The Masqueraders (previous chapter 6)
Night had well and truly arrived by the time Frank woke up. He had slowly slid from his position draped around Gerard’s neck, and now his head was buried in Amy’s lap, hand clinging on to one of her knees. Amy seemed very pleased with this. Jasmine, Michelle and Gerard sat some way off, not wanting to waken the sleeping boy.
“We know what’s going to happen when he wakes up.” Jasmine whispered, shredding a leaf with long fingers.
“He’s going to be terrified.” Michelle commented. “He was scared enough before he fell asleep, and now the cycle? Even if it doesn’t start soon, it’s going to be awful to watch. He’s like an adorable little baby when he cries.”
Jasmine nodded her head in grim agreement, tossing the leaf slices over her shoulder.
“I just don’t understand why he let Gerard touch him, and not Amy or I.” Jasmine said accusingly. “Is there something going on between you two?”
Gerard made no answer, and continued to stare blankly into the treetops.
“Gerard!” Michelle hissed. He snapped his neck down to look.
“What?”
“I said, why is it that he let you touch him and not us? Are you and him… you know?”
Gerard let out a short bark of laughter, for which Amy gave him a death glare. Level nine.
“Of course there’s nothing going on.” He whispered. “Frank’s straight.” Both girls’ eyebrows shot up.
“You mean you… like him?” Michelle said under her breath, a tone of disbelief in her voice. Gerard pulled a face, waving his hand in front of him.
“I don’t… like like him. Just, you know, he’s fun, and kind, and good looking…”
“Really good looking.” Jasmine interrupted. “Amy’s noticed too, you know.” Gerard looked dismally at the girl on the dirty forest floor, stroking back thick locks of Frank’s hair with a blissful look on her face.
“I know.” He sighed. “But it wasn’t like I was going to do anything about it. I mean, first off, we don’t know each other that well.” The girls bobbed their heads around in agreement. “And second, well, why would he go for me?” The bobbing stopped sharply. The girls were wearing identical masks of anger as they contemplated what Gerard had just said. Jasmine leaned forward and snarled in her friend’s ear.
“Gerard, you are fucking sexy. If I hadn’t had a boyfriend these past four years I’ve known you, I would have attempted to have sex with you by now.” Gerard leaned back from her, shocked. He looked at Michelle in disbelief, but she shrugged her shoulders and nodded too. After a second of silence, he let out that sharp laugh again and got up.
“Well girls, your lying has certainly improved. You almost had me fooled there.” He strolled over to Amy, where she studied him cautiously to see if he showed signs of waking her beloved patient.
“I swear to god, I’m gonna maim that pretty face of his if his self-esteem doesn’t raise soon.” Jasmine growled, shifting herself off her seat.
“Well, that’s just gonna give him quite a big hit on said low self-esteem. I doubt that would help much.” Michelle goaded. Jasmine gave her a glare similar to Amy’s previous one for Gerard, and joined the other three in their small circle. They all watched as, slowly, Frank roused himself. He snuffled a little, attempted to pull a non-existent duvet over his eyes, before cracking them open a millimetre.
“Hey, sleepy-head.” Jasmine cooed.
“Mmf… hey…” He groaned, sitting up. He looked down to see what had been his pillow, and stood in shock as he saw only Amy’s legs.
“Oh, shit, m’sorry, I fell asleep on you…” He groaned. In the middle of stretching, Frank paused and looked up at Gerard. “But I thought you were hugging me?”
Before Gerard could speak up, Amy laughed heartily.
“No, silly, that was me. You blew Gerard and Jasmine right away, but you let me touch you, remember?” She ended the sentence with an innocent giggle. Frank looked at her with narrowed eyes, and glanced at Gerard. He shrugged; seeming like he was in a bad mood, Frank took that as agreement. He was still a bit confused, though, and as he sat down, he glared around at the people surrounding him. He had remembered why he was out here in the first place.
“So.” He uttered. The group studied his face carefully.
“So.” Jasmine agreed. As Frank bit his lip in thought, silence reigned over the whole area. Not even the wind could be heard, and any cars had stopped arriving in the neighbourhood well before any of them had got there. Frank wondered if they were going to say anything to defend themselves- in fact, he was right in the middle of that thought when Amy piped up again.
“Frankie, we’re so sorry that you had to find out about it this way.” She simpered. “I don’t know what Gerard was thinking, no offence.” Despite her last words, Michelle and Jasmine both scowled at her dig at Gerard.
“Well… to tell the truth, I still don’t really know what’s going on. I mean, all I know is that you- Gerard- told me that you guys aren’t human, and then I’m getting beaten to shit by those two dudes and somehow me shouting a lot made them run off. I don’t get what’s happening.” Frank admitted. He looked around at his friends, hoping for some answer to come quickly. But they all looked deep in thought, even Amy.
