“What kind of fucking bar is this, anyway?” Trey asked, looking around again. “The fuckin’ city, Unc–I just don’t fucking get it sometimes.”
Dirk nodded, feeling uneasy and uncomfortable as well…and even though he knew, in his guts, that he and his nephew should leave…some other, deeper part of him, kept his ass glued to the chair where he was sitting in the bar. Trey’s cousin–and another nephew of Dirk’s–was getting married back at home the next week, and had wanted to have his bachelor party at some of the strip clubs in town. At some point, Dirk and Trey had gotten separated from the main group, and ended up here, in a bar called Pigtown. It had…sounded like a strip club, but now that they were in here, drinks in hand…he realized there were no women. Just a room full of men in the low light, music pounding from some other room nearby, some of the slipping off behind a curtain every once in a while, and on less occasion, a man came stumbling back out, eyes wide and breath short.
“I think this is some fag place, Unc,” Trey said, “Fuck, look at those fuckers over there, who the fuck would wear shit like that?” Trey pointed off to another corner of the bar, where three men were sitting–or, where one was sitting, and two others were kneeling on the floor beside him, while the one sipped his beer. It was the two kneeling that had captured Trey’s fascination–both of them clad head to toe in rubber gear, without any skin to be seen at all. “It’s fucking disgusting.”
He said the last bit loud enough that the whole bar heard him, including the man sitting at the table with the two gimps, who smirked, but didn’t acknowledge Trey beyond that. Dirk…couldn’t help but get a bad feeling about all of this. Trey was a bit of a hothead, and certainly had no love for faggots–not that he should, of course. Fags were pieces of shit to Dirk too, but he had grown into more of a live and let live philosophy as he’d gotten older. If they just kept their creepy shit to themselves, away from Dirk, then what did it matter to him?
“Maybe we should get the rest of the guys, and come back here, show these fuckers what a real man can do,” Trey added, and chugged the rest of his beer. “Come on, Unc, let’s get the fuck out of this dump.”
Dirk nodded, and stood up–Trey tried to do the same, but only got have way before a hand landed on his shoulder and pushed him back down into his chair. “What, leaving so soon? But the night’s just getting started!” It was the man from the table, the two gimps close behind him, looking like two shiny black statues. Their masks–they weren’t just masks, were they? If anything, to Dirk, it didn’t look like something was covering their face–if anything, it looked like they were simply faceless, their identifying features scrubbed away entirely. It was the lack of any contour–usually, wearing a mask, you could still see the contour of a nose and eyes and mouth, but the two drones…it was so smooth. He told himself it had to be the light, keeping him from seeing it, but he was unnerved all the same.
The other man was wearing less, and didn’t have a mask on at all. His head was shaved close, and he had stubble across his face the same length, giving the impression he’d razored all of it a few days ago at the same time. He was wearing a rubber shirt, with a leather jacket over it, and leather pants and boots. At a distance, he had seemed less imposing, but this close it was clear he was heavily muscled–more than a match for Trey, who for all of his big talk, had never had the physique to back up his boasts and threats. It had gotten him into plenty of trouble, but he was a bit too thick to learn his lessons. “You two aren’t from around here, are you?” he said, leaning down close to Trey’s ear, “Yeah, you don’t quite know how things work around here, I don’t think, so why don’t I show you?”
Trey felt one of the man’s bare hands curl around his neck–and then after picking at his neck for a moment, he felt…his fingers slip underneath his skin, like an edge had appeared out of nowhere on his body. He panicked, but the other hand on his shoulder was pressing down with an impossible weight. He looked over at Dirk with terror in his eyes, begging his uncle to do anything, but the older, pot bellied man was just looking on in horror at what was happening.
“You see, around here, we don’t have a lot of patience for men who come in here wearing masks like this. No–we like to see who you really are, underneath all the posturing and bullshit you’re throwing around, like you know something about anything,” the man slipped his fingers further under the edge and got a grip on the flap of Trey’s skin he’d found, “But you–I don’t think there’s anything under here, do you? Not under either of you, probably. Just a whole lot of bullshit–how about we check?”
Before Trey could say anything, the man lifted the edge, and Dirk watched as the edge pulled away all around the base of Trey’s neck, and the man drew it up Trey’s head quickly, his nephew’s face going blank as his features came away from his body, attached to the mask the man had created. He pulled it free, and Dirk found himself staring at a face just like the two rubber gimps behind the man–no features, simply…blank, and then Trey’s face fell forward and collapsed onto the table, limp and lifeless–nothing more than a dummy.
Bracken's Corner 