The Facemask Mafia and the Real Score

It was a warm day for Avarxil up here at the foot of the Mlotlxi, in my laid-back front-range town of Fmoolxi. The nearby purple-rock formations of Sloxmi Park and Magenta Rocks Ampitheatre are like pews in a giant's church, framed by the sixty-thousand-foot peaks visible on clear days to the south and west, especially Wunxidi Peak directly to the south, by far away Yugxilimi.

You always know which way west is. It's where the mountain range is, going north and south like a curtain of rocks, ending the vast Great Swamp with a finality of Gods. You know you are special, because only the affluent can afford to live here. The herd of the poor live down south and east in nearby Tlowxmawi -- less clear view of the mountains, more swamp pollution; all the big city problems, including poorer schools.

Only twenty-seven more days of school left and then I graduate. This summer will be the best of my life, one big party, before I pack off to college, and a new life; my first time away from my parents.

I love my schoolmates. We study so hard, even during lunch hour, above the cafeteria in the library. Here comes Mstiflxa now.

"Hi Mstiflxa! How are ya?"

"Fine, friend."

We touched. Then a mean collimated guy in a striped facemask shouts, "Here's a gunzaga!", and shoots Mstiflxa in the face.

He shot my collimated pal too. He shot at me but missed. Must have been because he went for the body instead of the face. I guess I believe in angels now.

I played dead. Not that it was hard to do. It was either that, or be dead for real. I prefer play acting to the real thing myself. It can be uncomfortable, but when laying with real, bloody corpses that used to be your friends, you don't notice; you appreciate the difference.

I knew the shooter. He was a member of the local facemask mafia, the FMM. He was crazy. Smart, but hated school. He was getting even with it, and I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. No, I was lucky. I had the right face at the right time. Collimated face. The reason I didn't get shot in the face. It passed. It got a Maximum. Mstiflxa's face flunked. It got a Minimum. Dead.

I loved Mstiflxa. He was the kind of a guy that everybody liked, the kind with no enemies. But he had a striped face, and there was nothing he could do about that when the devil came to the library looking for souls. His whole life should have been about that moment somehow. We will not let it be, can't let it be.

Is that it? Spot check: striped face: bang: you're dead? I understand striped rage now. I understand their pain now. I walked a mile in their faces: the mile from the chair to the floor. When the coast was clear and the survivors ran for it, the west exit and the mountains promised safety. But the soul of one gunzaga shines the way forever for me now.

I had bits and pieces of Mstiflxa's blood and flesh on me as I lay there, playing dead. I was pretending I had a striped face, and all I had to do was lie still. They shot his face off. He was a manikin with his face missing, and my face was now carrying bits of it. That's the power of blasters, to shoot faces off. They will never kill the soul.

The FMM shooter was wearing a striped facemask. Funny I couldn't have returned the favor if I was packing. Nobody in that school packed, like in Tlowxmawi's First High or Second High, where the predominantly Thinstriped and Thickstriped population, respectively, has turned the schools into primeval jungles, where few study, go to the library, or even graduate. At least, if the FMM came to their schools, they would have made short work of them. We at Near-Purple were mainly collimated, and like collimated food-whales, were slaughtered without resistance.