“Uh… guys?” He mumbled. No one reacted to him speaking, but Jasmine did lean across to Gerard and whisper something in his ear, to which he nodded.
“Oh my god, would you stop doing that? What are you saying?” Frank growled. A sudden heat wave passed through the group, producing a light amount of sweat to gather at the top of their foreheads. Only Frank remained cool, though he did seem to have a bit of a problem with breathing properly.
“Frank?” Jasmine breathed. “It’s alright, Frank. Just breath deep.” It took a minute for him to regain his normal breathing pattern, but when he was sorted, Frank turned back to his friends expectantly, who were back to regular temperature.
“So I guess you want to know what the hell’s going on, right?” Jasmine smiled faintly.
“Well, yeah, kind of.”
“Alright. So… Gerard told you what- told you who we are?”
“I said Masqueraders and he didn’t disagree.” Frank corrected her.
“Whatever. Well, you were right in that guess. We are Masqueraders, though to tell you the truth, that’s not really our group name. We don’t have a group name. The papers needed something fancy for the headlines, and they pulled that up out the dictionary.” Jasmine took a breath, as the others slowly stood up and whispered in her ear, before leaving the way they came. Frank watched Gerard’s outline as he went.
“Don’t worry, Ash has called them. They’re just going to go talk to him, tell him what’s happening with you.”
Frank looked vaguely worried.
“Are they gonna get in shit because of me?” He squeaked, sounding a lot more pathetic than he had intended. Jasmine’s answer didn’t help much, either.
“Most likely. But Ash is only one man, even if he is powerful. Those three could overthrow him easily.”
“What do you mean by powerful, exactly? I have a feeling you don’t mean good contacts.” Jasmine snorted lightly.
“Not really. To tell you what I mean by powerful, I have to tell you the whole story. And I need to know that you aren’t going to freak out and run off again, because if you do, you’ll be in even more danger than you were this time around. You promise?”
Frank looked slightly puzzled, but he nodded anyway.
“Good. Okay, here goes.” Jasmine fidgeted a bit.
“Okay, this is gonna sound a bit fairytale-ish, so don’t mock me if I sound stupid, right?”
“Right.” Frank agreed, grinning. Jasmine nodded.
“So this all started about ninety years back. Things were starting to change, life was getting a bit more complicated to live, and times were sure different to what people were used to. People did experiments on everything, just to see what happened. Just for the sheer pleasure of it, because that’s what people were doing back then, even if it was in secret. Now, there was one person who did more experiments than everyone else in the whole country, Jonathan White. He was a British guy, come over here to try and make his fortune in the god-knows-what industry.” Jasmine rolled her eyes, expressing her distaste for this part of the story.
“He tried out all these experiments, on other people, on himself, on animals, on anything. None of them worked, and he was starting to get pretty angry. By this time, he had reached thirty. That probably seems fairly young, but he had been working on these things since he was eighteen. That’s a long time for nothing to happen. So one day, in a fit of anger, depression, and who knows what else, he throws this bunch of chemicals together, mixes ‘em up, and chugs them down.”
Frank gasped.
“Yeah.” Jasmine agreed. “Shocking. But unfortunately for him, he’s got a bunch of chemicals that, on their own, would be pretty dangerous, but mixed with any other substances, they’re more or less harmless. Jonathan realises this for about an hour of waiting around for himself to die. So what does he do next? He runs out directly into the street to get run over.”
“Oh my god, are you serious?” Frank gaped. Jasmine nodded.
“Deadly serious. Now, we aren’t sure whether a horse-drawn cart, or one of the early automobiles hit him. But whatever did hit him didn’t kill him. Instead, it completely blasted everything inside his body to some place it shouldn’t be. Well, not the organs, but you know what I mean. Among the blasted stuff is the chemical mixture. Johnny boy’s body is refusing to digest such a weird concoction, and it’s still floating round there in his upper body. Okay, here’s the pretty confusing part. Somehow, those chemicals got into some vein that pumped blood around his head, around his brain. His brain’s already messed up from the severe blow, so when those chemicals get in there, you’d think he’d be a goner.” There she paused. Frank looked surprised.
“You mean… he wasn’t a goner?” He asked.
“Too right.”
“Good lord.”
“I know. The mixture has leaked in to all the little areas of his brain where normal thought processes are created, and it’s beginning to mess them up. For a while, Jonathan may as well have been dead. But by the time the people on the street have got him to a hospital, he’s alive, kicking, and the first of our kind. Of course, there were more soon after- he gave his girlfriend the same drink, and their babies were the same. It just goes on. Some of us just plain don’t know where we come from, though, like we’ve just been magicked out of thin air with exactly the same… features as this Jonathan’s children.” Jasmine finished on a slightly proud note. Frank wasn’t sure if it was pride for the man, or pride for remembering the whole story.
