Behind The Mask

A young boy believes his mother is a sociopath.

He was shaking. Tightening his sweaty palm around the handle of the kitchen knife. He anxiously glanced at this imposter, again in his kitchen, who was calmly cutting the carrots for tonight’s dinner party. Somewhat reluctantly he turned, wiping beads of sweat from his brow. With his heart pounding he began to cautiously take steps towards this pretender; his anxiety beginning to subside as he thought about all the agony she had caused. All those lives she had ruthlessly destroyed through relentless deceit, heartbreak and manipulation.

This woman was not his mother. She looked like his mother and she sounded like his mother and everyone said that she was his mother.

But she was not his mother.

Readjusting his grip on the knife, he walked towards her, swift and silent. This woman deserves to die. His eyes grew cold as his jaw clenched in determination. Everything was falling into place; the uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach had fled. She hadn’t noticed he was there. It was as if what he was about to do was meant to be. He stopped when he reached her.

“Mum,” he barely whispered. She stopped and put her knife down, not startled at all, before turning around.

He froze.

He had thought about this day for a long time - ever since he realised that his mother - if you could even call her such a caring thing - was a sociopath. For months he had planned how to do it: the right time, the right place, where to dispose of the body. Some nights his impatience caused him to become restless: tossing and turning in his bed until the faint light of dawn filtered through the gap between his curtains; strangling his duvet as he fought the unrelenting, sinister urges that plagued his young mind...

Yet, he had hesitated. After waiting for so long to finally execute this monster that stood before him. After all the time he spent convincing himself that being the flesh and blood of someone so detestably horrid was no reason to let them do whatever they wanted to. Maybe it was the sight of her face; the welcoming smile that her lips curled into - but it was all fake. It was a mask. He cursed himself for believing it. He knew better; her unwavering stare gave her away.

Calmly, her gaze flickered between the puzzled expression of her son and the trembling knife in his hand. Gently she reached down and slid the knife from his clammy palm.

“You shouldn’t play with knives, Johnny. They aren’t safe for young boys like you,” her voice was soothing. It almost made him feel safe again.

Almost.

A growing panic spread through him; his throat felt tighter and sweat was still trickling down the sides of his innocent face. Fear was taking over. Not because of what he was he was about to do or because of who he was on the verge of becoming, but because of her. Of the knife she was lightly twirling in her hand. She was his mother, but she was not like all of the other mothers who were kind and loving and cared for their children when they were sick. Other children didn’t have to hide when their mothers got angry; they didn’t have to hide bruises; they didn’t have to be scared in their own homes.

They didn’t have to live like me.

Quickly, he looked down, tears stinging his eyes.

“S-sorry…” Johnny stuttered. Shuffling his feet as he wondered what she might do.

She lifted the knife up and looked at it casually.

“You could kill someone with one of these, Johnny.” Her tone was indifferent, but her eyes told a different story. Johnny flinched as he heard a door slam and shifted his attention to the kitchen doorway.

“Ah,” Johnny’s mother sighed, “look who’s home.”

 

***

 

On the living room sofa with a blanket wrapped around them were two minors; one was a boy, about the age of twelve with dark brown hair and matching eyes. The other was a girl with the same hair and eye colour as the boy, but she seemed older - about 19 or 20. His sister, perhaps? The girl had her arms wrapped around the boy stroking his hair comfortingly. They seemed to be close, but the boy's face was blank; his eyes staring at nothing. Was it shock?

 

"Johnny and Jenny Moore," Officer Parker stood beside me. "They are siblings. Aged 12 and 19. Their mother, Victoria, was found dead in the bathtub by Johnny. Her son..." She always got emotionally attached.

 

"That must not have been a pleasant thing to experience," I surveyed the boy again; he had barely moved. "Question them separately."

 

"Yes, sir." I watched Officer Parker walk over to them; she was a compassionate woman. She was thoughtful and sympathetic, unlike me. I would rather be detached. I see everything for what it is that way. Like the way the sister reluctantly forced herself to leave her brother's side and the look she gave him as she walked away - only tearing her eyes away at the last second. Why did she give him that look? What did it mean? Humans have a lot of emotions and even though they try their best to hide them: they always show themselves eventually.

 

The truth always comes out.

