For one month a year, everybody gets to put on a monster and hide inside it. Most people use that for candy.
The new one is about two who used it for something else. Brother and sister, one creature costume, built so big it takes both of them stacked inside to make it walk. He's in the back, blind, his hands on her hips because the rig won't stand up otherwise. She's up front working the face, waving at the crowd. It moves better the closer they get, and by the time they reach the stage they've quit pretending that's a problem.
Four hundred people on their feet. A judge with a clipboard. A kid wanting a photo. Nobody in that hall with the first clue what they're really looking at.
Which is the whole point of a mask. People stare straight at you and see nothing.
A word for the regulars: you know how it usually goes here. Somebody talked into it, or pushed past where they meant to stop, or saying no while their body says otherwise. Even the warm ones keep a thread of it. This one has none. Nobody's reluctant, nobody's being worked on, and there's no knife waiting at the end. They both want it, dead even, the whole way, and nobody's punished for it. First one I've written like that. Don't take it for soft, though. Wanting it doesn't make it gentle. They want it like a bad idea they've circled for years, and they do all of it to each other, in public, with the cameras up. Both of them, all in, filthy about it.
It's up now. Read the tags before you climb in. Happy haunting.
— Kinjite