Behind the Mask

The midwinter somber broke with even gusts from the diseases that struck solid in those up near the woodland’s edge. Quiet was so common that the squeak of a bug could draw the whole world’s attention there. The cold air that groomed the valley soaked the wood of the establishment in frostbitten flurries. It was a quaint house, big and roomy inside. Three bedrooms, home to four inhabitants, sunk into the wall’s forgiving surface with a few stray indents in the forms of bathrooms to count. When one walked into the quarantined hellhole they could firstly be found in the smooth tiled kitchen overrun by the messes from days prior. Not a soul touched such slop, dishes lay eschew and random slips of paper littered the ground. As it was now, the kitchen was far from a sightly place, but when it was new its floors shined of hope and its walls welcomed each individual who chose to work in it. Now the walls simply beconned those to leave that the room had an unfamiliarity with. Two passages lead off the welcome area, one into the open spacious pit of living dubbed by those who resided there as their living room and a hall, long in size, thin in width. In the living space were situated two mighty leather sofas, tags still clinging to their sides, and a beaten old chair whose cushion no longer provided a place for one to sit. It wasn’t all so bad to those who lived there, for the place was a common ground that all four people felt akindred to. The hall leading off as the other entrance from the kitchen stretched for what seemed like miles to the unfamiliar eye. It was painted in a dull cream, as the rest of the house was, with a singular painting lining its right wall. The piece displayed three boats with three men positioned ever so delicately on each ship’s bow. It stood as a true work of art to the family, but in reality the painting was nothing special. From the wall mirroring the kitchen, facing inwards towards the two leather sofas climbed a slick staircase of wood, lined with various pictures of a random individual. As one scaled the steps they found a platform facing out towards the living space. One could look down below and see the whole common area displayed before them in a perfect fashion. The rails, although they prevented one from falling, were far from their best days in use. As one traveled deeper into the level there stood three rooms, two of which were the children’s rooms and the other a white washed bathroom whose paint peeled at the seams. Each bedroom consisted of a bed and homely dresser stuffed with endless amounts of clothes and fabrics. Although each place was well liked by their owners, recently such places that once gave off a homely comfort now felt like unbreakable prison cells. One of the rooms belonged to a boy and the other a girl. Their difference of age caused a wide gap of interest between the siblings, but their bond was somehow strong. Down the hallway with the painting so ever plain bridged off a quaint bathroom and the master sweet. Off the sweet stood a glorious bathroom filled with bottles of the most elegant soaps and a porch, screened in and reduced to a rummage pile by the family’s various animals. The sweet itself was quite large, consisting of a closet on each of its sides as well as a wide king bed at its center. Near the women’s edge of the bed sat a camo pillow with various blankets covering its surface for a dog to sleep on. On the man’s side clothes were sprawled all over the floor with stains blotched on every other garment. It wasn’t perfectly clean, but the couple made due. The family slept each night in the constant silence of the woods and its majesty. Few other houses scattered the hilltop’s barren edge. It was a peaceful life, a good life till the years rolled by and hit the decade of disease. A virus began plaguing the world, torturing its inhabitants with unsightly symptoms that killed the morale of the populace slowly. This little family atop their grass speckled hill led lives untouched for so long. Their dreams had been their only true distinction between reality and fantasy for years, but now they awoke in a place where the horrors of the world around them hit hard. This disease, it crept like a mouse through a house leaving not one unaffected by its unsightly charm. In the night it did sweep through bedroom after bedroom, infecting the entirety of the household by sunrise. The first to come down with the sickness was the man, father of two, husband to the women. He was a hard worker and loud about his various educated opinions. In all, the world of his family had seen him as an unbeatable beast whose very will was of the hardest of stones. At least, that was what the daughter had always known to be her father. She admired him with such respect, taking every word he ever spoke into deep consideration. She modeled herself after his work ethic and great aspiration to better the world he lived in. This virus, it ravaged the man, he felt broke inside by the scars the disease continued to leave. The family watched in horror as their once unbreakable will began slowly deteriorating into what seemed like their new reality. Next, the mother caught the dreaded sickness. It was slow for her at first, but fear of the uncertainties it did present were present in her mind. Over time the kids watched as their mother grew worse as their father before had. Her will broke too and her body slowly gave into the disease's demands. The older of the two siblings, the girl, watched as her mother and father grew worse day by day night by night and began running the house to her best ability. Responsibilities piled in as her schoolwork began to slowly build up overtime and her homely duties called her to action. It was hard, mentally and physically and before she knew it the sickness had overtaken her as well. Nevertheless, she kept working, fighting, watching and doing all she could to be of use to her broken parents and little brother. The boy, he watched it all happen, he experienced the pain of feeling alone in such dismal times. He was broken just like his parents, for no longer did he smile or giggle as he once did. On his own he thought of the things of far away memories and distant futures that had and could happen. It was a hard life, but a life nonetheless. The girl tried to make it as normal and smooth as possible for her brother, yet there was no way to mask the truth. She took care of him, put him to sleep, fed him, and played with him to replace the roles her parents were unable to fulfill while stuck in bed.