 

***

 

The house was buzzing. What was supposed to be an exclusive dinner party had escalated into a whole neighbourhood get-together. There was still something elegant about the whole thing; the adults who filled the rooms were respectable even with the jokes and laughter. A few older kids sat in their small groups drinking lemonade; they were friends. They had grown up together. Even their parents were friends. 

 

Sitting alone in the corner, Johnny stared at an empty plastic cup. Usually he got involved - in everything actually. Every year he got onto the football team and volunteered for whatever he could and auditioned for roles in drama productions and made sure he was as close to the top of the class he could be and... it still never seemed to be enough.

 

That wasn't what he wanted though; it was what his mother wanted. He felt like he was pretending; he didn't feel like he was on the same wavelength as his 'friends'. An outcast. That's what he was; but as time goes by it becomes easier and easier to pretend that you're somebody you're not.

 

"Johnny," A snappy voice broke into his thoughts. A fake grin staring down at him. "Why aren't you sitting with your friends?" Wrapping her hand firmly around his arm his mother pulled him out of the lonely corner he had put himself into.

 

"I just don't feel like it..." As soon as the words slipped out of his mouth, he regretted them. Attempting to not cause any suspicion, his mother guided him to the empty kitchen and closed the door behind them.

 

"Are you trying to make me look bad?"

 

"No, I just-"

 

"And now you have the audacity to interrupt me?!" The words sprung from her lips sharp and angry.

 

"I can't believe how selfish and disrespectful you are being. After all I have done for you... I have provided you with all you have ever needed. I give you food and shelter and an education! I even bless you with every single little thing that you could ever want from the latest Xbox to designer clothes. Everything you needed to be perfect-"

 

"But I don't want to be perfect!"

 

Snap.

 

For once he had been unable to control his resentment. It was a dangerous idea to talk back, but he seemed to have forgotten about that.

 

"That's what you want! I don't need designer clothes or the latest games or anything! I don't want to be popular; I don't want to try out for every drama production and I don't want to do everything just to make you look good. You're my mum and you don't even care!"

 

Desperately, he attempted to blink his tears away. Crying was for the weak. Shaking, he looked down. What have I done? The house was full of people. If there hadn't been music and a closed door... At least no one heard, he hoped. She would murder him. Slowly he lifted his eyes up to look at her. Her face was empty. No fake smiles. No false sparkle in her eyes. No sorrow. No sympathy. Nothing.

 

And then the explosion of anger.

 

***

 

Naked in the water was a body. Her skin was a waxy purple with the exception of her hands and feet which had turned blue. I estimated that she had been dead for no more than a couple of hours. Faeces floated around in the water; after the moment of death the body releases everything. This job is not for everyone. 

 

“Pretty, huh?” Cooper had positioned himself by the corpse. The massive camera he held in his hands flashed.

 

“Unusual.” I pulled on a pair of latex gloves. “I suppose they both said it was a suicide.”

 

“Who? The kids? Yeah.”

 

“I would say that it is a rather unpleasant way to die; you would have to fight all your natural instincts.” I lifted up the corpse's hands to inspect her fingernails. There was something under them. “Have a look under her fingernails. Any sign of a suicide note?”

 

“Uh, not so far.”

 

“I see.” I focused my attention on the room. I checked for any sign of a struggle that may suggest this was not a suicide. A still wet towel hung on the radiator. Otherwise, there was nothing worth noting. I walked out and towards the bedroom and began searching through the victim's personal belongings. If it was a suicide, then the reason why she did it would be found here, but if it was not... the answer to who might of done this could be found as well.

 

I thought back to when I first saw the two siblings downstairs. Was the boy in shock? Or was that just the stone cold expression of a killer? Did the girl look at her brother with concern? Or with fear that he might expose her terrible secret?

 

Author's Note

This is a piece where I tried to go out of my comfort zone and write from a perspective I have not yet attempted (the detective) in a genre I do not usually write in. Any critique on improvements would be appreciated.

Reviews

[JayG]

The thing that hit me first was that you’re not presenting the story. Instead, a dispassionate external narrator is explaining the situation, using the same words they would were it an oral report. Yes, you’re using first person, but the one speaking to the reader isn’t the one living the story, it’s that person at some time after the events took place, explaining them primarily in overview and summation. Informative? Sure. Entertaining? No, because reports are seldom entertaining.

