Lights out

Chapter 2Josh

You good, man?” I asked my roommate. We’d paused our video game five minutes ago so he could text someone, and I was getting bored.

Tyler flopped onto the couch next to me. “Yeah, just had to break things off with that girl Aly I was hooking up with.”

I frowned. “I thought you ended it months ago.”

He shook his head and ran a hand through his dark blond hair, flexing his bicep and turning to check his muscles out.

“Knock it off,” was on the tip of my tongue, but I kept my mouth shut. There wasn’t anyone here for Tyler to impress, but he’d been vain as long as I’d known him, and he posed even when he didn’t realize he was doing it. It was almost like a nervous tic at this point, so he must have been more bothered by the Aly situation than he was letting on.

“I thought she ghosted me,” he said. “But she probably got busy at work again.”

I turned toward the TV and tried to act natural. “She’s an ER nurse, right?”

I already knew the answer to that, along with several other facts like her address, where she’d gone to nursing school, what kind of grades she got, and what her current work schedule was. You know, normal things people knew about their roommate’s ex-hookups.

“Yeah,” Tyler said. “I don’t hear from her for two months, and then look at the shit she sends me.”

He pulled his phone out of his pocket, unlocked it, and tossed it to me. I caught it out of the air and glanced down, freezing the second my eyes landed on the screen.

Oh, fuck.

It was happening. The day I’d dreaded since starting a secret social media account two years ago had finally arrived. My online life was colliding with my real one, and I was about to be found out.

Play it fucking cool, man, I told myself. Tyler was watching me, and I couldn’t let him see how freaked out I was. But, fuuuck, Aly had a mask kink, and of all the screenshots she could have sent my roommate, she chose this one.

I cleared my throat. “You never said she was into this kind of thing.” Which was weird because Tyler had a habit of telling me every sordid detail of his sex life, even though I’d begged him to keep it to himself.

He snorted. “I didn’t know she was, so it’s good I’m seeing Sarah because I’m not. I just want to get in, get off, and get the fuck out. I’m not down for playing games.”

How unfortunate for the people he slept with.

“I hear that,” I lied, tilting the phone toward me as if I were inspecting the picture, and, whoops, there went my thumb. “Shit. I just accidentally deleted the text.”

Tyler shrugged. “It’s fine. I don’t need some shirtless dude on my screen.”

Some shirtless dude, I thought as I handed the phone back. So, he hadn’t looked at the picture too closely because if he had, he would have recognized the tattoos. My tattoos. A girl he’d slept with had sent him a screenshot from one of my videos, and I’d be laughing if not for the fear of discovery and the adrenaline roaring through my veins.

“You ready?” he asked, lifting his controller.

“Sure.”

He unpaused the game, and we went back to shooting at everything that moved. I tried to focus on the split screen before me, but all I could think of was that text. Aly wanted to be fucked by someone wearing a mask.

I’d only met her once, but she’d made an impact. It was over the summer, early one morning after she’d spent the night in Tyler’s bed, not sleeping. I’d been awake, too, cursing the weird acoustics of our apartment until I found my noise-canceling headphones and drowned them out with music.

I’d always slept like shit, so I didn’t expect anyone else to be up when I finally threw in the towel and went to make coffee several hours later. Tyler’s door cracked open right after the machine beeped to tell me it had finished brewing. I’d half turned, expecting my roommate, only to see a woman instead. A tall woman, which was unfortunate because she was wearing one of Tyler’s shirts, and it barely covered her crotch. My eyes had immediately fallen, taking in her long legs. Tyler met her at his gym, and she looked like someone who regularly hit the weights: thick thighs, toned calves, and from what I could see of her arms, they were just as muscular.

I’d lifted my gaze, realizing I was staring, and instantly regretted it. Aly was hot. Not that I’d expected otherwise; Tyler always dated attractive people. But she was more striking than beautiful, with a pointed chin, full lips that looked like they’d been well-used the night before, a nose my mother would have said was distinctively Italian, and large dark eyes. Her brown hair was a mess, falling to her elbows in loops and snarls.

The smile she’d given me when our gazes locked was nearly blinding. “Please tell me you made enough for two.”

I’d grunted an affirmative and put my back to her.

She’d tried to make small talk with me, and I hadn’t been outright rude or anything, but I’d kept my distance and my face turned away while giving her monosyllabic answers, and she’d fallen quiet pretty fast. To make up for it, I poured her coffee first and set the mug on the counter where she could reach it. Then I’d splashed some into my cup and hightailed it out of there.

