, but the moment the two fused together, the Mask instantly began to probe Noah's mind and memory, turning over every last piece of information it could find until it had thoroughly read through all of his feelings and fears. The Mask quickly latched onto some of Noah's insecurities and began to feed off of them, bringing them to Noah's attention. For a moment, then, some of the fun of this little game started to shift into something more sinister.

An old anger flickered up in Noah's chest and he began to feel unreasonably antsy and upset. He suddenly remembered all the times he'd been bullied and harassed just because he preferred to read instead of play sports. The memories made him want to cry and his clenched his fists in anger, suddenly feeling the desire to smash his mirror...

But he came back around soon enough, his common sense winning out over his emotions. Since he did not realize that the Mask was trying to tug at his inner demons, he quickly disregarded that trip down (bad) memory lane and chose to distract himself by speaking to the Mask.