The goal isn’t to make the reader know the events and the people. That’s a chronicle, a history, and as such, as dispassionate as any report. If this was a horror story, for example, the reader doesn’t want to know that the protagonist feels terror, they want you to terrorize THEM, and make them afraid to turn out the light. And to do that you need to make the scene happen TO the reader in real time—a trick not even mentioned in our school days, because there, we were trained to be useful to employers, via the ability to write reports and essays, not be professional fiction writers.

It’s not that you’re doing something wrong, it’s that you’re using the tools of nonfiction writing and verbal storytelling nstead of showing the events through the viewpoint of the protagonist. And because you’re using our schoolday writing skills it’s fact-based and author-centric. But the goal of fiction is to entertain, so it must be emotion-based and character centric. We want the reader to know what the protagonist knows, as that protagonist knows it.

If we don’t know what the protagonist is trying to accomplish, for example, we can’t have context for what they say and do. But to know that we need to know how THEY perceive the situation. That calibrates the reader’s viewpoint to that of the protagonist, giving them reason to care. Why the protagonist’s viewpoint matters so much is discussed in this article:
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/the-grumpy-writing-coach-8/

Not placing ourself into the protagonist’s viewpoint as we write invariably causes problems:
- - - - - -
• Because we know the characters, their attitudes, background, necessities, and desires, if we forgot to properly present it to the reader we won’t see the problem as we read/edit. For us, each line points to images, attitudes, and history, stored in our minds. So the story lives. But what about the reader? For them, each line points to images, attitudes, and history, stored in OUR minds. And what good does that do the reader?

You open, for example, with, “He was shaking.” You know who he is. Mom knows who he is. But what does the term “he” do for the reader but to indicate gender? Is he young or old? Unknown. Is it his hands, his entire body? Unknown. Is the shaking from fear, desire, rage, sickness? Unknown. And learning it as early as the next line cannot retroactively remove the lack of context as it’s read. We get one, and only one, first impression.

See the problem? You gave effect—the shaking—while the reader has no reference for its cause. So for the reader there’s no context.

When you say, “Tightening his sweaty palm around the handle of the kitchen knife. He anxiously glanced at this imposter, again in his kitchen, who was calmly cutting the carrots for tonight’s dinner party.” The reader is lost:

Forgetting that the period should be a coma, what’s a “kitchen knife” supposed to mean? Large? Small? Chef’s, boning, bread, or…? Why is the unknown “he” carrying it? Unless we know that, and his intentions for it, it’s just a meaningless fact—a visual we can’t see. So the order in which we learn things is critical. Had he, for example, studied her first. Had her appearance caused reflection that gave context. And had he THEN reached for the knife, it would have made perfect sense.

To you it’s all clear. To a reader…

• When we “tell” a story we assign the dialog and attitudes the characters display. We never ask the character how they feel, based on their needs and perceptions. We just hand them a script. So if we need our protagonist to be smart they cleverly notice what we need them to. But if we want them to miss something they dutifully shed IQ points. And how can that seem real?
- - - - - -
It’s not a matter of skill, talent, or story. It’s that you, like pretty much all of us, graduated school believing that writing is writing, and that we have the mechanics of that taken care of.

But what kind of writing did they teach us in school? We’re pretty good at writing essays because we wrote a LOT of them over the years. We’re also great at report writing. And that means we’re ready for the kind of writing employers need. But how much time did your teachers spend on the elements of a scene on the page, on why scenes almost always end in disaster for the protagonist, and such things as the short-term scene-goal? I’m betting pretty much zero. And if so, if we’re not aware of what publishers think of as a well-written scene, how can we write one?

For all we know you’re oozing talent from every pore. But untrained talent? That’s no more than potential, and useless for writing till it has the tools and knowledge of how to use them. And that’s my point. You have the desire. You have the basics of expressing yourself on the page. You even have the story. But you’re also in the position Mark Twain was speaking of when he said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

And that’s what you need to fix, so as to present your story in the polished and professional setting it deserves.

For an overview of the issues, I immodestly suggest digging around in the writing articles in my blog. They were written for the hopeful writer. I also have some links there that may be helpful

Then hit the library’s fiction writing section and devour a few books on writing technique. My personal suggestion is to look for the names Dwight Swain, Jack Bickham, or Debra Dixon on the cover. They’re pure gold, and focused on the nuts and bolts issues of constructing a story that will grab the reader on page one and not let go.

But whatever you do, hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/