Short Horror Stories

Masked

{Art by: Shyrrn - YT: https://www.youtube.com/@Shyrrn}

Perhaps it's just my world, but it might also be yours.

Everyone here wears a mask.

A real mask, maybe the one given from the beginning or one changed or even stolen.

Our masks decide everything for us: our emotions, jobs, school, friends, relationships, chances in life and even crimes. Our whole identity really.

Without our masks, we can't live since there isn't really anything underneath it.

We all get our first mask just after birth after all.

My life has always been rather uneventful, boring even. Oh how much I wished to be another. Everything about me has been determined from the start, written in stone, from beginning to end.

So I am done.

I don't want to continue this miserable life.

I stare up to face the sky, silently cursing its ways. Raindrops drip from my mask, falling down, making circles on the puddle beneath me.

The sudden sound of a door creaking behind me, awakens me from my self-pity and dark thoughts.

Quickly I turn to see who just invaded my space.

"Ah, sorry." A man softly mutters when he sees me: "I'm sorry for intruding."

I look at him slightly annoyed. Why can't people just leave me alone?

He looks a bit gloomy, but I must look worse.

From his mask I can see that he is one of the people born more fortunate, a higher class.

How can someone like that-

"Are you also bored?"

I sigh, it must have been written all over my mask.

But I ignore him.

Then he asks me a question, so very strange.

"Do you want to swap?"

Swap? Is his life that bad?

"Isn't that dangerous?" I carefully ask.

"If we do it quickly, no." he answers calmly.

"But it is illegal, right?!"

"Yes, but no one will notice."

It is quiet for a bit, only the sound of the rain surrounds us, soaks us.

I am the one to break the silence first: "first, tell me about yourself! I won't make a deal without knowing what I might be up against."

"Then I will." He says with a sad smile and tells me his story.

He was born into a wealthy family, but wanted to leave to understand the rest of the world. To have the freedom to travel and not be stuck to the rules of the rich.

After he told his, I told mine.

I was born in a 'normal' family, but want a life less boring and not bound by the rules of the normal. I want to see things from another side, and a more meaningful one.

It was as if some deity had made us for this moment.

After this conversation we knew what had to happen, we counted to five and then quickly swapped our masks.

I was him, he was me.

His memories flooded mine, my memories flooded his.

He had told the truth, I had told the truth.