Jane woke up to a whisper.
Startled, she hopped out of bed and searched around for the origin. She tossed her blankets to the side and jumped down to look under to the bed.
Nothing, then she heard the whispering again.
She stopped and listened to see if she could make out the direction. “Hey, over here!”, she looked by the closet and on her chair was a strange mask.
It moved around expressively as though it were truly a living face. “Hey, so I was dropped off here last night and I’m supposed to let you know that someone is ultimately going to die. Who will it be? We’ll just have to wait and find out. I mean, that’s the fun in this game and I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”
“What do you mean someone is going to die?! Can I ask you this, do you know who it’s going to be?”, Jane questioned
“Nope, not a damn clue. I’m just here to help the process move along.”, expressed the mask. “Now, let’s get started....”
“Wait.... WAIT! ...I’m still trying to grasp the reality that I’m talking to a mask that says that some unnamed and I guess unknown person is going to die.”, she said shaking her head in her hands.
“Well, we need to move on because we don’t have forever to figure this thing out. This is how it works; you ask me questions and I’ll receive the answers to reply with. As we move closer, we have the power to change who is the chosen one.”, the mask says.
“So, this outcome changes as we progress? Can that person be me? That’s my first question.”, she asked.
“Yes, in a sense. In the end, you could be the one that is chosen. Now, you get ten questions and 30 minutes. A glim of hope to keep you on the upside. If you do ask all the right questions, no one must die, and this time will just end like it never happened. Just so we’re clear, I don’t make up the rules nor do I control any part of the answers or outcome. You are fully in control, you must think inward to the past five years, and this will help you in finding the questions you want to ask.”, it explained.
“Is this person related to me?”, she asked
“In a sense but not blood related to you. But they were remarkably close to you.”, it specified.
“We’re close? Did I have a falling out with this person?”, she questioned.
“Yes, you had a falling out with this person and the experience left them devastated in a way that they buried themselves in a dark place for a while.”, it answered.
“Have I known this person for a very long time?”, she asked.
“Yes, all your life. But you only knew them in a sense of knowing their surface self. You never truly knew them deep down.”, it replied. “You have three questions left.”
“Three, but I’ve only used a few.”, she said
“You’ve used seven, there aren’t practice questions. There is a countdown I have built inside and every time it detects a question; it clocks it in.
That’s seven, you have three left so use them wisely.
“Okay, was this person a best friend of mine?”, she asked
“Yes.”, it replied.
“I think I might know who it is, but I’m still not entirely sure......
“You can only guess once so keep that in mind while saying the next thing.”, the mask explained.
“Is it my best friend who I grew up with?”, she confidently replied.
She sat back in the other chair by her closet and her eyes rolled back into her head. She laid peacefully sleeping.
“No, it was you”, the mask whispered sadly
Her sister came through on their weekly luncheon and came across her lying in the chair. She tried to revive her, but no matter how hard she was shaken, she couldn’t be awakened. Her sister called 911 and they took her up to the hospital where they hooked her up to machines to keep her going.
Inside her head, Jane sat in a room and when the mask showed up in her dreams, she had one question. Am I dead?
It replied, “No, well not technically. You didn’t die, but your mind did kind of imploded and then it went quiet. Like a blackhole. And now you can only take things in. These past decades had been especially intense for you, and you have neglected yourself in such a way that you were losing everything that made you. Ironically, you did ask if it was you and it wasn't in the traditional sense. Whoever this was going to happen to be was only going to die inside versus what you probably had in mind while asking the questions. I’m sorry, I must go now. This is now your forever home, and I won’t be seeing you after today. This is Goodbye”, the mask whispered in a gentle and peaceful voice.
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