The Masked Child

Chapter 6: The House

Just before the child hits me I take out a chain wrapping it around my hand and backhand him launching him to the side. Jasmine pulls out her blade, coats it in fire and goes to slash him, the blade goes through him but not hitting him almost like he was made out of air and not real. If he's not real why are we all seeing him then? How can we kill him if we are just phasing through him? The child leaps at Jack as he pulls out his dagger and once again just goes straight through him. As the masked child turns around me and Jasmine are launched to the wall and all of her flames that were lighting up the house all went out. I felt a hand on my shoulder so I turned to see somehow the child already got behind me. Jasmine shot flames through the sword at the masked child. Less than a second later Jack was crushing the child's mask under his foot. After the mask was destroyed the child started melting into a puddle on the floor slowly going towards the hole in the center of the floor. 

"What did you do? I didn't see you get over here let alone kill him." I say looking at Jack because I want to know exactly how useful his power is

"It would appear as though I can stop time. I feel very tired now so I think it takes a huge toll on my body but still pretty cool. You froze, he froze and I just had to walk over to rip his mask off and crush it." Jack said with the biggest smile I've seen him give since we met

We heard a cry and all looked over what was left of the child screaming reaching out for his mask. His face was completely black. He got up well what was left of him got up and started bolting towards us. As he was running his leg melted from underneath him and he collapsed to the ground. He was crying on the ground. 

"The original is going to be pissed and it's all your fault. He put so much into making this mask and you- you- you broke it! You broke my fun mask! You all deserve to die a slow painful long death in the worst fire in the world! All of the other clones are gonna hunt you bastards down. None of you are gonna live long." the child was saying as the mask melted out of his hand. Not even a minute passed before he melted completely. 

"Does that mean there are more of those things? I don't wanna fight any more of em' let alone deal with a group of them together." Jasmine said with a terrified look

"Well the way he talked made it sound like it took quite a lot to make it meaning he can only make a limited number of them. We don't know how long it takes for his power to come back either so we have no idea how fast he can create these things. He also said the original is gonna be pissed meaning he has a way to find out he was killed, if I were to take a guess there is something connecting them and there is most likely a limiter of some kind. either way we only need to kill the original and can ignore the rest." I say but I honestly don't even believe a single thing of what I just said 

"Yeah, but we don't know where the real one is and have no clue how to figure that out right now. As far as we know he could be living on that damn second moon! We don't even know if it's possible to kill him!" Jasmine said with it being very hard to tell if she was more angry or scared 

"Don't worry about it, let's just go kill him. We will go around killing a bunch of them until we kill the right one piece of cake. Besides after we kill a number of them we'll have experience and it'll get much easier." I'm still not sure if what i'm saying is actually true. I really wanna give up on this life, I will admit it's at least more entertaining but this whole situation is just stupid.

"What if we can't even kill the real one?"

"We run away, get more experience, get even stronger, come back."

"Fine, whatever you say. Let's go find him."

We all leave the house and head towards the van. I turned on the van and it made very weird noises so I looked under to see what was making the sound. I don't know anything about cars but I don't want Jasmine to know that, I wanna seem like I am more useful than Jack. I see another masked child laying and looking right at me. I shot a lighting bolt right at him and it cracked his mask. He started bleeding and the one Jack hit didn't so I am pretty sure this is the real one.

"What did you do? That child didn't even have the mask for a month. When I met you behind the bar of that hotel I didn't kill you did? I never killed you as you slept and yet you three didn't even hold back. And now you are just going around ruining all my fun. You are a piece of shit, I will make sure you die a slow and painful death." The masked child was saying as he disappeared into thin air

I didn't tell the others about it when I got back in because I didn't think they would need to know about it so instead I told them the brake line was bent. I don't exactly know what the brake line is so I just hope it's something that can bend and make a weird noise when it does although Jack gave me a weird look. I started driving around until we found more of these things.

We have been driving for weeks and it's been two months since we've been to that store. We are going to have to find some more food in around a month. I found a weird looking house so I pulled into the drive way and we all hop out of the van. After ten minutes they found a hole in the side of the wall since the house didn't have any doors. 

We all went into the house through the hole in the wall but once we got inside there were 50 more of those masked children. They looked as though they were just hanging out and talking until the last of the three of us entered the house and then at that exact moment all of them turned their heads as there body's just went perfectly still with a lot of cracking noises as though they snapped there necks and were staring at us. I looked up to notice a giant cage was dropped on us. The masked child from earlier came up and I could tell because the cracks from where I shot him under the van were still there but it looked as though somehow the mask itself was healing because the crack was smaller. 

"What brings the lot of you here ? Was killing one of my clones and stabbing me not enough for you, is that what this is all about? Doesn't matter now all of your suffering is gonna start now." The masked child yelled in a very calm tone in my face 

It got very hot very fast. I looked down to notice flames were growing underneath the cage. All the masked children were laughing as the flames just kept growing bigger and bigger.