Mask Off

Fred couldn’t help but pace around his living room. With his mother hanging up on him like that, he couldn’t even defend himself against her charge. Couldn’t tell her yet again that the hospital presented a huge infection risk, and that everybody has to make sacrifices during a pandemic. Repeat the ten percent figure to her. Ten percent! Why did she act like it was over? He wanted to rant to somebody, anybody. But standing alone in his living room, he knew nobody listened.

To keep his thoughts from spinning out of control, he pulled his magnifier close by, and rummaged through the mess of miniature models on his table. Orcs, elves, dwarfs, humans. Some of them brightly colored, others just a dull gray. He picked up a wizard he had wanted to paint for ages now. Soon the outside world disappeared from his mind, the one where all the masses oblivious to disease went about their day. At first, he felt the urge to shout at them about the stats. But soon he got into the minutiae of getting the wizard’s blue mantle just right.

He couldn’t wait to put his army to the test at the game store the day the pandemic would really be over. The last time he went must have been over three years ago. He still remembered the tight finale, with everyone clustered around him, and Steve, and that one unlucky roll that made his buddy there take the victory. Although Fred hated losing, he still shook Steve’s hand. They all ate take-out and argued about the different editions. He even hugged Steve as they parted ways, something Fred rarely did.

He got up to get a coffee.

It must’ve been twenty years ago, when after some nagging, Fred got his own miniature to paint together with Dad. He tried to listen to his father’s advice on how to hold the brush, how to go step by step over each part. A photo of that moment still adorned the staircase at his parent’s place. Fred’s big blue eyes behind a dwarf, his curly red hair sprawling all over. Mother’s favorite picture of him.

But the entire class laughed in his face when he brought his first painted miniature to show and tell day. Dwarves don’t wear purple robes, the other kids told him. Especially when Fred couldn’t yet paint within the lines. He came home crying, but Dad laughed it off, and took Fred with him to his game night in the basement. Dad’s friends all liked his dwarf. They couldn’t wait to see how much better he would get at painting them.

He could sit on Dad’s lap as they played. Although he didn’t understand what the pictures on the dice meant, he felt important for throwing them, and fancied himself one of the guys, as Dad’s friends cheered on every roll he made.

Dad called his basement his safe haven.

“Son,” he used to say, “we all need a place to get back to ourselves.”

Fred felt grateful his father helped him find such a place of his own. People of his own.

The game store. Three years. Three years.

“Ouch!”

Fred’s coffee splashed on the floor as he grabbed his foot. A dwarf pierced through it, coloring his white sock red.

“How the HELL did this get here?”

He pulled out the bloodied dwarf and threw it at the wall.