Page 70 - WTP Vol. X #5

The Mask of Red Death (continued from page 32)
Dude who’d get them all in the end. Stalking the Prince through the trippy rooms of his own Palace. Each room a different bizzaro color. In Orlando the linked hotel suites at the Saturday night party flashed with strings of colored lights, multi-colored. Not a different color for each different room which would have been cool. Cool, too, if you’d all dropped dead amidst dancing and hooking up. Instead of an End worse than Poe’s.
Death lives! Lives on and on, like car after car of kids you barely knew. A whole lifetime of days ahead, knowing if you hadn’t gone to the goddamn Break, Death in the form of You might not have seized your grandad, who would be here at your un-Graduation. Your dad was going to come but when he found out you weren’t even graduating, he cancelled his trip. You almost phoned Friend A to bitch to her about that, him. Her dad even worse. If her dad hadn’t in- vited you all to his bachelor condo, would Grandad be here, towering above the other picture-takers? Would you be graduating? you wondered just as—like Black Magic—you saw them.
Holy shit. Ex-Friends A through D, rolling toward you. Bopping their heads to Taylor Swift. Crammed atop the back seat of Friend D’s convertible, waving like they’re all Miss America. Ex-Friend D. at the wheel, eyes fixed straight ahead.
At least D-for-Driver hadn’t spotted you yet. You turned in panic, guiding your bike off the curb, stupidly stepping onto the side-street leading to Not Your Aver- age Joe’s parking lot. Meaning to jump your bike and speed away. But you froze as the girls’ car passed. You stood there exposed beside your bright yellow bike.
So of course—you dummy!—your waving ex-friends saw you. First, shit: Friend B. slowed her wave then nudged Friend A, Ana, the closest to you. Both in life and in the car passing you directly. So you had to meet Friend A’s shocked made-up stare. Her full dark hair blown-out extra-big like yours would’ve been today; her rounded black-lined eyes locking your own bared blue eyes, the one part of your face not hid-
den by your helmet-plus-mask. Friend B had already turned her blonde hair-extensioned head away to wave to the other side of the street (B-for-Bitch!) but Friend A burst into a scared smile. She waved at, not toward, you.
She even (you couldn’t be sure, it happened so fast) waved you over, gestured you to follow—to bike into the parade somehow and climb onto the car? Like nothing happened? Like they’d even let you
in: Friends B through D, rolling on by. A boat-sized Cadillac of jocks followed, blowing obnoxiously loud airhorns. The guys who you girls used to deem Too Dumb to Live.
“Con-GRATS,” folks shouted gamely from your curb. “Good LUCK, dudes!”
“They’re gonna NEED it,” sarcastic-Dad voice called out above the rest.
The Parade was winding down, the cheers more muted for the straggling final cars. Soon the Moms and Dads and restless siblings would turn from parade’s end and see you. Though no one knew you were Death except your Ex-Besties; the lucky ones who had tested Negative, who had rolled on, gradu- ating without you. Friend B. turning away like you weren’t even there! You re-mounted your bike, mad at that. You could be a Bitch on Wheels too, today.
Helmeted head low, you pedaled into the Bike Lane, the rear cars of the parade still visible a block up ahead. Two Police cars rode right behind with their blue lights flashing in muzzy sun. Like the multi-col- ored hotel-suite lights in Florida, hypnotic. You biked toward those lights.
A parked car pulled out, almost clipping you, the Mass. Ave. traffic matter-of-factly resuming. Screw that! You were the tail-end of the Graduation Parade, only no one knew it. Just like no one at Prince Prospero’s party knows at first that Death is coming for them all.
~
Do you ever think of hurting yourself? the usually smiley Guidance Counselor asked you via Zoom and you shook your head no, lying. Yep, every time I bike, you could’ve said. But they’d have tried to stop your biking. You never did cross the bike-lane line till Graduation Day.
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