“By the first of your kind, you mean… the Masqueraders? But what is that? You guys all just seem like perfectly normal people.”
Jasmine smiled.
“Of course we do. We are, in all technicalities, perfectly normal people. We eat, sleep, talk, breath, shit- everything that everyone in the world does. But unlike everyone else, we have that small messed up part in our brain that causes us to be different.”
“What do you mean by different, though?” Frank asked impatiently. Jasmine blushed and looked down.
“Alright, here you have to swear not to laugh.” She muttered.
“Totally.” Frank agreed, crossing his fingers behind his back.” Jasmine looked up, a cheeky smile on her face.
“Well, Frankie, we have magical powers.” She grinned. Frank stared blankly for a moment, taking in what she had just said. And then he exploded.
“You swore not to laugh!” Jasmine squealed, standing up as Frank fell backwards, giggling. He waved his crossed fingers at her, still writhing on the dirty ground with mirth.
“Magical…powers!” He gasped, before collapsing in a fit of chuckles again. Jasmine watched, a look of adult amusement spreading across her features.
“Are you done yet?” She huffed, watching as Frank brushed a few stray tears from his eyes and struggled to stand up.
“Yeah… done.” He snorted, dusting himself down.
“Good.” Jasmine muttered. Frank looked up, grinning, but his face dropped at Jasmine’s deadpan expression.
“You were joking, right?” He asked weakly. Jasmine raised her eyebrows.
“What do you think?”
Frank bit his lip ring.
“I’m… I mean, I think… are you serious?” He stuttered. Jasmine looked thoughtful.
“I wonder how many times you’ve said that tonight.” She pondered. “Frank, I’m deadly serious. And I think I’ve said that before, too.” Frank stood, looking astounded. Jasmine gave him a minute before continuing.
“I know it’s a lot to take in. Yes, we’re all magical. Gerard, Amy, Michelle, Me, Ash… we all have some sort of talent that we have to hide, every day. It sounds horribly cheesy and shit, I know.”
Frank just stared.
“So…” He gulped, his throat dry. “Is there a particular reason you made friends with me?” He asked worriedly.
“We thought we could detect something of us in you, thought you might reveal your ‘powers’-” here Jasmine made sarcastic quote marks in the air- “- if you were around us. And we were right.” Frank proceeded to widen his eyes until they looked strangely huge.
“You mean… I have… magic?” He whispered, giggling a little to himself at how weird that sounded.
“Yes, you have magic. At the moment, there’s no way you’ll be able to use it. We only know you have them because you used the stored energy you have- from waiting for this to happen- to fight those guys off.”
“I fought those guys off with magic? But all I was doing was yelling. Something was really hurting.” Jasmine nodded, seeming slightly sympathetic.
“You obviously couldn’t see straight. It took you a while to gather all your stored energy, but after about two minutes, you shouted louder than before- you must have noticed that- and you produced an energy blast. It looked a lot like flame, so your power could possibly be something to do with the elements of weather related to your current emotions- I guess you were feeling pretty hot-headed at the time?” She asked.
Frank pulled a face.
“Well, more ill than hot-headed, but yeah, I was pretty angry.”
“I can imagine why. Do you even know those guys?”
“Well, duh. That was two of Devon’s crew, didn’t you realise? The guy with the braids was Simon and the other guy was Dennis.”
Jasmine made a noise of assent, before collapsing back down onto the tree stump. It was starting to get lighter, now- the sun was just starting to spill over the horizon, flooding the area with pale, wavering colour.
“I didn’t realise we’d been out this long.” Frank said blankly, staring at the sun. “Mom’ll be worried.”
Jasmine looked at Frank in alarm. “You live with your mom?” She gulped. Frank looked confused.
“You don’t?” He responded.
“No, no… Me and a bunch of the others from the ‘Masqueraders’ live together. Amy and Michelle share a house, and I have no idea whatsoever where Gerard stays.” She muttered under her breath. Her face was pained.
“Ohhh, this makes things so much more difficult…” She sang in a slightly maniacal tone. She hurried around the clearing, gathering up the coats and jumpers that they had strewn all over in the time that they had been there.
“Why? Why does me having a mom make things harder?” Frank demanded, following Jasmine wherever she went.
“It just does, Frank.” Jasmine snapped. She glanced around quickly, making a brief check to see they hadn’t left anything, before grabbing hold of Frank’s wrist and tugging him along.
“Where are we going?” Frank moaned.
“We’re going to see Ash.” Jasmine told him.
For some reason, he gulped.