When Bob’s body stood up again, Bob was barely in it. The Mask held dominion over all.

It didn’t particularly enjoy experiencing meatspace this way. Confined to the flesh-blood and bone-buttress of Its host, It engaged fibers and stacked joints and pulled Itself up against gravity. The flesh-bone-blood moved slowly. Compared to the speed-of-nightmare It could attain in Its other forms, everything in the ‘material world’ moved slowly. All of it had the sluggishness of mass and weight, of velocity, acceleration, and deceleration. Still, the Mask stood. It flexed Its newfound hands. Nodded Its newfound head. Exited the farmhouse kitchen.

The hostmeat didn’t fully restrict all of Its senses. It hadn’t wanted to exert the resources necessary for a full possession; It had overpowered Bobbobsson only through sheer will, and so It still existed as a rider on a mount, not as the beast itself. Without the sensory restriction provided by sapient limitations, the ‘material world’ could prove overwhelming. Everything was heavy and loud with everything else. The very air hummed with history and rumor. The dried blood on the floor still carried the shock and panic of Its victims.

It took some time to orient Itself. Moving a vehicle not meant to experience the sea of data bombarding It, It had to practice. It used the emptied farmhouse as an arena. Over the course of a few hours, It learned how to fold some of Its perceptions into Its periphery, how to focus on the input most important to Bob’s body. It flexed the network of Its newfound muscles and joints, practicing their movements, learning their limitations. When the moment came to push the host-form beyond its breaking point, It needed to know where most to spend Its resources.

By early afternoon, It knew.

Drawing Its practice to a close, It slid Its long blade into a deep pants’ pocket and moved on to the next step in Its plan. Leaving the farmhouse, It crossed a gated pasture toward the low, flat building where It had found the milkslaves. One by one, It unlocked the cages. The creatures inside shuffled and hesitated, inky eyes flicking to and fro. They began to leave their cages, but only slowly.

The Mask left the animals pawing the ground and exited the building. Circling east-northeast toward the back of the farmhouse, It sensed/felt a threat approaching. Continuing Its path, It turned Its head to watch the road to the west-northwest. The sensefeel of threat crescendo’d, and soon It saw/knew two ‘police’ vehicles roll into the small asphalt lot fronting the property. (‘Tours!’) (‘Closed.’) The Mask’s path sloped out of sight. As It dipped below the ‘police’ sightline, It adjusted Its heading. Near an old-old silo, a new-old shack contained dozens of tools.

It snapped the rusted padlock off with a supernatural charge and a twist of Bob’s wrist. Stepping inside, It assessed the shack’s inventory.

‘CAREFUL : GASOLINE’ a lidded plastic box shouted. The Mask popped off the lid and found a large red container inside. It reeked of flammability and roar, of screaming and cinders. The Mask poured the potential-energy incineration/obliteration all over the floor. It splashed a trail out of the shack and through grass to the silo. When It had emptied the crimson chalice, It threw the thing away. Returning to the shack, It took a heavy axe and a dusty pack of matches. Standing in the threshold, It turned a match-head into promise and used it to ignite.

As the fire caught and spread, the Mask followed the side of the farmhouse toward the ‘police’ vehicles.

The ‘police,’ it seemed, had mostly entered the building. One remained outside, a young male sapien sitting in the driver’s seat of a car, talking very loudly into a black communicator/radio (radio) clutched in his palm. The Mask could smell the sweat, the fear and sick hormones mixing in it. It approached the car from behind. The male sapien (man) had vomited dread and revulsion only minutes earlier. The digested-undigested still sweetened his breath.

“…at least seven, seven bodies…we’re doing a sweep now. We need backup. We—”

The Mask slammed the head of the axe into the side of the man’s throat. All of his words turned into gurgles. The Mask ripped the weapon loose and drove it home again. The edge chunked through three-quarters of a cervical vertebra before sticking. The ‘cop’ went limp and the Mask used the jammed axe-head to unshell the cop-corpse from the vehicle. Putting a boot on the dead meat’s torso, It freed the axe.

Inside the car, It locked the doors, buckled the safety belt, and turned off the radio, which still carried the crackling voice of a distant sapien (human/person/woman) asking increasingly panicked questions. The engine was already running, cylinders pound-pound-pounding (who had invented that? a male sapien, obviously. haha.) The Mask reversed the vehicle a fair distance and pointed the hood toward the front of the farmhouse.

It turned on the siren.

As smoke-promise-blaze climbed up from the shack behind the house, three ‘police’ (cops/badges/officers) stumbled out of the front. The Mask pressed the vehicle’s accelerator to the floor and shot forward. 

They tried to run, but they ran in ways that presumed a survival instinct on the part of their assailant.

But the Mask didn’t gain strength by surviving. It gained strength by killing.

After noticing one of their ‘own’ vehicles racing toward them, two cops tried to run back inside. The third ran for the far side of the building. With the engine overheating, speedometer a nonsense reading to a creature such as It, It plowed through one of the retreating cops and sent her tumbling broken over the roof of the car and rolling snap-split-shatter across the lot behind. The other reached the farmhouse door, leapt inside, and slammed it shut.

The Mask just didn’t stop.

The front of the house exploded into sharded boards and splinters, sharp rips of glass and needle-thin wood fragmentation. The structure took most of the blow; by the time the hood caught the pelvis of the cop beyond the door, the car only had enough velocity to send him tumbling six or seven feet down the hallway. He landed face-down, right leg knee crooked brokenly.

The Mask expended some energy to recover from the brace, the whiplash, the speed and sudden stop of the crash. Within a second, It felt fine; Its host’s body felt fine. It unbuckled the safety belt, kicked open the jammed door, and exited the car. 

It tingled with excitement as It saw the man struggling to reach for his weapon. This one was still alive. This one would reveal himself to It. Reaching back into the car, It retrieved the bloodslicked axe. The cop had unholstered his sidearm but had lost most use of his right leg. He turned toward the Mask in a sharp lurch, completely off-balance, and took a shot without aiming. The bullet whizzed passed, rage and despair whispering off of its wake, and the Mask continued walking.

The man inhaled, pupils focusing on the approaching Mask. Everything in the ‘material world’ moved so slowly. The Mask swung the axe and the man overestimated the weapon’s reach. He shifted his weight just as his index finger tightened around the trigger. His right knee immediately gave out. The bullet zipped through the air unstopped. A shout echoed the gunshot as the cop collapsed. With a yell, he pulled himself back up to a kneeling position.

“Fuck you,” he snarled, visage a wrack of pain.

The third bullet hit. The Mask felt the hot lead enter the hostmeat and shred a tunnel through. The Mask ignored the damage and swung the axe again. The man turned to avoid the strike but the only result was that the axe-head embedded itself in his hindbrain instead of his forebrain. The edge breached skull and obliterated pieces of both the cerebellum and occipital lobe.

The man sputtered and collapsed.

The Mask left the axe where it stuck, the handle a marker for the man’s corpse. Replacing the weapon, It drew Its long blade from Its pocket. It paused to siphon energy into the hostmeat, repairing the structural damage the cop’s bullet had wrought. It took substantial cost to fix the injury, but the slaughter so far had still produced surplus fuel. Within a second, It felt fine; Its host’s body felt fine.

Outside, the ink-eyed milkslaves bellowed and lowed. Fire gnashed its teeth, eating all in its path. Spreading.

Knife in hand, the Mask turned left, toward the side of the house where the last sapien-cop had sought cover. 

Did the Mask smile?

Of course It did.