A little fragment I'm proud of ...

A friend recently sent me the photo above, with a note attached: "I'm not sure whether this is Rorschach or the Black Mask ... thoughts?" It reminded me of this passage in Chapter 3, where Trevor searches Rae's hideout, which used to be the Black Mask's, and finds an old fedora that could only belong to one person …

It wasn’t everyone who could wear a trenchcoat and fedora in the waning nights of the twentieth century, but that was the Black Mask for you. It helped that he had haunted Los Angeles since before the talkies were a glimmer in Al Jolson’s eye, but that was only part of his mystique. The Black Mask knew everything, about everyone. He kept files on generations of city governments, whispered in the ears of industrialists and studio chiefs, came and went from police headquarters like a wraith. There were almost no photos, few recordings of the gravelly voice behind the black facecloth — the sound of oil and broken glass, one unauthorized biographer had called it — but everyone knew he was there. The crimes no one could solve, the powerful men no one could touch, the shadows no one could penetrate … they melted away before him like morning fog. Maybe he had powers, maybe he didn’t; it never mattered.

When capes and tights sprouted around him like weeds and the heroes went from front-page news to scandal-sheet trash, he stuck to the trenchcoat and the shadows and the truth. Even the most devout powers snobs steered clear of him, never questioned his right to exist. In other cities, they were metas and superheroes and mysterymen and capes; here they were masks, and could be nothing else. The girl took advantage of that. Ten years after the mysterious explosion that took his life, his hideout was still drawing free electricity from the grid, and no cop in the city would risk pulling over a black Indian with his plates. Just in case. Just in case.

Trevor remembered when he wanted to be the Black Mask someday.

As promised, two new scenes.

These two scenes are part of a series of flashbacks that occur throughout my novel, Masks, to explain how my characters, er, got that way. All you really need to know to understand them is that a) Rae has been bullied since she was six, and this is the day she stops taking it; and b) Trevor was adopted by a superhero when he was six, and this is the night he finally deals with the stress. Rereading these scenes out of context reminds me just how screwed up my characters really are ...

ONE

Ten years old and Jaime Ortega had finally said the last wrong thing. And Rae exploded.

One final, “Hey, owl,” and she spun and lunged at him, screaming in rage and frustration and pain, fingers hooking for his eyes, face contorted into a mask of fury. Around her, kids stopped laughing. Her scream would give them nightmares for years.

She didn’t know how to fight, so she bulled into him headfirst, and they crashed to the asphalt together, kicking and gouging and howling, Jaime in pain and Rae in the savage voice of the monster in the woods, of failure, of vengeance denied.

She rolled up to sit on his belly and pounded his face until she felt his nose crunch under her throbbing knuckles. She filled his eyes with blood and tears and sobbing and she was crying too. And suddenly her fists were brown and her eyes were sky-blue, and for a moment her ST END charm flew past her eyes and it was Sam’s BE FRI and she was someone else and it was so much better than being herself—

And the teachers grabbed her by her arms and hauled her off, kicking and wailing, wretched and furious and thirsty for more. How dare they deny her? She wasn’t Rae anymore—she was misery and terror, and she was revenge, and she would finish this if she had to tear their throats out with her teeth—

And then she saw two green eyes and the wave of a black-tipped tail beyond the schoolyard fence. And she relaxed, silent except for the sniffles. She would suck her cracked knuckles for the rest of the day, and Jaime’s nose would never be straight again, and she would never say she was sorry. But she would be silent, because out in the dust and darkness, someone understood.

TWO

Ten years old and he wasn’t supposed to be here. He crouched on a warehouse rafter, invisible in the clothes he’d so carefully stained with mud and rooftop grime. Jude would ground him forever if he knew. If they both lived.

Right now Jude was strapped to a table below, unmoving, probably unconscious. It made Trevor’s skin crawl. He didn’t even like to see his mentor sleeping—it was too much like seeing his parents in their caskets. He’d wake Jude up at three a.m. sometimes, just to see his eyes open.

Dr. Maligno was busy with something at his lab bench, all syringes and beakers and test tubes full of phosphorescent goo. Trevor shivered as he watched. He felt nauseous, waiting up here like this. He didn’t like the look of the bubbles in those beakers. Didn’t like Jude not moving. Didn’t like having to choose between saving someone he loved and keeping his nights as a shadowy sidekick secret from his teacher.

Then Maligno turned around, needle in hand, and Trevor was more scared of that than of being grounded. He dropped out of the darkness with a yell, and one sneakered foot glanced off Maligno’s shoulder, and the little mad doctor stumbled into a wall of beakers with a crunch of glass, a hiss of something caustic, and a bellow of pain.

And as Trevor landed in a crouch beside him, Jude stirred and opened his eyes to see his adopted son sawing at his restraints with a shard of glass. Their eyes met, and he took in the bare-faced boy he’d tried to keep at home, and for once he had nothing to say about homework or proper sleep habits.

As Dr. Maligno struggled, shrieking, to his feet, Jude pulled himself free of his restraints and smiled at Trevor as suddenly as lightning on a summer night and said, “We’d better get you a mask.”