Tyler hadn’t told her who I was. He knew better than that, but I couldn’t risk her seeing my face for too long and starting to wonder who I reminded her of. I looked too much like my goddamn father, and that Netflix documentary had just come out about him. It would have been my luck that Aly had seen it.

The whole summer was rough, thanks to that documentary, and I’d barely left the apartment because of it. Whenever Daddy Dearest was in the news, I’d have someone stop me on the street or in the supermarket and say, “I don’t know if anyone has ever told you this, but you look just like a guy I read about the other day.” Or they’d listened to a podcast about him. Or watched a true crime episode that focused on his many misdeeds.

With the documentary came a fresh wave of interest, and I’d been working overtime for months to keep people from finding me or my mom and stepdad. Everyone wanted the exclusive interview from George Marshall Secliff’s surviving family members, and sometimes they went to illegal lengths to track us down. It was why I’d gotten into hacking when I was still in high school. I’d wanted to help the three of us disappear from the internet, and I’d learned everything I could in pursuit of making that happen.

Those skills had paid off in the long run. Now, I worked for an exclusive cybersecurity firm writing code that kept other hackers from infiltrating Fortune 500 companies and stealing all their clients’ money. It allowed me to work from home, with flexible hours, leaving enough time to pursue other hobbies.

Like making thirst traps for all the other mask enthusiasts out there.

The same reason I stayed inside was why I didn’t date much. Even though my hair was darker than my dad’s, and I wore it shorter than his, we looked damn near identical. It wasn’t so bad when I was younger, and my face hadn’t filled out yet. Being a scrawny kid had saved me. Now that I’d grown into my man body and was nearing the age Dad was when he got caught, I was a carbon copy of his mugshot.

One of the first questions I asked the women I matched with on dating apps was whether or not they were into true crime. If they said yes, I blocked them and moved on. I only ever took a chance on the ones who said they hated “all that gross stuff.” On the rare occasions I did meet and hook up with women, it only lasted a few weeks at most. I broke things off when it felt like they were catching feelings or they got that look in their eyes that said they were trying to puzzle out where they knew me from.

Even mirrors were a problem nowadays because I couldn’t look at one without picturing my own face contorted in rage as fists rained down on me. I’d seen other documentaries about violent men, and it always baffled me when their family members swore they had no idea what their father/husband/uncle had been doing in their free time.

My dad was a fucking monster, and there was no disguising it. He’d only gotten away with his crimes for so long because he targeted marginalized women, was handsome, and could put on a good show for short periods. Just long enough to convince the sex workers he frequented to get in the car with him.

A lot like his idol, Ted Bundy.

The only communal mirror left in our apartment was the one in the half bath, and I turned my head down every time I was in there to avoid it. So, yeah, my face was a problem, which was why the thought of wearing a mask was so appealing. I’d been fixated on it for years and finally found an excuse to don one after a story popped up on my news feed about the rise of thirst trap accounts with people wearing masks. It was a lofty think piece about the psychology behind the trend, but I ignored all that bullshit and zeroed in on the videos embedded into the article.

I could do that, I realized, the thought striking like lightning. Here was a way to finally join social media, show off the body I worked so hard for, and fulfill every human’s desire to interact with others. Plus, I’d inherited some shit from my father, and one of those traits was wanting to be admired. I’d suppressed it for most of my life, but lately, my therapist had been trying to convince me how normal it was to chase after fame and acclaim. Our primitive brain craved it because back when we were still bashing each other’s heads in with mammoth bones, to be popular was to be safe and protected inside the cave.

Deciding it was okay to indulge my desires for once, I’d placed an online order for some high-end videography equipment, spent hours designing and 3D printing a custom mask, and watched far too many YouTube videos on filmmaking before I even created a social media account.

And I’d told absolutely no one about it. Not even Tyler, who’d been my best friend for as long as I could remember.

“Dude, you’re fucking trash today,” he said as we both died onscreen. Again.

“Shit, sorry. Thinking about work,” I lied.

He tossed his controller onto the coffee table harder than was necessary. “Whatever. I’m over it. I need to get to the gym before it gets crazy.”

He stood from the couch and strode into his room.

Tyler could be a dick and was absolutely a fuckboy, but he was also the only person who hadn’t immediately abandoned me when my dad got arrested. He was a good friend beneath the douchey exterior and loyal almost to a fault. It was his idea to move to this city and start over when people at college figured out who I was. His exact quote was, “Fuck ‘em. Let’s bounce,” so I didn’t think he was serious at first, not until he filed transfer paperwork to switch schools and started sending me listings for off-campus housing.